Bridging the Divide abstract

IGI Global, 2020

Teamwork and partnerships are inextricably related. They are the critical elements necessary for any institution pursuing its vision, achieving its goals, and accomplishing its objectives. For schools, this is especially true, and the makeup of a school's team must include those members of the educational community who are impacted by outcomes resulting from decisions made by the team. While conventional wisdom has the school's principal playing the role of the school team's leader, in fact, the leadership of a school's team is shared by the principal and distributed throughout the educational community, which includes parents. This chapter focuses on the concept of family/school partnerships and the inclusion of parents who are essential members of the leadership team. And, while this applies to parent representatives throughout the school's general population of families, it is critical to ensure that the parents of CLD children are included among the leadership team.

2006

In this new century, school librarians have expanded their roles and now serve as chief information officers, knowledge navigators, and teacher-librarians, partnering in the learning process. Adopting many of the practices recommended in AASL’s Information Power, school librarians are now well positioned to foster good citizenship by collaborating “with students and other members of the learning community to analyze learning and information needs, and use resources that will meet those needs, and to understand and communicate the information the resources provide." Moreover, they are redesigning facilities so they are more conducive to inquiry and group study that both reflect and create community, and that bring people together through multicultural arts programming, issue forums, training opportunities, intellectual dialogue and exchange. Beyond designing facilities, collaborating with teachers, and developing resources, school librarians enhance civic participation by teachi...

The Educational Forum, 2018

This study explored how one district-community partnership, comprised of seven nonprofit community partners that serve five elementary schools in a single urban school district, improved community literacy. This collective case study used semi-structured interviews to investigate the perspectives of 17 partners and analyzed student assessment data. Results revealed greatest benefits for first grade students and a need for consistent district leadership. This research is viewed through Hanleybrown, Kania, and Kramer's (2012) collective impact framework.

1988

This paper summarizes the major points raised at-a conference on "School/Community Collaborations:-Policy Implications for Urban Education" held in New York City (New York) on May 12-13, 1988. Schools or school districts have successfully collaborated with businesses, unions, schools of higher education, hospitals, youth agencies, community organizations, and local governments to solve mutual problems. Collaborative goals may be categorized as either school improvement goals, such as. decreasing the dropout rate, or fundamental change goals, such as obtaining a greater voice for the minority poor served by the schools. Participation in collaboratives may be described as either open, small group, or ritualized. Aspects of successful collaborations include, the following: (1) commitment; (2) clarity about roles; (3) training; (4) incentives for institutionalization; and (5) evaluation. Since collaboratives can provide powerful support for many types of intervention, it is ultimately up to educators to decide which interventions are most effective, and-then to create appropriate collaboratives to implement them. However, indepe lent public school improvement is needed to sustain the interest .nd support of the participating community groups. (FMW)

2012

2019

2010

Conclusion: Sustaining Community Engagement through District-Community Initiatives References 115 Appendices Appendix A: Methods ii Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to the family and friends who have loved, supported, and diverted me as I have travelled down this long and winding road… And especially for my love, Bradley, who has promised to continue the journey with me. iii Acknowledgments Many thanks to everyone at LAUSD, and to the residents and champions of the Southeast cities, who took time out of their busy schedules to help me explore these questions. A special thanks to Lorena Padilla and her staff, to Marisela Cervantes, and to all of the wonderful people of Southeast Los Angeles who inspired me with their passion for education and with their commitment to their communities. Also, to my cohort of exceptional SCS ladies: As scholars and as women, you are all amazing. Best of luck to you in all you do. No doubt, it will be great.

1998

Reporting on an October 1997 meeting of a representative group of mayors, school superintendents, and school board members held under the joint auspices of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the Council of Great City Schools, David Broder wrote: "The bad news is that the meeting should have been held years ago. The good news is that it finally happened.. . ."[1] That same sentiment might be expressed about this extraordinary, "first-time-ever" U.S. Departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development Joint Forum. Given the multisided, complex, interconnected, systemic, seemingly intractable problems afflicting our schools and communities, a joint forum on how to connect community building and education reform should have been held years, even decades, ago. But both meetings did not occur "back then." Today's forum follows the mayors-superintendents gathering by a mere three months. Although no direct connection exists between the two, they share a core proposition that successful community building and genuine education reform are intrinsically linked. You simply can't have one without the other. but abandoned the child, what can we do to turn that child around?" [emphasis added].[3] Although obvious, community impacts on schooling have not been seriously addressed by either governmental policy or American higher education. For too many politicians and academics "School is a school is a school is a school," with one size fitting all, no matter where it is and who attends. Prattling about high standards for all children without confronting "the blighted community in which [many] school[s] exist" will most likely result in frustration and disillusion, rather than achievement and success. Similarly, revitalized cities and communities necessitate revitalized and excellent schools. At the joint mayorssuperintendents meeting in October 1997, Mayor Paul Helmke of Fort Wayne, current president of the Conference of Mayors, expressed that idea as follows: "We [mayors] now realize how crucial schools are to the future of our cities. Good schools encourage parents to remain in the city, bad schools drive them away and keep employees out."[4] A recent campaign headed by High Price, president of the National Urban League, illustrates that reducing the particularly pernicious savage inequality in educational achievement has become a major national issue. Price has drawn together 20 national black organizations, with approximately 25 million members, including the Congress of National Black Churches for a Campaign for African-American Achievement. A statement announcing the campaign stated: "We have to reverse the increasing gap in academic achievement between African-American and other children. We have to increase the low rates of enrollment of African-American youngsters in college preparatory courses and attack the inequitable allocation of resources for public education [emphasis added]."[5] An emphasis on the preeminent role of education for individual and societal success also has deep roots in Dewey's work, in particular his 1902 essay, "The School as Social Centre." Dewey, in effect, observed that, during the 20th century, the schooling system would increasingly function as the strategic subsystem of the increasingly complex industrial (and "post-industrial") societies produced by the post-1800 economic and communications revolutions.[6] Twenty-five years after he wrote "The School as Social Centre," Dewey wrote The Public and Its Problems and highlighted another theme central to our deliberations.

2017

ProQuest