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Oakland Unified School District's long-standing community schools initiative offers lessons for districts implementing a community schools strategy, illustrating an approach focused on integrating whole child educational practices and providing sustained support through centralized district infrastructure.
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Examining how Oakland Unified School District successfully implemented a community schools approach, researchers found structures that support effective partnerships, Coordination of Services Teams, community school managers, professional learning and development, and family engagement.
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Fifty public high schools that have been identified as “Schools of Opportunity” are founded on policies and practices that address achievement gaps by improving opportunities to learn. Kevin Welner and Kate Somerville discuss four lessons learned from these exemplary high schools.
David L. KirpMarjorie WechslerMadelyn GardnerTitilayo Tinubu Ali
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A deep dive into the strategies of three high-achieving school districts across the U.S., this book shows how an evidence-based approach of continuous improvement can boost graduation rates and close opportunity gaps.
Dion BurnsDaniel EspinozaJulie AdamsNaomi Ondrasek
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The school conditions and educational outcomes California students in foster care experience may be impacted by a range of challenges associated with multiple school moves and barriers to important supports at the school and state levels. Effective processes and policies that span the state’s education system and the foster care system can help create a coordinated web of supports to enhance student outcomes.
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Education should provide opportunities for every student to learn and thrive, but the current U.S. system often falls short. Research from the science of learning and development points to whole child education as a method to transform systems to provide high-quality learning for all students. The Whole Child Policy Toolkit can help state policymakers and education leaders advance whole child policy and support schools, districts, and communities to meet the needs of every child efficiently, effectively, and equitably.
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Many educators seeking to transform schools to allow more student-centered, inquiry-driven, and community-connected approaches to whole child learning face a wide range of institutional barriers. Nevertheless, thousands of schools have been redesigned to promote more student-centered principles, and these schools have created networks that provide schools with models for adopting methods that nurture the whole child.
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A positive school climate—where students feel a sense of safety and belonging and where trust prevails—improves academic achievement, test scores, grades, and engagement and helps reduce the negative effects of poverty on academic achievement. To bring about such environments, teachers, paraprofessionals, and school and district leaders must be prepared to create the school and classroom structures that encourage secure relationships.
On February 5th, the Learning Policy Institute and the National Urban League hosted a webinar entitled, “Using School Climate Data to Meet Student Needs" on how states are measuring, collecting, and reporting on a variety of school climate and social and emotional learning indicators under the Every Student Succeeds Act.
