Linda Darling-Hammond is a prominent professor at Stanford and president of The Learning Policy Institute. She has been a public school teacher, a researcher, and president of the California State Board of Education. In this essay, she explains why the community school model may be the best path forward for school reform.
She writes:
“Kasserian ingera”—the traditional greeting of Masai warriors—asks: “And how are the children?” It is still a greeting among the Masai, acknowledging the high value they place on their children’s well-being. The traditional answer, “All the children are well,” means that the safety and welfare of the young are protected by their communities.
Unfortunately, in the United States, we know that all of our children are not well. Indeed, by any measure, children and youth in the United States are struggling. The aftermath of the pandemic has brought with it an epidemic of mental health issues, from anxiety and depression to suicidal ideation. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report from 2022 found that 44% of adolescents said they felt sad or hopeless most of the time during the spring of 2021, and 20% seriously considered suicide. During that time, 29% had an adult in their household lose a job and 24% went hungry; 55% said they were exposed to harsh verbal or physical treatment at home.
Many report continuing to feel disconnected from school. Among high school students from 95 districts surveyed by Youth Truth in 2021–22, a minority (40%) reported feeling like part of their school community or enjoying coming to school, and just 39% reported having an adult at school they could talk with when they feel “upset, stressed, or having problems.” (See figure below.) These proportions are even lower for students of color, LGBTQ+ students, and students in large schools.
It is in this context that a diverse and growing chorus of educators, students, families, and policymakers are calling for a reimagining of our schools. They are highlighting the need to center relationships, belonging, and community; to create structures and practices to support relevant and engaging learning; and to organize resources, supports, and opportunities in ways that mitigate the pernicious effects of structural racism and decades of disinvestment in low-income communities of color.
As Learning Policy Institute Senior Fellow in Residence Jeannie Oakes noted recently, “We need to have schools really change the way they operate to compensate for deficiencies, not in the kids, but in our social safety net.”
Responding to the uniquely challenging moment we’re in, many districts and states are making big bets on community schools—both to address the tattered social safety net Oakes refers to, as well as to provide a catalyst for the deeper cultural and practice changes needed to better serve students and adults alike.
These initiatives are underway in large urban districts like Albuquerque, Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and Oakland, as well as in smaller rural communities in California, Kentucky, New Mexico, New York, and Vermont. A number of states have also established funding and supports for community schools. Maryland established the Concentration of Poverty grant program to provide annual community school personnel grants to eligible schools, along with additional per-pupil grant funding for each eligible student. New York created a community schools set-aside in its school funding formula for high-need districts and funded three regional technical assistance centers for community schools. California, for its part, has leveraged multiyear budget surpluses in 2021 and 2022 to make a historic $4.1 billion investment in planning, implementation, and coordination grants—as well as technical assistance—for the state-funded California Community Schools Partnership Program. This investment is intended to provide sufficient resources for every high-poverty school in California to become a community school within the next 5 to 7 years.
Community schools are a place-based strategy deeply rooted in their local context—the needs, assets, hopes, and dreams of students, families, educators, and community partners. They leverage a complex web of partnerships and relationships, like those at Mendez High School in East Los Angeles, to support and engage students and families. By integrating access to services—from medical care to housing and other supports—and making them available to students and families on school campuses, community schools provide a much-needed alternative to the fragmented and bureaucratic social services gauntlet that families in need are typically required to navigate. As we have seen time and again during the COVID-19 pandemic, these services and supports—provided in the context of trusting and caring relationships—can be life changing and can mean the difference between academic success and struggling students and families.
At Mendez, because of the infrastructure created through its community schools approach, the school and its partners were able to provide vital services to students and families as soon as schools shut down in 2020. A mobile clinic that already served the school began COVID-19 testing for the community; mental health providers already in place conducted regular mental health check-ins with students via devices or at a safe physical distance. Other partners created care packages with food, toilet paper, electronic benefit transfer cards, and other essentials, and teachers organized to provide Wi-Fi hot spots to families before the district had the capacity to do so.
But to achieve the transformation our students need and the times demand, community schools must be about much more than providing an efficient structure for integrated student supports (or wraparound services, as they are sometimes called). Transformation requires that we also address the structural barriers to student well-being and academic success that are encompassed by the other foundational elements of community schools: a culture of belonging, safety, and care; community-connected classroom instruction; expanded and enriched learning opportunities; empowered student and family engagement; and collaborative leadership. Foundational to all of this is a grounding in whole childeducation.
