Purpose: Americans frequently turn to online social networking sites (OSNs) as a source of news and information. Yet the role of OSNs in knowledge formation about local public schools remains underexamined. This study explores how public knowledge about local schools is constructed on Facebook. Research Methods/Approach: This ethnographic case…

California is prioritizing equity in education post-COVID-19 by investing in community schools. Districts have an important leadership responsibility to develop the conditions, capacities, and resources for effective, sustainable community schools. Specifically, districts must strengthen system-level supports and infrastructure to ensure…

Community schools integrate a range of supports and opportunities for students, families, and the community through a set of partnerships between the education system, the nonprofit sector, and local government agencies. They are an evidence-based strategy for implementing whole child education, which addresses the full scope of children's…

Many school districts, particularly in inner-city communities, face numerous barriers to students' academic success. Unfortunately, the school paradigm is not constructed to address the glaring social/emotional conditions affecting millions of children (Anderson-Butcher et al., 2017). As a result, educators and social reformers have urged school…

This study examined six diverse school districts in Maine that have successfully formed partnerships between their districts and community or regional organizations to expand supports to students and their families that go beyond academic support to include health, mental health, social services and other supports.

Ohio law requires the director of the Department of Education and Workforce to report annually the numbers and percentages of students in kindergarten through grade 4 who are reading below grade level based on diagnostic assessments, and also to report progress for all students placed on Reading Improvement and Monitoring Plans in kindergarten…

Across the United States, policymakers, educators, and community members increasingly support community schools as a method of supporting whole child outcomes. Oakland Unified School District (Oakland Unified) in California has made whole child education central to its community schools initiative. Oakland Unified's community schools provide a…

This brief highlights lessons learned from New Mexico's investment in community schools. Drawing on profiles of three sites that received state implementation grants, we find that community schools implementing the key practices at the center of New Mexico's community schools framework are seeing improvement across a range of indicators, including…

Across the United States, policymakers, educators, and community members increasingly support community schools as a method of supporting whole child outcomes. Oakland Unified School District (Oakland Unified) in California has made whole child education central to its community schools initiative. Oakland Unified's community schools provide a…

Community schools respond to a variety of risk factors that impede student learning and development. School and community leaders in Canyons School District (CSD) have created community schools across one highly impacted feeder pattern to strengthen academic learning efforts, school climate and youth development opportunities, parent and family…

"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…

The term "equity" is widely used by educational policy makers to describe myriad programs and practices aimed at closing the supposed racial achievement gap. Research about the way equity has been used in these policies typically explores how policy actors with low will and capacity frame and implement their reforms. Few studies,…

Drawing on rich case studies of Baltimore City and Boston, this volume identifies policy factors and processes critical to the successful district-wide adoption of community schools. By applying the Multiple Streams Model (Kingdon) to comparative analysis of policy determination and the narratives of local stakeholders across a 16-year period,…

The Community School Manager (CSM) in Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) integrates a school's partnership work with its academic mission. The CSM collaborates with principals to: (1) identify school goals; (2) align partners and resources to those goals; and (3) build relationships with families, students, and the community. At mature OUSD…

Moving from a traditional school district to one that embraces a community schools model requires fundamental shifts in organizational structure and practices. Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation in southern Indiana and Vancouver Public Schools in Vancouver, Wash., are two districts that have navigated this change. Leaders from those…