Re-Imagining What a School Can Be

Why do so many schools have auditoriums?

Why do they have athletic fields?

We take features like those for granted today, but there was a time when a school building with anything more than classrooms and chalkboards was considered wildly unorthodox. But, more than a hundred years ago, educators came to realize that schools can be more than simply places for instruction: they can be the center of their communities.

The community schools movement was dedicated to the idea that, as the great educator John Dewey put it in 1902, "The conception of the school as a social center is born of our entire democratic movement." That idea helped make the school building a place for towns and neighborhoods to come together -- to cheer at games, to participate in civic clubs, to get a vaccination, to attend adult courses, and even to vote.

Today, the community schools tradition is experiencing a dramatic revival. It is being driven by the first-hand reports of teachers: again and again, we've heard the stories of students whose struggles begin long before they enter the classroom. These students don't have what so many of us took for granted in our childhoods -- three square meals a day, regular doctor visits, or the lightness that comes from being a child free of the worries a difficult life can impose. So many schools and teachers work hard to provide safe havens for these children; but even the most sheltering schools, the best teachers, and the most dedicated students can't erase the effects of all of those challenges without help.

That's where community schools come in. Just as they -- as well as the old settlement houses for recent immigrants -- once made great strides to enrich their neighborhoods, today they can enrich the education of millions of our children. Their success depends on more than the classroom, which is why leading educators and teachers unions, along with President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, are throwing their support behind a new generation of schools that use community schooling to help students and teachers achieve their best.

Full-service community schools work with local organizations and the private sector to coordinate a wide range of services for students and families. At a full-service community school you might find health clinics or dental care, mental health counseling, English lessons for parents, adult courses, nutrition education, or career advice. For high-need communities that require social services, there is no more welcoming -- or efficient -- place to house them than in a public school. Schools like these quickly find a place at the heart of their communities, staying open long after school hours and on weekends, giving neighbors a place to come together and participate in the education of their children.

To take one example, the Mirabal Sisters Campus is a group of public schools serving sixth- through eighth-graders in New York City. It offers a full-service school-based health center with medical and mental health clinics; after-school and summer programs that include athletics, performing and visual arts, technology, design, and leadership training; and English language, computer, GED, and vocational classes for parents and the community. Largely as a result of such innovative programs, the Mirabal Sisters Campus has seen a steady increase in parents' involvement in their children's education and -- most importantly -- rising student achievement.

Those results are hardly unique. A decade of research on full-service community schools has consistently shown that they promote higher student achievement and literacy, stronger discipline, better attendance and parental participation, a reduction in dropouts, and increased access to preventive health care (a factor that is especially urgent as we face a possible flu epidemic).

With these benefits in mind, Congress is considering legislation that could greatly expand the number of full-service community schools in America -- one of the most important pieces of school legislation in recent years. It would provide grants for states and school districts to work with community organizations and businesses to create the kind of programs that have had so much success at schools across America. Strengthening services in schools also has the potential to save our country money on everything from prison systems to emergency room visits.

A century ago, American educators re-imagined what a school could be; today, we have an opportunity to do the same. In fact, we have an obligation to -- because only by strengthening communities can we meet public education's mission of getting the most from every single child.

Rep. Steny Hoyer is the House Majority Leader and Randi Weingarten is president of the 1.4-million-member American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO

Comments

[David Campbell]

Yes, this is exactly what a school should be, a 24/7 community center making full use of the facility. Now, if we can just get rid of the No Child Left Behind phony education reform which is nothing more than the ancient European 11-plus examination system that was intended to sort children and keep them in their social class and had nothing whatsoever to do with true education. Instead us as a model our excellent science centers and aquariums along with the Discovery channels and National Geographic/Animal Planet & PBS. That is where true education is taking place, not memorizing textbooks.
(Obviously, I am a fan & impersonator of Charles Dawrin)

[GonzoFactor]

I retired after 30 years of teaching. My wife is still going at 33, but sees the end coming soon. One of my best friends finally retired after 40. We all see the same thing coming: there will soon be a catastrophic shortage of teachers.

The average new teacher stays in the field 5 years or less. Older teachers are retiring in droves. Student numbers are increasing. Why are so many new teachers hitting the road?

