Martin J. Blank

Organizing and Partnering for School Change in East Los Angeles

2013-01-30T08:47:02-05:00

For more than 80 years, no new school was built in East Los Angeles. In the past several years, the efforts of a community organizing group, a dedicated group of teachers, an array of community partners, the students, and the parents converged to demand change -- and to make it a reality. Now the Esteban E. Torres High School is a beacon of hope and opportunity in this low-income, largely Latino neighborhood. InnerCity Struggle (ICS) and Los Angeles Education Partnership (LAEP), organizations that played key roles in the development of Torres, continue their strong partnerships with Torres to support success of the school.

InnerCity Struggle is an East Los Angeles-based community organizing group; ICS has worked with youth and community residents since 1994 to promote safe, healthy, and non-violent communities in the Eastside. It organized students, residents, and educators through petition drives, community meetings, mobilizations, and rallies to secure the construction of Esteban E. Torres High School in 2004.

For decades, East Los Angeles had one high school that was built to serve 1,500 students and instead housed more than 4,700. The high school ran on a year-round academic calendar with students divided into three tracks to accommodate the overwhelming enrollment. As a result, students lost 17 academic school days per year. InnerCity Struggle's tireless efforts in organizing the East LA community to urge the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to alleviate the over-crowding to increase graduation and college-going rates of local youth led to the opening of the much needed new high school.

Long before the organizing effort, a group of LAUSD teachers were participating in the Humanitas program led by the Los Angeles Education Partnership. For two decades Humanitas has helped teachers develop inquiry-based interdisciplinary approaches to instruction. These approaches engage students in challenging learning experiences organized around relevant arts and humanities themes and encourage critical thinking, writing, and verbal skills. Humanitas teachers and students form close relationships that support student learning, and teachers improve their knowledge and skill through ongoing collaboration with their colleagues.

The interests of InnerCity Struggle and LAEP converged when LAUSD set in place a public school choice policy focused on the type of groups that could run new schools, just as the new Torres campus was nearing completion. This policy allowed organizations from inside and outside LAUSD such as charter schools, education organizations, LAUSD administrators, and teachers to apply to run schools.

Encouraged by their shared experience with Humanitas, groups of teachers proposed to run five small high schools on the Torres campus. With the support of LAEP, teachers worked many late nights to complete their applications. Influenced by the success of LAEP's community school work in the San Fernando Valley, the teacher teams combined Humanitas and community schools concepts in their applications -- embracing a holistic school operational framework concept. InnerCity Struggle's base of community members and youth were invested in ensuring Torres opened with a rigorous model focused on college and career preparation.

InnerCity Struggle mobilized broad community support in an Advisory Vote for the high quality application prepared by LAEP and the Humanitas teachers, including securing support from civic leaders, CBO leaders and most notably the namesake of the school, Retired Congressman Esteban E. Torres, who all committed to support the school's success; other proposals received little support. The LA Board of Education approved the plan.

In the fall of 2011, the Torres campus opened with five independent academies of 500 students each focused on performing arts, engineering and technology, social justice leadership, arts and technology, and urban planning. The Academies embody the Humanitas approach and offer students a robust college preparatory curriculum that expands learning beyond the classroom and connects students with real world learning experiences.

The East Los Angeles Performing Arts Academy, for example, works with the LA Repertory Theater, LA Opera, and the Shakespeare Theater of Los Angeles among others. Students at the Humanitas Academy of Art and Technology have been working with staff at the Huntington Library, Arts Collections, and Botanical Gardens to capture their everyday lives in East Los Angeles through photos, painting, and other media. The Engineering and Technology Academy is working with local community colleges such as East Los Angeles College, to provide students with access to STEM careers and education. The Social Justice Leadership Academy is working with local non-profits such as Farmscape to address local social needs such as access to healthy food. The East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy introduces its students to urban planning concepts and works closely with private firms such as Gensler Architecture in order to give students first hand experiences.

But the founding teachers at Torres and their allies at the Los Angeles Education Partnership and InnerCity Struggle knew they had to go beyond academics to help students succeed. The challenges of low-wage working families, health and wellness, and gang violence could not be ignored. Their applications envisioned a campus wellness center operating through partnerships with Bienvenidos, a community-based mental health agency with additional support from the California Hispanic Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse and Hillsides.

The community school model is beginning to effectively meet student needs beyond the classroom through relationships with more than 20 other agencies in the neighborhood which address hunger and nutrition, social services, adult education, and numerous other student, family, and neighborhood needs. Torres High School chose to have a full time community school coordinator, employed by LAEP, who works with all five schools, InnerCity Struggle, and many other partners to ensure the engagement of parents and the community and the alignment of school and partner efforts.

Students are part of the solution at Torres, too. Juniors and seniors founded the Torres Mentorship program to create positive change in their school, home, and community. Students identify needs and work in collaboration with adults involved with the school to ensure that all Torres students are healthy in body and mind. Summer freshman orientation, voter registration, cancer awareness, and mentoring at nearby elementary schools are among their activities; and, they plan to engage more students. In addition, parents have organized themselves into a council that is focused on how they can support student success across the various school sites.

Esteban Torres is only two-years-old, so we'll hear more about longer term results for students and the community. For now, in one example, East LA Academy for Performing Arts at Torres graduated 86 percent of its seniors in 2012, despite the fact that 70 percent of the class had arrived at ELAPA two years ago when it opened without sufficient credits or with a D or F in a college-required course. Sixty percent of the graduates were eligible for University of California or California State Universities.

In the meantime, Torres is a testament to what is possible when school and community leaders work together and create a beacon of hope and opportunity for students, their families, and an entire neighborhood. It has taken advocacy from InnerCity Struggle, LAEP and school board champions such as Board President Monica Garcia to make this vision become a reality.

We need more collective action like this to improve our schools.

Student Advocacy: A Sharper Picture

2013-01-03T11:09:53-05:00

During a recent trip to California, I learned what student advocacy really means at John C. Fremont High School in South Los Angeles. I saw first-hand what can happen when adults in schools, families, and the community, work together with young people to create the opportunity for them to thrive.

John C. Fremont High School is in a challenging neighborhood in South L.A. with many of its students and their families facing many difficult issues in their everyday lives that influence their education and their school. Yet the educators, community partners and students with whom I met, demonstrated a powerful sense of possibility and commitment as they work together to create a community school that will enable all learners "to be productive ethical individuals empowered by quality standards-based education in order to contribute to local and global communities."

Like many community schools, Fremont operates as a partnership between school leaders and an external partner, in this case the Los Angeles Education Partnership (LAEP), a widely respected education intermediary. LAEP has a community school coordinator at Fremont who brings school staff and community partners together to solve problems. The coordinator also has personal ties to the community since his father grew up in the neighborhood.

