text: Martin J. Blank 2014-09-30T07:55:35-04:00 Martin J. Blank http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=martin-j-blank Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Martin J. Blank Good old fashioned elbow grease. An Emergent Approach to School-Community-Family Partnerships tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.5607083 2014-07-21T16:08:54-04:00 2014-09-20T05:59:07-04:00 Martin J. Blank http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-j-blank/ First, the authors recognize that improving student achievement is neither simple nor complicated but rather complex. "Complex problems," they note, "are dynamic, nonlinear, and counter-intuitive. They are the result of the interplay between multiple independent factors that influence each other in ever-changing ways." The authors suggest that student achievement is a complex problem, "influenced by myriad interdependent factors such as school leadership, economic and family circumstances, peer dynamics, role models, and even nutrition." Leaders in the community schools movement have long known that attending to all these factors is necessary to help prepare students for college, career, and citizenship. Regrettably, education reform has been driven by a far too narrow construct focused primarily on standards, testing and accountability, and teacher quality. That's important when done well but just not enough to combat the complex challenges we face in educating our young people. Paul Barton of ETS warned in a paper on The Hard Facts of Education Reform, "We tend to put considerations of family, community, and economy off-limits in education-reform policy discussions. However, we do so at our peril." To suggest that educating students in poverty is anything other than a complex challenge is to avoid the hard facts. Second, the authors defined an emergent approach as a strategy that "accepts that a realized strategy emerges over time as the initial intentions collide with and accommodate to a changing reality." The graphic for this concept starts as a straight line and then loops upwards as the strategy confronts reality. It immediately brought to mind the spiraling process of change that was outlined in Together We Can: Crafting a Profamily System of Education and Human Services in 1993. The spiral in Together We Can underlined that the challenge local leaders faced was "to develop a process of working together that is flexible enough to allow adjustments to new circumstances, while staying focused on long-term goals...a picture of this process looks much more like a spiral than a straight line. Straight lines can stop dead when they run into roadblocks or ricochet off obstacles in unintended directions. A spiral, however, develops a process of working together and loops back on itself to gain strength." The spiral (TWC, P. 21) also described a five stage process of change: getting together, building trust and ownership, developing a strategic plan, taking action, and going to scale. It built on conflict resolution and negotiations research, as well as the experience of education and human services collaboratives. The emphasis on trust in an emergent approach reflects our own understanding. We knew that the hardest part of bringing different people and institutions together was getting people to trust one another--to believe that individual interests would be better served by working together rather than independently. We advocated trust building activities--jointly reviewing data, visiting promising programs, listening collectively to families and neighborhood residents and involving them in decision-making processes, and creating safe spaces to address tough challenges of race and power. We made clear that trust building was an ongoing part of the collaborative enterprise. It also soon became clear that "going to scale" was not a discrete stage but rather a developmental process of broadening work to engage new partners and deepening that work so that there were changes in policy, practice and mindset necessary to produce sustainable change in the way systems and institutions operate. And as the Coalition for Community Schools, which grew in part from Together We Can, thought about scale, we realized that scaling to get better results for young people was our North Star--the compass that guides our way--as the writers on strategic philanthropy note. The community schools work led us to develop resources and tools that reflect three other elements of an emergent approach: strategy setting frameworks and processes that give people a clear sense of where they will be heading without suggesting a step-by-step process; new organizational structures and systems at both the site (schools in our case) and systems level; and leaders who build a culture of joint-problem solving. Leadership remains the most critical capacity issue. We need leaders who understand what John Gardner said in On Leadership 20 years ago, "In a tumultuous swiftly changing environment, in a world of multiple colliding systems, the hierarchical position of leaders within their own systems is of limited value because some of the most critical tasks require lateral leadership--boundary crossing leadership--involving groups over whom they have no control." Without leaders who are willing to cross boundaries, the change and the results we seek, regardless of the strategy, will continue to elude us. Thinking about the complexity of education reform through the lens of an emergent approach should give pause to everyone working to change public schools and should push us to carefully assess whether we are heading in the right direction.]]> Navigating the Culture of Schools and Communities tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.5552499 2014-07-02T15:08:12-04:00 2014-09-01T05:59:05-04:00 Martin J. Blank http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-j-blank/ Brooke Troutman, a Northwestern University intern with the Coalition for Community Schools, at the Institute for Educational Leadership, contributed to this blog. I attended the Promise Neighborhoods National Network Conference recently, and one issue struck me as particularly noteworthy. As Director of the Coalition for Community Schools, I have long paid attention to progress in community-based approaches to education as well as the challenges that still persist. Not surprisingly, even as deeper partnerships between schools and community groups have emerged, a familiar question was posed during a community schools workshop: "What advice do you have for community-based organizations seeking to work with schools to help young people succeed?" Given this old problem and Arne Duncan's call to create thousands more promise neighborhoods and community-centered schools, it became clear that we need to be sure everyone understands the differences in the character of these institutions and how those factors influence their capacity to work together. We examined these issues 13 years ago in a paper entitled Education and Community Building: Connecting Two Worlds. Education and Community Building identified a number of sticking points that can gum up the relationship between schools and community-building groups (CBOs). Most relevant today are issues of leadership, power, accountability, and conflict. Understanding these factors establishes the groundwork for successful collaboration between community and school that can be applied to community schools, promise neighborhoods, and other school and community partnerships. The dynamics of leadership vary significantly between schools and community builders. Whereas schools rely heavily on credentials and boundaries of authority, CBOs' leadership structures tend to be fluid and based on the ability to create relationships. Consequently, a school leader might struggle to view a community leader as qualified, while a community builder might see her school counterparts as bureaucratic. A CBO leader requires social capital because support from the community empowers her actions. On the other hand, a need for accountability and efficiency demand tight boundaries of school leadership. Acknowledging differences in leadership structures as legitimate helps to develop bonds between school and community and creates a mutually beneficial relationship. Schools and CBOs also understand power in different ways. Schools tend to view power in terms of tangible characteristics like size, authority, and resources. When viewing partnerships, they often evaluate the potential resources from their own institutional perspective. CBOs, however, see power as something less tangible and deriving from people. CBOs see the untapped potential in mobilizing individuals to overcome racial and class disparities. This philosophy drives organizations that are part of the Journey for Justice Alliance. While such organizations may not be the most abundant in resources and may be overlooked by a school, these organizations are overflowing in potential influence due to their support from the community to create an equitable education. A relationship between school and community will thrive if resources of all types are considered to be powerful and valuable. Accountability is another source of potential collaboration between school and community that too often is seen as a point of tension. Today, it has become apparent that almost every reform, policy, and program must be backed with some form of accountability. In schools, that accountability is standard-driven and can be seen most easily through data, such as test scores or graduation rates. On the other hand, a CBO's accountability is used for such things as short-term funding and is much less likely to be subjected to the public scrutiny that schools face. As a result, this often translates into skepticism when schools work with CBOs. However, understanding the similar reliance upon accountability helps both schools and community organizations realize that they are working toward the same goals and are faced with similar challenges in achieving them. The relationship between community and school in the area of conflict is another important sticking point. Conflict in terms of a school is typically viewed as problematic and negative. In terms of a community and CBOs, conflict is welcomed as a vehicle for change; conflict represents a method of communication that leads to substantial and necessary community and organizational development. Understanding these two viewpoints could create a new lens to view conflict, in which schools have a greater understanding of the origin of conflict and the means to resolve it for the benefit of the larger community. Understanding these sticking points is just a first step. In Education and Community Building, we suggested "Rules of Engagement" to guide relationship building. First, find out just what each other's needs and interests are. Then, reach out and find ways to put into action the information acquired. When reaching out, remember you are on someone else's turf, making it vital to keep in mind the culture and values of the other's institution. Spell out exactly the purpose and terms of your joint efforts. Through this process, clear lines of comfort and priorities are established, and a strong structure is built for the final step of working out issues and building from successes. The application of these basic rules of engagement has contributed to expanded and deeper relationships between schools and community building organizations in recent years. But, we have still a long way to go to unite school and community for student success. Whether it be in the context of Promise Neighborhoods, Choice Neighborhoods or community schools, partnerships are vital to student and community improvement. Even as we push forward, it is necessary for us to step back and determine whether solutions to the problems we have can be found through understanding the fundamental cultures of institutions and organizations.]]