Implementation Science Lessons for Community School District Systems

• In Event: Scaling and Sustaining Community Schools Through Systems-Level Support

Abstract

This paper extrapolates lessons from implementation science, community schools research, and school improvement literature to offer a research-based framework for district- and County systems-level community school implementation. In 2021, California made history with Governor Newsom’s unprecedented budget for whole child education. The budget included $3.8 billion for community schools development, $4.6 billion for expanded learning, $2.7 billion for universal transitional kindergarten, and $4.4 billion for school-based mental health student supports, among others.

While these investments offer an unprecedented opportunity for strengthening school-based student supports, they also come at a time of extraordinary challenges, for example, teacher attrition, declining student enrollments, and pandemic fatigue. Additionally, policy program implementation is complex; fiscal investment alone does not guarantee meaningful change for students and schools. Decades of school reform and policy implementation research suggest that policy cannot always mandate what matters most to achieving desired outcomes (McLaughlin 1978) and even the most innovative reforms often seem to “die on contact” with the institutional reality of schools (Tyack & Cuban 1995). Policies and programs are implemented by individuals, embedded in organizations, enmeshed in systems; each complex, multifaceted, and constrained by their experiences, abilities, and limitations.

This paper elaborates lessons learned from implementation sciences and school improvement research, as well as over two decades of community school implementation studies. We triangulate this rich theoretical base with empirical research grounded in community school practice, including including interviews with over 30 community school champions and advocates across the country, participant-observation with 450 California-based communities school practitioners (educators, parents, students, community partners), and participant action research with twelve districts and/or County Offices of Education receiving inaugural funding from the California Community Schools Partnership Program (CCSPP). These rich empirical findings, triangulated with lessons from the research, allow us to engage and elevate cross-cutting implementation lessons for districts, counties, and states considering community school implementation.

As policies forwarding community schools and/or whole child approaches to school improvement, we must rigorously examine the implementation of current endeavors, as well as the lessons learned from decades of implementation and improvement research. This paper offers a valuable framework for understanding and assessing district-level efforts for community school change.

References
McLaughlin, M. W. (1987). Learning from Experience: Lessons from Policy Implementation. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 9(2), 171–178. https://doi.org/10.2307/1163728

Tyack, D., & Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering toward Utopia. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvjz83cb

Authors

• Kendra Fehrer, Heartwise Learning
  Presenting Author

• Jeannie Myung, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author