Fremont's teachers are advocating for their students with high-level classes that provide them with the kind of rich learning experiences they need and want. There are numerous advanced placement opportunities reflecting the efforts of community organizing groups that have fought to ensure that all L.A. students have access to the type of classes that will enable them to compete for entry into California's University and state college system. A series of small career-themed learning communities -- Math, Science and Technology; Medical Environmental Science and Agriculture; Environmental and Social Justice Leadership, and Global Media Arts -- bring learning to life for students.

But Fremont work goes far beyond academics. As a community school, it has deep ties to the community and intentional relationships with numerous community partners. Special workgroups advocate for students on several key challenges: A parent engagement group seeks to engage parents more actively in the education of their children, even as it responds to parents' greatest fear -- their children's survival in terms of both safety and learning; a ninth grade success group focuses on the severely low performance of entering freshmen, with a mentor program that involves juniors and seniors as mentors to incoming students; and a breaking-the-prison-pipeline group that is working to create a space where the school, its partners and families and residents can discuss the school-to-prison crisis plaguing the neighborhood and find solutions in the school and the community to address the issue.

The health and mental health workgroup is particularly robust as it seeks to be a 'healing force' at Fremont, addressing trauma, health, citizenship and other challenging issues that students face. The school's psychiatric social worker operates hand in hand with the community school coordinator and with mental health therapists from the Weber Community Center; it is a sterling example of cooperation between school and community-based mental health professionals. The UMMA Community Clinic will shortly open a clinic that will serve students as well as neighborhood residents. And the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust is opening a community garden on the campus that will be used by the Medical Environmental Science and Agriculture Magnet as well as other students and residents.

The community school coordinator also has organized the multiple College Access programs at Fremont so that all students who want to go to college can get the support and guidance they need. Previously those most likely to succeed often received help from more than one group, and others were left out.

Most striking at Fremont is that students are becoming their own best advocates. I met with five students who are leaders in Fremont's peer mediation program working with the community school coordinator to create a safe, supportive, achievement-oriented climate and culture at the school. Their efforts have contributed to the relatively low level of suspensions at Fremont, which is currently 2.6 percent. The rate is far below other high schools in South L.A. The principal has been so impressed with the students' efforts that he is asking them to not only increase the number of students who are mediators, but also to train the teachers in peer mediation so that they will understand how students are working to change the climate and the culture of the school.

Make no mistake. John C. Fremont High School is still struggling like many urban schools across the country. While 85 percent of its graduating seniors went on to post-secondary education in 2009 and 2010, the 2,600-student school still has only has a 37 percent four-year graduation rate, low proficiency levels and attendance problems.

Yet the growing number of adults in the school -- who are advocates for Fremont's students' learning and development and the fact that more and more Fremont students are becoming empowered as advocates for themselves, their peers and their school -- offers hope for their future, and those that follow behind them. This joint student advocacy -- this sense of shared responsibility -- exemplifies the best of what community schools can offer.

Beyond Chicago

2012-09-25T12:18:59-04:00

I spent several days of the Chicago strike week 300 miles to the southeast, in Cincinnati, a city of some 350,000. Although it faces most of the same challenges as its bigger neighbor, Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) and its many public and private partners are further ahead in addressing the challenges that poverty brings into our public schools. For the record, Cincinnati's student population is more than two-thirds African American and a quarter Caucasian, with 73 percent of its students on free and reduced price lunch.

The Cincinnati model of community schools or what Cincinnati calls "community learning centers" were on display for the second Community Schools Study Tour conducted this year by the Coalition for Community Schools at the Institute for Educational Leadership. What I and 20 leaders from across the country observed is a heartening example of what a mature and developed system of community schools can offer to respond to the critical needs of its children, and create more opportunities for them. The Community Learning Centers have since been recognized on NBC's Education Nation, as a case study of innovative solutions to our nation's education challenges.

Cincinnati's Community Learning Centers began in 2000. Former Ohio Governor John Gilligan and former Superintendent Steve Adamowski were key initiators of the effort.

What has made the Cincinnati model work so well? Steve Means, who attended the Study Tour for the U.S. Department of Education, characterized the initiative as having "restored the social compact," and indeed Cincinnati has found a formula that weaves together the resources of many community partners - business, public and private agencies, higher education, neighborhood, and faith-based groups - to design interventions and opportunities that work in alignment with principals, teachers, other school staff, and community members to achieve shared goals.

Darlene Kamine, a former juvenile court judge, has been with the Program since its inception. She now directs the Community Learning Center Institute (CLCI), a leadership organization for the community schools effort funded by private foundations. Kamine notes that Cincinnati Public Schools, the Board of Education, and the Cincinnati Teachers' Union have agreed to develop all of the City's public schools into community learning centers, with a school board policy undergirding the strategy.

Every Cincinnati public school is now a community learning center, and in each neighborhood these collaborative efforts are accountable to a site-based governing body - the Local School Decision Making Committee made up of parents, teachers, students, and community members. Each learning center is seen as having particular needs. Its local governing committee decides what its students require and selects the community partners -- from a carefully assembled group of organizations who receive "rent" free space in the school. Kamine views the learning centers as "customers" for the community partners and considers this configuration vital to the strength of the program, because it directly commits the school and the partners to one another.

There also is no cost to the host school for the opportunities and supports that community partners bring. Students have access to tutors, mentors, and business partners; health and dental clinics and, vision centers; mental health counseling, nutrition providers, and after school enrichment programs. Community partners are self-sustaining, they either come with their own sources of funding for their own missions, or they can bill for their services through Medicaid or private insurance. Many of these programs -- all conveniently available on site to students and families - also provide services to the faculty and staff, as well as to other members of the community.

A Resource Coordinator works in tandem with the principal to align the work of the partners with the goals of the school through the OnePlan School Improvement Process. The coordinator brings together partner teams to focus on key needs of students (e.g., tutoring, afterschool, health and mental health). The United Way of Greater Cincinnati, Greater Cincinnati Foundation, Schiff Foundation, Haile Foundation, and CPS finance the resource coordinator positions and serve as the Strategy Group for the Community Learning Centers.

Supporting the work of partners in individual schools is a cross-boundary leadership team that includes individuals responsible for local partner networks in key arenas including college and career readiness, business partnerships, mentoring, health, and mental health. A data system developed by Cincinnati Public Schools enables educators and community partners to track support for individual students and to ensure accountability for results.

Many cities have cross-sector collaboratives with similar missions; Cincinnati is the only place where these collaboratives come together to support their public schools.

The development of the Cincinnati community schools initiative is ongoing. But, in fact, the citizens of Cincinnati already have encouraging numbers to offer. Through its community engagement, community learning centers have helped more than 34,000 students, who--with their most pressing human needs met--have responded with academic progress that has earned them, for the second consecutive year, an effective rating (the highest of any urban district in the State) from the Ohio Department of Education. District wide, the high school graduation rate moved from 51% in 2000 to 81.9% for the Class of 2010, and its performance index (a composite score of gains on all state tests at all grade levels) has risen from 53.2% to 87.3% in 2010--its highest ever.

