Building More Effective Community Schools

Key Traits

Schools with the potential to act as family strengthening organizations are small, personal, simple, serene, trustworthy, collaborative and relentless about learning.

A Ready-Made Invite List

This report identifies 15 stakeholders groups — from local youth to elected officials — that Making Connections sites should consider involving in initial education reform discussions.

Statistics Smarts

Data should help guide the work. Some suggested numbers to know include: staff to student ratio, graduation and attendance rates, and dollars spent per pupil.

Outlining the Obstacles

Challenges arose — resource shortages, unengaged families, and dysfunctional bureaucracies, to name a few — when teams were working to improve educational outcomes.

Ready or Not

This report highlights eight educational improvement strategies and spells out when conditions are right — and when they aren’t — for initiating each one.

A Recipe for Academic Success

The first of eight key ingredients for fostering educational success is to set clear, high standards for all students.

Bonus Material

Want to learn more? This publication closes with a 25-page rundown of organizations and programs that were, at the time of this report, committed to supporting a range of school reform activities.