> Opportunity for All Demands All of Us tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.4905204 2014-03-05T13:17:47-05:00 2014-05-05T05:59:01-04:00 Martin J. Blank http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-j-blank/ Contributors: Kwesi Rollins, Director, Leadership Programs at the Institute for Educational Leadership and Reuben Jacobson, Senior Research Associate at the Coalition for Community Schools, Institute for Educational Leadership. President Obama's announcement of a signature initiative to help young men of color succeed will bring national focus to the many deep inequities they face systemically and on a daily basis. The President is not only highlighting the "problem," he is working toward solutions toward creating opportunity for all. And he's asking all of us to pitch in, to work together, and with a sense of urgency. Community school leaders and advocates from Oakland to Cincinnati, and in many other communities have been working on solutions and are ready to step up. In fact one of the strategies the President highlighted is the "Becoming A Man" (B.A.M.) initiative run by Youth Guidance in Chicago, a part of the Chicago Public Schools Community Schools Initiative and one of our partners in the Coalition for Community Schools. Youth Guidance operates B.A.M. in nearly 40 Chicago schools, many of which are community schools where the organization is a lead partner and has a deep relationship with the school principal, teachers and other staff. A community school is a place where the school and partners from across the community come together to educate and support kids. B.A.M. seeks to reduce dropout and violence among male students through programming inside and outside of school. There are six core values: integrity, accountability, self-determination, positive anger expression, visionary goal setting, and respect for womanhood. These are values that we want for all of our children -- values that community schools and their partners work toward daily. Our conversation with Youth Guidance leaders indicates that B.A.M. operates most smoothly in community schools. Malika Graham-Bailey, Director of Community and After-School Programs at Youth Guidance says, "creating a presence for B.A.M. within the community schools framework allows not only for a deeper recognition of non-instructional challenges many students face but also provides access to other diverse, targeted interventions and resources that may be needed, as well as the qualified people to implement them. In addition, the extension of 'whole-child' engagement within our community schools has aided in leveraging essential and impactful resources - both fiscal and in-kind." The B.A.M story exemplifies what community schools are doing across the country - uniting youth and families with educators, community partners, elected leaders, and funders, to address our most challenging problems. They share responsibility for creating the conditions that will enable our most vulnerable children - children facing the greatest inequities - to succeed. And they sustain their work because they know that solving deep and systemic problems cannot be solved by a campaign. Our children require a sustained commitment throughout their lives. You can't be "My Brother's Keeper" one day and not the next. It takes a deep commitment to young men of color that they can trust in, day in and day out. Their trust is foundational to our efforts to support them and ensure the opportunities they deserve. We will be talking about all of these issues together with our friends from Youth Guidance and several B.A.M. young people at our National Forum, Community Schools: The Engine of Opportunity, in Cincinnati in early April. Join us, bring your community, and learn how all of us can work together to make opportunity for all a reality.]]> Community School Collaborations--A Lifeline for Early Learning Program Success tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.4058120 2013-10-07T12:05:53-04:00 2014-01-23T18:58:21-05:00 Martin J. Blank http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-j-blank/ Guest Bloggers: Janet Brown, Senior Early Childhood Program Specialist and Kwesi Rollins, Director of Leadership Programs at the Institute for Educational Leadership In Lifelines for Poor Children, economist and Nobel laureate James Heckman argues that quality early learning programs represent our best national education investment due to evidence of societal benefits from longitudinal studies of Perry Preschool and Abecedarian early childhood programs. The Perry Preschool Project and Abecedarian programs worked extensively with families in their home and community contexts. Successes from such early learning and family support efforts suggests that cross sector community collaborations, such as those in community schools are ideal contexts for scaling up early childhood programming for low income children and families. Such schools share program approaches with Perry Preschool and Abecedarian including home visiting and follow up supports for children and families in their communities. Perry Preschool teachers conducted weekly home visits to families during the two years their 3 and 4 year olds participated in the program. Abecedarian--with 15 home visits per year and ongoing support until age 8--provided children and families with a seamless array of early learning resources including summer activity packets, assistance with summer camp experiences, visits to the public library, and tutoring in reading skills. Similarly, community schools partner extensively with health and social service providers, libraries and museums, offer tutoring and other expanded learning opportunities and serve as neighborhood hubs to ensure that children and families have what they need to be successful - in school and in life. The Coalition for Community Schools' Early Childhood/Community School Linkages Project applied some of the implementation lessons of the Perry Preschool Project and Abecedarian programs in three community school settings. Preliminary results from Linkages highlight the success of a few simple practices that led to improved school readiness (for parents and kids!), helping to ensure effective transitions of preschool children to school settings. Based on learnings from the Linkages Project, The John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and the Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL) have advanced a theory of change that identifies practices that improve early learning program coherence at three levels 1) the early childhood/school setting 2) collaborating systems level and 3) individual child and family levels. Recommended practices enable community schools to ensure continuity for families and children from the start of early learning throughout their transition to public school. Heckman notes that the investment in fostering children's early life skills and their families' parenting skills enables low income children to reap lifelong benefits. And while he doesn't talk explicitly about community contexts as part of the early learning investment, perhaps that is due to a presumption of community collaborations as a 'best practice' in supporting children and families. This practice is at the center of the community schools strategy and a key element in all of IEL's early learning initiatives, as evident in our partnership with Ellen Galinsky's innovative Mind in the Making initiative. As community members, parents, educators, leaders, and policy makers around the country try to take action in response to the child development and early learning research, they need to incorporate early education strategies in ways that make sense for their communities. By translating the idea of improved linkages into an actionable framework for creating coherence between early learning and elementary education IEL is working to accelerate efforts to ensure that all children thrive as they move through their early childhood and early elementary years. These efforts are not a substitute for a deeper national investment in early learning, but they are fundamental to strengthening existing early childhood programs, and must be a core element of any new programming as well.]]> Community-Centered Schools: A Challenge and Opportunity for Teach For America tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3790374 2013-08-21T11:03:03-04:00 2013-10-21T05:12:02-04:00 Martin J. Blank http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-j-blank/ This is a guest post from my colleague Mary Kingston, Public Policy Manager of the Coalition for Community Schools and TFA Alumnae. There are few things that we can do better alone than together, and education is no exception. Today, teachers often feel alone in trying to simultaneously provide their students the best academic experience possible while offering enriching opportunities and addressing all the needs students carry with them to school. Teachers and students should not feel alone anymore; we need the entire community involved to support them, not just because teachers and students need this support, but because it's the right thing to do. When I say community, I mean students' families, local businesses, community- and faith-based organizations, and local elected officials along with other community leaders. The problem is not that our families and community members are not eager to support their teachers; it's that too often they haven't been invited to do so in a thorough, respectful, and systematic way. When I taught middle and high school English in Oakland, CA through Teach For America (TFA), a nonprofit that recruits top college graduates to teach in underperforming schools for two years in an effort to close the achievement gap, I experienced this school-community disconnect. While my school offered some community-based partnerships, including tutors from U.C. Berkeley and some mental health services, it was clear that overall we fell short in providing what our students needed and deserved. With TFA's focus as an organization on academic results, I felt that it failed to recognize and promote school-community partnerships that could have significantly enriched our students' school experiences as well as decreased our stress level as beginning teachers in feeling that we had to do this all on our own. Last month, about eighty people gathered in Chicago for the first national summit of its kind to protest current practices of TFA. This summit occurred as part of a national conference called Free Minds, Free People. Summit organizers sought to bring to light the harmful impact they feel that TFA has on students and their communities, and to talk through ways they could remedy this worrisome trend in their respective communities. In a phone interview I conducted, a few of the summit organizers noted their concern that TFA is positioned as "central in the corporate movement through a market-driven ideology vs. a community-driven approach." Summit participants included Teach For America alumni, students, community activists, parents both with children in schools with Teach For America corps members and parents of Teach For America alumni, professors of education, and traditionally credentialed teachers, among others. One of the comments the summit organizers made particularly resonated with me as a TFA alumnae. They noted TFA's insistence on an "individualist culture" that places the responsibility of closing the achievement gap solely on the teacher and the student, while ignoring the pervasive opportunity gap that schools face through inequitable resources due to poverty and the broader cultural and societal influences that have increasingly contributed to this inequity. As Hannah Sadtler, a TFA alumnae describes it, "It was all about how I was doing as a teacher and how my students were doing on tests, so my and their progress were judged on this one measure...[ it sends the message that] you as the individual didn't work hard enough if you don't succeed. While I believe that we need individual effort to succeed, it's not the reason we have these gaps and inequitable schools in this country." The summit organizers described TFA's practice to only look at test scores as "dehumanizing" to corps members, students, and families, and that "TFA corps members and alumni [at the summit] had a lot of stories about how painful it was to be in that role and not able to support their students adequately with also so much pressure." Not just TFA teachers were affected by this, however: many summit attendees including students, parents of TFA alumni, and community leaders shed tears of frustration in recounting their experiences. So what do the summit organizers want to happen? They want to push back against TFA's approach and promote--separate from TFA--a community-centered approach to education where the school and community are not only strongly connected but also strongly supportive of each other. Through this approach, teachers and students would no longer feel that their success is solely measured by test scores and entirely up to them, but rather that success goes beyond test scores to embrace students' social, emotional, physical, civic as well as cognitive development that stems from a strong and dedicated partnership between school and community. The summit organizers indicated that their progress toward this goal may not be as public or immediate as people want, but assured me that they are mobilizing communities in a truly grassroots way to get there, and though that will take time, it's the right way to do it. They are currently planning an October conference for their next convening. As a TFA alumnae, I remain supportive of TFA's mission to ensure that all students receive an excellent education, but it cannot be achieved separate from communities, or at the expense of them. If we are truly committed to achieving educational equity, we must include students' families and communities as key partners in supporting, enriching, and adding meaning to their learning and development. Only then will we have an army strong enough to truly end educational inequity. Special