Community Schools
Community Schools

Author: JoAnne Ferrara

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2019-05-24

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 1475831420

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Ferrara and Jacobson go inside community schools across the country to explore the different roles that make this collaborative education reform work. This book provides practitioners, policymakers, family members, youth, and local leaders a greater understanding of the different roles that make up a community school and tools for action. Built on years of practice, research, and continuous improvement, community schools are an innovative, effective, and grassroots strategy for bringing schools and communities together in order to improve outcomes for students, families, and communities. This education reform is growing as school site, local, and state leaders seek collaborative solutions to our schools’ most persistent challenges. The contributors, experts in the field, represent a diverse group of people with longstanding commitments to the community school strategy. From principals to family members, from community partners to teachers, this book illustrates how together, we all have a part to play in the development of successful community schools.

Small Schools and Strong Communities
Small Schools and Strong Communities

Author: Kenneth A. Strike

Publisher: Teachers College Press

Published: 2010-04-05

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780807750599

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this insightful book, Kenneth Strike develops a new vision of school reform. Arguing that good schools are first and foremost strong communities, Strike maintains that the small schools movement is the best hope to create such schools. He shows how the core assumptions that characterize the “community paradigm” are preferable to those of standards-based reform and choice. Part I examines student disengagement as an issue largely unaddressed by current views of school reform; demonstrates that belonging is essential to authentic learning; and argues that good schools create a sense that “we are all in this together.” Good schools have a “shared educational project” and exhibit the four Cs of community: coherence, cohesion, care, and connectivity. Part II discusses the small schools movement. The author shows that small size is not sufficient to create strong communities or good schools—we cannot just downsize and hope that something good will happen. Strike looks at the educational practices and policies required to create successful small schools, and develops a view of accountability appropriate for building successful educational communities. He argues that if we expect small schools to be successful we cannot view them as simply a strategy for succeeding on standards-based reform, but rather we must see the creation of strong communities as a distinct paradigm for school reform.

Place-and Community-Based Education in Schools
Place-and Community-Based Education in Schools

Author: Gregory A. Smith

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-04-08

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 1134999925

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Place- and community-based education – an approach to teaching and learning that starts with the local – addresses two critical gaps in the experience of many children now growing up in the United States: contact with the natural world and contact with community. It offers a way to extend young people’s attention beyond the classroom to the world as it actually is, and to engage them in the process of devising solutions to the social and environmental problems they will confront as adults. This approach can increase students’ engagement with learning and enhance their academic achievement. Envisioned as a primer and guide for educators and members of the public interested in incorporating the local into schools in their own communities, this book explains the purpose and nature of place- and community-based education and provides multiple examples of its practice. The detailed descriptions of learning experiences set both within and beyond the classroom will help readers begin the process of advocating for or incorporating local content and experiences into their schools.

Developing Community Schools, Community Learning Centers, Extended-service Schools and Multi-service Schools
Developing Community Schools, Community Learning Centers, Extended-service Schools and Multi-service Schools

Author: Hal A. Lawson

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-12-14

Total Pages: 446

ISBN-13: 3319256645

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book focuses on special organizational configurations for schools in diverse parts of the world. Some of these new organizational and institutional designs are called multi-service schools, others are called extended service schools and still others are called community learning centers. While these schools have different names and notable different characteristics, they belong in the same category because of a common feature in their design: they connect schools with once-separate community programs and services.Chief among the prototypes for these new organizational and institutional designs are the ones featured in the book’s title. Some are called multi-service schools to indicate that they selectively provide some new programs and services. Others are called extended service schools to indicate that they serve young people beyond the regular school day, seeking influence and control over out-of-school time while enabling alternative teaching-learning strategies, and providing services other than typical “pupil support services.” Still others are called community learning centers, a name that showcases the educational functions and priorities of schools and announcing priorities for adult learning and development. Community schools, still called in some places full-service community schools, serves as a prototype that increasingly positions schools as multi-purpose, multi-component, anchor institutions serving identifiable neighborhoods and entire rural communities. The book is structured to enhance understanding of these organizational prototypes and provides comparative social analysis. It also identifies knowledge needs and gaps as well as developmental territory for the future.

Critical Perspectives on Education Policy and Schools, Families, and Communities
Critical Perspectives on Education Policy and Schools, Families, and Communities

Author: Sue Winton

Publisher: IAP

Published: 2020-03-01

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1641138815

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Critical Perspectives on Education Policy and Schools, Families, and Communities offers scholars, students, and practitioners important new knowledge about how current policies impact families, schools, and community partnerships. The book’s authors share a critical orientation towards policy and policy research and invite readers to think differently about what policy is, who policymakers are, and what policy can achieve. Their chapters discuss findings from research grounded in diverse theories, including institutional ethnography, critical disability theory, and critical race theory. The authors encourage scholars of family, school, and community partnerships to ask who benefits from policies (and who loses) and how proposed reforms maintain or disrupt existing relations of power. The chapters present original research on a broad range of policies at the local, state/provincial, and national levels in Canada and the USA. Some authors look closely at the enactment of specific district policies, including a school district’s language translation policy and a policy to create local advisory bodies as part of decentralization efforts. Other chapters reveal the often unacknowledged yet necessary work parents do to meet their children’s needs and enable schools to operate. A few chapters focus on challenges and paradoxes of including families and community members in policymaking processes, including a case where parents demonstrated a preference for a policy that research demonstrates can be detrimental to their children’s future education opportunities. Another set of chapters emphasizes the centrality of policy texts and how language influences the educational experiences and engagement of students and their families. Each chapter concludes with a discussion of implications of the research for educators, families, and other community partners.

