This dissertation in practice (DiP) was conducted to address the absence of a district-coordinated effort aligning Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and real-world project-based learning (PBL) with intentional community partnerships in Anaya Independent School District (ISD). The study aimed to develop a community outreach framework that can be…

The AIM process is a strategic planning process for school districts to create Comprehensive Health and Wellness Plans (CHWPs) aligned with the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child model. The purpose of this study is to describe results of this process as it was implemented with 21 rural school districts. An 81-item survey was completed by…

U.S. education has experienced many waves of reform in responding to rapid changes in knowledge, technologies, and the economy. It is now widely accepted that, to succeed in the future, all young people must have the opportunity to develop critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, and communication competencies--often referred to as…

Since 2014, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) has partnered with the Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities at Stanford University (Gardner Center) to support OUSD's efforts to assess, enhance, and scale their community schools work. They began by working with the district to develop a System Strategy Map to articulate the district's…

The work of school, family and community partnerships is complex and messy and demands a thoughtful and deep investigation. Currently, parent and community involvement does not draw on school reform and educational change literature and conversely the school change literature often ignores the crucial role that communities play in educational…

The current study replicates work of Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Northeast and Islands. It describes dropout prevention programs in nine Mid-Atlantic Region (Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) school districts serving communities with populations of 24,742-107,250 (as of July 2008). All nine…

The current study replicates work of Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Northeast and Islands. It describes dropout prevention programs in nine Mid-Atlantic Region (Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) school districts serving communities with populations of 24,742-107,250 (as of July 2008). All nine…

Both comprehensive and long-range educational planning are discussed in this paper. Comprehensive planning begins with the identification of the district's mission. This mission generates a set of continuing objectives that aim toward the completion of specific end-dated objectives. The comprehensive plan must take into account the educational…

To help Connecticut school districts both develop goals and involve the community in the process--phase 1 of the planning, evaluation, and resource management (PERM) model--this handbook discusses goal-setting processes and models. An introduction notes the state's educational goals, outlines the PERM model, and describes the role of goals in…

Sixteen New Jersey school districts located in four counties were selected to field test a generic educational planning system. The pilot program was to "ascertain where changes in guidelines, procedures, policy program, or resources were needed." The second major goal of the pilot program was to produce information for those districts…

This paper reviews and discusses political models that bear on policy-making processes. The first part of the report deals with the merits of the "elitist" versus the "pluralistic" frameworks used to analyze the exercise of power in local communities. This review of the theories serves as a basis for a subsequent discussion of…

This school district guide examines the why of long-range planning, the relationship between long-range planning and educational change, the long-range planning process, community involvement in planning, the communicating of educational quality assessment and other needs assessment results with the public, needs assessment, prioritizing district…

Center for New Schools (CNS) worked with the Illinois Office of Education to develop this guide for informing educational professionals and citizens interested in educational improvement concerning ways to carry out local problem solving in their schools. The guide focuses especially on parent involvement in the process of problem solving. Several…

Comprehensive staff development approaches described in this paper are based on on-site work with school districts and a 1980 National Rural Project investigation of problems experienced by over 80 rural districts and cooperatives across the country as they attempted to implement staff development programs. Three models are described which…