thanks to the following organizers of the summit who contributed to the interview: Ashana Bigard, Ruth Idakula, Hannah Sadtler, and Rebecca Radding. ]]> Connecting the Dots: Inequality and Education and the Need for Community tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3510891 2013-06-27T15:51:28-04:00 2013-08-27T05:12:01-04:00 Martin J. Blank http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-j-blank/ U.S. is now the least economically mobile country in the developed world; it's harder to move out of poverty here (though easier to slide into it) than in any competitor nation. Education policies that reverse this trend, then, and that alleviate the impacts of inequality, are critical to closing the opportunity gaps that are at the root of achievement gaps. Last year, Russell Sage issued a 550-page tome, Whither Opportunity?, in which leading education scholars offered rigorous, data-based evidence that education policies biased toward the rich are exacerbating our growing income and wealth gaps, making the American Dream ever more elusive. It should have been hard to ignore that massive body of evidence that current "reforms" cannot fix what ails our education system. But it wasn't. Congressmen Mike Honda's and Chaka Fattah's 2011 Equity and Excellence Commission, which was established in US DOE Office of Civil Rights, issued its report, "For Each and Every Child," in February 2013. The Commission was charged with informing the Department regarding disparities in opportunities and how to address them. It focused in particular on the long-neglected issues of school funding equity and state school finance systems. The report's core recommendations fill holes in standards-based policies: school finance reform, preschool, and comprehensive student supports, as well as more effective means of ensuring quality teachers in struggling schools and of ensuring strong, holistic accountability. "This report comes out in the context of growing concentrated student poverty in districts across the country." -- ELC David Sciarra, June 19, 2013 webinar. On the heels of the Equity Commission, the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education published an April 2013 comprehensive assessment of the lack of progress attained by a decade of narrow reforms in New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. Market-oriented Education Reforms' Rhetoric Trumps Reality brought to light the near-total lack of achievement gains in the three urban districts that led the way in using test scores to make high-stakes decisions about teachers and entire schools. Relative to other high-poverty heavily minority urban districts, these three also made less progress toward closing race- and income-based achievement gaps. The report explores, as well, systemic and community damage, such as loss of neighborhood hubs due to school closures, and resource deprivation for the highest-risk students and their teachers and schools as charter schools were put in their place instead. Finally, it points to the irony that, while more holistic initiatives with real potential to raise achievement and narrow gaps were also implemented in each of the three cities, lack of attention to them has made their scaling up and replication less likely than that of strategies that do harm. The latest institution to chime in is the Council on Foreign Relations, which released the newest report in its Renewing America Scorecard series this month. CFR echoes the findings of the Equity Report Commission, BBA, and others: "The real scourge of the U.S. education system--and its greatest competitive weakness--is the deep and growing achievement gap between socioeconomic groups that begins early and lasts through a student's academic career," writes Rebecca Strauss, associate director for CFR's Renewing America publications. The report uses data at each point in the education trajectory -- from preschool through college dropout -- to make a strong case that the U.S. is not so much falling behind as pulling apart. In the earliest years, we put ourselves at a disadvantage by enrolling only 69 percent of U.S. children in preschool, compared to a rate of 81 percent among our allies. And this does not account for the reality that, because the American preschool system is heavily private, that 69 percent represents only about half of low-income children versus nearly all high-income youngsters, nor the difference in average quality between the two groups' options. And while we can get more students to college, lack of preparation, support, and resources raises our drop-out rate substantially. In the K-12 years between, funding and other inequities keep low-income and minority children far behind. A problem that extends far beyond schools requires remedies that also reach much further. Districts that recognize this are partnering with a range of community institutions -- community-based organizations, local government, and health and youth development agencies -- to provide opportunities and supports that meet schools' and students' specific needs. These partners enhance students' school readiness, keep them physically and mentally healthy, and thus, in school and focused, and connect them with mentors. They strengthen student engagement and make learning more meaningful by linking schools with business, higher education and arts and cultural institutions. Moreover, a strategy developed based on community input, and that employs community resources, is inherently more likely to succeed and be sustained than one perceived as a foreign intervention. Indeed, evidence shows that these strategies -- in a growing number of places like Syracuse, Cincinnati, and Multnomah County (Portland) Oregon -- are having a real impact. When the whole community focuses on supporting the whole child and the whole school, amazing things can happen.]]> Early Learning Is Everyone's Business tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3385661 2013-06-04T16:02:02-04:00 2013-08-04T05:12:02-04:00 Martin J. Blank http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-j-blank/ The research on the value of early learning is indisputable. But equally important is what the common sense of parents tells us how much they value these opportunities. As Tim Noah commented recently, "I've never met an affluent 4 year old who is not enrolled in preschool, but nationwide about 1/3 of kids that age aren't." Quality early learning is an equity issue; all children deserve the opportunity. The early childhood proposal that is on the table should command the attention of every individual and organizations committed to our children. Organizations must band together across sectors and interests to advocate for the early learning plan. Whether your primary focus is housing and community development, health and social services, youth development, civil rights, higher education, violence prevention, the environment, or community schools for that matter, everyone knows that early learning matters to their own institutional goals. Everyone must get on board with the early childhood and education communities to move this agenda. The voice of all these powerful constituencies working together will make a difference.]]> Organizing and Partnering for School Change in East Los Angeles tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2576049 2013-01-30T08:47:02-05:00 2013-04-01T05:12:01-04:00 Martin J. Blank http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-j-blank/ InnerCity Struggle (ICS) and Los Angeles Education Partnership (LAEP), organizations that played key roles in the development of Torres, continue their strong partnerships with Torres to support success of the school. InnerCity Struggle is an East Los Angeles-based community organizing group; ICS has worked with youth and community residents since 1994 to promote safe, healthy, and non-violent communities in the Eastside. It organized students, residents, and educators through petition drives, community meetings, mobilizations, and rallies to secure the construction of Esteban E. Torres High School in 2004. For decades, East Los Angeles had one high school that was built to serve 1,500 students and instead housed more than 4,700. The high school ran on a year-round academic calendar with students divided into three tracks to accommodate the overwhelming enrollment. As a result, students lost 17 academic school days per year. InnerCity Struggle's tireless efforts in organizing the East LA community to urge the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to alleviate the over-crowding to increase graduation and college-going rates of local youth led to the opening of the much needed new high school. Long before the organizing effort, a group of LAUSD teachers were participating in the Humanitas program led by the Los Angeles Education Partnership. For two decades Humanitas has helped teachers develop inquiry-based interdisciplinary approaches to instruction. These approaches engage students in challenging learning experiences organized around relevant arts and humanities themes and encourage critical thinking, writing, and verbal skills. Humanitas teachers and students form close relationships that support student learning, and teachers improve their knowledge and skill through ongoing collaboration with their colleagues. The interests of InnerCity Struggle and LAEP converged when LAUSD set in place a public school choice policy focused on the type of groups that could run new schools, just as the new Torres campus was nearing completion. This policy allowed organizations from inside and outside LAUSD such as charter schools, education organizations, LAUSD administrators, and teachers to apply to run schools. Encouraged by their shared experience with Humanitas, groups of teachers proposed to run five small high schools on the Torres campus. With the support of LAEP, teachers worked many late nights to complete their applications. Influenced by the success of LAEP's community school work in the San Fernando Valley, the teacher teams combined Humanitas and community schools concepts in their applications -- embracing a holistic school operational framework concept. InnerCity Struggle's base of community members and youth were invested in ensuring Torres opened with a rigorous model focused on college and career preparation. InnerCity Struggle mobilized broad community support in an Advisory Vote for the high quality application prepared by LAEP and the Humanitas teachers, including securing support from civic leaders, CBO leaders and most notably the namesake of the school, Retired Congressman Esteban E. Torres, who all committed to support the school's success; other proposals received little support. The LA Board of Education approved the plan. In the fall of 2011, the Torres campus opened with five independent academies of 500 students each focused on performing arts, engineering and technology, social justice leadership, arts and technology, and urban planning. The Academies embody the Humanitas approach and offer students a robust college preparatory curriculum that expands learning beyond the classroom and connects students with real world learning experiences. The East Los Angeles Performing Arts Academy, for example, works with the LA Repertory Theater, LA Opera, and the Shakespeare Theater of Los Angeles among others. Students at the Humanitas Academy of Art and Technology have been working with staff at the Huntington Library, Arts Collections, and Botanical Gardens to capture their everyday lives in East Los Angeles through photos, painting, and other media. The Engineering and Technology Academy is working with local community colleges such as East Los Angeles College, to provide students with access to STEM careers and education. The Social Justice Leadership Academy is working with local non-profits such as Farmscape to address local social needs such as access to healthy food. The East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy introduces its students to urban planning concepts and works closely with private firms such as Gensler Architecture in order to give students first hand experiences. But the founding teachers at Torres and their allies at the Los Angeles Education Partnership and InnerCity Struggle knew they had to go beyond academics to help students succeed. The challenges of low-wage working families, health and wellness, and gang violence could not be ignored. Their applications envisioned a campus wellness center operating through partnerships with Bienvenidos, a community-based mental health agency with additional support from the California Hispanic Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse and Hillsides. The community school model is beginning to effectively meet student needs beyond the classroom through relationships with more than 20 other agencies in the neighborhood which address hunger and nutrition, social services, adult education, and numerous other student, family, and neighborhood needs. Torres High School chose to have a full time community school coordinator, employed by LAEP, who works with all five schools, InnerCity Struggle, and many other partners to ensure the engagement of parents and the community and the alignment of school and partner efforts. Students are part of the solution at Torres, too. Juniors and seniors founded the Torres Mentorship program to create positive change in their school, home, and community. Students identify needs and work in collaboration with adults involved with the school to ensure that all Torres students are healthy in body and mind. Summer freshman orientation, voter registration, cancer awareness, and mentoring at nearby elementary schools are among their activities; and, they plan to engage more students. In addition, parents have organized themselves into a council that is focused on how they can support student success across the various school sites. Esteban Torres is only two-years-old, so we'll hear more about longer term results for students and the community. For now, in one example, East LA Academy for Performing Arts at Torres graduated 86 percent of its seniors in 2012, despite the fact that 70 percent of the class had arrived at ELAPA two years ago when it opened without sufficient credits or with a D or F in a college-required course. Sixty percent of the graduates were eligible for University of California or California State Universities. In the meantime, Torres is a testament to what is possible when school and community leaders work together and create a beacon of hope and opportunity for students, their families, and an entire neighborhood. It has taken advocacy from InnerCity Struggle, LAEP and school board champions such as Board President Monica Garcia to make this vision become a reality. We need more collective action like this to improve our schools.]]