A city with a decidedly traditionalist bent, Cincinnati has always been an aggregation of neighborhoods. But, as in many cities, changing demographics and strained financial circumstances have eroded once vibrant communities. Now community schools have begun to restore not only the neighborhood schools but their communities as well.

Moreover, they seem to be restoring the social compact. Cincinnati's citizens have come together to bring up and educate their children, and in the most fundamental sense, they have found a way to honor the social compact and insure for their city an enduring civil society.

Chicago has its own community schools initiative with strong neighborhood roots; it has much to learn from Cincinnati, as do many communities and school districts across the country.

Lessons From Arne Duncan's Back-to-School Bus Tour

2012-09-21T11:34:59-04:00

As Secretary Arne Duncan travels the country on his Back-to-School bus tour, he has refocused his attention on the community schools strategy as a vehicle for implementing a Broader Bolder Approach to Education. Speaking in Kansas City, he described our public schools as community assets that should be open evenings and weekends, and where all individuals and organizations concerned with student success should be working together to help students and support their families.

The Secretary's visits include Redwood City, CA; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Evansville, Indiana, which already have full-service community school strategies in place; and today the Secretary is in McDowell County, West Virginia, where the American Federation of Teachers has taken the lead in bringing a comprehensive set of educational and economic development resources to McDowell County.

Redwood City's community schools were launched through Redwood City 2020, a partnership among the city's elementary and high school districts, Stanford University and several health organizations. Five elementary level community schools now offer family engagement, extended learning and support services for students and their families that complement student instruction. Partners include a local community college, office of parks and recreation, the police and sheriff's departments, Citizen Schools, the Peninsula Boys and Girls Clubs, and county health and mental health agencies.

The Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corporation started from one community school to establish a district-wide strategy. The full-service community schools focus on strengthening ties between families and schools and ensuring that all students' physical, mental, and emotional health needs are met. Together, these efforts, which leverage a range of community resources, result in better results for students and schools. Among the improvements seen since the start of this effort are increased early literacy due to the focus on early childhood development, better behavior among students who access mental health services, and better attendance and grades among students who participated in high-quality afterschool and summer programs.

In McDowell County, parents, teachers, and community leaders have recognized the need for intensive intervention if its students are to succeed. The county has consistently ranked last in education in a state in which educational attainment levels are already low. The majority of students currently live in homes without an employed parent, and deaths due to drug overdoses are common. Led by the local teachers' union, a coalition of business, foundations, government, nonprofit agencies and labor signed a covenant to develop policy and programmatic solutions to these interconnected problems. Education is at the core of the effort, with social services at school sites a key piece of the plan. Lack of affordable housing is recognized as a barrier to recruiting effective teachers that must be addressed. In all, the coalition brings together the diverse groups and perspectives needed to tackle deep-seated impediments to learning and to community economic well-being and commits to the patience and perseverance needed to address them.

All of these communities recognize that poverty-related impediments to learning are real yet can be alleviated through the organization of community schools as part of a Broader Bolder Approach. In each of them, a different type of organization has taken the lead, yet the coalitions have many common partners, and they share similar goals and seek similar outcomes. In all three, the district and teachers union have joined forces to ensure that all children are supported to enable them to learn effectively and thrive.

With our nation more focused on the impact of poverty on education as a result of the Chicago teachers strike, the communities that the Secretary visited exemplify effective, meaningful, lasting reform that can weaken the poverty-school attainment link that impedes learning in too many schools across our country. They demonstrate that schools and communities thrive when they work together, and that these approaches must become the norm, rather than exceptional examples.

Giving Our Children an Equal Opportunity to Succeed

2012-08-31T10:52:36-04:00

This is a challenging time to be young and poor in the United States.

The new global economy demands that our young people master 21st century skills and have the technical know-how by the time they graduate. And yet, many of our children will have completed the K-12 public school journey without the basic essentials -- like health care, enough food, or a safe place to call home -- that are vital for learning.

Not only do these children lack some of the basics, their families can't compete with affluent parents in the race to cultivate the "super child," made possible through financial investments ranging from private tutorials to summer camp or the latest educational software. In fact, a recent study finds that the gap between what upper income parents and working class parents spend on their children has increased exponentially in the last four decades.

The growing disparity between the children who "have" and those who "have not" is a violation of basic American values, which are premised on the belief that every child should have a fair chance to succeed in life.

How do we return fairness and equal opportunity to the lives of poor children? How can we improve their chances in life?

Here's one way: We can all work together to make public schools into the places where disadvantaged students and their families can tap into a network of community services, opportunities and supports. Vision screening, food assistance, after school enrichment, family counseling and early childhood opportunities are among the services that could be available. The community schools model requires that people from the nonprofit, high education, local government, business and faith sectors forge close, working partnerships with the public schools.

When this approach is done right, it can make all the difference in the lives of young, low-income Americans. Take, for example, Glencliff High School in Nashville, Tennessee. Glencliff used to be known for problems like low graduation rates, truancy, gangs and teen pregnancy. But a few years ago, education and community leaders worked together to transform the school into a community-invested school.

Today, Glencliff has a new reputation -- one based on student leadership and community service. Glencliff's students serve on community advisory boards, they work as interns at local health clinics, they show up in great numbers at college fairs and they take leading roles in school and community service projects. "Our students have a new confidence in themselves and in their ability to change the world," says Virginia Pupo-Walker, an education leader who helped bring about the transformation at Glencliff.

A visitor to Glencliff feels this positive atmosphere the moment they walk into the school. The school is abuzz with student projects and student clubs, especially in the afternoon. A visitor sees that one group of students is busy writing up a school improvement project; another group is meeting with the principal to offer suggestions about school policy, while still another group of students is hard at work in the school garden, mulching and watering the plants.

The community school strategy is what re-energized Glencliff High School and re-invigorated student life there. Community groups worked closely with school leaders to infuse the school with exciting projects and critical supports. A community group opened a health clinic on the school campus and encouraged students to work as interns at health clinics around town. Local universities and colleges offered college level classes to students. Nonprofit groups worked with teachers to craft a teaching plan centered on community service and student leadership. Businesses welcomed students into their offices and oriented them to the skills and education needed to become an employee. Youth advocacy groups offered workshops on preparing for college.

"The community partnerships have opened doors to many, many opportunities for our students," says Pupo-Walker. "As a result, our kids now have confidence in the future, and they have confidence in themselves. We used to have only a few students show up at college fairs. But not anymore. Now, we have very strong attendance. Now our students think, 'college is for me.'"

Glencliff High School's students also now have a better chance of getting into college as well. Since the transformation, more students are graduating with some college credit or college course experience, more students are taking advanced placement courses and student performance on writing tests has improved markedly.

The transformation of student life at Glencliff High School in Nashville shows what can happen when a community and a school join forces and get behind the city's children. The young people are now poised to become leaders, organizers, engaged citizens, creative problem-solvers and assets to their community.

