Entering Oakland International High School is like walking into a brighter and more welcoming world. Conversations in as many as 35 languages float through the sunny courtyard, where students come from nearly as many countries. Every student at the school is a newcomer, which means they have been in the United States for fewer than 3 years.…

The purpose of this guide is to illuminate best practices for meaningful engagement of youth in Community Schools and to recognize youth voice as a community asset that can help advance more equitable school systems. Youth voice plays an important role in redesigning how public education functions. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted education and…

"The Way We Do School: The Making of Oakland's Full-Service Community School District" offers an in-depth profile of the nation's most ambitious community school initiative. The book focuses on a nearly ten-year effort to transform all eighty-six district schools in Oakland, California into community schools in order to better meet the…

Although teachers, school counselors, and administrators are all situated within educational settings tasked with supporting students' educational development, rarely do these professionals have sufficient opportunities to learn from and collaborate with one another before entering these schools. Unfortunately, many of these professionals are…

Across the United States, state education agencies and school districts face daunting challenges and difficult decisions for restarting schools as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. As state and district leaders prepare for what schooling will look like in 2020 and beyond, there is an opportunity to identify evidence-based policies and practices…

This brief examines the research on community schools, with two primary emphases. First, it explores whether the 2015 federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) opens the possibility of investing in well-designed community schools to meet the educational needs of low-achieving students in high-poverty schools. And second, it provides support to…

ExpandED Schools (formerly TASC) has spent the past 17 years helping schools and community organizations find the right partners. This resource guide offers a guide to the strategic questions school teams might ask themselves and their potential partners to have the best outcomes for young people. The following attachment is included: School…

Social return on investment (SROI) offers a new strategy to measure and communicate the value of outcomes achieved by programs that provide social, health, and education services to children and their families. It can be a powerful tool for demonstrating the monetary value of programs and services and for communicating that value in a way that can…

Social return on investment (SROI) analysis offers a practical new approach for measuring and communicating the value of outcomes achieved by programs that provide social, health, and educational services to children and their families. This guide highlights the key steps in conducting SROI research, issues in data-gathering and analysis, as well…

This handbook is designed to help state leaders form vital connections between schools and communities to improve student learning. It explains that community schools are beneficial because they meet students' basic needs, including safety; offer high quality curriculum and teaching aligned with academic standards; provide learning experiences…

Boston's Jamaica Plain High School is a bright, colorful facility that belies that building's former life as a utilitarian warehouse. (Author)

Looks at what some communities faced with declining enrollment have done to solve the problem of excess school space. (MLF)

An interagency planning process, with citizen participation, for the shared use of educational facilities can lead to increased availability of educational facilities, enhanced revenue potential from building use, and improved facility design. (Author/MLF)

This monograph is the second in a series, whose purpose is to provide practitioners and researchers a forum for securing the most current knowledge pertinent to family, school, and community partnership issues. This publication focuses on emerging practices that link communities and schools, especially creating the school as the hub for…

This report examines 46 community (charter) schools that operated during the 1999-2000 school year. Community schools tend to be smaller than their public counterparts, enroll a higher proportion of minority and poor students, and serve relatively fewer special-needs students. On average, community-school teachers have fewer years of experience…