Community schools: bringing together community partners to increase opportunities for youth.

When U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan spoke a few weeks ago on the Charlie Rose show, many people were excited by his words about community schools. "Where schools truly become the centers of the community, great things happen.... We need the schools open much longer hours, and we don't have to do this all ourselves ... you can bring in great nonprofits, mentoring and tutoring groups to co-locate their services and bolster the community from the school," he said.

There are important initiatives that distinguish community schools from other public schools, including how community schools often partner with local agencies, and how they offer school-based health, mental health, and social services programs; extended day before- and after-school programs; parent involvement and support programs; and other methods of delivering community enrichment programs. This "full-service" approach to children's development and education represents partnership and teamwork between community residents, businesses, social service agencies, and public entities--all working to support their local school. In neighborhoods where children do not have a safe haven from gangs and drugs, or are lacking adult supervision outside of school, a full service community school is an innovative approach to educating children during the time when they are most vulnerable.

National-level Resources that Support Community Schools

Many educators believe and recent research studies find that the community schools approach can enhance learning for children and facilitate community engagement that leads to greater student achievement. And, as schools and communities move to create more community schools, resources and information are available to help them. The Coalition for Community Schools is an alliance of national, state, and local community schools networks, which, among other things, published the 2003 Making A Difference research report. The 15 community schools that are featured in the report produced remarkable improvements in efficiency and results by integrating existing community resources with the assets of the school. All of these successful schools link school and community resources as an integral part of their design and operation. According to the report, community schools have three major advantages over traditional public schools: (1) they garner additional resources for the school and reduce demands on school staff; (2) they provide learning opportunities that develop both academic and nonacademic competencies; and (3) they offer young people, their families, and community residents opportunities to build social capital, whichconnectsstudents to people and information that can help them solve problems and meet their goals. The Coalition's Web site draws attention to the latest information about community schools, and highlights research, resources, and strategies that facilitate networking for individuals and groups who want to become Coalition partners and work together to create and improve community schools. The Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL) staffs the Coalition for Community Schools by working to help individuals and institutions increase their capacity to work together.

Another important resource and model in the community schools arena is Communities in Schools (CIS), operating in thousands of schools across the country, and focusing specifically on dropout prevention. It champions the connection of needed resources with schools to help young people learn, stay in schools, and prepare for life. By bringing resources, services, parents, and volunteers into schools, CIS creates a community of caring adults who work directly with educators. CIS works with communities to assess the needs of their youth. In some schools, particular students are connected with services on a one-time basis (social service referrals) and in other schools, services are made available to all students and their families. CIS also brings services to students and families through after-school programs.

The CIS model includes:

* The presence of a CIS school-based, on-site coordinator.

* A comprehensive school- and student-level needs assessment.

* A community asset assessment and identification of potential partners.

* Annual plans for school-level prevention and individual intervention strategies. Appropriate combinations of widely accessible prevention services and resources for the entire school population, coupled with coordinated, targeted and sustained intervention services and resources for individual students with significant risk factors.

* Data collection, monitoring, and adjusting services offered to individual students and/or the entire school population.

* A combination of services provided and/or coordinated by CIS, which commonly include both academic and non-academic interventions, such as tutoring, mentoring, family engagement, health care, community service activities, and life skills development.

Currently, the CIS model is undergoing a national, five-year evaluation that is designed to reveal the most successful strategies for preventing students from dropping out of school and to identify replicable, evidence-based practices that can be adopted throughout the United States. Initial findings from the evaluation show that compared to other dropout prevention programs: 1) CIS is one of the few models to prove it keeps students in school and increases graduation rates; 2) the CIS model results in a higher percentage of students in participating schools reaching proficiency in fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math; and, 3) effective implementation of the CIS model of integrated student services correlates more strongly with positive school-level outcomes than does the uncoordinated provision of services alone.

Support for Community Schools at the Federal Level

In 2008, the U.S. Department of Education awarded nearly $5 million in grants to 10 full service community schools that aim to provide comprehensive academic, social, mental, physical, and vocational programs and services to meet individual, family, and community needs. The program, funded through the Fund for the Improvement of Education (FIE), and known as the Full Service Community Schools Program (FSCS), encourages coordination of education, developmental, family, health, and other services through partnerships between public elementary and secondary schools and community-based organizations and public-private ventures.

One such grantee benefiting from the new federal program is the Indianapolis Public Schools system. In an inner-city Indianapolis neighborhood where there are many negative societal factors including homelessness, low parent educational levels, a high number of single parents, a rapidly growing population of English language learners, and a high unemployment and poverty rate, George Washington Community High School is improving the future for its students. The school, grades 7-12, has more than 50 collaborative partners, and through its lead partner, Mary Rigg Neighborhood Center, provides services to help the underserved student population there to achieve goals that culminate in high school graduation, post-secondary learning, and community involvement.