> Student Advocacy: A Sharper Picture tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2402549 2013-01-03T11:09:53-05:00 2013-03-05T05:12:01-05:00 Martin J. Blank http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-j-blank/ John C. Fremont High School is in a challenging neighborhood in South L.A. with many of its students and their families facing many difficult issues in their everyday lives that influence their education and their school. Yet the educators, community partners and students with whom I met, demonstrated a powerful sense of possibility and commitment as they work together to create a community school that will enable all learners "to be productive ethical individuals empowered by quality standards-based education in order to contribute to local and global communities." Like many community schools, Fremont operates as a partnership between school leaders and an external partner, in this case the Los Angeles Education Partnership (LAEP), a widely respected education intermediary. LAEP has a community school coordinator at Fremont who brings school staff and community partners together to solve problems. The coordinator also has personal ties to the community since his father grew up in the neighborhood. Fremont's teachers are advocating for their students with high-level classes that provide them with the kind of rich learning experiences they need and want. There are numerous advanced placement opportunities reflecting the efforts of community organizing groups that have fought to ensure that all L.A. students have access to the type of classes that will enable them to compete for entry into California's University and state college system. A series of small career-themed learning communities -- Math, Science and Technology; Medical Environmental Science and Agriculture; Environmental and Social Justice Leadership, and Global Media Arts -- bring learning to life for students. But Fremont work goes far beyond academics. As a community school, it has deep ties to the community and intentional relationships with numerous community partners. Special workgroups advocate for students on several key challenges: A parent engagement group seeks to engage parents more actively in the education of their children, even as it responds to parents' greatest fear -- their children's survival in terms of both safety and learning; a ninth grade success group focuses on the severely low performance of entering freshmen, with a mentor program that involves juniors and seniors as mentors to incoming students; and a breaking-the-prison-pipeline group that is working to create a space where the school, its partners and families and residents can discuss the school-to-prison crisis plaguing the neighborhood and find solutions in the school and the community to address the issue. The health and mental health workgroup is particularly robust as it seeks to be a 'healing force' at Fremont, addressing trauma, health, citizenship and other challenging issues that students face. The school's psychiatric social worker operates hand in hand with the community school coordinator and with mental health therapists from the Weber Community Center; it is a sterling example of cooperation between school and community-based mental health professionals. The UMMA Community Clinic will shortly open a clinic that will serve students as well as neighborhood residents. And the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust is opening a community garden on the campus that will be used by the Medical Environmental Science and Agriculture Magnet as well as other students and residents. The community school coordinator also has organized the multiple College Access programs at Fremont so that all students who want to go to college can get the support and guidance they need. Previously those most likely to succeed often received help from more than one group, and others were left out. Most striking at Fremont is that students are becoming their own best advocates. I met with five students who are leaders in Fremont's peer mediation program working with the community school coordinator to create a safe, supportive, achievement-oriented climate and culture at the school. Their efforts have contributed to the relatively low level of suspensions at Fremont, which is currently 2.6 percent. The rate is far below other high schools in South L.A. The principal has been so impressed with the students' efforts that he is asking them to not only increase the number of students who are mediators, but also to train the teachers in peer mediation so that they will understand how students are working to change the climate and the culture of the school. Make no mistake. John C. Fremont High School is still struggling like many urban schools across the country. While 85 percent of its graduating seniors went on to post-secondary education in 2009 and 2010, the 2,600-student school still has only has a 37 percent four-year graduation rate, low proficiency levels and attendance problems. Yet the growing number of adults in the school -- who are advocates for Fremont's students' learning and development and the fact that more and more Fremont students are becoming empowered as advocates for themselves, their peers and their school -- offers hope for their future, and those that follow behind them. This joint student advocacy -- this sense of shared responsibility -- exemplifies the best of what community schools can offer.]]> Beyond Chicago tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1913102 2012-09-25T12:18:59-04:00 2012-11-25T05:12:01-05:00 Martin J. Blank http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-j-blank/ The Cincinnati model of community schools or what Cincinnati calls "community learning centers" were on display for the second Community Schools Study Tour conducted this year by the Coalition for Community Schools at the Institute for Educational Leadership. What I and 20 leaders from across the country observed is a heartening example of what a mature and developed system of community schools can offer to respond to the critical needs of its children, and create more opportunities for them. The Community Learning Centers have since been recognized on NBC's Education Nation, as a case study of innovative solutions to our nation's education challenges. Cincinnati's Community Learning Centers began in 2000. Former Ohio Governor John Gilligan and former Superintendent Steve Adamowski were key initiators of the effort. What has made the Cincinnati model work so well? Steve Means, who attended the Study Tour for the U.S. Department of Education, characterized the initiative as having "restored the social compact," and indeed Cincinnati has found a formula that weaves together the resources of many community partners - business, public and private agencies, higher education, neighborhood, and faith-based groups - to design interventions and opportunities that work in alignment with principals, teachers, other school staff, and community members to achieve shared goals. Darlene Kamine, a former juvenile court judge, has been with the Program since its inception. She now directs the Community Learning Center Institute (CLCI), a leadership organization for the community schools effort funded by private foundations. Kamine notes that Cincinnati Public Schools, the Board of Education, and the Cincinnati Teachers' Union have agreed to develop all of the City's public schools into community learning centers, with a school board policy undergirding the strategy. Every Cincinnati public school is now a community learning center, and in each neighborhood these collaborative efforts are accountable to a site-based governing body - the Local School Decision Making Committee made up of parents, teachers, students, and community members. Each learning center is seen as having particular needs. Its local governing committee decides what its students require and selects the community partners -- from a carefully assembled group of organizations who receive "rent" free space in the school. Kamine views the learning centers as "customers" for the community partners and considers this configuration vital to the strength of the program, because it directly commits the school and the partners to one another. There also is no cost to the host school for the opportunities and supports that community partners bring. Students have access to tutors, mentors, and business partners; health and dental clinics and, vision centers; mental health counseling, nutrition providers, and after school enrichment programs. Community partners are self-sustaining, they either come with their own sources of funding for their own missions, or they can bill for their services through Medicaid or private insurance. Many of these programs -- all conveniently available on site to students and families - also provide services to the faculty and staff, as well as to other members of the community. A Resource Coordinator works in tandem with the principal to align the work of the partners with the goals of the school through the OnePlan School Improvement Process. The coordinator brings together partner teams to focus on key needs of students (e.g., tutoring, afterschool, health and mental health). The United Way of Greater Cincinnati, Greater Cincinnati Foundation, Schiff Foundation, Haile Foundation, and CPS finance the resource coordinator positions and serve as the Strategy Group for the Community Learning Centers. Supporting the work of partners in individual schools is a cross-boundary leadership team that includes individuals responsible for local partner networks in key arenas including college and career readiness, business partnerships, mentoring, health, and mental health. A data system developed by Cincinnati Public Schools enables educators and community partners to track support for individual students and to ensure accountability for results. Many cities have cross-sector collaboratives with similar missions; Cincinnati is the only place where these collaboratives come together to support their public schools. The development of the Cincinnati community schools initiative is ongoing. But, in fact, the citizens of Cincinnati already have encouraging numbers to offer. Through its community engagement, community learning centers have helped more than 34,000 students, who--with their most pressing human needs met--have responded with academic progress that has earned them, for the second consecutive year, an effective rating (the highest of any urban district in the State) from the Ohio Department of Education. District wide, the high school graduation rate moved from 51% in 2000 to 81.9% for the Class of 2010, and its performance index (a composite score of gains on all state tests at all grade levels) has risen from 53.2% to 87.3% in 2010--its highest ever. A city with a decidedly traditionalist bent, Cincinnati has always been an aggregation of neighborhoods. But, as in many cities, changing demographics and strained financial circumstances have eroded once vibrant communities. Now community schools have begun to restore not only the neighborhood schools but their communities as well. Moreover, they seem to be restoring the social compact. Cincinnati's citizens have come together to bring up and educate their children, and in the most fundamental sense, they have found a way to honor the social compact and insure for their city an enduring civil society. Chicago has its own community schools initiative with strong neighborhood roots; it has much to learn from Cincinnati, as do many communities and school districts across the country.]]