Creating Communities of Learning and Excellence
School-Family-Community Partnerships Team
Links to Other Resources
Organizations
- Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships
The nation's schools must improve education for all children, but schools cannot do this alone. More will be accomplished if schools, families, and communities work together to promote successful students. The mission of this Center is to conduct and disseminate research, development, and policy analyses that produce new and useful knowledge and practices that help families, educators, and members of communities work together to improve schools, strengthen families, and enhance student learning and development. Research is needed to understand all children and all families, not just those who are economically and educationally advantaged or already connected to school and community resources. The Center's projects aim to increase an understanding of practices of partnership that help all children succeed in elementary, middle, and high schools in rural, suburban, and urban areas.
- National Association of Partners in Education
For over 30 years, the National Association of Partners in Education has been an objective voice in developing school volunteer, intergenerational, community service, and business partnership programs throughout the United States. Currently, it is the only national membership organization devoted solely to providing leadership in the field of education partnership development. To improve opportunities for comprehensive youth development, Partners in Education works to increase the number, quality, and scope of effective partnerships; increase the resources to support effective partnerships; increase awareness about the importance of partnerships for promoting youth success; and promote the importance of effective partnerships to policymakers. Efforts are focused through three core competencies:
- Training and Technical Assistance
- Research and Materials Development
- Unique National Member Network
Regional Educational Laboratory Network Projects
- The Knowledge Loom: School, Family, Community Partnerships
The Knowledge Loom is a place for educators worldwide to do the following:
- Review research that identifies best practices related to various themes.
- View stories about the practices in real schools/districts.
- Learn to replicate the success of these practices in your own organization.
- Add your own stories, knowledge, questions to the collections.
- Participate in online events and discussions.
- Discover supporting organizations and resources.
More importantly, using the Knowledge Loom makes you part of an active online teaching and learning community. This spotlight, offered by RMC Research Corporation, focuses on research and resources that support best practices in developing School, Family & Community Partnerships.
- The National Center for Family & Community Connections with Schools
The National Center for Family and Community Connections with Schools bridges between research and practice--linking people with research-based information and resources that they can use to effectively connect schools, families and communities. The Center emphasizes those connections that directly impact student achievement in reading and mathematics, as well as connections that contribute to the students' overall success in school and in life.
Resources
- Adopt a Classroom
This Web site invites the community into the classroom in support of teachers and their students. By adopting a classroom, donors form partnerships with specific classrooms providing financial and moral support. The result is a meaningful contribution to education in which donors experience the impact of their efforts and celebrate in a classroom's success.
- Engaging Public Support for Teachers' Professional Development
This paper proposes strategies for engaging the public in support of teachers' professional development. It outlines many of the issues that teacher leaders, building administrators, district staff, and other education advocates should consider in preparing for a targeted public engagement effort. The paper is based on the proceedings of NFIE's spring 2000 Public Engagement Symposium. One of a series, the symposium formed an important part of A Change of Course, NFIE's effort to improve the quality and availability of professional development for public school teachers nationwide.
- From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development
This resource has extremely valuable information about recent research and implications for children's development from a very broad perspective. It has great information for grant writing and report writing and just to add to your knowledge base of early childhood issues.
- Helping Families to Help Students: Kentucky's Family Resource and Youth Services Centers (PDF)
-
The Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 (KERA) was a sweeping effort to reform public elementary and secondary education in the state. No aspect of the reform law was more controversial than the creation of the Family Resource and Youth Services Centers. The program's goal is to help families and children find local solutions to nonacademic problems that interfere with student learning. This report looks at the factors that have played a role in the success of this program.
- Just Waiting to Be Asked? A Fresh Look at Attitudes on Public Engagement
Public engagement has become a relatively popular enterprise in recent years--especially in education circles. This resource attempts to disentangle thinking in this sometimes complicated realm. The study summarizes the results of surveys of education insiders (superintendents, school board members and teachers) and of parents and the public at large. Three questionaires were developed and fielded with 686 superintendents and 475 school board members; 404 public school teachers; and with 809 members of the general public, including a subsample of 205 parents of public school children. The results of their findings are reported here.
- Moving Targets
This article from Education Week on the Web looks at the issue of student mobility. This is a ripe issue for partnership's work as it can be a rallying point for engaging families and communities with schools to get all parties to understand the impact of mobility and develop strategies to reduce it as well as mitigate its negative affects.
- Playing Their Parts: What Parents and Teachers Really Mean by Parental Involvement
Parental involvement seems like the least controversial concept in education reform--just try and find someone who admits to being against it. But parental involvement is also a vague concept, covering a range of ideas from bake sales to school-based management. So is parental involvement really noncontroversial, or just unexamined? In Playing Their Parts, Public Agenda surveyed parents and public school teachers to find out what they think parents should be doing in the public schools. It seems like a simple question, yet public opinion on this issue turned out to be complex and subtle. The results of their findings are reported here.
- School Success Info.org
This Web site is a companion to the "Success in School Equals Success in Life" campaign urging parents--particularly those with the least available resources--to get involved in their children's education. The campaign is a natural outgrowth of the relationship between People For the American Way Foundation and NAACP. Together, the two organizations founded Partners for Public Education. "Partners" is indeed a public education effort, spreading the good word about public schools and urging local communities to rally support for this cherished--and fundamental--government service.
- Thriving Together: Connecting Rural School Improvement and Community Development
Thriving Together: Connecting Rural School Development and Community Development is a publication of the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory. It offers a practical guide for schools or community organizations and provides tips for building effective teams, starting service-learning or entrepreneurial education projects, and transforming a school into a community center. The publication includes project planning worksheets and checklists, fact sheets, and additional resources. Thriving Together is designed to give you the background information and basic tools you need to get started with a joint school-community development effort. It includes worksheets to help you get started with your project and an extensive resources section to link you to other organizations and publications.
- What Kids Can Do
What Kids Can Do is a national nonprofit organization founded in the winter of 2001. We document the value of young people working with teachers and other adults on projects that combine powerful learning with public purpose for an audience of educators and policy makers, journalists, community members, and students. We believe in expanding current views of what constitutes challenging learning and achievement, particularly for adolescents. We comb the country for compelling examples of schools and communities working together to:
- Challenge young people intellectually
- Enlist their help with real problems
- Nourish their diverse talents
- Support their perseverance
- Encourage their contributions as citizens.
Also integral to WKCDs mission is connecting the previously separate fields of school reform, youth development, community development, service learning, and school-to-work. We aim to stand, as well, at the intersection of journalism, research, and advocacy.
SFC Partnerships Team ·
Products & Services ·
Events ·
Other Resources ·
About Us·
|
This document's URL is: Home | Up & Coming | Programs & Projects: School-Community-Family Partnerships | People | Products & Services | Topics © 2002 Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory Date of Last Update: 8/17/2005 
|