Newsletter 5.17
Community Schools Online
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Looking Outside the Classroom...
October 20, 2008 Vol. V, No. 17
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We
know that public
schools are not islands; they operate within communities of family,
agencies,
and individuals who all share an interest in the preparation of young
people
and young people as future citizens. --Anne
Bryant, National Press Club, 9/2408
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Coalition
Update: Report to the Field
The
Community Agenda for
America’s Public Schools
Ed
Week On-Line Chat:
The Community Agenda and Community Schools
Tenderloin Community
School
“From
Outside to Inside Schools”
“What Matters
Most:
Keeping the Community in Our Schools”
In
the News
“Foundation:
School-Community Links Vital for Students”
“A
Path to Success Opens Quietly for Dropouts”
“Service
Learning: An On-Ramp to National Service”
“Beyond
the Classroom”
“Put
to the Test: Confronting Concerns About
Project Learning”
Research,
Publications, and Tools
Present
Engaged and
Accounted For: The Critical Importance of Addressing Chronic Absence in
the
Early Grades
Cultivating
Demand for
the Arts
Using
Evaluation to
Inform OST Programming and Serve Older Youth
Responding
to a Crisis
Communities
in Schools – National Evaluation
Engaging
and Re-engaging
Students in Learning at School
“What Works”
Clearinghouse
Awards & Events
Ed Week -
Upcoming On-Line
Chat on Early Chronic Absenteeism
NASBHC
Convention Call for
Abstracts!
Education
Commission of the
States Call for 2009 Awards Nominations
NCEA 2008 Annual
Conference
Coalition for
Essential
Schools Fall Forum 2008
PEN 2008 Annual
Conference
2008 National
Family Week
Pre-k Now
National
Conference
Funding Opportunities
Coalition
Allies and Partners Grant Tracking Systems
Job
Opportunities
American Youth
Policy
Forum - Program Associate
The Rural School
and
Community Trust – President
Massachusetts Executive Office of Education
– Policy Analyst
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Coalition Update:
Report to the
Field
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 CALL
TO
ACTION! The
Community Agenda for America’s Public Schools
With your
help, the Coalition has successfully launched The Community Agenda
(TCA)!
Individuals and organizations continue to endorse TCA.
Several endorsers have are highlighting TCA
on their websites and posting press
releases. These actions are helping us take the next step in
moving forward
with strong dissemination efforts by both the Coalition and its
partners. We
encourage you to share The Community
Agenda with your partners and networks, as well as getting them to endorse.
We also NEED
YOU to send
letters to Congress, asking them to support TCA! If you would
like copies
of The Community Agenda, contact Shital
C. Shah
at shahs@iel.org.
You can also send
her stories about how you are using The Community Agenda in
your
communities and with your policymakers!
Finally,
click
here to read what the blogosphere is saying about The
Community Agenda!
ACTION
BEING TAKEN!
“What Matters Most: Keeping the Community in Our
Schools”
In
her latest NY Times column, Randi Weingarten, President of the
American Federation of Teachers, argues that teachers need to help “the
community get its schools back.” She
notes the strong role that relationships between parents, teachers, and
communities have played in the past to secure resources, conditions,
and
respect for teachers. Click here
for more of
her reflections.
Ed
Week On-Line Chat:
The Community Agenda and Community Schools
Marty Blank, Director of
the Coalition for Community Schools, was a featured guest on the October 15th Ed
Week
chat.
Marty answered questions about
The Community Agenda and its role in the work of community
organizations,
social workers, health care providers, and other groups in helping
improve the
lives of students in the nation’s low-performing public schools. Click
here to
view the full transcript of the chat. Please
share the
transcript with your networks and partners!
Tenderloin
Community School: A Model of What a School Can Be
The
Tenderloin, home to more than 3,500 children, was the only San Francisco
neighborhood without its own
public school. Prior to the schools opening, some 1,200 pupils rose
before the
sun to catch buses to nearly 50 schools. Most parents rely on public
transportation—and many require translators, as a result they were
unable to
participate in school activities or talk with teachers. To address
these issues
and strengthen the community-school relationship, Bay Area Women's &
Children's Center
(BAWCC) launched a campaign to construct and renovate San Francisco
schools. Click here
to read more about how Tenderloin Community School
serves its community.
