Community–School Partnerships Across a System

• In Event: 65.049 - Implementing School and Community Partnerships: Lessons From Community School and Promise Neighborhood Initiatives

Abstract

Policymakers, funders, and practitioners are increasingly viewing partnerships and collaborative reform efforts as important elements of school reform. If these stakeholders truly believe that partnerships are important to improving outcomes for students, families, and communities, and are willing to create supportive funding and policy, then we need to learn more about why some succeed while others fail.

Efforts to reform education through partnership strategies are growing for a number of reasons including budget constraints and efficiency goals; the desire to provide additional academic and other developmental opportunities and supports for students that most schools cannot provide on their own; and utility of community-based organizations that have deep roots in the community and that can assist schools with family and community engagement.

Today’s school-community partnerships build on a rich history of comprehensive community initiatives (CCI’s) dating back as early as the settlement houses of the 1900s (Stagner & Duran, 1997). Stagner and Duran (1997) write that the theory supporting the design of CCI’s is

… to improve the lives of children and families living in poverty through multifaceted, coordinated approaches to strengthening communities and integrating the provision of social and other service (132).

Kubisch (2010) writes about the “special challenge” of working with public schools for CCI’s. This paper explores the “special challenge” by researching features of CCI’s that focus on schools as the center of their reform strategies. The paper will address three questions about CCIs:

1. Why and how do school system-level community change initiative (CCI) partnerships form?

2. What are the political, organizational, and financial structures that support sustainable CCIs and their work with school systems?

3. What are the critical leadership functions of sustainable CCIs and how are they distributed across schools and agencies within communities?

The paper will highlight one case from a larger study that uses a comparative case study research design (Merriam, 2009). This method offers a strategy for deeply exploring a case. I utilize interview and observational data from one jurisdiction already collected by a national education organization. I conducted a post-secondary analysis of these data.

Initial conclusions suggest that school and community leaders form school system-level partnerships because of a demonstrated need or challenge in the community (e.g., low academic achievement of some group of students), that CCI’s focus on political and organizational structures to assist with sustainability of CCIs; and that leaders bring their organization’s fiscal and other resources to support the partnership itself.

Despite the growing popularity of these reforms, little has been written about them. I believe that the leadership functions I identify in the paper (e.g., communicating, coalition building, resource gathering) and their distribution within partnerships will help to explain why the CCIs have sustained their work. By capturing the perspectives of leaders, stakeholders, and practitioners in sustained CCIs, I develop a better understanding of what leaders actually do and how they share responsibility to create successful CCIs.

Author

• Reuben Jacobson, Institute for Educational Leadership