1. Introduction
The community school model, while not new, is increasingly gaining momentum nationwide as an education reform strategy with the potential to address the effects of poverty and other factors beyond instruction that we know contribute to gaps in student achievement [
1,
2,
3]. Community schools may be viewed as one strategy among a long and winding road of school reform efforts, from pushes for smaller schools to more centralized (or de-centralized) authority to many other reforms [
4]. Further, for some the community school approach is grounded in a fundamental conclusion that the traditional school model itself is not sufficient to overcome the role of poverty in equitable access to learning, and that, beyond academic instruction alone, improving student achievement requires addressing the needs of the whole child. Viewed this way, the community school model represents an expanded vision of what schools are, who they include, and what they are responsible for, by leveraging community resources both to address student barriers to learning and shift relationships between schools, families, and community. This paper aims to improve our understanding of community school implementation, drawing on qualitative research in a sample of community schools in Oakland, California.
Although no single definition describes a community school, and different names may be used to describe similar approaches [
5], the model is characterized by partnerships between schools and community-based organizations (CBOs) to deliver coordinated services such as health services and expanded learning opportunities, designed to improve the well-being of children and families and to support students’ readiness to learn [
6,
7]. Some trace the roots of the community school model as far back as the late 1800s, and many cities—including Chicago, New York, and Cincinnati—have had substantial numbers of community schools for some time [
8]. However, it appears that education leaders nationwide are increasingly demonstrating an expanded role for community schools as a major element of district-led school reform efforts. Recently, for example, the mayors of New York City (2014) and Philadelphia (2016) pledged to dramatically increase the number of community schools in efforts to address persistent gaps in educational achievement by socio-economic status and race. Further, the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), signed into law by President Obama in December 2015, includes funding for full service community schools.
The Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) in California has embraced community schools as central to its district reform agenda and, with 33 community schools as of early 2016 (approximately one-third of all district schools), is progressing towards its goal of being a community schools district. In partnership with CBOs, Oakland community schools provide an array of integrated services intended to remove student barriers to learning by, for instance, addressing health issues, expanding the amount of time for learning, implementing alternative disciplinary practices, and engaging families in student learning and school improvement.
Community schools aim to comprehensively take on barriers to learning for low-income students through services that are not just based at the school but that involve CBOs and families [
8]. In theory, the model is set apart and strengthened by intentional inclusion of and outreach to multiple community and family stakeholders, and collaboration between them. Further, community schools foster coherence, as programs and services are integrated with the core of the school and with each other, and aligned with the fundamental school mission of promoting student success [
9]. Through this approach, the community school model aims to increase the realization of many elements of effective schools and ultimately to support teaching and learning that promotes student success [
10].
While some prior research lays out a theory of change underlying the community school model [
11] and still other research provides evidence of positive correlations between community schools or other models including school-based services and student outcomes [
11,
12,
13], less research has illuminated the mechanisms and challenges of community school implementation itself [
9,
14]. This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of elements of effective community school implementation based on qualitative research in five community schools in Oakland, including interviews with principals, teachers, community school managers, partner organizations, and other school staff. Further, we provide descriptive evidence exploring the link between community school implementation and school effectiveness, based on reports from teachers and principals.
3. Community Schools in Oakland
Oakland is home to one of the most demographically diverse populations in the country, with residents of different racial, ethnic, national, linguistic, and other cultural groups. Amidst this diversity exist considerable concentrated poverty and disparities in opportunity and outcomes, especially for Oakland’s children. Those born in some neighborhoods are, for example, much more likely to suffer from poor nutrition, be subject to violence, and lack adequate healthcare. For example, compared to a White child of the affluent Oakland Hills, an African-American child born in West Oakland is seven times more likely to be born into poverty, four times less likely to read at grade level by grade 4, and 5.6 times more likely to drop out of school. Additionally, as an adult, the African-American child will be at least twice as likely to die of heart disease, stroke, or cancer [
19]. Further, Oakland has experienced considerable demographic shifts in recent years, attributable in part to both increasing immigration as well as increasing gentrification as housing costs continue to rise across the San Francisco Bay Area. Between 2000 and 2010, Oakland saw increases in the number of Latino and White residents, and decreases in its African American population [
20,
21].
