Jeff Bryant writes here about the surprising emergence of Jackson, Mississippi, as a trailblazer for public school reform. Jackson is right now renowned for the failure of its water supply. Jeff also documents years of the state government underfunding its public schools. Racism can be seen is almost every aspect of the relationship between the state and the city. The public schools of Jackson are 95% Black. Under these circumstances, what is happening in the schools is remarkable.
Before it got national headlines about its severe water crisis, Jackson, Mississippi, was much renowned for its potholes. “The amount [sic] of potholes in the city is crazy,” exclaimsthe narrator of “Jackson, Mississippi: The Second Most Dangerous City in America,” a video posted to a popular travel YouTube channel in December 2021. The vlogger continues, “It’s just amazing to me there is a city in America that looks like this. … It’s hard to believe that this is the United States.”
“It is not uncommon to walk through west Jackson and see water flowing out of pipes for weeks,” observed Yoknyam Dabale, a Nigerian immigrant who moved to Jackson, in an op-ed in the Jackson Free Press. “Roads are overrun with potholes and uncleaned gutters.”
“The city says 90 percent of its roads are in poor shape,” television news outlet WLBT reported in 2021. “A Google search pulls up endless complaints, dangerous accidents, and hazardous barricades,” reporter Sharie Nicole wrote. “Local comedians write songs about the potholes; out-of-towners rant about it.”
The steady decay of Jackson’s public infrastructure goes beyond potholes and the water supply.
In 2018, the Mississippi Clarion Ledger reported that Jackson libraries faced a crisis that included “black mold, leaking buildings,” and “chronic flooding issues at two of its main branches.” Jackson libraries have been “suffering from needed repairs,” and some libraries were even facing temporary closure due to lack of money for repairs, according to an August 2022 report in the Northside Sun.
In 2017, the Clarion Ledger, in reporting on the “deteriorating” conditions in the city’s parks and recreation facilities, found a “$1.2 million hole” in the Department of Parks and Recreation budget.
The lack of government investment in Jackson’s public infrastructure, and across the state in general, extends to public schools as well.
Were Jackson schools funded according to state law, the district would receive $11,447,922 more in state funding for the 2022-2023 school year alone, according to the Parents’ Campaign, a parent advocacy group in the state.
Funding for Mississippi students is even worse if they happen to be Black. “Between 1954 and 1960, the state gave Black students more than $297 million less (in 2017 dollars) than white students,” the Sun Herald reported while referring to government data. “And if that number is extended back to 1890, Black students were shortchanged more than $25 billion.”
Jackson Public Schools (JPS) are 95 percent Black, according to the 2019 Better Together Commission (BTC) Findings Report by the nonprofit One Voice. The Better Together Commission is a public-private partnership that included city and state officials, Jackson citizens, and representatives from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, a private foundation based in Michigan.
As I reported for the Progressive magazine in 2018, BTC was formed as an alternative to a takeover of the district by the state after an audit by the Mississippi Department of Education found a significant number of state regulatory violations by the district. Fearing state takeover would lead to schools being handed over to charter school management groups—which is what happened in New Orleans, Newark, and other majority-Black school districts—a coalition called Our JPS quickly formed to oppose the takeover and demand an alternative approach to improving the public school system.
One such alternative was to remake schools into community-based centers for providing student- and family-oriented supports and programs designed to address the high levels of poverty, homelessness, and mental and economic trauma in the district.
“We need schools that serve as hubs of the community,” Pam Shaw, a leading spokesperson for Our JPS at the time of writing the article for the Progressive, told me. “Communities should own that space and use it as a launching pad for everything children need.”
Our JPS has since refined that idea into a campaign for the district to adopt what’s become loosely known as community schools. Our JPS defines community schools as “neighborhood schools that partner with families and community organizations to provide well-rounded educational experiences and supports for students’ school success…”
Meanwhile, the idea of community schools has caught on with progressive think tanks, teachers’ unions, public education advocates, and philanthropic groups across the nation. California has provided $3 billion in new state funding for transitioning schools to the approach in 2022, and Maryland has pledged to convert at least one-third of the state’s public schools to community schools.
One philanthropic group advocating for the community schools approach in Jackson is the NEA Foundation, a Washington, D.C., based nonprofit founded by educators.
“We entered this work in Jackson at the invitation of Mississippi educators,” NEA Foundation president and CEO Sara Sneed told Our Schools. “There is enormous community pressure for positive change but also expectations that any effort to include community voice in the process will come with a fight.”
The NEA Foundation’s effort also targets two other communities in school districts in the South—Little Rock, Arkansas, and East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. But Sneed expects their work in Jackson to lead the initiative for spreading the community schools approach throughout the South.
“We want to make community schools a signature issue in Mississippi and believe the effort in Jackson is an opportunity to transform the education experiences of children in the South,” Sneed said.