When implemented well, community schools are guided by principles for equitable whole child practices that are grounded in the science of learning and development. This whole child framework is at the center of the community schools initiative in California, where the State Board of Education has thus far approved $1.5 billion in planning and implementation grants from a larger initiative that is intended to reach one third of the state’s schools in high-need communities.
The key elements of a whole child framework should be foundational to our vision of transformational community schools:
- Structures and practices to foster positive developmental relationships and ensure that students are known and supported. Examples include looping in the elementary grades, where a teacher stays with the class for more than one year, and utilizing advisory systems in middle and high school, which create small family units that offer personal attention, space for sharing needs and feelings, and family connections that support each student.
- Supportive and caring school communities where students feel a strong sense of belonging and are safe to bring their full selves, without fear of being bullied by peers or stereotyped or negatively judged by students or adults at school.
- Culturally affirming social and emotional learning that is infused throughout the school day and includes skill-building, as well as educative and restorative approaches to classroom management and discipline, so that children and young people learn responsibility for themselves and their community.
- Rich learning experiences that support inquiry, motivation, competence, self-efficacy, and self-directed learning.
- Integrated student supports that remove academic and non-academic barriers to learning by providing health and social services as needed, tutoring and other academic supports, and a focus on children’s individual talents and needs.
Move at the “Speed of Trust”
Just as we need to rethink how students are engaged and supported in schools, we also need to reimagine adult interactions—among families and educators, as well as among school staff. That means treating families as trusted partners in their students’ well-being and academic success and intentionally supporting their capacity building and leadership development.
As importantly, it also means investing in educators and school staff, so they have the necessary tools, agency, and support—including support for their mental health and emotional well-being—to shift practices in ways that expand the capacities of students and adults alike. This includes enabling new teachers’ success with strong induction and mentoring, while providing leadership opportunities for more experienced teachers. It means providing the collaboration time essential to advancing meaningful and engaging instruction and supporting teacher-led professional development. And, just as with students and families, it means nurturing trust and collaborative leadership among staff and with school and district leaders.
Open the link to read the rest of this article and to see the graphs.
Oh, Barack, why, why, why did you change your mind?
Desegregation was about ending segregation, necessarily.
For many leaders 30 years ago it was about integration. Housing was left out of the mix. For the millions of kids who did receive a “better” education in many cities, it broke down neighborhoods. Within city desegregation took kids out of neighborhood schools and bused them miles away.
A Nation at Risk to NCLB to neo-liberal reform was about “failing” schools and exposing the “achievement gap.” It ignored the evidence and underlying factors of failing schools and provided a quick fix – test and punish. Instead of supporting schools, they were placed on lists of shame, threatened to be “reconstituted” or closed.
COMMUNITY SCHOOLS go way back. Dewey’s explanation of the formation of a school in a community. James Comer’s model of full-service, parent supporting, wrap-around services schools. Eve Ewing and many others writing about the effects of school closings on neighborhoods. (One community’s response in Chicago closing their school – reframe it as a community school).
The GOP in their pretense of helping poor families and urban schools want choice, charter schools, scripted (and now revisionist and straight-white history) curriculum. The want “parents’ rights” smoke screen for “turn in your teacher” who mentions race or lgbtq topics). They don’t want parent engagement and participation; they want vigilante parents storming meetings.
Dr. Darling-Hammond et al know and have researched time and again what works.
Spot on! I know this approach can be powerful from past experience.
Enough school reform.
Thank you! Blah blah blah..
Is it “reform” if one gets rid of school reform?
The first and foremost correction in school reform should be the abolition of the standards and testing malpractice regime. Everything else is secondary.
