| Founder(s) | Dan Rothstein, Luz Santana |
|---|---|
| Type | Educational Nonprofit |
| Founded | 1990 |
| Motto | A catalyst for microdemocracy. |
| Formerly called | Right Question Project |
| Website | rightquestion.org |
The Right Question Institute is a small nonprofit organization based out of Cambridge, Massachusetts whose mission is to "promote the use of a simple, powerful, evidence-based strategy that helps all people, no matter their level of income, literacy or education, learn to help themselves." [1] Founded in 1990 by Dan Rothstein, former Director of Neighborhood Planning for the city of Lawrence, Massachusetts, Luz Santana, a Lawrence resident and parent advocate, and Agnes S. Bain, a Lawrence resident and Professor of Government at Suffolk University. The Right Question Institute has worked in dozens of different fields across the country and in several continents.
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The idea behind the Right Question Strategy originated in 1990, when RQI founders worked together on a drop-out prevention program in Lawrence, MA. Parents in the program reported that they were not going in to their children’s schools because they did not know what questions to ask teachers and administrators. Hearing this prompted founders to consider the importance of question-formulation skills, specifically in relation to self-advocacy and advocacy on behalf of one’s children. Soon after this experience, founders started what was then called the Right Question Project in an effort to help low-income parents learn these skills.
Through the 1990s the work of the Right Question Project expanded significantly. RQP developed the Question Formulation Technique (QFT)™ and Framework for Accountable Decision-Making (FADM)™ as teaching tools to help people problem solve and self-advocate in various settings. The organization continued its work in parent involvement while beginning to work in adult education, community organizing, voter engagement, and community economic development, among other areas. It was also during this early period that RQP developed the concept of Microdemocracy.
Throughout the 1990s and in the early 2000s RQP conducted workshops across the country, and the organization began to collaborate with international partners.
In the 2000s RQP continued to evolve. The organization began working in the health care field, examining the effect of the Right Question Strategy on patient activation. RQP also started work in K-12 education, examining the value of teaching students to ask their own questions.
In 2011, the organization changed its name from the Right Question Project (RQP) to the Right Question Institute (RQI).
The Right Question Strategy teaches two skills: a) how to formulate questions, and b) how to focus on decisions and use specific criteria for accountable decision-making. The organization's website states their belief that "Question-formulation and focusing on decisions are foundational skills, essential for effective self-advocacy and effective democratic action." [2]
Microdemocracy is defined by the Right Question Institute as, “individuals using essential democratic skills to participate in decisions made in their ordinary encounters with public institutions.”[3] Examples of these public institutions include a child’s school, a job training program, the welfare office, or Medicaid-funded health services. On average, low-income Americans participate less than higher income Americans in traditional forms of democratic action, such as voting or demonstrations.[4] RQI theorizes that encounters with public agencies can turn into democratic action when individuals have certain key democratic skills: formulating questions and focusing on decisions. These skills enable individuals to “a. use specific criteria to expect and require accountable decision-making and; b. ask their own questions, and participate effectively for the first time in decision-making processes that affect them.”[5] RQI targets front line workers as catalysts for democratic action as they are able to teach RQI’s methods to the people they serve.
RQI’s Question Formulation Technique (QFT) has been used in K-12 and adult education classrooms across the country as a strategy to help students generate their own questions. Building on experience working with parents, who named for themselves their barrier to participation, the QFT is a structured exercise that takes students through a process that includes divergent, convergent and metacognitive thinking. Past partners of RQI include GED, adult literacy, job training and workforce preparation programs in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and beyond, primarily funded by Jane’s Trust. The Institute partners with K-12 teachers in a wide variety of settings.
Directors Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana co-authored a book entitled Make Just One Change - Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions to be published by Harvard Education Press in September 2011.