Please open the link and read the rest of this hopeful post.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It is really painful to have to see these posts on how wonderful community schools are when they are simply another kind of charter school, but even more invasive. They make deals with and give up a degree of local control to Wall Street and corporations who “invest” and will profit off student outcomes. And the data mining is insane. The marketing material in news articles often mentions more lighting in city neighborhoods, and now pot hole repair. Both parties are in bed together on this idea. Who will it really help? https://newpol.org/issue_post/community-schools-and-the-dangers-of-ed-tech-privatization/?fbclid=IwAR3uetOHwfj2GRB4rjXqxG7T3emr12cYyw2oaNjYB5gwDuF9kKssrfP4pYA
These “pay for success” schemes are another horrible Wall St. financial product that pretends to be altruistic and meet community needs. No problem solving initiative is as effective as real community engagement without a profit motive. Public-private partnerships generally require the public to pay for private profit, aka, another Wall St. scam.
Danielle,
I don’t agree with your assumptions about community schools. There is no implicit or explicit connection between community schools and Big Tech or Ed Tech.
Community schools are defined by their outreach to the cimmmunity and their provision of services to children and families.
Diane, you have helped me understand so much of ed reform for well over a decade, but ESSA welcomes ed tech, data mining and more. It’s all in the law. Wishful thinking that the “good” outweighs the bad feels like gas lighting when its from those we trust. Community school “stakeholders”give to public schools with tons of strings attached, including a “stakeholder voice” for corporations, Wall Street, data collection and more. I am heartbroken and the duplicity is taking a toll on those of us who get the true picture.
I read the article. It strikes me as a way left left paranoia that is somehow analogous to the stuff we see from the wacko right. Another example of how extreme left and right aren’t really that different.
The article infers things about community schools that are built on dubious arguments to begin with, The biggest omission is that it does not address the real world, something extreme ideologies never do. As you gripe about surveillance capitalism–many of the concerns it raises are consistently brought up on this blog and by contributors. But does not the reality of you writing a comment on this forum–in your view as you express it here–that you are contributing the to the very thing you are complaining about?
A traditional view of public education welcomes the contributions of communities, either by financial support or in-kind services. It just can’t get out of hand. That’s part of the American tradition. I would assume that the vast majority of readers here are all in favor of community wrap around services in schools.
Danielle– I question the linked article’s premise. They claim in the opening that “ESSA requires ‘full-service’ community schools to incorporate public-private partnerships that facilitate ‘wrap-around services’ managed by data analytics”– footnoted simply by link to the entire 392-pp ESSA law.
I found & read through Sec.4625, “Full-Service Community Schools.” There is no reqt that services be provided by “public-private partnerships.” See 2nd para of article: ESSA is merely describing what constitutes a community school, and listing the types of arrgts through which they obtain wrap-around services– “through community-based organizations and public and private partnerships.”
Nor is there a reqt for management by “data analytics,” unless author is using that to characterize the standard verbiage every law inserts for setting up and tracking goals and budget spending. The article oddly singles out Rand’s positive study of NYC community schools to excoriate ‘data-mining’ of students, speculating gross excesses based on a not-very-scary description.
I looked at that Rand study. NYC’s 1st 3 yrs of community schools’ results line up with Diane’s posted article and are what you would hope to see: improvement of attendance & fewer disciplinary incidents in the 1st 2 yrs, improvement of math results by 3rd yr. [Related: EdNext’s new pubsch longitudinal study “A Half Century of Student Progress Nationwide” has an interesting discussion of why math improvement tends to lead reading improvement].
I think the article should be seen simply as a warning that community schools can be warped from intended purpose by the maneuvers of for-profit actors, due to our poorly-regulated capitalism. We’ve seen it happen to many [most?] charter schools. But community schools are not “charters on steroids” as this article would have it. They are not ‘alternatives’ to zoned pubschs competing for enrollment—they are zoned pubschs. They require additional fed & local funds to operate as community schools. Those funds can be mismanaged like any other public funds. But– being entirely public funds– at least the reqd addl funds are easily identified, and there’s transparency as to how they’re spent.
BTW, Peter Greene has a story on his reading list today about the public school improvement in Erie, Pennsylvania. Their turnaround includes investment in resources and community schools that provide social services in the schools. Improvement is possible when communities work together to improve the lives and outcomes of their young people. It is not necessary to bring in corporate interlopers that sniff around to sell products for easy ROI. If anything, they should be avoided at all costs.
Thanks aka retired teacher. I feel so gaslit by my own party (Dems) and even these posts at times. Its like NPE decided to cover for my party and the unions (NEA is mine). I am heartbroken and now I teach in a community school that no one in my community (which is very well-funded) knows the truth about. ESSA is pretty unethical and is being implemented in the most shady ways.
Corporations follow the money. They trying to insert themselves into federal and state projects despite the fact they have no expertise in education or community service.
The article states that interest by charter schools was “sluggish.” The lack of interest I assume is that Jackson is so poor there is no room for profit or academic “miracles.” Failing in Jackson would damage their corporate brand.