This transformation also shows how a community can, as my colleague in the national equity movement Angela Glover Blackwell puts it, "take advantage of a pivotal moment and find a way to connect the changing demographics to the needs of the nation".

Glencliff High School's students, roughly equally divided among black, Latino and white, are the face of America's future. It is an exemplar of the kind of change that is happening in many communities across the country. If schools and communities can work together to bring about similar transformations to student life at more schools across the country, our future, indeed, will be bright.

Some Kids Need More to Get the Same Result

2012-08-01T14:03:05-04:00

I recently heard a story that explains why the community schools model -- a reform approach I've been touting for about twenty years now -- is so effective at helping children succeed in the classroom.

The story is about a small school district in northern California called San Rafael City Schools. I recently met with the superintendent there, Michael Watenpaugh, and he shared some details about the unique challenges that many of his students face.

The school district is located in one of the wealthiest counties in our country (Marin County), and yet some of the families who live in San Rafael are barely scraping by. Many of these families work odd jobs doing service work, such as housecleaning and landscaping. Some families live all packed together in one apartment, so as to make ends meet. Many of the parents and their children are learning English.

Not only that, many of these children and families live in a neighborhood, called the Canal, which is literally cut off from the rest of the community. This is how Michael Watenpaugh describes the neighborhood:

"It is surrounded by water. It's a moat, almost, with a few exceptions where the land connects to the surrounding area. It's very cut off and public transportation isn't good. Access to the greater community is challenging. There have been efforts to build a pedestrian bridge, but those haven't been successful so far."

If that wasn't bad enough, the children from the Canal neighborhood were also isolated from opportunities at their local school. As Watenpaugh explains, before his superintendency, students at the school district's middle school were placed into three academic tracks, with many of the Hispanic kids and many of the kids who were learning English placed in the lowest track.

Watenpaugh is now working to change all that, and he's using the community schools model as the way to do it. A community school is a place where kids not only receive engaging, individualized instruction, but also where they can connect to all kinds of special supports, services, and resources offered by community groups, government agencies, and business groups.

Watenpaugh says this approach helps ensure that each one of his students gets a fair shake at school: "We are bringing together partners and services that support the needs of kids, because we all know that some kids need more to get the same."

San Rafael City Schools now partners with dozens of nonprofit, government, and business groups to ensure that every single student not only graduates from high school, but is ready and prepared for college. The type of support that these groups offer ranges from mental health support to academic support.

For example, one of the district's newer partners, BELL (Building Educated Leaders for Life), offers a summer enrichment program for kids at the middle school. The program helps keep kids engaged and mentally active during the summer months, helping prevent the summer slide. A partnership with Bay Area Community Resources has brought counselors into the schools, so that students have a professional to help them work through life crises and extreme stress; and, as the Superintendent explained, screen ninth graders to "see if there are indicators of disconnection..." and to "[identify] which kids need our help and attention."

Additionally, in an effort to help pregnant high school girls graduate, San Rafael City Schools now partners with Head Start to have child care at school. Watenpaugh mentioned that "those little ones will soon be kindergarteners in our district," so it makes sense to support them and their families now.

With these community supports in place, Watenpaugh says his students are better prepared for success in the classroom. In fact, the school district has seen gains in student achievement every single year for the past five years for Hispanic students, low-income students, and students who are learning English.

More importantly, the school district has shown how far these students can go, if given an equal chance to succeed.

Bold Leaders for Our Public Schools

2012-07-24T11:18:48-04:00

Strong leaders are key to building strong and innovative schools, and so I want to share some insights about the tremendous people who are leading the community schools movement. I'm talking about people like John Porter, Jan Christensen, and Richard Carranza, all superintendents and, all of whom are working to transform their local schools into community hubs.

I had the opportunity to see many of these superintendents in action at the 2012 Community Schools National Forum, which took place recently in California -- a part of the country where the community schools movement is taking off.

As I listened to these superintendents share stories about how they build community schools -- schools that offer an engaging curriculum and surround children and their families with supports, resources, and opportunities offered by non-profit, community, government, and business groups -- I realized that these leaders have a few special qualities in common.

First, they think big and set ambitious agendas. Their agendas don't simply aim to move student test scores up a few notches. Rather, they aim to improve the overall quality of life for children so that children are ready to learn everyday when they arrive to school. Many of these superintendents oversee districts with large numbers of disadvantaged children and families facing economic stress in this great recession. These leaders look for ways to provide children with academic support and essentials -- essentials like health care or eye glasses or enough food to eat, and the kind of opportunities that wealthier families are able to provide on their own.

John Porter is one such superintendent. He leads the Franklin-McKinney School District in San Jose, California, which serves students from high-poverty neighborhoods. Porter shared his bold agenda with us at the National Forum. He said: "Our number one priority is student achievement. Number two is income for families. We have families that are in crisis and we have created a program for parents to get their economic lives back in shape. And third is [neighborhood safety]. We couldn't stand anymore hearing third graders sitting at a table during lunchtime talking about how they were going to get home safely."

Like John Porter, superintendents who embrace the community schools approach, see the connection between the quality of a child's life outside school and their level of engagement in school. They work to tackle some of the root problems -- like hunger, family stress, and poor health -- by bringing community groups that can help into the school.

And that's the other special quality that I see in those who lead community schools -- the ability to organize many different groups around a common agenda. At the National Forum, John Porter explained how he helps keep an orchestra of community groups all on the same page, working towards the same goal: "We created a governance system that had signs offs from everybody -- the county, city, San Jose State University, the Community College District, probation, the police department, Second Harvest Foods ... and we divided our focus into three areas: safe neighborhoods, [student achievement], and adult empowerment. Then, the partners started to co-chair those work teams."

Getting many different groups to row in the same direction is no easy task. Jan Christensen, the superintendent of Redwood City School District in California, is working to bring the community school model to more schools in her district. At the recent National Forum, she explained that building partnerships with community groups requires a willingness to hear other perspectives:

"You have to give up your silo mindset and be willing to share. Anytime you have different people sitting at the table, you are always going to have possible conflict over turf ... and when there is an issue we are all able to talk about how we solve that in a positive manner. When you have a common vision it's much easier."

Christensen said that children can benefit immensely from these partnerships. She shared a recent success story from her district:

"Just this past week we recognized corporate and faith-based partners for work that they had done at three of our schools. Hundreds of volunteers came to these schools to do construction, cleaning, remodeling, planting trees and flowers."

Another superintendent who is building partnerships between schools and community groups is Richard Carranza, the new superintendent of San Francisco Public Schools. At the Forum, he shared why he is passionate about the community schools approach:

"In San Francisco we ask how are we going to improve educational outcomes for our most disenfranchised children. We find folks who can help us do this work and coordinate the pieces so that all students have a shot at being successful."