Shuttered Schools
Shuttered Schools

Author: Ebony M. Duncan-Shippy

Publisher: IAP

Published: 2019-04-01

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 1641136103

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Since the late 1990s, mass school closures have reshaped urban education across the United States. Popular media coverage and research reports link this resurgence of school closures in major cities like Chicago and Philadelphia to charter school expansion, municipal budget deficits, and racial segregation. However, this phenomenon is largely overlooked in contemporary education scholarship. Shuttered Schools: Race, Community, and School Closures in American Cities (Information Age Publishing) is an interdisciplinary volume that integrates multiple perspectives to study the complex practice of school closure—an issue that transcends education. Academics, practitioners, activists, and policymakers will recognize the far-reaching implications of these decisions for school communities. Shuttered Schools features rigorous new studies of school closures in cities across the United States. This research contextualizes contemporary school closures and accounts for their disproportionate impact on African American students. With topics ranging from gentrification and redevelopment to student experiences with school loss, research presented in this text incorporates various methods (e.g., case studies, interviews, regression techniques, and textual analysis) to evaluate the intended and unintended consequences of closure for students, families, and communities. This work demonstrates that shifts in the social, economic, and political contexts of education inform closure practice in meaningful ways. The impacts of shuttering schools are neither colorblind nor class-neutral, but indeed interact with social contexts in ways that reify existing social inequalities in education.

School, Family, and Community Partnerships
School, Family, and Community Partnerships

Author: Joyce L. Epstein

Publisher: Corwin Press

Published: 2018-07-19

Total Pages: 508

ISBN-13: 1483320014

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Strengthen programs of family and community engagement to promote equity and increase student success! When schools, families, and communities collaborate and share responsibility for students′ education, more students succeed in school. Based on 30 years of research and fieldwork, the fourth edition of the bestseller School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, presents tools and guidelines to help develop more effective and more equitable programs of family and community engagement. Written by a team of well-known experts, it provides a theory and framework of six types of involvement for action; up-to-date research on school, family, and community collaboration; and new materials for professional development and on-going technical assistance. Readers also will find: Examples of best practices on the six types of involvement from preschools, and elementary, middle, and high schools Checklists, templates, and evaluations to plan goal-linked partnership programs and assess progress CD-ROM with slides and notes for two presentations: A new awareness session to orient colleagues on the major components of a research-based partnership program, and a full One-Day Team Training Workshop to prepare school teams to develop their partnership programs. As a foundational text, this handbook demonstrates a proven approach to implement and sustain inclusive, goal-linked programs of partnership. It shows how a good partnership program is an essential component of good school organization and school improvement for student success. This book will help every district and all schools strengthen and continually improve their programs of family and community engagement.

Just Schools
Just Schools

Author: Ann M. Ishimaru

Publisher: Teachers College Press

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 080777815X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Just Schools examines the challenges and possibilities for building more equitable forms of collaboration among non-dominant families, communities, and schools. The text explores how equitable collaboration entails ongoing processes that begin with families and communities, transform power, build reciprocity and agency, and foster collective capacity through collective inquiry. These processes offer promising possibilities for improving student learning, transforming educational systems, and developing robust partnerships that build on the resources, expertise, and cultural practices of non-dominant families. Based on empirical research and inquiry-driven practice, this book describes core concepts and provides multiple examples of effective practices. “This is the most compelling work to date on school and community engagement. It will be required reading for all my future classes.” —Muhammad Khalifa, University of Minnesota “Full of practical steps that educators and administrators can and must take to build strong collaborations with families.” —Mark R. Warren, University of Massachusetts Boston “This important publication provides a way forward for educators, families, students and community members to co-create “Just Schools” by honoring, validating, and celebrating each other’s knowledge, skills, power and resources.” —Karen Mapp, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Reviewing the Success of Full-Service Community Schools in the US
Reviewing the Success of Full-Service Community Schools in the US

Author: Mavis G. Sanders

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-03-05

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 1000043673

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, this expanded text provides new insights into the successful, sustained implementation of Full-Service Community Schools (FSCSs) in the United States. Reviewing the Success of Full-Service Community Schools in the US documents the experiences of students, teachers, and communities involved in the establishment and growth of FSCSs. By considering how successful this reform strategy has been in meeting the needs of underserved communities, the text illustrates the potential these schools have to transform students’ learning and outcomes. In particular, the studies illustrate the value these schools have in supporting low-income students and students of color. At the same time, by interrogating the defining pillars of FSCSs – expanded learning opportunities, integrated services, family and community engagement, and collaborative leadership – chapters identify challenges that if left unattended, could limit the transformative potential of this reform strategy. This groundbreaking text will be of great interest to graduate and postgraduate students, researchers, academics, professionals, and policy makers in the fields of Educational Change and School Reform, Multicultural Education, Sociology of Education, Education Policy, and School Management and Administration.

Emerging Perspectives on Community Schools and the Engaged University
Emerging Perspectives on Community Schools and the Engaged University

Author: Kronick, Robert F.

Publisher: IGI Global

Published: 2019-08-23

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1799802825

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

University involvement within their communities and the promotion of engaged scholarship is essential for the success of the learning institution as well as for providing students with opportunities to interact with various leadership roles and hands-on interactions with the communities themselves. Community schools employ strategic partnerships to expand the boundaries of school improvements and to increase the direct benefits gained by the community. Emerging Perspectives on Community Schools and the Engaged University is an essential research publication that explores the importance of civic engagement in various school settings, but especially in higher education settings. Featuring a wide range of topics such as service learning, charter schools, and democracy, this book is ideal for community organizers, superintendents, directors, provosts, chancellors, education practitioners, academicians, administrators, researchers, and education policymakers.