From
Outside to Inside Schools
Logan Square
Neighborhood Association,
a nonprofit, multi-issue, grassroots community organization which
started in Chicago
during the early
1990’s, understands that creating and maintaining relationships between
schools
and communities is essential in achieving their mission “to ensure that
the
community is an excellent place to live, work, play, raise children,
run a
business, and worship.” They believe that creating the strong
connection
between the parents and the teachers helps break down barriers between
the
community and schools, as well as enabling students to achieve
academically. LSNA is
a lead partner for a series of community schools in its neighborhood as
part of
the Chicago Community Schools Initiative.
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Communities
in Schools – National Evaluation
A model for
providing "integrated student
services," advanced by Communities
In
Schools (CIS), a nonprofit group devoted to dropout
prevention, has been
shown to yield more positive educational outcomes than services offered
in an
uncoordinated manner. The conclusion comes from initial results at the
midpoint
of a five-year longitudinal study by ICF International, a global
consulting and
research firm. The initial findings come from a comparative analysis of
more
than 1,200 schools, half of which used the integrated model and half of
which
did not.
Foundation:
School-Community Links Vital for Students
As part of their
Closing
the Achievement Gap series, the Annie E.
Casey Foundation released: Closing
the Achievement Gap: School,
Community, Family Connections, highlights the
George Washington
Elementary School (an community school which was awarded one of the DOE
full-service community school grants) in their argument that community
schools
can improve student learning, increase parent participation, give
teachers more
time to focus on instruction, and contribute to making schools and the
community safer. They
also showcase parent
organizing in Texas
and Denver,
one California
school district’s innovative parent engagement policy, and the
Foundation’s
contribution to results measurements in the field. Click here to
read more.
“A
Path to Success Opens Quietly for Dropouts”
In response to a
severely
high dropout rate, the Philadelphia
School District
opened a Re-Engagement
Center
for drop-outs, this past summer. Philadelphia
has among the highest drop out rate in the country – about 8,000
students. The
District has set aside $300,000/year of permanent funding for the
Center which serves
as a “one stop shop” of academic programs and social and emotional
services to
help students re-enter school. The Center is a testament of how
offering
supportive services to youth can help improve their academic outcomes.
Research
from Johns
Hopkins
University
and others shows that it is possible to identify students likely to
drop out as
early as sixth grade -- emphasizing even more that we need to offer
supportive
services to our youth early on. Finally, it is important to ask
ourselves and our local
leaders why all Philadelphia
schools do not take this comprehensive approach which is consistent
with the
community schools vision.
“Service
Learning: An On-Ramp to National Service”
John C.
Kielsmeier,
founder of NYLC and Jim Schiebel, former mayor of St. Paul,
MN,
highlight the need for service-learning in schools.
They state that youth who have been involved
rebuilding hurricane destroyed communities and monitor environmental
quality,
have grown academically, increased their civic participation, and
strengthened
their leadership skills. They
cite that
in Minnesota,
service learning has helped improve academics for the past 25 years.
Service
learning in schools has been supported by the National
and
Community Service Trust Act of 1993. Click here
to read further.
“Beyond
the Classroom”
Teaching Brazilian martial arts, parents and
teachers making home visits to
new students, providing information to families who need extra help,
opening
school-based health clinics– these are just a few ways in which many
schools in
Chicago are looking outside of the classroom to help their students and
families. The
intention is that these
activities, seemingly unrelated to academics, will help low-income
students achieve
better grades and test scores. Acknowledging
the importance of the more holistic approach, in March 2008, Atlantic
Philanthropies awarded 5 schools and their communities a 4 year, $18
million
dollar grant to provide health and social services to their students
and
families. The
grants are being
administered by Local
Initiative Support Corporation’s Chicago Office.
“Put
to the Test: Confronting Concerns About
Project Learning”
Project-based
learning is
a dynamic approach to teaching in which students explore real-world
problems
and challenges, simultaneously developing cross-curriculum skills while
working
in small collaborative groups. While many teachers have embraced
project based
learning (PBL) there are still some who have concerns around the ease
of implementation
and therefore do not use this method. To address the teachers’ issues,
the Buck
Institute for
Education (BIE) has launched a PBL
Starter Kit,
the first in a series on project learning. The series will discuss:
standards, time
commitment, collaboration, and classroom management, in the hopes of
empowering
teachers. Read more….