From our perspective, the thing that drives newbies (and oldies) out the fastest is the forever-increasing load of paperwork that has nothing to do with running one's classroom. Its purpose is to justify what's being done to administrators, state auditors, and inspectors. It's window dressing that eats up hundreds of hours every year just so administrators can "prove" to their higher-ups that their underlings are doing the "right" thing. It's wearying, discouraging, and time-wasting. If you want to increase teacher productivity, let them concentrate on their classrooms, not on covering some higher-up's lordly butt.

Certainly, accountability is important, but time-wasting paperwork is not the best way to it.

[akrishn3]

@afrographia
there are some solutions for fixing some of the problem coming from dysfucntional families..
the following may sound drastic and you will trash me and my thoughts as antedeluvian but hear me first...
1. If I have a daughter in school... I would make sure.... no sex at all during your teen years.. which means even during the freshman and probably sophomore years of college.
(I know this sounds rubish to you....but why... why this can work in Singapore and not here..? it worked for me.. it worked for my wife...it works for millions in Malaysia and Inida why is it that teenages MUST have sex...they will not die if they donot have sex. even here almost all asian kids donot have sex in their school years.. this is a fact)
2. No pregs/child unless you find the right man and walk the alter. (again works for billions around the world...so do not trash me..)
3. No marraige until you find the man who is equal to you in you skills, intelligence, hardworking and last but not the least ..comitment.

do the above for 10 -15 years... in US you will have GREAT reduction of dysfunctional families and single parent families.. and then you will get GREAT parents who are responsible and you get GREAT improvement in educational levels.... and hence schools can do teaching instead of running social programs....

it works for Singapore. do you want Signapore standard of education here?

[alex61]

I grew up in California at a time when this state had the best schools. We also had intact families. Our culture had a sense of respect for the common good and discipline. All of that is gone. Of course our schools are worse.
Look at our culture. Lowered standards, lower expectations, excuse making for all sorts of stupid behaviour, the victim mentality, the entitlement mentality (see victim mentality), the "I have lots of rights but no responsibilities" mentality and for minorities and women, the "I'm equal but never responsible mentality. People behave in all sorts of crazy ways because "It's nobody elses business." Only when they mess up their own lives and they need help or money do their choices become everybody else's business. Nice.
All of this is evidence of the corrosive affect that liberalism has had on our culture. There have beedn countless foolish experiments with the framework that make a culture strong and funtional. We now see the price we are paying.
Dysfunctional "families" (including children born out of wedlock) are putting a poor produc into the schools. The schools, themselves ruined by stupid liberal policies, are returning a poor product to society. That is our problem. You want to remake schools? Remake the culture.

[Pearlswan]

You had me until you blamed the liberals and the children born out of wedlock. That's where you lost me. You can't "fix" liberals and children born out of wedlock or dysfunctional families but you can return the whole community, including dysfunctional families, children born out of wedlock and liberals, into the hub of the community through a community owned and operated school system. Perhaps then, with a sense of belonging and security borne of familiarity with all ideas and lifestyles, we can begin to create communities that will promote functional families, fair-mindedness and responsibility for all its members, no matter how they came into the world, who nurtured their development, or what are their current beliefs.

[akrishn3]

the fix the problem it is better to fix the "root cause" otherwise you keep on treating the symptom. either trat it or remove the problem.
I mean the dysfunctional families (children born out of wedlock ) situation....
yes... all the problem today we have is because we donot have parants taking responsilities...
paraents are respoinsible for inculcating values... morals... compassion..social responsibilty and accountability. Not schools.
but we donot have these parents... why? becasue there are no parents (plural).. the single family home is mired iwth problems lack of authority figure, moral figure and role models...
Hence it becomes a problem and schools /govt steps in... and forgets that is job is to **teach** and not **preach***.
Now do you understand how Libs have spoiled the education system....
They succeded in killing the family first..and then spoled the scholling next by adding all sort of social agenda to it..and then all teachers are telling ...oh it is the parents who are irresponsi­ble...wher­e are the parents (plural)?

[afrographia]

Amen. Actually, the Founders believed that schools are there to help "remake the culture" in each new generation, so that children are not limited to the opportunities or worldviews of their parents. There is a necessary tension between a family's right to indoctrinate their children with their own views and values, and the responsibility of a democracy to make sure that each generation is getting the message that we are a democracy, and that requires you to value the voices of all people, to learn about all people (for at least one reason--we vote on issues that affect all people, and we want a citizenry that respects the rights of all, and not just some)... See the tension? No easy answer; we just have to make sure schools are places of open discussion, listening and debate. But I will say we are a better society because the children of big. ots go to schools where they are exposed to other ways of imagining community than the ones their parents wanted them to know. And that's why I'm able to have a diverse group of friends today, who could only be my friends because they turned away from their parents' views. THAT is what democracy is all about!

