As students and communities emerge from the ravages of a global pandemic, authorizing faces a key challenge: embracing its fundamental role of providing high-quality educational opportunities, while evolving to meet new demands and expectations, especially those created by the pandemic. How it navigates this tension will impact millions of…

Preparing educators to engage families and communities is one of the most promising ways to improve student learning and build equitable schools. In this commentary, authors from the National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement explore the landscape of educator preparation for family and community engagement and describe a…

The unprecedented challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic led teachers to innovatively shift their teaching methods. These pioneering practices inspired this study's "Elevated Family-Teacher Partnership" intervention which was designed to provide equitable guidance and communication for all families. This dissertation, in practice,…

As they adopt and adapt emerging approaches, K-12 leaders have a tremendous opportunity to activate the latent social capital within families to improve students' experiences and outcomes. Whether they succeed depends on where and how schools activate family networks, and for what purposes. This paper details five emerging opportunities for…

The Coalition for Community Schools (Coalition), as an alliance of national, state and local partners that advocate for community schools, wanted to provide support and a space for community school leaders to share their challenges and successes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Beginning March 17, 2020 through the present, the Coalition conducted…

Despite dwindling resources and high-stakes testing, public school teachers all over the country are managing to breathe life, passion, and excitement into their classrooms. In this new book by bestselling author A.J. Juliani and lifelong educator David E. Baugh, you'll meet a diverse group of teachers--Mavericks--who are doing exactly that.…

Background/Context: The challenges documented in the literature on research-practice partnerships and similar school-university collaborations are outlined in the literature review in this issue. Yet only a collaboration among multiple educational and community organizations could create a synergy powerful enough to achieve the multifaceted goals…

Challenging policymakers, educators, reformers, and citizens to replace piecemeal reforms with fundamental redesign, "First Things First!" calls for a different way of organizing the American primary school. Ruby Takanishi outlines a new framework for integrating early education with primary education (pre-K-5), including both short- and…

It was 8:45 a.m. on Monday, March 29, 2010, when Paul Herdman got the stunning news. Just two states had won first-round grants in the Race to the Top competition, the largest federal competition of its kind in American history, out of 40 state applicants. Herdman joined the Rodel Foundation of Delaware (Rodel) as President and CEO in 2004. The…

The objective of this paper is to explore the operation of magnet and professional development school (PDS) programs in a real life situation using an ethnographic study of Downtown Elementary School (DES--a pseudonym) that simultaneously operates as a PDS and a magnet school. The author spent almost three years at DES, located in the Southern…

This paper explores the challenges facing educators to incorporate "informatics"--computer education in the broad context of information technology--into the curriculum for K-12 students, and "capacitation" for teachers, the continuing professional education which enables and empowers teachers to face these demands. The…

This compilation of publications from the School-Linked Service Integration Research Project focuses on integrated services and includes the following papers: (1) "New Community Schools: Issues for Families in Three Streams of Reform" (Wayne Sailor), describes issues in special education reform, general education reform, and school/health services…

This monograph has been developed as part of an intensive, 3-year study of five local school districts engaged in general and special education reform. The purpose of the study was to examine how educational reforms were being defined and implemented at the local district and school levels, particularly with students with disabilities. The…

Along with a companion documentary video, "Learn & Live," this resource manual focuses on innovative schools around the country that are integrating technology and involving parents, business, and the community. Ten chapters are divided into four sections. In Section 1, "Students," two chapters look at learning and assessment. The two chapters in…