What happens to schools when it is safe to reopen fully? Pundits call for more testing, longer school days, anything to make up for “learning loss.”
Gretchen Dziadosz, executive director of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice, has a better idea: community schools.
She writes in the Columbus Dispatch:
There is a cost-effective way to keep school doors open 12 hours a day and which provides organized services to students in addition to their normal in-person class time. These are schools in which parents don’t need to pay for after-school day care or private tutoring and students can complete their homework before they come home. Already overburdened, this solution prevents an increase in workload for educators. This solution is called the community schools model.
The most astonishing part is schools following the community schools model provide all these benefits at a fraction of the cost of hiring more teachers to work more hours. Such teachers, by the way, are in very short supply in many parts of the country.
There are already more than 5,000 U.S. community schools, and research shows they succeed in improving student achievement. This proven, successful model can be implemented in many more communities if policymakers, parents and schools have the desire to make it happen.
Imagine school buildings and programs open to families and students all year.
Imagine a school in which students have available tutoring, supervised homework time, mentoring, enhanced science, reading, art, music and sports programs, school clubs, programs with the local zoo or library, computer labs with internet access, dance classes, community theater, whatever the community chooses to provide.
Imagine a school in which the whole family can access programs such as COVID-19 vaccinations, eye exams, mental health services, GED programs, adult enrichment classes, tax services, insurance assistance and sports…
Working together with the school, community resources are brought into the school to improve access and opportunities for students and families. Students struggling with math might have community volunteer tutors. Students without broadband internet at home have access to the computer lab. Students who need reading assistance can work with the local library program.
Read more about how community schools can transforms schools and communities.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A very important topic. What to do about the deep challenges for public schools and families who need help.
“This proven, successful model can be implemented in many more communities if policymakers, parents and schools have the desire to make it happen.”
I am not counting on policymakers to do much of anything they don’t have to do. The impetus must come from parents and the community. They must make policymakers so uncomfortable that they will support community schools. The level of discomfort must exceed the amount of money they get from the wealthy. We need a groundswell of support for this model so politicians cannot run and hide from supporting this. The oligarchs are running the campaign against public education, and they need to be overwhelmed by the level of support from the people and community. The only way to make change is to demand it. Otherwise, we will continue with the “Putinesque” invasion of our common good and more harmful education policy
Thanks for posting this Diane. I think it’s so important that people be offered some other view than that of the ed reform echo chamber.
It isn’t enough that we criticize the echo chamber on privatization. The larger and more damaging effect of the ed reform echo chamber is they have no positive agenda for public schools and they contribute nothing to public schools.
There should be a pro-public school side. Not just anti-privatization. A positive side that values public schools and public school students. If people see that presented they will realize this “movement” offers nothing to their schools or students and they will demand ed reform echo chamber lawmakers start contributing something of positive value to their schools.
People can test this for themselves- go to any of the hundreds of ed reform orgs or ed reform promoters and look for anything positive they offer to public schools. You will find full throated, lock step promotion of charters and vouchers and you will find testing and measurement schemes. It’s all they got. People deserve a positive alternative.
Over 10,000 people died of COVID last week. What happened to the adamant sentiment on this blog that schools would not be safe to open until cases were negligible and there was universal vaccination, masking, testing and contact tracing/quarantining? if you’ve now decided that academic, mental health and social factors outweigh those considerations, at the very least can you acknowledge that I was right two years ago and apologize for smearing me? (And, by extension, you might even consider that I might be right about other things too? Yeah, I know, too much to ask.)
You seem nuts. Newsflash: Schools have been OPEN since fall!
You always said that people should be willing to die in mass numbers – especially children and their extended families – in order to keep schools open and please the people who hate Democrats. Oh, you didn’t? But I thought you believe that people should be able to tell lots of lies to smear the people who they don’t like.
Are you going to start being truthful, or would you prefer we join your method of discussion and post about all the nasty things you keep saying about how delighted you are that Putin is bombing and killing families in Ukraine because you believe they deserve it.
I am starting to believe that nothing is going stop trolling like this until we reply in kind.
Are you ever going to apologize for smearing all the teachers and others on here who cared about the lives of children and their families?
I’ll say it, you were right.
But Dienne, at least you have to be grateful for all the serious concern that’s been expressed here over the last two years about how students have been impacted by remote learning. Oh wait there’s been approximately zero of that. But of course that’s ok — to talk about that stuff would be “accepting a right-wing framing.” And we can’t have that.
FLERP!,
You and dienne77 are kindred spirits. I have never seen two people so similar in their reasoning ability and in their ability to make arguments in support of what they believe.
You and dienne77 could even start your blog and be able to converse with other people who share the same values as you two like-minded souls. It’s hard to know which if you is smarter since you are both equal in the quality of your comments. I am happy to call it a draw.
Aww you guys are so cute together!
Thank you, NYCPSP. Nicely done. I was getting upset until you made me feel better. Seriously, though, teachers shouldn’t have to put up with such lack of respect and appreciation on an education website. The anger needs to be kept closer to the breast — unless it’s directed at not teachers but wealthy corporations and billionaires.
And now, back to our regularly scheduled program. I believe we were talking about improving schools. Here is the crux of the matter: Test score fluctuations and school improvements are two completely unrelated things.