[zola77]

Do you realise the stats show that conservative christian households have higher divorce rates than their liberal counterparts.

Alex, the broken homes are being produced by the right.

You want people to take responsibility and then refuse to take any yourself!

[stop the politics]

I hear the call to pay teachers more all the time. I did some research and according to the American Federation of Teachers for the 2006-2007 school year the average teacher made $51,009. Not a great salary, but not a bad one either (especially since the job is theoretically only 9-10 months of the year). http://www.aft.org/salary/index.htm The disturbing thing about the study was 2006-2007 was the first time since 2003 that the annual increase surpassed the rate of inflation.

I think the biggest problem with education is not the pay, but the people attracted to the field of teaching. Yes, there are some very smart people teaching but there are a lot of "C" students teaching or people teaching in fields they are not qualified to teach. When I was young, the best jobs most women could look forward to were nursing, teaching, or being a secretary. That led to very smart and talented people (mainly women) as teachers. However, we no longer have that captive market. To attract good teachers the system needs to be improved. Who wants to work in a place where it is dangerous or you are not appreciated? I am not sure how to accomplish this, but to improve our education system, we need to attract the best and brightest into teaching.

[akrishn3]

Full service community schools: WTF... already our schools are so out of focus now it going ot be worse.
and about teachers....this is what I wrote few days back to one of the bloggers ...
****
You have not seen schools in India and Korea and Signapore and Malaysia. .......In fact they kick ass in math and science to any devleoped / secular country. The problem is not religion dude. The problem is paraental attitude and responsibility.. Secondly the teachers in US are big wuss... they complain about less resource (huh... have you seen a class room in US and Malaysia?) and class size. (again see signapore, Inida , China, and malaysia) Ban teachers Union. fire incompetant teachers....stop hiring arts/ lang/history teachers in elementary and middle schools. Hire math and science majors instead (these teachers would be smart and have enough Lang/arts knowledge because most probably they took AP classess and got a 4.0 in their 12 grade... that much is enough to tech elementary and middle schools)

[Pearlswan]

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Parents were once school children themselves and were educated in the same system that now educates their children. So, if parental participation is the answer, then the system has already failed to educate the children of the past, who are now the parents of the present, that the entire system depends on their continued participation in it. I don't see how you can blame the parents because the parents don't write the curriculum nor do they execute it nor do they have the power to change it. Without power, the parents can do nothing. And, by design, the parents are time-constrained with their jobs trying to pay their bills and expenses so they have little energy left over to educate their children too. That's why they pay taxes and send their kids to school in the first place.

[mandymarleyandme]

As a teacher, I both love and hate the ideas presented in this article. I whole heartedly agree that schools that work in partnership with their local communities and encourage students to become active members in their communities can provide a greater education than those that are unable to attach themselves to community partnerships.
However, one of the primary problems I see in schools today is that the schools are expected to be all things to all people. Until we are able to accomplish our primary task, to educate students, we should not be focusing on secondary and tertiary goals. We can spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on our athletic programs, but our kids can't meet the college academic requirements to participate and compete in those same athletics at the college level. We can build luxurious stadiums, but we can't get functioning computers in our classrooms.
What is the purpose of our schools? Why aren't we focusing on it?

[afrographia]

As an educator and professor of educational policy, I think you're missing the point: Schools succeed in educating students when the students and the community believe the school and its personnel "have their back," and care about their neighborhood and their well-being. This may not be as true in affluent communities or white communities, but it is true in poor communities and in communities of color, where people rely on one another to make it through, and where people generally have less faith in institutions, and where it is more difficult to imagine the value of education 5 or 10 or 15 years down the line; rather, education is valued for the relationships and the good it does today, in the lives of real people.

I do agree with you that schools can not be "all things to all people." But the vision in this article doesn't ask schools to do that, and suggests that when schools reach out, they'll get heaps of support from communities that are often, and erroneously seen as helpless and hopeless.