RQI’s work in health care has focused on increasing patient engagement. The organization has stated that using the RQ Strategy allows patients to “take greater ownership of their own health care and partner more effectively with their health care providers.” [6]
Examples of RQI’s work in health care include:
• RQP Mental Health Intervention: In 2008 the organization partnered with the Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research (CMMHR) to conduct a study on using the RQ Strategy with patients who were primarily Latino. A report of the study stated that “Results demonstrate the intervention’s potential to increase self-reported patient activation, retention, and attendance in mental health care for minority populations." [7]
• Medical Education Pilot Project: The organization partnered with the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education in a pilot program that tested the relevance of using the Right Question Strategy in medical education. CCNY medical students were trained to teach the Strategy to patients in health center waiting rooms in Brooklyn and the Bronx.
The Right Question Institute began its work in parent involvement in the 1990s. The three-part strategy aims to build parent capacity to a) support their children's education, b) monitor their progress, and c) advocate for them when necessary.
The Right Question Strategy has been used in efforts to increase voting among populations that traditionally participate less in civic action, such as low-income Americans. After conducting a pilot program in 2004, the Institute implemented its Voter Engagement Strategy in 10 states: Arizona, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
RQI has also worked in citizen action initiatives, supporting citizens with RQI's educational strategy. The strategy attempts to enable individuals to recognize that there are decisions made on many levels of public institutions and government, participate in decision-making processes, and hold local elected officials accountable. The RQ Strategy has appeared all across the country, from the New Hampshire welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) to The Neighborhoods Partnership Network in New Orleans, two years after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. The Center for Collaborative Planning, based in Sacramento, CA, taught the RQ strategy as part of a coalition-building effort. This effort addresses the needs of low-income families in many of California’s poorest counties.
In the fields of community organizing and coalition building, notable RQI work sites include the Isleta Reservation in New Mexico, where a resident used the RQ Strategy to focus on the needs of youth in her Native American community, and in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Lawrence Community Works (LCW)[8] featured the use of RQI's methods in their PODER Leadership Development Institute[9] to design strategies for holding accountable local decision-makers, for recruiting more people to the organization and for including more citizens in the municipal budgeting process.
RQI has worked on community economic development projects in New Bedford, MA in the fishing industry and with the Hawaii Department of Health in a sugar cane plantation on the Big Island of Hawaii. Residents focused on the allocation of job training funds, determination of land use of the sugar cane fields, provision of health care, and assignment of former company-owned housing.
In early childhood education, RQI partnered with Associated Early Care and Education, serving low and moderate-income communities in the Greater Boston Area. Other early childhood programs that have worked with RQI include Head Start, Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youth (HIPPY), Even Start, and The Parent Services Program.
Professor Martha Minow, the Dean of Harvard Law School, referenced the organization in the Justine Wise Polier Memorial Lecture: “One impressive effort, called the Right Question Project...prepares parents to advocate, to participate in decision-making processes and to hold decision-makers accountable...What I appreciate about the Right Question Institute is its effort to meet parents where they are. Equally important is its recognition that no system, no professionals, no individual dealing daily with large numbers of people can meet all their needs without the avid involvement of those whose needs are to be met...”
The work of the Right Question Institute is featured in Data Wise, a book on using assessment results to improve teaching and learning, edited by Kathryn Parker Boudett, Elizabeth A. City, and Richard J. Murnane. The Right Question Institute's work in parent involvement appears in several publications, including Beyond the Bake Sale: The Essential Guide to Family/School Partnerships by Anne T. Henderson, Vivian Johnson, Karen L. Mapp, and Don Davies. Other books that refer to RQI are The Vulnerable Child: What Really Hurts America's Children And What We Can Do About It by Richard Weissbourd [10] and Making Our High Schools Better: How Parents and Teachers Can Work Together by Anne Wescott Dodd and Jean L. Konzal. [11] The Institute is also referenced in numerous articles.[12][13][14][15][16][17][18]
The Right Question Institute is funded by individual donors, service-related revenue, and foundation grants.
Foundations that have given financial support to the Institute include: