With any implementation effort it is important for system actors to understand “the why” of your delivery effort: Why is change important? What is the moral purpose behind this change? These actors are stakeholders with a vested interest in the effort’s success, and for this reason they must also understand your system’s strategy, how it will be carried out, and, crucially, what it means for them. A good communication plan will engage them both analytically and emotionally and convey the necessary messages in a compelling way. 
 
A communication plan should provide a powerful narrative that provides answers to five questions:

• Why are we changing?
• Where are we going?
• What will change?
• Why choose this course?
• What does this mean for you?

 
The goal of the communication plan will be to shape these stakeholders’ views over time so they become more supportive of your delivery effort.
 
Context and Challenge
 
In recent years, education leaders and elected officials in Kentucky have worked to ensure that more students are adequately prepared for college and careers in order to guarantee the Commonwealth’s future competitiveness and the ability of its young people to succeed in postsecondary education and employment. Based on 2009-2010 ACT results, only 34 percent of Kentucky’s public high school students are ready for college or careers.
 
In 2009, state legislators passed Senate Bill 1, a law that required leaders from the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) to team with the state’s higher education system to produce a plan for reducing college remediation rates of high school graduates by fifty percent by 2014 and increasing the college completion rates of students enrolled in one or more remedial classes by three percent annually from 2009 to 2014. As a result of this mandate, a groundbreaking collaborative plan was created: Kentucky’s Unified Strategy for College and Career Readiness. This plan focused on four key areas: acceleration, interventions, advising, and supports that lead to graduation. The KDE also developed a new accountability model to better allow schools and districts to measure their effectiveness in helping students graduate high school ready for college and careers. Further, presidents of Kentucky’s colleges and universities pledged to partner with the Kentucky Department of Education and the Kentucky Board of Education in this work.
 
Taken together, these efforts helped increase the number of stakeholders committed to the college and career readiness agenda and strengthened statewide focus on the issue as a priority. The work provided an opportunity for state leaders to engage local school districts as part of this plan as well. Their participation would be critical to ensure that true change would occur in Kentucky’s schools and classrooms. 
 
In October 2010, a team from the KDE, along with a representative from a local school district, attended the Delivering World-Class Results Institute, hosted by the U.S. Education Delivery Institute (EDI) and the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE).  At the Institute, KDE representatives, with education leaders from several other states, learned about the delivery approach and how it can be used to effectively implement sustainable education reforms. After hearing from his team and learning more about the delivery model after the Institute, Education Commissioner Dr. Terry Holliday became convinced that delivery would help the Department reach its goals, specifically the college and career readiness goal.  
 
Key Actions
 
The Commissioner and his team were already in the process of shaping an aspirational goal for the Commonwealth’s college and career readiness efforts. In early February 2011 this goal was publicly announced at a meeting of the Kentucky School Boards Association (KSBA), an event that brought together school board members and superintendents from across the state. Commissioner Holliday used this platform to ask all superintendents and school board chairs to pledge their commitment to increase the rates of college and career ready graduates by 50% by the year 2015. Commissioner Holliday used this goal as a catalyst to kick off the KDE’s delivery efforts.  In doing so, Commissioner Holliday serves as a clear example of a system leader “leading from the front” by establishing an aspirational goal to motivate change (See Deliverology 101, p. 8).
 
During his speech, Commissioner Holliday asked local superintendents and school board chairs to sign a “Commonwealth Commitment to College and Career Readiness” that articulated the district’s pledge to reach the goal. In order to make each district’s contribution to the goal clear and concrete, superintendents also received a spreadsheet that outlined the number of students that needed to be college and career ready by 2015 in their particular district. A copy of the Commissioner’s letter and spreadsheet is also attached to this case story.
 
In the weeks following the speech to the KSBA, Commissioner Holliday and leaders at the KDE, with support from EDI, utilized various strategies to communicate the importance of this goal. The Commissioner used his weekly email updates to superintendents to provide up-to-date counts of the number of districts that had signed on to the Commitment. The Department also published a map online, which was updated regularly to show which districts had pledged their commitment (shaded in blue) and which had not (shaded in red).  See examples of these maps attached.
 
This public outreach, coupled with attention from the news media, helped to build momentum in school districts statewide to sign on to the commitment. As the days passed, more districts pledged their commitment to college and career readiness. By early April, all of the state’s 174 school districts that provide high school programs, plus KSB and KSD had signed on to the Commitment.
 
Results
 
The communication strategies used by the Commissioner and his team garnered statewide support for the initiative from school and district leaders, and helped build a strong foundation for the delivery effort. As a result, stakeholders from throughout the state are unified around one aspiration and have committed their support in reaching the goal. The KDE has now finalized its delivery plan for college and career readiness and is beginning to implement the plan within the department and in local districts and schools throughout the Commonwealth. 
 
For More Information
 
Deliverology 101, Section 5B