Here’s what I know…after working with the kids who come to school hungry, translate in courts, raised by single mothers, and what not, all they wanted was someone to listen to their needs. I had always told them, “This is how it works. There is a triangle = Student — Teacher — Parent — we work together to move you in the direction right for you. The Reggio Emilia School does with the little ones. Raised in a working-class (going to be an ironworker) I was the first to attend college as most in my family barely made it through high school, but did well for themselves in life. As Paul Eck responded, it is a great approach because college is not for everyone and is far too expensive. For the last two years, I worked in the CA Community College system and with the CA Promise, students can attend college for free. I tell parents it is a strategic step to further the needs of their child. Our goal is to make them have a sustainable life with the skills they need to be successful. Community Colleges, at least, let students get the feel for higher education to see if they like it. I do know, though, most kids are “done with school” by 12th grade. They are bored, it makes no sense to them, and have little direction, unless they are the fortunate who have the means to go to a four-year university. The only way I could provide for my students was help from my community, paying for food and supplies with my own money, and making sure the kids felt like they were worth a million dollars. When I needed to attend workshops at the comprehensive high schools, they seemed like castles to where I worked. I told the kids, “I met a man from African who was a child soldier (I worked with the Red Cross in Humanitarian Law) who said he put on his uniform after he attended school “under the mango tree.” I wanted my students to have all that I could provide and for them to feel good about themselves even thought they went to the continuation high school. Even though they received a high school diploma, they were told more times than not, “Your diploma is not as good as our diploma.” The community schools are a great move in reshaping what our children need now. Employers are looking for people who have certain skill sets ( I always promoted — hey kids if you are good at this, then you can get a job doing this; this is how what you just learned connects to real-world situations), willing to learn, and have social skills, but not necessarily a college degree. My friend who works at LinkedIn told me they were more interested in what a person could do “right now” as opposed to “book learning” because they could be trained. And, they liked their employees trained a certain way not “text book style” — they could apply their skills in real time. My son’s fiancé has no college, yet makes a six-figure income based on her project management skills. I know many of my past students who work construction and especially a plumber who makes six-figures. In sum, kids need to feel that whatever path they follow with hard work and perseverance, they can be successful. I have always liked the methodologies of Dennis Littky and The Big Picture Schools where students proved proficiency through exhibitions rather than tests only. https://www.bigpicture.org And, I just received this article on what students feel about college. https://www.the74million.org/article/gen-zs-declining-college-interest-persists-even-among-middle-schoolers/ Once again, just my view from the trenches.
This is just the Deformers coming up with a different plan. It won’t work….just like all the other ideas they have imposed upon children/teachers/schools. It’s just another way to extract tax education $$$$ by offering another “shiny new thing” for sale. Capitalism at its finest!
Where’s your evidence?
This is not the “deformers” concept. It’s roots are in Dr. James Comer’s research and center at Brown University decades ago (and what neighborhood schools and one-high school in a small community have done for decades).
Dr. Darling-Hammond’s LPI researchers have published dozens of case studies of schools and quantitative research on the effects (positive).
Communityschools.org illustrates models, research, strategies, and more.
The US DOE (ok, it’s the feds) published a comprehensive report including the following:
Are Community Schools Successful?
Yes, according to a 2020 RAND Corporation Study5 of New York City community schools (the study uses the term “community school” rather than “full-service community school”), the approach had a positive impact on student attendance in elementary, middle, and high schools and across all three years that outcomes were measured (2015–2016, 2016–2017, and 2017– 2018). The study also found positive and significant impacts on elementary and middle school students’ on-time grade progression and suggested a reduction in disciplinary incidents for elementary and middle school students. The study found that the community schools had a positive impact on students’ mathematics achievement in the final year of the study. Further, based on a comprehensive analysis of 143 studies,6 the Learning Policy Institute concluded that well-implemented community schools lead to improvement in student and school outcomes and contribute to meeting the educational needs of struggling students in schools with high poverty rates.
Yep….and just like the Common Core was supposed to be so great! Kids could move all over the country and not miss a beat in the classroom if every school in every state were doing exactly the same curriculum at the same time. Teachers fall for this Sh__ every single time! It sounds so great and organic when it’s being pushed by the “leaders”, but the reality is ALWAYS just another marketing scheme. The USDoE is filled with nothing but grifters sucking up tax $$$$ meant to educate children. I wonder what Jimmy Carter thinks of his Cabinet being colonized by grifters stealing from children?
Sorry……I won’t fall for this crap anymore. Talk is cheap.
“Community schools are a place-based strategy deeply rooted in their local context—the needs, assets, hopes, and dreams of students, families, educators, and community partners.”
For community schools to be effective, the design has to be a community effort, of, by and for the community. It cannot be canned, corporate community schools designed to bleed districts into paying for high priced consultants with an array of fees. Community schools ‘in a box’ is not an option. It has to be a collaborative, respectful commitment in which all stakeholders are heard and welcomed. If a community requires outside help, contact a university with a legitimate college of education. Representatives from the community need make sure they vet these folks before they are hired.
Thanks for this. It is the best news of how educational policy makers are thinking in years, even though it’s only the beginning of a dream that if taken seriously would take many years to implement broadly and well. I know this works for students living in poverty from my years being part of one such dream in the ‘90s.