> Lessons From Arne Duncan's Back-to-School Bus Tour tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1901794 2012-09-21T11:34:59-04:00 2012-11-21T05:12:01-05:00 Martin J. Blank http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-j-blank/ community schools strategy as a vehicle for implementing a Broader Bolder Approach to Education. Speaking in Kansas City, he described our public schools as community assets that should be open evenings and weekends, and where all individuals and organizations concerned with student success should be working together to help students and support their families. The Secretary's visits include Redwood City, CA; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Evansville, Indiana, which already have full-service community school strategies in place; and today the Secretary is in McDowell County, West Virginia, where the American Federation of Teachers has taken the lead in bringing a comprehensive set of educational and economic development resources to McDowell County. Redwood City's community schools were launched through Redwood City 2020, a partnership among the city's elementary and high school districts, Stanford University and several health organizations. Five elementary level community schools now offer family engagement, extended learning and support services for students and their families that complement student instruction. Partners include a local community college, office of parks and recreation, the police and sheriff's departments, Citizen Schools, the Peninsula Boys and Girls Clubs, and county health and mental health agencies. The Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corporation started from one community school to establish a district-wide strategy. The full-service community schools focus on strengthening ties between families and schools and ensuring that all students' physical, mental, and emotional health needs are met. Together, these efforts, which leverage a range of community resources, result in better results for students and schools. Among the improvements seen since the start of this effort are increased early literacy due to the focus on early childhood development, better behavior among students who access mental health services, and better attendance and grades among students who participated in high-quality afterschool and summer programs. In McDowell County, parents, teachers, and community leaders have recognized the need for intensive intervention if its students are to succeed. The county has consistently ranked last in education in a state in which educational attainment levels are already low. The majority of students currently live in homes without an employed parent, and deaths due to drug overdoses are common. Led by the local teachers' union, a coalition of business, foundations, government, nonprofit agencies and labor signed a covenant to develop policy and programmatic solutions to these interconnected problems. Education is at the core of the effort, with social services at school sites a key piece of the plan. Lack of affordable housing is recognized as a barrier to recruiting effective teachers that must be addressed. In all, the coalition brings together the diverse groups and perspectives needed to tackle deep-seated impediments to learning and to community economic well-being and commits to the patience and perseverance needed to address them. All of these communities recognize that poverty-related impediments to learning are real yet can be alleviated through the organization of community schools as part of a Broader Bolder Approach. In each of them, a different type of organization has taken the lead, yet the coalitions have many common partners, and they share similar goals and seek similar outcomes. In all three, the district and teachers union have joined forces to ensure that all children are supported to enable them to learn effectively and thrive. With our nation more focused on the impact of poverty on education as a result of the Chicago teachers strike, the communities that the Secretary visited exemplify effective, meaningful, lasting reform that can weaken the poverty-school attainment link that impedes learning in too many schools across our country. They demonstrate that schools and communities thrive when they work together, and that these approaches must become the norm, rather than exceptional examples.]]> Giving Our Children an Equal Opportunity to Succeed tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1844069 2012-08-31T10:52:36-04:00 2012-10-31T05:12:02-04:00 Martin J. Blank http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-j-blank/ The new global economy demands that our young people master 21st century skills and have the technical know-how by the time they graduate. And yet, many of our children will have completed the K-12 public school journey without the basic essentials -- like health care, enough food, or a safe place to call home -- that are vital for learning. Not only do these children lack some of the basics, their families can't compete with affluent parents in the race to cultivate the "super child," made possible through financial investments ranging from private tutorials to summer camp or the latest educational software. In fact, a recent study finds that the gap between what upper income parents and working class parents spend on their children has increased exponentially in the last four decades. The growing disparity between the children who "have" and those who "have not" is a violation of basic American values, which are premised on the belief that every child should have a fair chance to succeed in life. How do we return fairness and equal opportunity to the lives of poor children? How can we improve their chances in life? Here's one way: We can all work together to make public schools into the places where disadvantaged students and their families can tap into a network of community services, opportunities and supports. Vision screening, food assistance, after school enrichment, family counseling and early childhood opportunities are among the services that could be available. The community schools model requires that people from the nonprofit, high education, local government, business and faith sectors forge close, working partnerships with the public schools. When this approach is done right, it can make all the difference in the lives of young, low-income Americans. Take, for example, Glencliff High School in Nashville, Tennessee. Glencliff used to be known for problems like low graduation rates, truancy, gangs and teen pregnancy. But a few years ago, education and community leaders worked together to transform the school into a community-invested school. Today, Glencliff has a new reputation -- one based on student leadership and community service. Glencliff's students serve on community advisory boards, they work as interns at local health clinics, they show up in great numbers at college fairs and they take leading roles in school and community service projects. "Our students have a new confidence in themselves and in their ability to change the world," says Virginia Pupo-Walker, an education leader who helped bring about the transformation at Glencliff. A visitor to Glencliff feels this positive atmosphere the moment they walk into the school. The school is abuzz with student projects and student clubs, especially in the afternoon. A visitor sees that one group of students is busy writing up a school improvement project; another group is meeting with the principal to offer suggestions about school policy, while still another group of students is hard at work in the school garden, mulching and watering the plants. The community school strategy is what re-energized Glencliff High School and re-invigorated student life there. Community groups worked closely with school leaders to infuse the school with exciting projects and critical supports. A community group opened a health clinic on the school campus and encouraged students to work as interns at health clinics around town. Local universities and colleges offered college level classes to students. Nonprofit groups worked with teachers to craft a teaching plan centered on community service and student leadership. Businesses welcomed students into their offices and oriented them to the skills and education needed to become an employee. Youth advocacy groups offered workshops on preparing for college. "The community partnerships have opened doors to many, many opportunities for our students," says Pupo-Walker. "As a result, our kids now have confidence in the future, and they have confidence in themselves. We used to have only a few students show up at college fairs. But not anymore. Now, we have very strong attendance. Now our students think, 'college is for me.'" Glencliff High School's students also now have a better chance of getting into college as well. Since the transformation, more students are graduating with some college credit or college course experience, more students are taking advanced placement courses and student performance on writing tests has improved markedly. The transformation of student life at Glencliff High School in Nashville shows what can happen when a community and a school join forces and get behind the city's children. The young people are now poised to become leaders, organizers, engaged citizens, creative problem-solvers and assets to their community. This transformation also shows how a community can, as my colleague in the national equity movement Angela Glover Blackwell puts it, "take advantage of a pivotal moment and find a way to connect the changing demographics to the needs of the nation". Glencliff High School's students, roughly equally divided among black, Latino and white, are the face of America's future. It is an exemplar of the kind of change that is happening in many communities across the country. If schools and communities can work together to bring about similar transformations to student life at more schools across the country, our future, indeed, will be bright.]]> Some Kids Need More to Get the Same Result tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1728642 2012-08-01T14:03:05-04:00 2012-10-01T05:12:03-04:00 Martin J. Blank http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-j-blank/ The story is about a small school district in northern California called San Rafael City Schools. I recently met with the superintendent there, Michael Watenpaugh, and he shared some details about the unique challenges that many of his students face. The school district is located in one of the wealthiest counties in our country (Marin County), and yet some of the families who live in San Rafael are barely scraping by. Many of these families work odd jobs doing service work, such as housecleaning and landscaping. Some families live all packed together in one apartment, so as to make ends meet. Many of the parents and their children are learning English. Not only that, many of these children and families live in a neighborhood, called the Canal, which is literally cut off from the rest of the community. This is how Michael Watenpaugh describes the neighborhood: "It is surrounded by water. It's a moat, almost, with a few exceptions where the land connects to the surrounding area. It's very cut off and public transportation isn't good. Access to the greater community is challenging. There have been efforts to build a pedestrian bridge, but those haven't been successful so far." If that wasn't bad enough, the children from the Canal neighborhood were also isolated from opportunities at their local school. As Watenpaugh explains, before his superintendency, students at the school district's middle school were placed into three academic tracks, with many of the Hispanic kids and many of the kids who were learning English placed in the lowest track. Watenpaugh is now working to change all that, and he's using the community schools model as the way to do it. A community school is a place where kids not only receive engaging, individualized instruction, but also where they can connect to all kinds of special supports, services, and resources offered by community groups, government agencies, and business groups. Watenpaugh says this approach helps ensure that each one of his students gets a fair shake at school: "We are bringing together partners and services that support the needs of kids, because we all know that some kids need more to get the same." San Rafael City Schools now partners with dozens of nonprofit, government, and business groups to ensure that every single student not only graduates from high school, but is ready and prepared for college. The type of support that these groups offer ranges from mental health support to academic support. For example, one of the district's newer partners, BELL (Building Educated Leaders for Life), offers a summer enrichment program for kids at the middle school. The program helps keep kids engaged and mentally active during the summer months, helping prevent the summer slide. A partnership with Bay Area Community Resources has brought counselors into the schools, so that students have a professional to help them work through life crises and extreme stress; and, as the Superintendent explained, screen ninth graders to "see if there are indicators of disconnection..." and to "[identify] which kids need our help and attention." Additionally, in an effort to help pregnant high school girls graduate, San Rafael City Schools now partners with Head Start to have child care at school. Watenpaugh mentioned that "those little ones will soon be kindergarteners in our district," so it makes sense to support them and their families now. With these community supports in place, Watenpaugh says his students are better prepared for success in the classroom. In fact, the school district has seen gains in student achievement every single year for the past five years for Hispanic students, low-income students, and students who are learning English. More importantly, the school district has shown how far these students can go, if given an equal chance to succeed.]]