Carranza added that, with the help of various community groups and resources, many students are now achieving at higher levels:

"And ... it's because they had this fabric of support woven in so that if a student isn't doing well in class, the teacher can help connect students and families with resources whether it's in city government or a community-based organization. It's a much more comprehensive approach to looking at how students achieve."

Richard Carranza, Jan Christensen and John Porter are just a few of the many bold superintendents who are changing children's lives by bringing together the entire community to help their student succeed. The approach is working. Let's learn from the example.

All Hands on Deck for Community Schools

2012-05-02T11:00:15-04:00

Last week, Rebecca Mieliwocki spoke at the White House after being honored by President Obama with the National Teacher of the Year award. The seventh grade English teacher from the racially and economically diverse Luther Burbank Middle School in Burbank, California made clear that "commitment to education must extend beyond walls of the classroom. Parent support and community involvement are essential to ensure the success of our students."

In a follow up interview with the Washington Post, Mieliwocki went further, capturing the many challenges that teachers face in their classroom: "We face so many barriers to student success that I didn't create and are beyond my control. I can't control whether my students eat breakfast, have a place to sleep at night, whether they have access to technology," said Mielwocki. "I can do everything I can when they step into my classroom to try to level the playing field but one person alone just can't do it all, and that's pretty overwhelming."

Mieliwocki went on to say that even though there are amazing teachers like herself across country, they cannot fix the problems of our failing schools alone.

"In any school system in any state, whether the most affluent district or not, you have families in crisis right now. Everyone is worried about money, jobs, the economic future. I am seeing it in my classroom. I see the needs are so great -- health care, hunger, transportation, clothing, parents losing jobs. It's all hands on deck right now to get through this."

What Mieliwocki may not have known is there are growing numbers of people from all walks of life who are rethinking the way we look at schools in local communities across the country. These individuals represent public education, family groups, health and social agencies, youth development organizations, local government, higher education, business, faith-based, and many other neighborhood and community groups.

Together with school officials, local leaders are working to create community schools. Community schools are the vehicle that enables schools and communities to connect, collaborate and create more powerful learning environments for students. They are places where children gain access to an array of health services and social support as well as enriched educational opportunities that lay the foundation for impactful learning. Community schools are also where families can find the assistance they need to confront the challenges of a difficult economy and to tackle the additional out of school factors Mieliwocki and others face in the classroom.

The power of community schools will be on display in San Francisco next week when more than 1,300 people from 36 states, and more than 100 communities, will come together at the 2012 Community Schools National Forum. There are now more than 50 local community school initiatives across the country and many other communities where they are emerging.

Recently in Connecticut, Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman and Commissioner of Education Stefan Pryor, convened their colleagues in the state departments of health, social services and economic and community development to plan a community school strategy to support the state's lowest performing schools.

Places like Nashville and Knoxville, Oakland and San Francisco, Cleveland and Toledo, Orlando and Miami all have emerging community schools efforts. And community leaders from Bozeman, Montana, Rapid City and Sturgis, South Dakota, and Duluth and Rochester, Minnesota are planning for community schools. They will all be in San Francisco eager to learn from one another.

The ideas that schools and communities should work together is not a new one. But at a time when some education reformers argue that only high test scores matter, the rise of the community school movement offers a crucial counterpoint. Community schools wisely recognize that we must pay attention to every facet of a child's life, and to their families, if they are to succeed not only in school, but also in life. We are delighted that the Teacher of the Year agrees.

Education Is a 'Both-And' Issue

2012-03-23T09:56:48-04:00

"We tend to put considerations of family, community, and economy off-limits in education-reform policy... at our peril," a phrase from Paul Barton at Educational Testing Services (ETS), was the first thing that crossed my mind when I read Paul Peterson's recent Education Next piece. Then I saw the faces of the three African-American high school students in Undefeated, the Academy Award winning documentary.

Peterson's attack on the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education suggests that teachers and testing should be our only focus in education. His criticism extends to all of us who believe that there is no silver bullet for educating all our children, but rather that we must work together to develop a comprehensive strategy that reflects both research and common sense.

First the research. Starting in the ETS publication, Facing the Hard Fact of Education Reform, and subsequently with his ETS colleagues in the Parsing the Achievement Gap reports, Barton presents rigorous research showing that both academic and non-academic factors influence student achievement. Yes, teacher preparation and experience matter, but so too do safety, student mobility, reading to young children and other non-school factors.

Charles Basch has shown us that health matters in student achievement. Nobel Laureate James Heckman calls support for high-quality early childhood experiences the smartest public investment for good reason; anyone who looks carefully knows that our nation is not even close to providing all low-income children with the early childhood opportunities they need to thrive and succeed.

Now the story. Undefeated depicts three African-American students from North Memphis who make it through high school and on to college through the support of their coaches and their attachment to their football team. The film starkly depicts their desolate neighborhood and the realities of what it means to grow up in poverty. These young men, and the many other young men and women who face similar challenges, need, and richly deserve more opportunities and more support in addition to effective teachers and a robust curriculum. Their talent must be discovered and nurtured and their personal needs met. To see them only as students who will succeed with a good teacher and years of tests is not just short-sighted, it is disrespectful.

As the director of the Coalition for Community Schools, the research and common sense tell me that both quality teachers, curriculum, and school environment and high-quality early childhood opportunities, school-based health clinics, afterschool programs and other supports that Peterson dismisses as "narrow, niggling, naïve, and negligible" are critical to creating the conditions for learning that all students need.

Indeed, I can't imagine that any middle- or upper-class parents, who provide all of this as a matter of course, would ever stop doing so.

But we cannot wait for the elimination of poverty, for all the opportunities and supports students to be available, or for there to be an effective teacher in every classroom. A generation of students demands that we act together now, using existing resources more strategically even as we advocate for increased investments in our children.

It is time to move beyond the education wars that Peterson seeks to keep alive, and find solutions. Community schools represent that solution.

Several recent reports out of the Center for American Progress, in fact, suggest that the "both-and" approach of community schools -- effective teachers, more opportunity and support -- is a great strategy for helping kids succeed.

Let's not allow narrow positions to cloud our perspective. As Paul Barton advises, "The seriousness of our purpose requires that we learn to rub our bellies and pat our heads at the same time."

Improving the Conditions for Teaching and Learning

2012-03-14T18:59:51-04:00

The headline from the latest MetLife Survey of the American Teacher warns education policymakers and leaders in our schools and communities that teachers are increasingly dissatisfied with their jobs. Teachers with low job satisfaction rates feel they don't get support, that they work in isolation, and have less help from parents.

When you dig deeper into the results of the survey, other troubling data emerges. The MetLife survey makes crystal clear that what happens outside the classroom also matters to teachers and has an impact on instruction. Teachers know that family matters and that poverty matters.

This year's survey took a special look at parents and the economy, seeking to understand their impact on teachers and schools. Teachers reported noticeable changes in the children they teach and in their families. A majority of teachers said that more children and families require health and social support services, and one-third indicated that more children are coming to school hungry.