[Pearlswan]

I wholeheartedly agree. You're exactly right on target. Education should be a means to mine the potential in all of our nation's communities. We can't afford to waste a soul. Remember when tv ads used to say "a good mind is a terrible thing to waste?" Whatever happened to that virtue? Its a thing of the past. Today all the best minds have been wasted on creating wealth with zero value to the community or to the nation. There's so much wrong with education and the social value structure today that its hard to know where to start improving things but education might be the first best place to start because with so little so much can change if we invest in intellectual development before financial development.

[akrishn3]

I would be happy if school **just** did the educating... not all the health....­sex...reli­gion...spo­rts... political.­...special interest things...etc...
Just education... esp math and science..
and keep the children to education. only... not community service....
I dont buy the BS that if a student is not invovled in the community service during his school years he will not be attached to community....it is a parants responsibility to inculcate that habit / value. not the school.
there is a lot to learn.... donot inculcate/ indocranate "social values" ...teach tem what they are supposed to learn...
if you want go to singapore, korea, Malysia, India and china... there is no community service there in schools.... they turn out to just just fine... they are not sociopaths....

[afrographia]

I want to challenge you to read some of the early writings about the purpose of public schools in the United States, especially as imagined by folks like Thomas Jefferson (despite whatever flaws he may have had) and Benjamin Franklin. We live in what we hope is a democracy, which means we have to keep re-creating democratic values in each generation. The founders believed that schools in our nation had to teach values--of community, responsibility, equality, justice, beauty--in order to make sure we stayed a democracy. "Social values" are actually a very old thing; not something new-fangled or "socialist." They also believed that the children of poor people had to have opportunities to learn so they could have just as much voice and power in the democracy as the children of the wealthy. None of the countries you mention have that kind of commitment, and none of them are nations I would want us to become. That does not mean we cannot learn from them; we just have to be careful that we do not abandon who we hope to be as a society. Now, I think we can do both: teach skills and teach students to explore values (without indoctrinating them--but keep in mind, "democracy" is a bias, so public schools in our nation should be biased in favor of democratic values, no?)

[sonshine]

PASS HEALTCARE REFORM! WE NEED A PUBLIC OPTION. WE NEED HELP OUT HERE. Stop wasting time and do your jobs. Pass a public option. The insurance companies have got enough. Help the people. Please. Please.

[hayness]

Schools should concentrate on educating the children. They do a crappy job of that right now. The last thing they need is to expand their focus.

Creating community is a great idea. But the schools should not be the hub of all this activity.

[akrishn3]

Hear Hear....

[Pearlswan]

If not the schools, a place for intellectual freedom and egalitarian opportunity, then where? The cut-throat corporations or the divisive religions are far worse hubs for a community to center its activities around, IMHO. What else is there? Divorced families? The government is of the people, by the people, for the people and nothing else aspires to that. Government is already the hub of the people and the best thing government has to offer is education so schools are a natural hub and that hub ought to be used to get the wheels of the economy rolling again and then they should be the hub that keeps the whole social wheel rolling down the road to progress toward a just and liberated society that allows us all to pursue our own happiness.

[vippy]

Sports is okay unless they put more money into football or other events, then it becomes a major problem. A nearly 50% dropout rate of high schoolers is unacceptable. We need school reform.
And what is up with the pregnant ones and then have to haul their babies to daycare? What a world today. Hey, but don't let them issue condoms or have sex education.

[NoMoFearNoMoHate]

Anything besides the testing center, robot manufacturing systems being pushed by Republicans today.

[philko]

Rep Hoyer & Ms. Weingarten,
The idea you're proposing sounds good, but any law that encourages schools to be used for other purposes really needs to protect school districts from accusations (from both the left and the right) that they're using taxpayer-funded facilities for improper purposes. Maybe your bill has provsions for this and, if so, that's great.
But if it doesn't, please consider the issue. We need to be prepared for issues like:
-- An on-campus health clinic prescribes contraceptives. Right-wing uproar causes district to have to deal with this issue and pay less attention to education.
-- An on-campus military recruiting office tells students about options for military service. Left-wing upoar. More distractions for the school administrators.
Schools definitely have the capability of serving the community more fully than they currently do, but let's not do that in a way that hinders their primary purpose.

[bigpaws23]

So many American schools can't even adequately provide proper instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Everything else you suggest is superfluous when you consider how many fail at their core mission.

