Notes

The Role of Community Partnerships in Education
Schools, families and communities each make important contributions to student achievement. Community partnerships help strengthen and support these efforts.

Effective partnership programming requires clear expectations and structures that ensure a shared purpose and desired outcomes are addressed by all participants. These promising practices can help school leaders create or expand their very own partnerships.

1. Increased Student Achievement

Local community organizations provide a rich set of resources for students and schools to expand when, where, how and what they learn. In the united states, schools and community-based organizations are building strong partnerships to greatly help address student learning needs outside of the classroom.

The best community-based learning experiences connect real world problems with classroom instruction. This can be the ?sweet spot? of community engagement?where authentic community needs meet rigorous student learning. For example, a physics teacher at Latitude High School (an XQ School) partnered with community volunteers to aid student studying scientific concepts while also helping build tiny houses for homeless youth in their Oakland, CA neighborhood.

To create these experiences possible, school community partners must engage educators and students in thoughtful planning and implementation. The Communication and Collaboration Growth Chart might help coordinators assess whether they are intentionally including students, teachers, and parents in the planning process. The chart also includes sample evaluation questions that can be used to guide partnerships on the journey toward effective programming.
2. Increased Parent Involvement

A substantial barrier to school improvement may be the low level of parent involvement. The current test score accountability movement, birthed by the country at Risk report and fueled by Goals 2000 and No Child Left Behind, has relegated parents to a supporting role, with community partnerships being the exception rather than the rule (Bryk & Sebring, 2009).

Relationships are key to building effective school-community partnerships. In fact, the XQ School model in Cedar Rapids, Iowa was built around relationships, and the school?s success is founded on its commitment to partnering with neighborhood actors to address real world problems that have a primary effect on student learning (Iowa BIG, 2014).

Parental engagement can take many forms; dealing with parents on governance teams, connecting them with resources, or helping them know how their students learn are just a few examples. For parents, the key is really a reciprocal relationship that fosters both trust and respect between school and home.
3. Increased Community Support

Community partnerships are respectful and collaborative relationships between a school and outside organizations that may provide academic enrichment activities, tutoring and behavior support, family and social services, and much more. A fresh report outlines several guidelines to promote this kind of alignment.

As efforts to expand learning time continue steadily to take shape across the country, schools and their partners are recognizing that community partnerships are fundamental in making these programs more equitable and sustainable. http://lilyrlewis.com and National Center on Time and Learning have developed a set of guidelines to guide these efforts.

These guiding principles include making certain the partnership is aligned with the school?s goals, establishing systems for communicating, and clearly defining responsibilities and roles. The school and community partnership should also acknowledge a scope and statement of work, in addition to a solution to evaluate progress and success. These evaluations should focus on community-level change, including high rates of change on several indicators that are important to the neighborhood community (e.g., decreasing teen pregnancy).
4. Increased School Sustainability

It?s hard for schools to meet all the demands of their students with limited funding resources. Community partners can fill the gaps between what's needed and what is available by offering services or donating resources.

Furthermore, school-community partnerships can open doors for other opportunities and support in the form of grants, volunteerism, as well as student fundraising. By establishing a solid network of partnerships, schools can sustain their expanded learning programs longterm.

Educators and community members need to develop a shared understanding of the goals of the partnership. That is accomplished through a clear, transparent communication plan that includes regular meetings, email updates, and in-person conversations between educators and community leaders. In addition, it is crucial for administrators to involve teachers and students in the communication process to make certain everyone is on a single page. This communication strategy allows schools and community organizations to measure progress towards their desired outcomes. For instance, the TIME Collaborative provides a sample evaluation tool for community partners and volunteers which you can use to find out whether their enrichments are meeting expectations.

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