It doesn't matter who you're voting for in November or whether you believe in standards, charters, wrap-around services, or teacher quality. Nobody can expect our children to thrive in an increasingly competitive global economy when they are persistently hungry, sick, and in need of other supports.

Making matters worse, teachers described reductions and even eliminations of health and social support services to help children and their families and that after-school programming is being cut. Ten percent of teachers reported that their schools didn't have health or social services to begin with. Schools with existing supports saw more teacher layoffs, and those with higher numbers of English language Learners and large low-income populations had greater reductions in supports.

So while the needs of children are greater, the supports continue to shrink or be eliminated -- especially in the schools that need them the most.

Why does this matter to education? Research tells us that social and health needs have a direct effect on the classroom (see for example Charles Basch's paper Healthier Students are Better Learners). And the MetLife survey confirms the impact of these factors on teachers -- as the needs of children increase, teacher satisfaction decreases.

When there are distractions in the classroom and in children's lives, teachers have a harder time doing their job. That's not an excuse, that's reality, and the survey supports this. For example, the researchers found that close to 20% of students skipped a class because of family responsibilities. Kids can't learn when they're not in school.

And these are not only urban challenges. Rural and suburban teachers also reported increased needs for students and families.

So what are schools with a decreasing set of resources doing about the increased needs that prevent children from learning? The survey suggests that they are turning to partnerships with families and the community.

Parent involvement is increasing in America's schools. More than 70% of teachers and parents reported that there are a wide range of opportunities for parents to support the school. A similar percentage says that their schools are excellent or good at coordinating resources and services both from the community and to the community. Parents in schools with high levels of parent engagement say their schools are doing a better job at providing supports and resources. Not surprisingly, however, the survey notes that parent engagement and support is lowest in high-needs schools.

How then should our schools and our communities respond to the twin challenges of parent engagement and a lack of health and social supports, especially in schools serving low-income children? To address the parent issue, teachers and principals need better professional development to learn how to effectively engage parents. Schools also need a focused approach to bring parents into the school and for making them active participants in their child's education. Teachers in the survey suggested that there is room for growth in parental engagement and that improvement in this area would lead to stronger teacher job satisfaction.

We also need deeper school-community partnerships. We need schools to be educational, social and cultural hubs of the community, or what we call community schools. In these schools families participate in decisions about the school, work to increase social supports for children and families, and support teachers and principals. Partner agencies work closely with teachers, assessing student and family needs, and bringing community resources together. However, partners' expertise and resources cannot make up for the deep cuts we are seeing in school district budgets.

The community school strategy is emerging in a growing number of places. From Tulsa to Philadelphia, from Oakland to Grand Rapids, and from New York City to Evansville, school and community leaders are partnering to support students. But more needs to happen.

Our nation's schools face myriad challenges, as the MetLife Survey indicates. Especially at a time of decreasing resources, if we are to create the conditions for teachers to teach and students to learn, partnerships with parents and community organizations must be part of the solution.

Thinking Outside the Box to Boost Teacher Effectiveness

2012-02-16T08:59:58-05:00

Ask any parent, or for that matter, any student -- they've always known that good teachers are better than bad ones. And those of us lucky enough to have had one or two can remember the long-term impact of a really great teacher. Recent research, however, gives us a more concrete understanding of the potential economic magnitude of teacher impact. In their rigorous study, "The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers," Raj Chetty and his colleagues estimate that substituting a very poor teacher for an average one in one school year could increase each student's age-28 earnings by nearly $200 per year. While that is a small improvement, the entire class could see gains of as much as $250,000 over their lifetimes.

Unfortunately, it is much harder to figure out how to make that teacher swap happen, and how to keep the good teachers once they have been recruited. As Chetty and his colleagues acknowledge, bonuses for excellent teachers have not proven effective. Indeed, New York City shuttered its high-profile bonus program for high-value teachers when evidence showed improvements in neither teaching nor student outcomes.

Should we be surprised? Great teachers consistently report that they are motivated largely by the pleasure they derive from the job, not bonuses. Unfortunately, the joy of teaching has taken some serious hits in recent years. Policies that focus on reading and math tests increasingly narrow curricula, neglecting important subjects and making instruction more rigid in core subjects. Emphasis on student test scores as a means of evaluating teacher performance, often with serious consequences for those teachers' careers, punishes teachers who take on the very at-risk students we want them to work with. Those policies also fail to promote or reward team teaching and collaboration, factors shown to improve teacher effectiveness and morale.

This is where community schools come into the picture. By making schools the hubs of their communities and engaging a range of partners with expertise and resources that schools do not have, community schools support students' needs and boost their learning. This can include school-based health clinics that get more students to class instead of having them sick at home or in the emergency room and provide counseling as needed; afterschool opportunities like science labs that capitalize on lessons during the day; and packed backpacks that ensure that school lunch is not the only healthy meal of the day. As a result, teachers do not deal with so many poverty-related impediments to learning. Many fewer find themselves feeding students who arrive at school hungry, repeating lessons due to high numbers of students who have moved or are homeless, and dealing with behavioral problems coming from angry and stressed-out students whose parents are unemployed. School climate improves.

A recent report from the Center for American Progress documents this finding: community schools that lighten the load for teachers in high-poverty schools by alleviating these problems can greatly improve teacher effectiveness. Not only are teachers better day-to-day instructors, these supports also increase the odds that the good ones will want to stay, rather than leaving at the high rates they do in schools that fail to provide such supports. Tony Smith, Superintendent of the Oakland Public Schools, which has initiated a plan to create a full service community school district, argues that "community schools not only help to create the conditions for students to learn but also the conditions for teachers to teach."

Until our nation's education reform strategy explicitly takes into account the realities that teachers face every day in the classroom and we all agree to work together to address these challenges, we will not achieve our national education goals.

Community Schools: Proving That 'Collective Impact' Works

2011-12-06T18:43:58-05:00

There comes a time when many fine examples of how to improve learning and life conditions for our children and young people hits a ceiling. They cannot get to scale, because as exemplary as they may be, they have an "isolated impact" on the issues. While collaboration may be part of their strategy, they often fall short of achieving deep changes in prospects for young people, especially those who are poor.

That is why some funders and community leaders are retiring their search for a silver bullet with an approach called "collective impact." A recent article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review describes collective impact and how it works. The elements of collective impact are consistent with what those of us supporting the growth of community schools have been practicing for a long time. We agree with the article's authors that "fixing one point on the educational continuum -- such as better after-school programs -- wouldn't make much difference unless all parts of the continuum improved at the same time."

Indeed a comprehensive understanding of the problems we face in educating our children is at the collective impact strategy. At the Coalition for Community Schools, we see the challenge of educating our children as a collective responsibility. School systems alone cannot deal with the myriad of factors that influence student learning.