In response to vast disparities in educational outcomes, in 2010–2011, Oakland launched an initiative to transform itself into a full service community schools district [
22]. OUSD’s community schools initiative emerged out of an extensive strategic planning process with schools, families, and other community stakeholders, and builds on existing, ongoing efforts to support more equitable life and academic outcomes for Oakland’s youth. As of early 2016, 33 OUSD schools were identified as full service community schools, representing about one-third of district schools. Most of the district’s full service community schools are middle and high schools, and scale-up efforts continue to expand implementation to elementary schools as well.
Like other community school models, OUSD’s community school theory of change includes multiple strategy areas: (1) an array of integrated services intended to remove students barriers to academic learning including health and mental health services; (2) expanding the amount of time for learning; and (3) engaging families in student learning and school improvement. Oakland has also made concerted efforts to implement alternative disciplinary practices, in particular restorative justice. Oakland community schools aim to address students’ needs and promote a positive school climate in which students are engaged learners and teachers are supported to provide quality instruction. OUSD’s theory of change posits that these strategies will increase student and family access to services and, in turn, improve student attendance behavior and performance ultimately contributing to the goal that all students are college, career, and community ready when they graduate. Importantly, the community school model also includes organizational strategies for leveraging community resources and partnerships, coordinating services, and integrating services and partners into the operation and mission of the school. For instance, most community schools engage in strategic partnerships with CBOs, and have a community school manager charged with supporting and coordinating the community schools work. (See
Appendix A for a system strategy map that outlines key activities and outcomes associated with the Oakland Community Schools theory of change at the district, school, and student levels).
6. Discussion
Research has long documented the pernicious effects of poverty on educational attainment. Traditional schools, unfortunately, are often ill prepared, under-resourced, and ultimately, insufficient to mitigate these negative effects, especially in the contexts of high-poverty urban communities. Community schools represent an attempt to redress the effects of poverty and inequality through re-conceptualizing the role of the school as one that includes comprehensively addressing student barriers to learning. At the same time, research indicates that a co-location of services on a school site does not guarantee the quality of those services, or the ability of those services to effect student and school outcomes [
17]. Rather, recent research suggests that to be effective, community schools must undergo organizational transformation to incorporate new roles, structures, and resources [
9,
14,
18]. Additionally, schools and school staff must develop new capacities accordingly [
8,
9,
14]).
A robust literature exists on the role of community and partner agencies in children’s learning. Research has long identified that children exist in multiple spheres of influence including school, home, and various other community institutions and contexts [
34,
35]. These other arenas outside the school walls are intricately linked to what happens within the school setting. During the last few decades, a body of research has emerged exploring how partnerships between school personnel and community entities are a valuable way to reinforce and enhance students’ learning [
41,
42,
43]. Accordingly, some scholars and practitioners have argued that partnerships should not be pursued just for partnerships’ sake but, rather, conceived through a mutual goal of effecting students’ educational and life outcomes, the benefits of collaboration between each parties’ respective strengths and expertise, and a shared commitment to meaningful and sustainable engagement [
44,
45].
Across our sample sites, we found that school staff often described their partnerships as strategic. Strategic partners supported student learning by aligning with school goals and integrating with school resources. While school staff acknowledged that community-based partners provided key resources, they also found that aligning and integrating those resources to ultimately support school and student outcomes required: (1) developing and explicitly communicating shared goals; (2) collaborating with partners to include them in school structures and processes; and (3) a shared commitment to a long-term relationship of mutual respect. Especially we found this latter point—building a long-term relationship—to be critical. While school and community agencies often have similar goals—that is, positive outcomes for students—in practice, school-community partnerships are often complex and at times challenging, involving distinct organizational cultures, accountability systems, communication styles, and perspectives. In each of our sample schools, sites had examples of strong partnerships they felt to be deeply aligned with their school goals, vision, and every-day administration, as well partnerships that were more peripheral or, even, had ended as school leadership had determined they were no longer serving the school’s and students’ needs. In sum, partner agencies are critical elements of community school implementation, providing comprehensive services to students, their families, and at times, the broader community. However, to align and integrate these partnerships into the school (ultimately, fostering greater coherence) requires collaboration from all adults at the school, as well as a shared commitment.