What was the difference between now and the 90s and before? There was no standards and testing malpractice regime taking up necessary time, energies and monies. Abolish the standards and testing malpractice regime now!
agreed
Abolish the standards and testing malpractice regime and it is guaranteed that the mental health of children will become cheerier/rosier/less mean. Does anyone ever wonder WHY children don’t like to go to school now? Why the absenteeism is so high (especially in low income schools)? Schools are not joyous places to be. Public schools have become a survival of the “smartest” (according to stupid standardized tests). There will NEVER be “community schools” until the deforms are gone.
Exactly so, Lisa. One cannot simultaneously embrace community schools and this or any other criterion-based assessment regime. So, put me in the dubious column.
I am currently reading the January 2017 Special Edition of National Geographic Magazine about the Gender Revolution.
American Girl is on pages 110 – 129. It is worth reading because it addressed the issue in this post but focused on girls.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/issue/january-2017
This is the wrong blog to talk about common core. No one who understands kids, teaching, schools, curriculum, assessment, and learning ever said “Common Core was supposed to be so great!”
What they did say was a set of standards written BY PROFESSIONALS and PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS to guide or suggest planning for states and local districts and real teachers to adopt OR adapt (or not use) could be a good idea.
No one but the Governors and then Lamar Alexander feeding it to George Bush said –> high-stakes standardized testing of learning standards was a good idea.
No one who knows what they are talking about every said –> use high stakes testing to rank and label schools and then fire everyone or close them and impose Rhee-like “leadership” to impress the corporate “run schools like business” world.
Sadly, both parties co-opted what belongs in the hands of professionals and turned it over to the government and hedge fund guys, privatizers, (some) publishers, and mayors saw dollar signs and quick fixes.
Unlike common core – – Fortunately no one seems to have co-opted the community schools model because it’s a model – each school is different based on parent engagement, teacher voice, addressing all the needs of kids are identified and everyone has some sense of identity and belonging.
“What they did say was a set of standards written BY PROFESSIONALS and PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS to guide or suggest planning for states and local districts and real teachers to adopt OR adapt (or not use) could be a good idea.”
The most important part of your statement is “could be”.
But, as Wilson has shown, the concept of standards in the teaching and learning process is a false, invalid one. The teaching and learning process is an art and is not amenable to standardization due to the many, many factors involved not only in the process itself but to all the differences brought to that process by/of the students and teachers.
The attempt to take such a complicated process and break it down into standardized parts that can supposedly be “measured”-it can’t logically-is a Sisyphean task, an impossibility, a logical nightmare that only wastes time, energies and monies all the while harming students in implementing the standards and testing malpractices.
I repeat a question to which I’ve never received a satisfactory answer: How did America become the top dog nation of the world in the last half of the 20th century without having any educational standards to guide us?
As Learning Policy Institute Senior Fellow in Residence Jeannie Oakes noted recently, “We need to have schools really change the way they operate to compensate for deficiencies, not in the kids, but in our social safety net.”
Perhaps mine will be a minority perspective, but I think Oakes is wrong. The job of schools is teaching and learning. We cannot expect schools to compensate for the deficiencies of our safety net. We must demand and advocate for a robust safety net; one that includes medical care, addresses food insecurity, and secures stable, affordable housing.
Schools, of course, take on these roles heroically, every day. And it makes sense that school buildings can continue to serve as locales to provide those services. But teachers already have a lot on their spinning plates. They should not be extending their day into these other areas. There must be a vigorous partioning of support services from the school day.
Because this is what happens: the school has a closet where kids can get clothing or personal hygiene items. Someone has to maintain order in that space, pick up donations, and staff the closet. Someone is going to end up being a teacher or staff member who is volunteering.
It’s not lost on me that Darling-Hammond won’t be organizing any of this from her prestigious position. And I will never pardon her for her role in the nefarious EdTPA.
Her role in EdTPA AND in developing the Smarter Balanced Test. Since these, I have zero interest in anything she has to say.
I, too, could have made myself wealthy and influential by sucking up the river of green that flowed from Seattle to support the Common [sic] Core [sic] and its associated testing, but I considered both extreme evils. There was a time when huge contracts and influential positions to implement this stuff were readily available to anyone with my kind of experience and expertise.
I refused.
Unfortunately, a LOT of well-known EduPundits saw where the money was flowing from and jumped aboard the deformy CC$$ testing and evaluation bandwagons. So, equally egregiously, did the American Federation of Teachers. Sickening.