Currently, some people engaged in the debate about what more it will take to educate our children often seem to push only one and at best two levers to improve education -- teacher effectiveness and testing. We argue that our children surely need strong teachers and principals and an engaging curriculum, but they also need a range of opportunities from prenatal care to college and career readiness; the sort of support that enables all children to succeed. To do this we must act collectively.

The five basic elements of collective impact go far beyond collaboration and do not call for additional funding, but rather, efficient use of what is available. Cincinnati's community schools movement, which in fact began 8 years prior to the advent of Strive, as well as efforts in Tulsa, Evansville, Multnomah County (OR) and other communities, have put these elements into practice, and they are seeing results. In their well-organized efforts, local community school leaders have:

• Agreed on a common agenda. Leaders from across sectors -- schools, health and social service agencies, youth organizations, higher education, faith-based and neighborhood groups and business/civic groups -- let go of their individual agendas, and built a shared vision for improving achievement through community schools.

• Used shared measurement systems. For community schools, this means much more than academic achievement. Their metrics consider many factors that influence student success including: attendance/chronic absenteeism; health indicators such as asthma and obesity; student motivation and engagement; and parental involvement.

• Organized mutually reinforcing activities. Collective impact in community schools demands quality instruction in the schools, complemented by a set of opportunities from other sectors. These may include health and mental health services, after-school programs, mentoring, internships and apprenticeships. Families and neighborhood residents participate in adult education classes, ESL programs, job training, leadership development and cultural programs.

• Emphasized continuous communications. In community schools, the voices of those who have a stake in the outcomes -- students, parents, educators and the community -- are respected and given formal and informal means for being heard. These stakeholders, and the public, learn about the work and its results through newsletters, community meetings, websites and the media.

• Organized backbone support organizations. A collective impact initiative requires dedicated staff to coordinate the effort. Community school systems have an analogous approach, using intermediary organizations to drive their joint work. The intermediary could be a school system, or just as often local government, a United Way or another non-profit agency plays this role. A similar arrangement occurs at the school site where community partner organizations often hire community school coordinators to glue together the work of the school and its partners.

The fact that community school strategy involves work at both the school and at the community levels is particularly important. Collective impact in education does not happen just because community leaders and partners articulate a set of desired metrics. It happens when community leadership see schools as primary places for joint community action; when they empower educators and community partners to create the conditions for learning together; and, when they hold people accountable for results.

The Coalition's new guide, Scaling up School and Community Partnerships, demonstrates how building a system of community schools can lead to collective impact. It makes clear that the place to begin marshaling communities behind schools is by setting a powerful shared vision, the first tenet of collective impact. It argues that collective trust among school and community partners is the fuel for a joint enterprise.

Cincinnati created a shared agenda in 2000 under the leadership of then school board member and former Governor John Gilligan. His idea for community learning centers (aka community schools) has led to a cross-boundary leadership team that includes educators and community partners who focus on many aspects of a young person's life at Cincinnati's schools. That vision is getting results and now aims to make every school a community learning center. That would be a collective impact worth replicating everywhere.

The Right To Read

2011-07-19T10:58:37-04:00

It is almost a nightly ritual now -- the airways filled with scenes of angry, demanding and sometimes victorious crowds wanting change to happen. I missed one of the most hopeful demonstrations, however. Recently, while visiting Cape Town, South Africa, the former education adviser for the South African Bank told me that thousands of young students, perhaps as many as 15,000, had marched through the city's streets, demanding the right to learn to read.

They wanted their school libraries to be stocked with books and a teacher assigned as a librarian for every school. I observed this compulsion to learn and read on a visit to the Vulindlela Reading Club in Langa, a township right outside of Cape Town. Children as young as 4 and up to age 11 were spending their Saturday mornings in a program coordinated by the Project for the Study of Alternative Education at the University of Cape Town where they received extra help on learning to read in both Xhosa and English. They are lucky to be there. More than half of South African children are behind in reading skills.

The idea that being able to read is a "right" stems from the country's constitution, which focuses heavily on the rights of the people in the aftermath of years of powerlessness under apartheid. The students who marched challenged adults who now hold power, demanding that these adults take responsibility for creating the conditions that will make their right to read possible.

In the United States, as developed and wealthy as it is, more than 80 percent of children in low-income families are not proficient in reading. I listen, I talk to people, I read what's going on in policy circles, but rarely do I find any sympathy for a public demand for the right to read, as the South African students showed. By contrast, we are a society that talks more about the responsibilities of individuals and less about acting for the common good.

We know better though. The research on what it takes for children to learn to read tells us that it is a collective endeavor and includes: parents, other family members, and adults who provide books at home, read to children, and nurture a love of reading; quality early childhood development; access to health and social services; and teachers who are competent to teach early reading skills. Yet, in the United States many of our poorest children are on their own, lacking these kinds of opportunities.

How can we all work together to respond to the 'demand' that every child read well, certainly by the end of 3rd grade? In South Africa and in the United States, it is the adults who need to mobilize around helping children learn to read. Even in the present fiscal climate, there is much that schools and communities can do together to address the problem.

First and most important, we must understand that helping poor children to read is a shared responsibility. It is the first step toward preparing the next generation to take over. Thus, it is not just the responsibility of the family or the school. Rather, it is a challenge we all share.We need a culture that organizes around the "right" of all children to learn to read. That kind of culture, thankfully, is evident in the local community school movement.

More and more communities have collaborative structures where leaders from schools, local government, non-profit organizations, health institutions, higher education, the faith-based community, and neighborhood groups join together and build a culture of shared problem solving and learning opportunities for children. These communities -- numbering more than 50 and ranging from Tulsa to Oakland, from Lincoln to Cincinnati, from Peoria to Chicago -- are learning that collaboration is the only way to develop sustained supports for poor children, such as those needed for learning to read.

Without marching through the streets, people have come together to help poor children, working from a base of community schools. They collect books for poor children through the joint efforts of faith based institutions, local businesses, health agencies, and non-profit institutions; organize peer teaching so that older children read to younger ones; focus on reading as part of parenting education, parent leadership, and adult education classes; involve citizens as readers for young children and reading tutors; improve teaching in early childhood programs and in our elementary schools; and, make sure children receive vision testing.

Community schools ease the transition between early childhood programs and traditional classrooms. This is a big step for young children and their parents, but seldom do they get help in making it. Moreover, community school leaders are a bridge to the wider advocacy and policy communities concerned with the education of poor children.

While we may hesitate about declaring that children have the "right" to read, what we cannot dispute is that it is our shared responsibility to create the conditions that enable them to read.

Shrinking Budgets Demand Smarter Schools

2011-05-21T13:00:04-04:00

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has warned of an ominous "New Normal" for public schools. This era of sky-high deficits and fiscal austerity for states and school districts threatens our ability to achieve better outcomes for all students, particularly the most vulnerable. That leaves us no choice but to work together and spend smarter.