LCT, not sure how I disrespected “teachers” with this comment. I’m simply saying there has been essentially no discussion among commenters here about the negative impact remote learning has had on students during the pandemic. If you think I’m wrong, please direct me to a comment by any regular commenter here the damage caused by remote learning in the last two years. I actually don’t think you’ll be able to find even one.
It has been implied that teachers should have returned to work without being first vaccinated. It has been implied that teachers should work in a pandemic without mask mandates. It’s water under the bridge if it’s not rehashed. I know you mean no harm, but sometimes intent and action cannot be separated.
And as far as damage inflicted is concerned, you are perfectly welcome to blame the virus. Don’t blame teachers.
Those test-mania “pundits” (I use much stronger language to describe them) won’t make profits off of longer school days and more support for teachers to teach and children to learn.
Other than glazed eyes, mental exhausting, and Zombieitis , has anyone every learned anything from a test?
Community schools are a great idea. I attended schools in Flint, MI, (before the exodus of GM & and the poisoning of the water). My grade school had a full library we could use during class time or after school, when it re-opened as a community library. Our high school campus had a jr. high, a h.s., and a jr. college–later to become a U. of M. branch. WE SHOULD STOP MANDATORY, OUTSIDE-IMPOSED, STANDARDIZED TESTING! Excuse me for shouting, but some of us warned about it before it started, and are still warning. It is a way to drag down public education. And education should be PUBLIC, not private. It’s the only way to bring our society together. Stop the testing, and open the doors to the community. Oh, and increase the funding from state and national sources. As the former ex. dir. of NEA once said: “I look forward to a time when schools get all the money they need, and we hold bake sales to buy tanks.”
Thank you so much for posting my piece!
However, the original article has one error that I have been trying to get the Dispatch to correct.
The url https://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Community-Schools is NOT correct. It should be:
https://www.communityschools.org/
The confusion is caused by the fact that Ohio calls charter schools coimmunity schools. I am NOT talking about charters!
Thank you, Gretchen, for writing it. I was aware that Ohio calls it’s floundering, scandal-ridden charters (including those run by profiteers) “community schools.” An Orwellian misuse of language.
So true!
It would really be a shame if the United States allowed this same anti-public school echo chamber to “reinvent” vocational and technical education too.
Don’t let the Waltons and the Gates and the Koch family employees determine how students are trained for work and what they do. It’s all gimmicky junk and it all comes out of a low wage, anti-regulatory ideology and though some of them are “Democrats” and some of them are “Republicans” they all propose and promote the identical set of opinions as fact.
Ed reform moving from conquering K-12 schools to career and technical education is just another in a long series of errors where we let this small minority of people determine what public education looks like. None of these people use trade schools. They don’t even KNOW people who would use a trade school. It’s obscene that they’re designing CTE with no input from anyone other than their own echo chamber members just like they design privatized systems with no input from anyone other than true believers.
Don’t lets keep making the same mistake over and over. It’s a big country. We can find and hire people who value public education. We don’t have them now but we could have them. We just have to break from this pack and go our own way.
https://www.sentinelsource.com/news/education/students-set-to-begin-enrolling-at-new-classical-peterborough-charter-school/article_0400b91b-46dd-5deb-94f2-f802b331e1d4.html
Ladies and Gentleman, I give you Republican Party charter schools:
“Bedard shared a brief history of the school’s conception, which involved a group of community members known as the Monadnock Freedom to Learn Coalition, which created the school’s charter.
The Lionheart Classical Academy Board of Trustees currently has five board members: Chairman Barry Tanner of Hancock, Kim Lavallee of Mont Vernon, Richard Merkt of Westmoreland, Leo Plante of Dublin and Jim Fricchione of Windham. Once students are enrolled, two parents will be added to the board.
Merkt is chairman of the Cheshire County Republican Committee, which has highlighted the school on social media. In 2020, Plante ran for a seat in the N.H. House of Representatives as a Republican.
But in an interview Saturday, Merkt emphasized that the board’s focus is to provide quality education for all students who choose to enroll.”
You’re now going to be funding “public” schools that are education arms of a political Party, specifically and exclusively, the Republican Party. Innovation!
Look for the whole echo chamber to be selling and promoting the Hillsdale College charter chain. The whole echo chamber will recite whatever Hillsdale claims abou the superiority of these schools, verbatim. Except a full court press to sell the schools and then a year or two in we’ll see real information come in and no one in the echo chamber will ever mention the chain again.
This is what the ed reform echo chamber wants for all of us. A Republican Party school named after the GOP donor who gave them the building:
“Tanner said previously that the school, which initially was supposed to be called “Monadnock Classical Academy,” is named after Sternberg’s Miami-based investment firm, Lionheart Capital.”
The Lionhart Capital “public” school run by the local Republican Party. The only thing “public” about this school is the funding.
The new superintendent of LAUSD has a 100 day plan to “improve” schools. School takeovers! He intends to make a competition for metrics. The winners get the gold mine and the losers get the shaft. Getting Community Schools resources to needy schools probably never even occurred to his $900 suit wearing self. His name is LAUSD Superintendent Jim Crow.