Not just poor– virtually a “rural city.” I compared Jackson MS [pop 150k] with two cities I’m familiar with: Rochester NY [pop 211k] and Newark NJ [pop 307k]. Jackson’s population density is 1/5 of Rochester’s, and 1/10 that of Newark. So the usual reason for reluctance to open charters in rural areas [cited in the article for reluctance by state govt] applies to this city as well.
Supporting young people instead of beating them over the head with high stakes tests, corporate takeovers, and punitive test prep: enlightened. Makes Arne Duncan and Betsy DeVos look feral.
We give benchmarks constantly throughout the school year, which standardizes the pacing of content – even if kids need more time to learn it. The benchmark testing is for Wall Street investing on student outcomes. I have a degree in business, as well as a Masters in Education. Public education is going through a quiet hostile take over and ESSA is basically set up like the crumbs thrown to communities and public education make it okay or worth it.
Community schools are not, however, charter schools; they are public schools. In my district, community schools have union teachers. The consultants do not report to administrators. It’s imperfect, to say the least, but public schools in areas under constant threat of school privatization are encouraged to help keep the charters away with the community schools model. All good? No. Ideally, wealthy taxpayers support wraparound services without forcing in outside consultants.But consultants are better than charter management organizations. Schools safe from takeover or closing should not sign up. And yes, our government must get the data mining out of education law. It does all harm and no good.
The corporate structure of community schools is the same as charter schools, but with more data collection. My school board is now called the “Board of Directors”. We need an ed. law attorney to explain that, as it seems those in the know want to keep that knowledge to themselves. The community school plan will only grow if school boards take ESSA money that is OPTIONAL. If the public really understood the law, I don’t know if they would make that deal. From the link I posted previously in this thread:
“As public-private educational partnerships, community schools are essentially the same as charter schools, which are private corporations subsidized by public taxes. The only difference is community schools are required to facilitate “family, health, and other comprehensive services,” or “wrap-around services,” through public-private partnerships.”
Danielle—see my critique of that article posted above. I find no evidence that community schools are “public-private educational partnerships” (like most charters). And ‘corporate structure’ is same—how so? Do community schools have their own separate boards that don‘t answer to locally-elected school boards?
But I’m getting from your posts that you actually work at a community school, which makes your on-the-ground experience an invaluable input to the discussion.
When you say “same as charter schools, but with more data collection”: that I would think is natural, as in many [most?] states, charter law does not hold charters to the same govt monitoring as traditional publics. (In some states they are not even reqd to administer state-stdzd assessments.) Even when they supposedly do, in many states charters are able to evade regular audits of financials and academic results for years—or at least the 5 yrs until their charter is up for renewal—at which point we know from stats that many states extend them “just cuz” [fill in with monetary reasons i.e. cheaper to run district, or $charter state lobbyists etc].
Just wondering do you also have traditional, non-community-school pubsch experience– since 2010 or so– to compare? The data-collection thing has become huge at traditional publics: annual stdzd assessments aligned to state stds, plus pre-tests in many districts, plus before& after progress measurement, & often other assessed add-ons like SEL. Do community schools have to bear all that burden PLUS another bunch of data-collection?
Asking because the Rand report on NYC community schools just seemed to be tracking the same sorts of stuff all tradl pubschs are reqd to report.
We need a new national group called the Network Opposed to the Privatization of Everything, NOPE. Communities need to organize and defend their communities and public assets from corporate vultures.
Yes, but I can understand why good people feel the need to continue this “cover up” type of thinking/behavior, because what choice was left to progressives who care about public education? Neither party is supporting public education or labor unions (and the labor unions must agree because they took a seat at the ESSA table – to try to survive is my guess). Should good people just take the hit for the Dems so we don’t lose votes (which is important), or do we come together, out the ethical conflicts in ESSA and force changes? Both major parties agreed on ESSA, and that should be telling. It is hell as a teacher who understands ESSA and is living through this hostile takeover of our schools. I can’t stress this enough, the underfunded AND well-funded school districts are being swallowed alive. It can’t be to help the “most vulnerable” when they are taking over rich districts that can afford to do so themselves.
Thanks Diane.
Danielle has pointed out how private interests are trying to profit off the community school idea. I believe when the model was first introduced, wrap around services were provided by public services operating out of the schools rather than being housed in their own little fiefdoms. There was no profit motive; it was not designed as a public/private partnership. I guess that idea has easily been taken advantage of especially in communities where public services are marginal to begin with.
This is a devastating post, not a hopeful one. United Way, the fine folks helping Cradle to Career undermine schools through predatory philanthropy’s ‘collective impact’ model, are part of the Community Schools Coalition. Multiple board-appointed committees direct implementation and govern Community Schools schools which undermines public participation and accountability, especially in districts like mine where billionaire privatizers and tax exempt groups already exert undue influence on the school board.