> Bold Leaders for Our Public Schools tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1696647 2012-07-24T11:18:48-04:00 2012-09-23T05:12:09-04:00 Martin J. Blank http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-j-blank/ I had the opportunity to see many of these superintendents in action at the 2012 Community Schools National Forum, which took place recently in California -- a part of the country where the community schools movement is taking off. As I listened to these superintendents share stories about how they build community schools -- schools that offer an engaging curriculum and surround children and their families with supports, resources, and opportunities offered by non-profit, community, government, and business groups -- I realized that these leaders have a few special qualities in common. First, they think big and set ambitious agendas. Their agendas don't simply aim to move student test scores up a few notches. Rather, they aim to improve the overall quality of life for children so that children are ready to learn everyday when they arrive to school. Many of these superintendents oversee districts with large numbers of disadvantaged children and families facing economic stress in this great recession. These leaders look for ways to provide children with academic support and essentials -- essentials like health care or eye glasses or enough food to eat, and the kind of opportunities that wealthier families are able to provide on their own. John Porter is one such superintendent. He leads the Franklin-McKinney School District in San Jose, California, which serves students from high-poverty neighborhoods. Porter shared his bold agenda with us at the National Forum. He said: "Our number one priority is student achievement. Number two is income for families. We have families that are in crisis and we have created a program for parents to get their economic lives back in shape. And third is [neighborhood safety]. We couldn't stand anymore hearing third graders sitting at a table during lunchtime talking about how they were going to get home safely." Like John Porter, superintendents who embrace the community schools approach, see the connection between the quality of a child's life outside school and their level of engagement in school. They work to tackle some of the root problems -- like hunger, family stress, and poor health -- by bringing community groups that can help into the school. And that's the other special quality that I see in those who lead community schools -- the ability to organize many different groups around a common agenda. At the National Forum, John Porter explained how he helps keep an orchestra of community groups all on the same page, working towards the same goal: "We created a governance system that had signs offs from everybody -- the county, city, San Jose State University, the Community College District, probation, the police department, Second Harvest Foods ... and we divided our focus into three areas: safe neighborhoods, [student achievement], and adult empowerment. Then, the partners started to co-chair those work teams." Getting many different groups to row in the same direction is no easy task. Jan Christensen, the superintendent of Redwood City School District in California, is working to bring the community school model to more schools in her district. At the recent National Forum, she explained that building partnerships with community groups requires a willingness to hear other perspectives: "You have to give up your silo mindset and be willing to share. Anytime you have different people sitting at the table, you are always going to have possible conflict over turf ... and when there is an issue we are all able to talk about how we solve that in a positive manner. When you have a common vision it's much easier." Christensen said that children can benefit immensely from these partnerships. She shared a recent success story from her district: "Just this past week we recognized corporate and faith-based partners for work that they had done at three of our schools. Hundreds of volunteers came to these schools to do construction, cleaning, remodeling, planting trees and flowers." Another superintendent who is building partnerships between schools and community groups is Richard Carranza, the new superintendent of San Francisco Public Schools. At the Forum, he shared why he is passionate about the community schools approach: "In San Francisco we ask how are we going to improve educational outcomes for our most disenfranchised children. We find folks who can help us do this work and coordinate the pieces so that all students have a shot at being successful." Carranza added that, with the help of various community groups and resources, many students are now achieving at higher levels: "And ... it's because they had this fabric of support woven in so that if a student isn't doing well in class, the teacher can help connect students and families with resources whether it's in city government or a community-based organization. It's a much more comprehensive approach to looking at how students achieve." Richard Carranza, Jan Christensen and John Porter are just a few of the many bold superintendents who are changing children's lives by bringing together the entire community to help their student succeed. The approach is working. Let's learn from the example.]]> All Hands on Deck for Community Schools tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1469254 2012-05-02T11:00:15-04:00 2012-08-10T17:31:22-04:00 Martin J. Blank http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-j-blank/ spoke at the White House after being honored by President Obama with the National Teacher of the Year award. The seventh grade English teacher from the racially and economically diverse Luther Burbank Middle School in Burbank, California made clear that "commitment to education must extend beyond walls of the classroom. Parent support and community involvement are essential to ensure the success of our students." In a follow up interview with the Washington Post, Mieliwocki went further, capturing the many challenges that teachers face in their classroom: "We face so many barriers to student success that I didn't create and are beyond my control. I can't control whether my students eat breakfast, have a place to sleep at night, whether they have access to technology," said Mielwocki. "I can do everything I can when they step into my classroom to try to level the playing field but one person alone just can't do it all, and that's pretty overwhelming." Mieliwocki went on to say that even though there are amazing teachers like herself across country, they cannot fix the problems of our failing schools alone. "In any school system in any state, whether the most affluent district or not, you have families in crisis right now. Everyone is worried about money, jobs, the economic future. I am seeing it in my classroom. I see the needs are so great -- health care, hunger, transportation, clothing, parents losing jobs. It's all hands on deck right now to get through this." What Mieliwocki may not have known is there are growing numbers of people from all walks of life who are rethinking the way we look at schools in local communities across the country. These individuals represent public education, family groups, health and social agencies, youth development organizations, local government, higher education, business, faith-based, and many other neighborhood and community groups. Together with school officials, local leaders are working to create community schools. Community schools are the vehicle that enables schools and communities to connect, collaborate and create more powerful learning environments for students. They are places where children gain access to an array of health services and social support as well as enriched educational opportunities that lay the foundation for impactful learning. Community schools are also where families can find the assistance they need to confront the challenges of a difficult economy and to tackle the additional out of school factors Mieliwocki and others face in the classroom. The power of community schools will be on display in San Francisco next week when more than 1,300 people from 36 states, and more than 100 communities, will come together at the 2012 Community Schools National Forum. There are now more than 50 local community school initiatives across the country and many other communities where they are emerging. Recently in Connecticut, Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman and Commissioner of Education Stefan Pryor, convened their colleagues in the state departments of health, social services and economic and community development to plan a community school strategy to support the state's lowest performing schools. Places like Nashville and Knoxville, Oakland and San Francisco, Cleveland and Toledo, Orlando and Miami all have emerging community schools efforts. And community leaders from Bozeman, Montana, Rapid City and Sturgis, South Dakota, and Duluth and Rochester, Minnesota are planning for community schools. They will all be in San Francisco eager to learn from one another. The ideas that schools and communities should work together is not a new one. But at a time when some education reformers argue that only high test scores matter, the rise of the community school movement offers a crucial counterpoint. Community schools wisely recognize that we must pay attention to every facet of a child's life, and to their families, if they are to succeed not only in school, but also in life. We are delighted that the Teacher of the Year agrees.]]>


text:
21,343 views
Watch this bit from the episode to know why Karan Johar finds the expression "Thank you so much for having me here" strange. Check out http://www.ideapopcorn...
Freida Pinto Can't Drive Or Swim - CONAN on TBS
98,161 views
Free People Presents Rangeen ft. Freida Pinto
95,297 views
Freida Pinto Talks Butt Double
339,778 views
How to Flirt with Freida Pinto
40,586 views
Freida Likes Marine Drive To Rodeo Drive
21,343 views
Frieda Pinto India's Most desirable
87,304 views
Freida Pinto is Vogue's sixth anniversary cover star
41,478 views
Freida Pinto pushes for girls' education
3,293 views
The "geek mind" is concerned with more than just the latest iPhone rumors, or which company will win the gaming console wars. I4U is concerned with more than just the latest photo shoot or other celebrity gossip.
The "geek mind" is concerned with life, in all its different forms and facets. The geek mind wants to know about societal and financial issues, both abroad and at home. If a Fortune 500 decides to raise their minimum wage, or any high priority news, the geek mind wants to know. The geek mind wants to know the top teams in the National Football League, or who's likely to win the NBA Finals this coming year. The geek mind wants to know who the hottest new models are, or whether the newest blockbuster movie is worth seeing. The geek mind wants to know. The geek mind wants—needs—knowledge.
Read more about The Geek Mind.
I4U Daily Email Digest

subset: commoncrawl


text:
I'm glad I read the reviews - they gave great ideas for this. I subbed lime in for the lemon, and really liked the flavors it gave the salsa. I doubled the recipe and I'm sure we'll gobble it up as leftovers. We thought that it would actually have been better without tortillas. I served this with the Chipotle sweet potatoes somebody cited below and thought they were a perfect accompaniment. Thanks for the great ideas, everyone! I could see dressing it up or down for company or just a weeknight dinner.
