Some researchers believe that collaboration between schools and community stakeholders--including families, educators, community organizations, and businesses--is the key to improving public education. However, broad and inclusive community-school partnerships are rare. Instead, we frequently hear about friction between communities and their…

This report examines the contrasting views of parents and students about what goes on in and around the school building. Two focus groups and eight in-depth interviews were conducted with children in the New York City area in addition to interviews with a nationally representative sample of 1,000 parents of children in public schools and classroom…