A number of well-remunerated EduPundits, regular features at national conferences who got big bucks for consulting with districts, had spent their lifetimes railing against summative testing but, seeing that river of green coming from the Gates Foundation, completely tossed any principles they had ever had. And one cannot lay this capitulation to a simple mistake because the tests so clearly, in ELA, DO NOT MEASURE WHAT THEY PURPORT TO MEASURE and cannot, given how vague and broad the so-called “standards” are. They are pseudoscience. And the question types that Dr. Hammond champtioned–EBSR–are particularly bad. They are like trying to use a butter knife to turn a tiny Philips-head screw–the wrong tool for the job of measuring higher-order thinking while reading. If THESE THINGS are not obvious to someone, then he or she is simply a moron who hasn’t or cannot think clearly about any of this. But there is an alternative–that some people are willing to be seduced by the $$$$.
“Tell me where a man gets his corn-pone and I’ll tell you what his ‘pinions are,” says one of Mark Twain’s characters.
Exactly
cx: championed
I can’t speak to the motivations of specific people. I suppose that there were probably some who thought, “OK. This thing is happening. If I’m involved, it will be better than it would have been.” But my lord, the damage that was done by CC$$ and its associated testing!!!!! It DESTROYED my profession–the teaching of ELA, the texts used for that teaching. The younger teachers in the last school I taught in believed that handing out practice sets for the test was teaching English.
A lot of these edupundits came of age in the era of behavioral objectives and programmed learning, and they never quite moved beyond those failures.
So, the CC$$ took over ELA and Math education. When the CC$$ first appeared, I started going onto my website and posting pieces about particularly stupid “standards” in the CC$$ for ELA. And interestingly, over time, the CC$$ powers that be tweaked their stupid “standards” to fix these, for the most part. However, what they couldn’t fix were the facts that
a) theirs was an almost content-free skills list and
b) their “standards” were so vague and broad, for the most part, that they COULD NOT be validly measured by the state tests based on them.
Why could they not do this? Because doing so would require approaching the whole idea of standards anew and tossing all that they had done.
“I refused.”
Thank you for refusing and doing what you do to counteract that and the many other educational malpractices that attempt to pass for “new and improved.”
Same to you, Señor Swacker!
Benchmarks became standards, curriculum became scripted and the stupid tests became everything. This is not education and it’s not what is good for children. “Community schools”, as the Deformers will make them to be , will be of no use to children/teachers/families. “Community schools” are just one more Deform (mea culpa) with a feel good name to try and boost the scores on a stupid test. Only the gullible will fall for this….as they seem to do time and again.
It is extremely important that schools be community centers–that they be key community institutions. And a lot can be done via wraparound services offered through schools. Imagine neighborhood schools giving kids a safe place they can go in the evening to play basketball or watch a movie and get some homework help. Imagine schools providing breakfast, lunch, and dinner to kids who live with the constant threat or reality of hunger. Great stuff.
But yeah, those schools will continue to fail as long as they follow the curriculum- and pedagogy-debasing criterion-based pedagogical model with its invalid tests.
From my personal experience schools work better for poor students when there are comprehensive approaches that include teachers, parents and access to outreach programs. Schools cannot solve poverty, but they can help by helping families gain access to social services. Sometimes small changes like better nutrition and access to a doctor or dentist can translate into a student being able to perform better in class and learn more. Poor families are often isolated, and they may need guidance in how to access assistance. Students will do better when families function better, and they feel the community cares about them.
I don’t disagree, at all, that teachers can effectively connect kids and families to needed services. I’m just leary that this kind of solution will add one more burden to school staff that already is stretched far too thin.
I prefer the model of impact bargaining we see in Chicago and Boston, where the negotiations include demands for services kids in the classrooms need, like breakfast and lunch without cost, rent control to avoid homelessness, reliable transit, support for raising the minimum wage and a push for health care for everybody.
Using school buildings as community centers to provide these services may well be quite effective, but it shouldn’t be an expectation that teachers and school staff will take on that responsibility. Let’s change the expectation that mending the safety net is yet another issue for educators to solve.
“Perhaps mine will be a minority perspective, but I think Oakes is wrong. The job of schools is teaching and learning. We cannot expect schools to compensate for the deficiencies of our safety net. . . It’s not lost on me that Darling-Hammond won’t be organizing any of this from her prestigious position. And I will never pardon her for her role in the nefarious EdTPA.”
Move over, Christine! Make room for me! Excellent commentary!
Welcome to The Club, Duane! Plenty of space.