Community schools: For extra credit

By James Krohe Jr.

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Recently I banged the drum on behalf of so-called community or full-service schools as a way to provide learners with a wider array of help and to provide taxpayers with a better return on their investment in school buildings that sit idle two-thirds of the time.

Want to learn more? I found Joy Dryfoos's 2002 article in The Phi Delta Kappan -- Full-Service Community Schools: Creating New Institutions -- to be useful. Unfortunately, the article lies a-moldering behind a pay wall.

Also worth reading is the recent report published by the Coalition for Community Schools (CCS) titled Making the Difference: Research and Practice in Community Schools. The authors are advocates, of course, but enthusiasm is not always proof of error.

Finally, Full-Service Schools: Policy Review and Recommendations in the Harvard Graduate School of Education is only a bit wonky.

About The Author

James Krohe Jr.

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