Cumin-Spiced Pork with Avocado-Tomatillo Salsa
lavransdottir Posted: 12/21/08
chughestx Posted: 03/12/13
This was delicious and the salsa was to die for!
Daily Specials


text:
so if you've seen my last posts, you know that i'm going to close the rp for now. I might open it back up, but im not sure when, so i'll contact you guys if i ever decide to. but i just wanted to say thanks so much to the people that joined and thanks to the admins too; you were a great help :)
Thanks so much for your feedback. But after thinking about it for a while, i might just close it for a few months to make a few changes. Im not sure yet, though
dude im trying, alright? we have a decent amount of characters, but its still been dry cause the characters arent posting anything. Im really doing the best i can. i made the rp because i thought it would be an interesting theme that i've never seen before, i thought TM might appreciate that. but just saying "this rp sucks" doesnt give me much; if you dont like it, then you could at least formulate a full sentence or tell me a way to improve it. but instead, you simply just sent me hate as a desperate cry for attention. but since you're my first actual feedback, im gonna take your opinion into consideration, because i really feel like im just wasting my time promoting an rp that nobody wants/likes. if you guys think i should keep it, message me telling so. if not, i'll just delete it.
thanks, admin, for that last character :)
i proofread it and now im gonna put it on the blog
yup :) you can make the blog
lol yea you didn't. i followed you though
Sign up for this awesome new Role-play! Accepting apps for guys AND girls! So look for a character you'd like to be on our page, message us who you'd liked to be (NO FORM TO FILL) and just make the blog and start! Easy so sign up!
A group of troubled teens struggling to cope with mental disorders with the help of their friends and family.
Derrick DeJesus | age: 17 | FC: Julio Arias| diagnosis: Selective Mutism
Selective Mutism is when a person who usually talks normally, goes mute when in a specific situation or talking to a specific person.
Derrick is a very shy guy. He usually keeps to himself, and is very quiet. He may say hey once in a while, but unless your close to him that's all you'll hear him say. Only close friends see the side where Derrick is a chatterbox. He only goes completely mute when talking to one girl here at the Rehab, Only because he's so shy he doesn't know what to say. During the exercises, expect to find Derrick in the corner, to shy to speak. Will he find a group of friends here who will help him out of complete shyness?
ooh i like that. imma queue those characters cuz i forgot to do it yesterday ;)
We are accepting apps for guys AND girls! So sign up!
A group of troubled teens struggling to cope with mental disorders with the help of their friends and family.


text:
Year to End all Years-James Gilliland 1
- Dali777
- uploaded: Nov 18, 2011
- Hits: 969
2011 The Year to End all Years-James Gilliland-Part 1
2 comments
Tooting November 18, 2011 2:51:12 PM CET
Eh? Tart!! If u dont like this kind of thing WHY The fffff are you here? out of all the millions of website's, you choose something you hate to see and listen too !! TARD.
Witetrashmfo November 18, 2011 1:00:50 PM CET
GoT any beer eh... yeah Hoser.... my p[enus is cold too when i shit outsite n talk about sitting stupid n useless... oh dear humans... can u be quiet while i put relish on ur head n eat U


text:
With candidates free of anyone whispering in their ear, and forced to respond candidly and directly to a moderator, the debates have become perhaps the most influential event in the race for the White House. In some cases, they have literally turned a race upside down.
The debates we have seen this year are no different, as evidenced by the renewed vigor of Kerrys campaign following his decisive win in the first televised debate.
As MSNBCs Chris Matthews stated, We havent seen this decisive of a victory in decades almost four-to-one in favor of Kerry.
The first debate between President Bush and John Kerry may have made this years election a horse race again, but its far from the most memorable example of when a debate changed history.
Back in 1960, before Sen. John F. Kennedy debated Vice President Richard Nixon, most pundits were ready to write Kennedy off.
A Catholic with relatively little experience and a supposed lack of maturity due to his youth, Kennedy was never truly seen as a threat to Nixon, vice president in a very popular Eisenhower administration.
However, when America tuned in to watch the debates, they saw a sweaty and nervous Nixon up against a tan, fit and charming Kennedy.
That night of the first Kennedy-Nixon debate marked the beginning of the end of Nixons chances in 1960, and firmly established successful debates as crucial components to any presidential bid.
While Kerry hasnt enjoyed the massive leap in the polls that Kennedy gained following his trouncing of Nixon, he has done something much more important.
In three debates, Kerry has deconstructed the meticulously-created aura of invincibility which had surrounded the Bush campaign.
After the first debate, Bush found himself in the same place as Al Gore in 2000, ridiculed for his facial expressions of exasperation and chided for being on the defensive.
Do facial expressions and sighs add up to a bad president? No, but they do give a glimpse into the character and patience of the individual campaigning.
When Gore became exasperated with Bush in 2000, his sighs and smirks were seen as snobby and elitist.
Gore became the know-it-all prize pupil to Bushs well-meaning simple man.
Not surprisingly, Bush leapt ahead in the polls. His message, much like Gores, had remained virtually unchanged. Style triumphed over substance.
This years debates werent as combative as those in 2000 or even as concentrated on the issues as the 1996 debates between former President Bill Clinton and former Sen. Bob Dole.
These debates have, however, been immensely more revealing about the nature of the election ahead.
In the past years, partisan bickering has made many people who are uninterested in politics turn off entirely to the election process.
The debates allow the undecided voter to listen and look at both candidates and to read each man as both an individual and a statesman.
While Kerry has a very nuanced plan that has a lot of meat to it, Bushs straightforward and arguably simplistic plan has merits among his supporters.
The undecided voter hears both bits of substance, but the candidates styles of delivery and the personality must be finally and indelibly incorporated into the message.
Of course, we as Americans pride ourselves on our individuality. We, as
a nation, are as likely to vote for the candidate whom we admire personally as we are to elect the candidate with the superior political agenda.
The debates allow style and substance to come together, hopefully with one bolstering the other.
In 2000, Bushs superior style may have cost Gore the election. In 2004, Kerry has put himself back in the race by showing that substance can be stylish, too.


text:
1. They're going to have to recognize the Deathly Hallows part 2 at next year's awards, right?
2. Pottermore welcome emails are coming out in a matter of mintues…
3. Bitches think we're going somewhere? Ha. We're not going anywhere, because it's not really goodbye, after all.
good points there bro


text:
Home » Opinion » Editorials
Maggie's gamble: Unexpected opposition
One roadblock came from a predictable, if questionable, anti-gambling source. The other, however, came from the House Finance Committee chairman.
Democrat Rep. Mary Jane Wallner of Concord really poured cold water on Hassan's gambit.
"The issue for us is that the House has not had a vote on a gambling bill, so to assume revenue at this point is really not the position of the House, either for or against,'' Wallner told our senior political reporter, John DiStaso.
"To expect revenue of $80 million would really be a mistake, especially if it didn't show up later,'' she said, explaining that she will ask her committee to find a like figure in possible budget cuts.
Perhaps being caught off guard by that reality check is why the governor's response was so weak to a Center for Public Policies Studies report that claimed the social costs of gambling would be higher than the tax revenues it would bring in, even at a whopping 30 percent tax rate on slot machine revenues.
State Sen. Chuck Morse of Salem, the gambling bill's sponsor, questioned the report's validity, noting it has said the same thing before. He thinks it overestimates social costs and underestimates revenue.
That was a lot stronger retort than Hassan's. Rather than dispute the social-cost theory, she practically embraced it, saying that New Hampshire residents will go to Massachusetts to gamble and bring their social problems back home, so we might as well have the gambling, and the social problems, closer to home.
That's the spirit, governor. If people are going to jump off bridges, they ought to be jumping off bridges right here at home.
- Woman sentenced to a year in jail for crash - 0
- New tech course open to students in Londonderry - 0
- UPDATED: Nashua man accused of beating girlfriend - 0
- Developer granted permit for wind tower in Alexandria - 0
- Manchester Crimewatch: Man faces charge of simple assault against son's mother - 0
- NHIAA Boys' Soccer: Bedford, Concord deadlock - 0
- NHIAA Boys' Soccer: Central shows title mettle - 0
- Dave D'onofrio Patriots Notebook: Don't expect Patriots to fix this - 0
- They're all about that bass fishing - 0
Body of woman found under Claremont bridgeREADER COMMENTS: 0
Hillary Clinton to join Shaheen fundraiser
State surplus isn't big enough
Weare police sergeant's firing rescinded
Planned Parenthood endorses Hassan
By the horn: Feds owe NH man an explanation


text:
Sverresborg Trøndelag Folkemuseum
West of the centre, this folk museum is one of the best of its kind in Norway.
West of the centre, this folk museum is one of the best of its kind in Norway.
This beautiful estate, on the island of the same name, was built in 1873 as the summer residence of renowned Norwegian violinist Ole Bull. After the death of his French-born wife, Felicité Villeminot, Bull purchased the 70-hectare Lysøen island, about 20km south of Bergen.