Schools are supposed to teach children and shouldn't be a petri dish for the left's socialist agenda (i.e. - gov't makes choices for you)

[GreenTeacher]

Rather than simply saying you have no idea what you are talking about (though that is obvious), I will simply ask this: Which do you think is the greater recipe for failure,

Solid, comfortable home and family + bad teachers?

or

The best teachers in the world + broken home, family, and community?

If you think that teachers are the sole instruments of a child's success, well then first of all we should be making CEO salaries. But more importantly, you would be shopping for schools based only on the teaching. Somehow I doubt that you would send your child to an inner-city school even if that school's teachers were brilliant, award-winning teachers. (Guess what? Some of them are.)

[bigpaws23]

Uh let's see many American schools perform poorly. that is a fact. I do know what I am talking apart. A school's job is to teach, and they don't really do it that well. They should get that right before embarking on some cockamamie ideas like the ones proposed here.

cuckoo!

[GreenTeacher]

Bravo! Thank you both for articulating an approach that addresses the true needs of education. School improvements without community improvements are always destined to fail, which is why business-minded administrators (up through and including our current Sec'y of Ed) keep trying to reinvent the system without addressing the real problems that hold children back.

I fervently hope that this movement can indeed gain more traction.

[WASanford]

This piece begins with a couple of questions. I have questions of my own. Why are there no schools with shop classes or business classes anymore? When I was in high school in the early 50's, I took auto shop. We took an old pickup truck apart and rebuilt it. We did everything from a total overhaul of its engine to the body work, we then carefully painted it. We learned to work with tools, our hands, and our minds and in the end we had the pride and satisfaction of an incredible accomplishment. It was the most beautiful vehicle I've ever seen.

If you want to keep young men and women from dropping out of school, isn't this an answer?

I began my working life as an electrician's apprentice. Went from being an electrician to electrical engineering, and finished my career managing a large crew. If I can do that anyone can. I got my start in that shop class.

[philko]

From the sound of it, you're a person with a wide variety of experience. Approach your local schools and volunteer to share that experience!

Even if your local high school doesn't have a shop class, there's nothing preventing them from having an after-school activity in which kids work on cars. You sound like a perfect person to mentor kids who are mechanically inclined. So go talk to your local schools. Talk to the district administration. Volunteer! You might have to be persistent (I know that I had to be), but eventually you'll find someone in the school who is receptive to having a knowledgable and experienced person help students learn useful stuff that they wouldn't otherwise learn.

Try it. It's worth it.

[Pearlswan]

There are no shop and business classes anymore because the corporate social structure doesn't want us to know how to do things with our own hands so they can sell us more crap we don't need and they don't want us to know how to handle our money or to know anything about the structure of the financial system so they can keep stealing our labor and our cash and so they can keep creating financial instruments that make the corporations wealthier while providing zero value to our communities or our nation.

Without the ability to fix things and create things we need for ourselves, we become dependent on whatever the corporations market to us. Without the ability to understand how wealth is created and destroyed we become dependent on the jobs the corporations offer to us. No shop and no business classes seems like a recipe for slavery to me. People end up with no skills and no money who have no training and no business sense. Who needs people like that if not corporations?

[georgiaR]

After working as a teacher's aide in the public schools (K-5) for 20 years I feel that the problem with education is not all about money. There are bad teachers out there. There is not enough time in the school day spent on the basics - reading, writing, math. There does need to be some testing but in a more meaningful way. Where I worked the district picked the curriculum, the state set the standards, and the testing was a national test. So the kids were being tested on things they had not learned.

[Pearlswan]

Educators are smart. So, if the system is designed this way and even commonfolk like me can see that the parts don't work toward the same goal, then I can only conclude its deliberate. Why? That's the question we should be asking. Why doesn't government want education to work--to achieve its first and foremost goal--to educate the people? Surely, if the people owned and operated the government education system as they are intended to do, they would not construct a system to fail at its job, would they? Whoever is in charge of this "educational" system has decided to accept a status quo of repeated and repeatable failure. Today, the educational system is training its students for a future in the prison system rather than as free market entrepreneurs or job-holders. Notice that credit and jobs are shrinking yet prisons are booming. Principals act like wardens and teachers act like guards so the student drop-out rate is 50%. If the people don't own and operate the gov't education system, who does? Who owns those charter schools--the corporations? What else do they own or invest in? Why is there such a strong push to privatize the K-12 system? These are the questions that will deliver us the truth but they rarely get asked, so I'm asking now. Anyone want to research an answer? Take the challenge? Learn the truth? Go for it.