School leadership is key to opening the process of integrating and aligning community partners into schools. Richardson (2009) [
14] argues that effective community school implementation requires leaders able to “plan and implement a vision, create relationships with critical people and organizations, understand and navigate (formal and informal) power relationships, and commandeer resources to support the proposed vision and structure”. During the course of our study, we found striking similarities in the approaches to leadership across each of our sample sites. While this study did not actively compare traditional to community school sites, these findings may help illuminate the unique ways in which leadership manifests at effective community schools.
Across our sample sites, while the principal was clearly the guiding force of the school, non-school site entities—such as partner agencies, community school managers, and sometimes families—played an integral role in school vision, planning, coordination, and even management. OUSD refers to this leadership approach as collaborative leadership, and has made the term a key feature in their community school model. All five of our sample sites demonstrated, to varying degrees, a collaborative leadership approach and considered it to be an important feature of their school. We also observed that this more inclusive form of leadership was necessary to foster inclusion of multiple stakeholders and alignment and integration of the various components of community school work, especially the comprehensive services with the school’s academic core. Concretely, principals played a significant role in facilitating collaboration between instructional and support staff, prioritizing parents and parent voice, articulating a strong vision for the school, and incorporating divergent stakeholders into that vision (e.g., sharing administrative responsibilities with the community school manager, allowing partners a place at the table). While collaborative leadership may appear in traditionally schools as well, it was essential for maintaining the dynamic shared vision that characterized successful community schools in our sample.
The collaborative culture of these community schools allowed for resources to be better leveraged and aligned to support student needs. For example, as described above, an afterschool provider collaborated with school leadership to adjust their own staffing schedule to allow afterschool mentors to spend time in the classroom during the day. This institutional collaboration—the willingness to be flexible and align one’s organizational resources to the school’s needs—facilitated on-the-ground collaboration in the classroom; mentors had time to coordinate their curriculum with teaching staff, ensuring afterschool instruction was aligned with school-day instruction, as well as strengthening the school-day instruction by providing another skilled instructor in the classroom. In our sample schools, the community school manager often played an important role in bridging and aligning school and partner efforts.
At all five sample schools, we observed evidence of a collaborative culture, in which adults at the school worked together across traditional boundaries to serve students’ needs. Through this collaboration, facilitated by key structures and supports (including the hiring of a designated community school manager), schools showed signs of greater cohesion and coherence; community services and supports were aligned with and integrated into the instructional core of the school. This work was made possible through long-term commitment—from school, partner, and district staff—to build relationships, foster trust, and ultimately, sustain the model. Further, while the primary focus of this paper is on the community school implementation process itself, overall we found that school adults perceived that community schools helped remove barriers to learning, allowed teachers to focus more on instruction, and contributed to a positive school climate.
In addition to interviews with key staff, we did analyze OUSD administrative data as an additional source of information regarding the relationship between community school implementation and student outcomes anticipated to be influenced by community school activities. We examined school-level trends in leading indicators of academic engagement and performance related to student behavior and attendance.
Figure 2 reports three-year trends in chronic absenteeism and student suspension rates for the three schools in our study sample that serve middle school students along with middle school district-wide averages. We examine middle school grades here because three of our five sample schools serve this population. Further, this grade level allows for comparisons between community schools and traditional schools, as there are very few community schools at the elementary school level, and few traditional schools at the high school level, making comparisons between community and traditional schools difficult. All three of these schools demonstrate reductions in the percentage of students suspended, consistent with district-wide trends. Further, in these schools, chronic absence either decreased or remained below the district average. Overall, these figures suggest trends in the desired direction although further statistical analysis is required to explore these relationships before making any causal inferences.
Finally, it is important to acknowledge the limitations to the research presented in this paper. First, while the findings reflect the perspectives of multiple stakeholders involved in implementing the community school work in these schools, they do not directly capture the voices of the students and families affected. Future research on this topic should include interviews with students and families in order to better understand their experiences and perspectives. Second, this study focuses primarily on understanding implementation of the community school model, and less so on the resulting outcomes for students, schools, and families. Reported outcomes are largely short-term and self-reported by respondents, in addition to examining unadjusted patterns in administrative data. Further, this study is limited in its investigation of the district role in community school implementation, and the extent to which district leaders perceive community schools as a new institutional design.