Abstract:

In the United States, No Child Left Behind, which passed in 2001, increased expectations for schools to drastically improve academic performance (Blank & Shah, 2003; Dryfoos, 2005). The history of poor academic outcomes for young people with disabilities in particular made implementation of NCLB especially challenging for schools that serve large percentages of students with more significant forms of disabilities such as mental illness. Educators, researchers, families, policymakers, and others have argued that such schools require sustained support from families and community-based social service agencies to create necessary conditions to support learning and engagement. Thus, the call for partnerships between schools and communities to better support students with significant needs has continued to grow (e.g., Adelman, & Taylor, 2006a; Adelman, & Taylor, 2006b; Conwill, 2003). Moreover, other types of supports, such as tutoring and as peer-to-peer programs for parents, have fueling the reemergence the “community schools” model (Blank, Melaville, & Shah, 2003; Center for Mental Health in Schools, 2008). The community school concept in the United States can be traced back more than a century to the work of John Dewey and Jane Addams (Dryfoos, 2002). In the 1980s, Joy Dryfoos (1994; 2005) argued for creating “Full Service Community Schools” (FSCS) where schools become neighborhood “hubs” that attracts a variety of community-based partnerships and funding, specific to meet the contextual needs of the community, and its children and families. FSCS programs are also excepted to provide developmentally appropriate supports for students who may have disabilities and similar challenges, across the lifespan, thereby improving transitions from childhood to youth to adulthood. The US Department of Education definition: “Full-Service Community Schools provide comprehensive academic, social, and health services for students, students’ family members, and community members that will result in improved educational outcomes for children” (USDOE, 2014). The research described in this presentation was designed to evaluate one FSCS project in the Eastern United States. Results comparing findings from a implementation (2009) study and a follow-up (2013) study of the FSCS initiative will be presented. Both studies used interviews protocols to examine the perceptions of key stakeholders in children’s services systems about the FSCS initiative, including successes and challenges from 2009 to 2013.

Two primary research questions drove this work:
1) what were stakeholders’ perceptions about the FSCS initiative, including its purposes and goals; and
2) how did those perceptions change during the grant period?

Although preconceived hypotheses did not drive the design, the 2013 study was developed to follow up on the 2009 baseline study. In the implementation study, there was a wide optimism that the FSCS would improve most aspects of the schools in which they operated, including test scores, parent engagement, and support for students with disabilities. In the follow up study, respondents noted increased family engagement and improved climate in FSCS schools, along with more school-community partnerships. Although there was also still optimism that the initiative would lead to improved test scores, it was more tentative. Implications and recommendations for models like FSCS that derived from our study will be discussed (Anderson, Chen, & Watkins, under review).

Keywords:

Full service community schools, family and community engagement, interagency collaboration, school-based social services, children’s social services, systems ch.