Enter community schools. Built around the notion that education is a shared responsibility, community schools draw on the expertise and capacity of many local institutions, including universities, nonprofits, and government agencies to coordinate diverse services under one schoolhouse roof. When a school is a community hub, students and families can easily access healthcare, academic enrichment, social services and a range of supports that strengthen kids, parents, and neighborhoods.

Just as critically in this economy, community schools efficiently combine scarce school, local, public, and private funds to maximize the benefit to children and families. By marshaling complementary services, community schools eliminate waste and bureaucratic barriers to leverage a variety of funding streams and human talent. These multi-tasking campuses provide more comprehensive help to families than any one school or organization alone could. Working across boundaries educates the "whole child" and serves the whole family, which in turn, strengthens the whole community.

I saw this vision in action during a visit to the Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN) community schools in Multnomah County, Oregon. This initiative links the county, the city of Portland, and six school districts to provide a range of supports for students that will help them to succeed. Thanks to sustained investments by the county, city and school districts, with strong local leadership, and support from existing health, higher education, youth development and other agencies resources, SUN Community Schools have grown from eight in 2001, to 60 schools today.

A coordinator at each school, hired by a lead community-based agency, strategically leverages the services and expertise of local nonprofits and other organizations in an intentional way that supports the school's core mission and addresses the myriad of challenges low-income children face.

The 4-H leader at Earl Boyles Elementary, a SUN community school, is funded from a juvenile justice grant, to help mentor at-risk youngsters. He was grateful for the community schools structure, which eliminates logistical hassles of coordinating with administrators, and allows him to focus on his real goal: reaching kids. Meanwhile, AmeriCorps volunteers engage families, a local charity provides summertime meals for parents and kids, and a gardening group helps students plant and care for a community plot. Teachers connect the work students do in the community garden with classroom learning: one child presented a class report on eggplants; part of the school garden's harvest.

Last school year, Earl Boyles Elementary partnered with 28 community agencies and businesses, resulting in nearly $30,000 in cash and in-kind donations, and nearly 200 hours of volunteer service. With so much community support -- and offerings ranging from chess club to youth service learning to financial literacy for adults -- Boyles students have boosted reading and math scores, and teachers report better attendance, homework completion, and participation.

Another SUN school, Woodmere Elementary, helps prepare the youngest children -- many with no preschool or Head Start experience -- for kindergarten through a special three-week program. Parents can take English, nutrition, and computer classes. Woodmere's 29 community and business partners offered direct services, generated nearly $69,000 in cash and in-kind donations, and volunteers contributed 670 hours of service last school year.

This multi-layered approach is made possible through money from Multnomah County, the city of Portland, school districts, state and federal grants, Title I funds, the resources of local partners, and the essential donation of supplies, and volunteer hours from groups such as the PTA, Portland State University, and Reed College.

Joining forces stretches limited dollars: A recent report by the Coalition for Community Schools found that every dollar invested in a community school generates 'three dollars' worth of services and opportunities for children and families. And that's a conservative estimate. When Duncan was CEO of Chicago Public Schools, he advocated for community schools, estimating that they capture even more value.

In the midst of Duncan's "New Normal," community schools make more sense than ever. Many different services and opportunities exist in communities -- but, a coherent and collaborative strategy for organizing them is missing. By uniting social and health services, enrichment, youth development, tutoring, adult education, and other opportunities under one roof, schools and communities save time and energy, and most critically, use their money in a smarter way.

Times are tough; today's children arrive at school with complicated challenges. Solving them demands that we work together toward a smarter solution that is both effective and cost-effective. That's just what community schools do.

It Takes a Community: The Secret to Fixing Our Nation's Schools

2011-02-28T02:32:04-05:00

With education topping his agenda, President Obama sent a powerful message during last month's State of the Union address: No school is an island. "Education," Obama said, "begins not in our classrooms, but in our homes and communities."

"We know what's possible for our children," he continued, "when reform isn't just a top-down mandate, but the work of local teachers and principals, school boards and communities."

As someone who's fought for community-based schools for more than two decades, I couldn't agree more.

The President's words were a great start, but there is more to the message. Had he devoted more of his speech to education, here's what the President might have said:

Yes, a rigorous education coupled with family and community supports are key to educating all of our children. No one can dispute the power of great teachers and an engaging curriculum, accompanied by afterschool enrichment, wraparound health and social services, real family involvement and the chance for students to contribute to their communities. We can and we must work to educate the whole child -- and impact the whole family -- particularly those from underserved communities.

I know that our schools cannot do this alone. Families and community organizations must step up. My administration has been learning what success looks like from school and community leaders.

They are organizing community schools that serve as neighborhood hubs, open year-round with longer hours and linked with local organizations to provide a range of opportunities, from tutoring, enrichment, mentoring and health services for children to evening classes for parents and neighborhood residents. These kinds of schools are driving student achievement and neighborhood revitalization; promoting family involvement in school; and strengthening community bonds.

Given our nation's fiscal challenges, we have no choice but to organize public, private, and community resources more effectively and collaboratively. A recent report from the Coalition for Community Schools shows that for every $1 that the school system invests in a community school, the community invests an additional $3. That's real leverage. According to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the return was even greater during his tenure organizing 150 community schools in Chicago.

And the research is clear: students in community schools learn better, attend school more, and are healthier.

The Lane Middle School in Portland, Ore. shows what's possible. Lane is one of 60 Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN) community schools organized through a partnership of Multnomah County, the city of Portland and six school districts.

Lane works with higher education institutions, public agencies and community-based organizations to provide homework assistance, tutoring, sports and arts activities, and youth empowerment and leadership groups. The school links students and families to individualized social services and connects with them through a family engagement coordinator. A school-based health center, operated by Multnomah County, cares for students and their families. A dedicated staffer mobilizes these resources and integrates them into the school, allowing educators to focus on academics.

Principal Karl Logan reports that Lane is the first school in Oregon to move beyond federal benchmarks and has since received a state award for closing the achievement gap. Logan considers the SUN community school as a pillar of Lane's success.

We know the formula works elsewhere, in places like Chicago, Cincinnati, Evansville, Hartford, Kansas City, Montgomery County (MD), Tulsa, and rural communities as well.

To replicate and build on these successes, I want to send a clear message that we all share responsibility for our children's future, and ask Congress to offer incentives, such as grants and policy reforms that move schools and community partners toward collaborations that focus on results.

Let's modify top-down educational mandates such as No Child Left Behind to unleash the power of communities to adapt school models to neighborhood needs. State and local government, schools, and private supporters must allocate funds to schools for staffers to coordinate these critical partnerships and encourage community participation.

Washington will provide invaluable leadership. But the beauty of the community schools model, and the key to its sustainability, is that it originates from the grassroots.

Just as community schools nurture partnerships among educators, advocates, and citizens, I pledge a new level of partnership between Washington and communities nationwide to build on the promise of this approach: healthy kids, healthy families, and healthy communities. The only way we'll get there is by working together.