For more than six decades the school was the center of the neighborhood, but by the mid-1990s, economic hardship caused the school to close. The neighborhood was outraged, and the community mobilized to form a task force and find a way to re-open the school. In the fall of 2000, a full service community school opened. Jim Grim, Director of Community Schools for the Mary Rigg Neighborhood Center, said "Before we reopened the school, we had to make sure we could address the issues that led to closing it. When you talk about learning and poverty, community schools are the answer." The group reached out to families and businesses to create a center for activity around the school. One goal of the school was to improve graduation rates, and the community sought partners to participate in the process to improve outcomes for its children. The school has a teen health clinic, mental health counseling services for students and families, and after-school initiatives that are sponsored by such places as Goodwill Industries and Indiana University--Purdue University Indianapolis to offer safe and healthy alternatives for students. "The award we are getting from the Department allows us to deepen the process that is already in place. It will let us fill in the gaps--like providing more mental health services for children who have been on a waiting list. It will also allow us to take our model to three other high schools in Indianapolis. We will be a technical assistance center for other school communities." The school's work has been to develop a culture that reinforces the benefits of having goals, achieving academic success, and enrolling in post secondary education to achieve that success. This year's class of 2009 achieved unbelievable results: all 78 students who received diplomas were accepted to college--and of those, 89 percent live in poverty, a fifth are still learning English, and only five percent of adults who live in their community have ever attended college.

At the federal level, the Administration has proposed in the fiscal year 2010 budget for the Education Department another important effort to provide an oasis for children from disadvantaged neighborhoods through community schools. Secretary Duncan, in his testimony before the House 2010 Budget Committee, said he "plans to work very hard at scaling up success in our education system...and our budget would support comprehensive approaches such as Promise Neighborhoods, which would be modeled after the Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ), that aim to improve college-going rates by combining a rigorous K-12 education with a full network of neighborhood-based social services." The $10 million Promise Neighborhood Initiative would provide one-year planning grants to non-profit, community-based organizations to develop plans for comprehensive neighborhood programs that provide the necessary support for children and youth from preschool through college so that they can succeed in school and beyond.

Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone is a nationally recognized program that covers 100 blocks in Harlem, NY, and reaches nearly 10,000 children with a variety of social services to ensure that all kids are prepared to get a good education. HCZ prepares students from early childhood to high school and beyond with a "conveyor belt of high quality services" including parenting classes, pre-schools, charter schools, after-school services, and tutoring for college students.

A rigorous evaluation report in April 2009 from Roland G. Fryer, Jr., a Harvard economist and his colleague, Will Dobbie, revealed that HCZ students made "enormous" gains in student achievement. "We provide the first empirical test of the causal impact of HCZ on educational outcomes, with an eye toward informing the long-standing debate whether schools alone can eliminate the achievement gap or whether the issues that poor children bring to school are too much for educators to overcome," the researchers say. Students entering Promise Academy, the HCZ charter middle school, tested in the 39th percentile among New York City students in math and English Language Arts (verbal). By eighth grade, the typical student scored in the 74th percentile in math and the 53rd percentile in verbal ability. Few other education policies have shown gains that are so dramatic. In math, Promise Academy eliminated the achievement gap between its black students and the city average for white students.

HCZ is a holistic approach to rebuilding a community, helping its children to stay on track through college and successfully enter the job market. Under the umbrella of the HCZ are the HCZ project, Promise Academy Charter Schools, Beacon Community Centers, and Foster-Care Prevention Services.

The HCZ model focuses on the social and educational development of children, along with programs focused on health. To help support that development, it provides wrap-around programs that improve children's family and neighborhood environments.

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The model includes five core principles that aim to:

* Serve an entire neighborhood comprehensively.

* Create a pipeline of support.

* Build community among residents, institutions, and stakeholders, who help to create the environment necessary for children's healthy development.

* Evaluate program outcomes and create feedback to improve programs.

* Foster a culture of success rooted in passion, accountability, leadership, and teamwork.

More Help to Transform Regular Neighborhood Schools

There are increasing numbers of state-level community schools organizations, such as the Federation for Community Schools in Illinois, working to bring together individuals and organizations who support community schools throughout the state. The Federation was started by two groups in Chicago that wanted to continue the community schools momentum: the Chicago Campaign to Expand Community Schools (funding ended in 2007) and the Chicago Coalition for Community Schools (a coalition of community schools practitioners engaged directly in community schools work). Recently, Illinois became the first state to pass community schools legislation, which is awaiting the Governor's signature to make Illinois the first state in the nation to codify community schools into the state school code and create the infrastructure necessary to make use of federal stimulus funds to support community schools.

The Federation provides a number of advocacy tools to help communities and schools such as position papers, talking points, community schools development strategies, access to research papers, and a repository of best practices for community schools that are posted on its Web site.

There are many more examples of people and organizations that are helping schools transform from regular neighborhood schools to schools that are the hub of the community--the Eisenhower Foundation, the Children's Aid Society, the Harvard Family Research Project--and more. Increasingly, the highest levels of government and the private sector are acknowledging that community schools are an idea whose time has come.

Key Resources

Children's Aid Society

Chicago's Community Schools Initiative

Coalition for Community Schools

Communities in Schools

Eisenhower Foundation

Federation for Community Schools

Harvard Family Research Project

Institute for Educational Leadership

National Education Association's "The Community Agenda for America's Public Schools"

Editor's Note

The Education Innovator will take a brief summer break in July. Look for the next issue in late August when we will resume publication.