Background/Context: Full-service community schools provide comprehensive and coordinated resources and supports to meet the complex needs of children and families in low-income communities. Given their intentional focus on expanded networks of school, family, and community stakeholders, full-service community schools are particularly useful…

Background: Currently, there is great enthusiasm surrounding place-based initiatives for school reform, such as the Harlem Children's Zone, Promise Neighborhoods, and other initiatives that attend to the multiple contexts that influence child development. However, past efforts to bridge schools, families, and communities have been undermined by…

Background/Context: The children of military service members experience numerous military-related stressors (e.g., deployment of a parent), resulting in negative psychological outcomes. About 90% of military-connected students are educated in civilian public schools. A few recent studies in disciplines outside education research suggest that…

Background/Context: Some school districts across the country have begun to convene principals in professional learning communities (PPLC) as a strategy to help principals develop as instructional leaders, and they have designated executive-level central office staff to lead the PPLCs. Extant research suggests the promise of PPLCs for supporting…

Background: In light of the growing complexity of schoolwork, it is important that faculty members move away from isolated learning toward a more collective type of thinking regarding teaching and learning issues. Purpose: Whereas collective learning has mostly been approached from a deficit-based orientation (finding/solving problems and…

Background/Context: A group of educators have demonstrated success not only with White middle-class and affluent students but also with students from varied racial, socioeconomic, linguistic, ability, and cultural backgrounds. A reoccurring theme from these schools and from the literature on school change is that exemplary leadership helps create…

Describes how one urban elementary school in a high-reform district and state developed strong connections with community business and organizations as part of its program of school, family, and community partnerships, identifying four factors that allowed the school to maintain successful partnerships: school commitment to learning, principal…