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Research,
Publications and Tools
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Present
Engaged and
Accounted For: The Critical Importance of Addressing Chronic Absence in
the
Early Grades
Although
students must be
present and engage to learn, thousands of this country’s youngest
students are
academically at-risk because of extended absences. A new
report, by Hedy
Chang, a consultant to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and Mariajosé
Romero, from
the National Center for Children in Poverty, shows that nationally, an
estimated one in ten kindergarten and first grade students are
chronically
absent. Chronic early absence in kindergarten is associated with lower
1st
grade academic performance for all children and the worst fifth grade
academic
achievement among poor children. Fortunately,
chronic early absence can be significantly reduced when schools,
communities
and families join together to monitor and promote attendance.
Currently, Chang
is working with a group national Coalition for Community Schools’
partners to study
the rates of chronic early absence in their respective communities.
Stay tuned
for more details in the weeks ahead!
Cultivating
Demand for the
Arts
Years of cuts to
arts education in schools and
after-school programs is taking a heavy toll on students. A new report
from
RAND and the Wallace Foundation looks at collaborative efforts in six
cities
and counties to revive and support young people's interest in arts and
how they
marshaled resources to support local arts education. Research
shows that students who
participate in the arts, both in school and after school, demonstrate
improved
academic performance and lower dropout rates. The authors argue that
arts
policies have long focused on supporting supply and expanding access
while
neglecting demand, which calls for cultivating the capacity of
individuals to
have engaging experiences with the arts.
Using
Evaluation to Inform OST Programming and Serve Older Youth
This Research
Update, put out by the Harvard
Family Research
Project, explores two major themes: using evaluation to
shape program
improvement and planning, and out-of-school time (OST) benefits to
older youth and
their families. Increasing demands for accountability have led many OST
staff
to use evaluation to demonstrate their programs’ value to stakeholders.
But, in
many instances, accountability demands leave staff with little time and
few
resources to examine how evaluations can improve the quality of their
programs.
Several of the studies in this review, however, succeed in using
evaluation
both to demonstrate their programs’ value and to strive for continuous
improvement.
Responding
to a Crisis
The UCLA
Center
for Mental Health
in Schools will be devoting the next few weeks on their Mental Health
in
Schools Practitioner Listserv to “How to Respond to Crisis.” The
listserv will
offer suggestions and resources for how we need to support students
during the
aftermath of the hurricane and evacuations.
This report argues that after such crisis, as soon
as school opens,
despite their own suffering, school personnel will need to hit the
ground
running in providing social and emotional supports for students and
staff. Click here
for a list of the resources.
Engaging
and Re-engaging Students in Learning at School
Howard Adelman
and Linda
Taylor, co-directors of Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA,
recently
published a new practice guide on how to use supportive structures to
engage
and re-engage students in the classroom. They argue that engagement is
associated with positive academic outcomes, including achievement and
persistence in school. Adelman
and
Taylor note that engagement is higher in classrooms with supportive
teachers
and peers. Also when students become disengaged, behavior and learning
problems
could lead to dropouts.
“What
Works”
Clearinghouse
The Institute
for
Education Sciences (IES) offers practice guides which provide practical
recommendations for educators to help them address the challenges they
face
daily. Developed by
a panel of
nationally recognized experts, the practice guides consist of
recommendations,
strategies for overcoming potential roadblocks, and an indication of
the
strength of evidence supporting each recommendation. IES practice
guides are
subjected to rigorous external peer review. Guide topics range from
reducing
behavior problems to dropout prevention.
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Events, Funding, and
Job Opportunities
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EVENTS
Ed
Week - On-Line Chat about Early Chronic
Absenteeism
Debates over
test scores
and graduation rates have recently come to dominate the education
policy scene.
However, a series of recent reports point out an obvious, though
oft-ignored,
fact: Students have to be physically present in school in order to
succeed. Check out a live chat on Monday,
October 27 from 3-4
p.m. , featuring experts in the issue of chronic
absenteeism. The guests
will be:
-- Dr.
Mariajosé Romero
is co-author of "Present, Engaged, and Accounted For." Dr. Romero is a senior research associate
at
the National
Center
for Children in Poverty.