Norway's aviation museum is huge fun to ramble around if you have even a passing interest in flight and aviation history. Allow at least half a day to roam its 10,000 sq metres.
Trondenes Church , just north of the historical centre, was built by King Øystein around 1150, after Viking chieftains lost the battle against the unification of Norway under a Christian regime. For ages it was the northernmost church in Christendom – and still lays claim to being Norway's northernmost stone church.
The Kristiansand Posebyen takes in most of the 14 blocks at the northern end of the town's characteristic kvadraturen (square grid pattern of streets). It's worth taking a slow stroll around this pretty quarter, whose name was given by French soldiers who came to reposer (French for relax).
Near the southern end of Tromsøya, it has well-presented and documented displays on traditional and modern Sami life (in the garden, a gammen , or traditional Sami sod house, offers free coffee in summer) and ecclesiastical art and accoutrements (look for the set of hourglasses, turned to warn the vicar that his sermon time was running out).
Some 92 homes, nearly two-thirds of the original town, were gutted by fire in 1843, after which Egersund was reconstructed with wide streets to thwart the spread of future fires. Most buildings in the Old Town date from this period. Strandgaten , a street of timber houses constructed after 1843, is well worth a stroll.
The terrific Hanseatic Museum provides a window into the world of Hanseatic traders. Housed in a rough-timber building from 1704, it starkly reveals the contrast between the austere living and working conditions of Hanseatic merchant sailors and apprentices, and the lifestyle of the management.
Trondenes Church was built by King Øystein around 1150. For ages it was the northernmost church in Christendom – and still lays claim to being Norway's northernmost mediaeval stone church. Originally of wood, the current stone structure replaced it around 1250 and quickly came to double as a fortification against Russian aggression.
This museum, 7km west of Rjukan, is in the Vemork power station, which was the world's largest when completed in 1911. These days it honours the Socialist Workers' Party, which reached its height of Norwegian activities in the 1950s.
Ålesund's celebrated Sunnmøre Museum is 4km east of the centre. Here, at the site of the old Borgundkaupangen trading centre, active from the 11th to 16th centuries, over 50 traditional buildings have been relocated. Ship-lovers will savour the collection of around 40 historic boats, including replicas of Viking-era ships and a commercial trading vessel from around AD 1000.
Norwegians take pride in their role as international peacemakers, and the Nobel Peace Prize is their gift to the men and women judged to have done the most to promote world peace over the course of the previous year.
The woodland north of the Holmenkollen Ski Jump, known as Nordmarka, is a prime destination for hiking, mountain biking, sledding and skiing.
This 4367-sq-km national park, Norway's largest continuous protected area, protects the dramatic highlands around the 2286m-high Snøhetta and provides a suitably bleak habitat for Arctic foxes, reindeer, wolverines and musk oxen. Snøhetta can be ascended by hikers from Snøheim (allow six hours).
Dating from 1697, the Oslo Cathedral has just been reborn following on from several years of intensive renovations. The highlights of a visit are the elaborate stained-glass windows by Emanuel Vigeland (brother of Gustav) and painted ceiling (completed between 1936 and 1950).
This oil-rig-shaped airship mast on Vadsø island was built in the mid-1920s as an anchor and launch site for airborne expeditions to the polar regions. The expedition of Roald Amundsen, Umberto Nobile and Lincoln Ellsworth, which floated via the North Pole to Alaska in the airship Norge N-1, first used it in April 1926.


text:
I don't want to brag on my vast experiences, but I really used to think I had tried every chicken roasting position out there: The Inverted V-Rack, the Beer Can Prop-up and my favorite — the Spatchcock. The latter involves removing the bird's backbone and keel (breast) bone, then laying it spread eagle on the roasting pan. It gets crispy.
That's the point with all of these: you want crispy skin, cooked-through legs and still moist breast. You can just shove it in the oven like your grandmother did, but it seems like you've got to either sacrifice crisp skin or juicy white meat, or you've got to deal with a little pinkness of thigh.
Now I find out, thanks to Melissa Clark's story in the New York Times, there exists another path to roast chicken bliss. A chicken position I had never imagined. This bird gets splayed.
Here's what you do: Cut through the skin between the legs and the breast and push the legs down until the joint pops a bit and they splay out like an avian yoga pose. Clark heats a cast-iron skillet in a 500-degree oven, then places the chicken in the hot skillet. She cooks the chicken in that hot oven uncovered for about 30-50 minutes, depending on the size of the chicken.
I was working fast and sloppy. As my oven preheated to 500 degrees with the convection fan running, I prepped a small, natural chicken by smearing it with a bit of bacon fat, seasoning the skin with salt and lots of pepper and stuffing the cavity with crushed garlic, rosemary and cut lemon.
In about 35-40 minutes it was ready and absolutely terrific. The dark meat was really crispy and rendered of its fat, almost like duck confit legs. The breast skin came out nicely crisp and the white meat was seriously juicy.
I tried it again with a cruddy, brine-injected chicken that was all I could find at a small branch of a chain supermarket. The results were okay, not great. A weird texture and almost too much bland juice in the breast. This kind of chicken is more engineered to withstand traditional roasting methods.
Still, I think I'm going to be splaying chicken for a while.
May 22nd, 2012
2:15 pm
John, I think I am going to love this method. Do you believe it would work on a turkey? Just today I purchased a 13 lbs fresh Butterball. Your thoughts?
May 22nd, 2012
2:25 pm
Made this a couple of weeks ago using an organic chicken from Whole Foods. I bought a big handful of fresh ramps as well (despite the insane price tag). My family went nuts! They couldn't believe how delicious it was. At the end of the meal the chicken looked like it came out of a movie…one of the ones where they drop an animal into a pool of piranha and the bones come out a pristine shinny white without a speck of meat left. This recipe is a keeper.
May 22nd, 2012
2:47 pm
I wonder if this method would translate to the grill?
May 22nd, 2012
3:01 pm
jd……if you have a ceramic grill, you can get the heat up to 500 degrees easy.
May 22nd, 2012
4:59 pm
Thanks John, I will give it a try.
May 22nd, 2012
5:04 pm
This is a great recipe, one my husband's been using since the article appeared online. Fantastic chicken, and so far everyone that's tried it has loved it. Thanks for sharing the recipe with more Atlanta cooks, John!
May 22nd, 2012
5:06 pm
jd – my husband has done this in the oven and on the grill, with great results each time. Enjoy!
May 22nd, 2012
9:31 pm
Ramps, if you can find them, are kind of pricey.
I wonder how quartered onions in the skillet would work? Then add fresh garlic chives/nida at the end just to wilt.
May 23rd, 2012
10:01 am
On a weber kettle, if you cook indirect (coals piled on the sides, drip pan in the middle) and use decent sized piles of lit coal, it should definitely be at least in the 475-500+ range (My weber smoker, with a drip pan in place tops out around 340, so this is an educated guess that the kettle can easily go 150 degrees higher).
May 23rd, 2012
10:34 am
Can you put up some pictures showing how to make these cuts??
May 23rd, 2012
10:55 am
The bird looks great.
Did this make your oven a greasy mess John?
May 23rd, 2012
11:48 am
Lucy, seems you have some splayin' to do.
May 23rd, 2012
2:12 pm
Try leaving chicken uncovered in the fridge for 24 hours. That is the key to cripsy skin.
May 23rd, 2012
8:48 pm
Krystal….great tip!!!!!!!!!!!!
May 24th, 2012
10:25 am
Thanks Baltisraul
I should mention that you should put it on a wire rack on top of a baking sheet, as there might be some drippage. The skin may turn opaque-ish and look a little different, but don't "chicken" out. (Sorry.)
I then spatchcock (I dont cut the keel bone though) and go skin side up direct-raised on charcoal grill (Big Green Egg) at around 400-450.
Will have to try the "splayed" technique.
May 24th, 2012
4:34 pm
I have made this recipe at least three times since the Melissa Clark video was posted on the NYTimes website. It is easy to do and I have found that it works great on the grill. I use a Weber propane grill with the burners as Medium/High Off Medium/High to maintain a temperature of around 475 degrees.
I have had good results with the cheap supermarket chicken after brining it for 2 hours in a gallon of water with 1/4 cup of both salt and sugar. Rinse the bird well in water and then soak it for another hour in milk. It has to be dried off very well before it is spiced and put into the hot skillet.
I also like to make roasted mirepoix by cutting up a large onion 4 carrots and 4 stalks of celery and place them in a cake pan on the grill about 20 minutes before the bird is done. When you first place
the pan on the grill, pour the released fat from the cast iron pan over the mixture and coat the vegetables. Place in the food processor when finished and you have a great side dish for the roasted chicken.
This recipe is a keeper.
May 29th, 2012
1:32 pm
John & Krystal…….Made a 14 lbs turkey on Memorial Day. I used the Spanek Vertical Roaster as it was raining all day. John, did as you suggested, 450 degrees for the first 30 min then down to 350 degrees for the next 2 hours. Turned out so juicy.Put Hellmann's under the skin and a rub mixed w/, bacon fat over the skin. Extra crispy skin. Also cover the breast w/ tin foil after the 1st 45 min. of roasting. A big turkey in 2 1/2 hrs is most satisfying.