-- Hedy
Nai-Lin Chang is
co-author of "Present, Engaged, and Accounted For," as well as a researcher, writer, and facilitator.
She
also consults with the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
-- Dr. Jane
Sundius is
the director of the Education and Youth Development Program at OSI-Baltimore and co-authors a series of
policy papers on absenteeism in Baltimore City Public
Schools.
Be sure to check in
next week to submit
questions for this chat!
NASBHC
Convention Call for Abstracts!
The
2009 convention marks the fourteenth annual convention of the National
Assembly
on School-Based Health Care. The convention theme will be: "School-Based
Solutions to Promote Health Equity". NASBHC
invites you to share your expertise, best
practices, resources, and tools with school-based health care
professionals at
the 2009 Convention, June 24-27, to
be held at the Westin Diplomat in Hollywood, Florida. Click here
to submit an abstract. [Deadline:
October 24, 2008]
Education
Commission of the States Call for 2009
Awards Nominations
Each
year the Education Commission of the States (ECS) presents awards to
individuals, states and organizations that have made significant
contributions
to public education. This year's awards will be presented at the 2009 National Forum on
Education Policy
in Nashville,
Tennessee,
July 8-10. The
deadline for submissions is
October 24, 2008. Click here
for the
nomination form.
43rd
Annual NCEA Conference
Join
National Community Education
Association for their 43rd Annual NCEA Conference and connect with
Community
Education colleagues and resources from around the country. It will be
held in Dallas,
TX
from November 5 – 8, 2008.
Coalition
for Essential Schools Fall Forum 2008
Connect
with
thousands of K-12 educators, students, parents, and other leading
thinkers who
are changing lives through learning. Create schools for the 21st
century that
are personalized, equitable, and intellectually challenging through
your life,
through your teaching and learning, and through the change that you
inspire.
PEN
2008 Annual Conference
The conference
will take
place from November 16-18, 2008, at
the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel, in San Francisco.
The conference, which will
celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of the first local
education
funds, will focus on the education imperative of extending the reach of
high
quality learning. Click here to
register.
2008 National
Family Week
The Alliance
for Children and Families has just announced that National Family Week
will be
from November 23 – November 29. They hope that you will promote
National Family
Week to your constituents by posting a news
release
on
your Web site and including it in
other appropriate communications vehicles. Resources and materials for
planning
observances are available, at no charge, on their web site, www.nationalfamilyweek.org.
Pre-k Now National Conference
On December 10th,
Pre-K Now National
Conference will have a live broadcast at 1 PM ET.
Its live
conference broadcast — viewable at hundreds of sites throughout the
country —
will share new lessons and best practices to help you win high-quality,
voluntary pre-kindergarten for all children. For more
information go to www.preknow.org.
FUNDING
Coalition
Allies and Partners Grant Tracking Systems
For
up-to-date funding opportunities, please
bookmark our partners’ websites and/or sign up for their newsletters:
JOBS
American
Youth Policy Forum – Program
Associate
AYPF is seeking
to hire a
Program Associate to assist in the development of various AYPF learning
events
and products, including forums, field trips, and publications on a
range of
education and youth policy issues depending on current grant projects.
Projects
address middle grades and secondary school reform, dropout prevention
and
recovery, postsecondary education access and success, and youth
employment and
workforce development. Click
here for more
information.
The
Rural School and Community Trust - President
The Rural
School
and Community Trust is seeking an energetic executive as its new
President. Rachel Tompkins, longtime leader and advocate is
retiring June
2009. This national advocacy and professional development
organization works
with a network of rural schools and community groups. The
successful
candidate will be an entrepreneurial individual who has a proven track
record
of leadership, creativity, vision, and managerial oversight. Click
here for
more details. Closing date: October 31, 2008
Massachusetts
Executive Office of Education (EOE) – Policy Analyst
The
Massachusetts EOE is
seeking a policy analyst to assist in the development and
implementation of the
Readiness Project, Governor Deval Patrick’s comprehensive education
action
agenda for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The
analyst will join a small but active policy team working on a broad
array of
issues, including initiatives in early care and education, P-12
education, higher
education, and adult education/lifelong learning. Click here
for details.
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Additional
Information
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for more information on the Coalition's work and progress.
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Coalition for Community Schools c/o Institute
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Washington, DC 20008
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