Improving Schools through Community Engagement: A Practical Guide for Educators

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How Does an Engaged Community Improve Student Achievement?

There seems to be widespread consensus that the public has been abdicating its responsibility for public education over the past four or five decades. More recently, Benjamin Barber (1992) described a modern America where rights and obligations have gradually become uncoupled. Continues Barber,

It [America] is a place where individuals regard themselves almost exclusively as private persons with responsibilities only to family and job, yet possessing endless rights against a distant and alien state in relationship to which they think of themselves, at best, as watchdogs and clients and, at worst, as adversaries and victims. There is apparently nothing government can do right, and nothing markets can do wrong (p. 232).

When Americans see something in their government that they do not like, their first inclination is to blame their elected representatives. But in a democracy, these elected representatives should bear only part of the responsibility. According to David Mathews (1994), The responsibilities for defining the public interest, describing the purposes and direction consistent with those interests, creating common ground for action, generating political will, and creating citizens are undelegable. . . . We can elect our representatives, but not our purposes (p. 11).

Public schools are among the many institutions that have felt the effects of abandoned public responsibility. A recent report by Public Agenda (Farkas, Foley, & Duffett, 2001) on the lack of public involvement in education concludes that the issue seems to be less a problem of opportunity and more a problem of complacency (p. 15). In their survey of the general public, two-thirds of respondents said they were comfortable with leaving school policies for educators to decide. Only when people think their schools are performing poorly do they express a greater willingness to become involved. An alternative explanation is offered by David Mathews (1996), who served as the secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in the Ford administration. He proposes that many Americans no longer believe the public schools are their schools. Reviewing more than 10 years of research by the Kettering Foundation, Mathews concludes that many recent school reform initiatives (i.e., increased financial control by state governments and professionally established standards) have actually served to further distance the public from its schools. Although many educators focus on ways to improve student performance or to enhance communication with public stakeholders, few are addressing what may be undermining improvement in performance or communication. Mathews writes, Citizens complain that educators are preoccupied with their own agendas and don’t address public concerns about discipline and teaching the basics. This lack of responsiveness is part of what convinces people that the public schools aren’t really theirs (pp. 3–4). Americans don’t see the public schools as agents for creating a better society; instead, they focus on how public schools will meet the needs of their own children. Mathews posits that community development must precede school reform. In other words, there must be a public before there can be public schools. If we focus on public life in our communities and encourage more responsible citizenship, then we have laid the necessary foundation for true school reform.

Harvard professor Robert Putnam (2000) echoes this concern for a declining sense of community in America. He notes a serious decline in social capital, which refers to connections among individuals—social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them (p. 19). Putnam bases his conclusion on trends that include declining political participation, lower levels of participation in organized religion, and fewer memberships in clubs and community associations. Building on Putnam’s work, the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (Saguaro Seminar on Civic Engagement in America, 2001), completed in late 2000, compared 40 communities across dimensions of social capital. The survey addressed two dimensions of social trust (trust of others), two measures of political participation, two measures of civic leadership and association involvement, a measure of giving and volunteering, a measure of faith-based engagement, a measure of informal social ties, a measure of the diversity of friendships, and a measure of the distribution of civic engagement across social classes within the community. Survey results, along with a more detailed description of methodology, can be found at: http://www.cfsv.org/communitysurvey/results_matrix.html.

It would certainly appear that social capital is a multifaceted concept and that the United States has seen a recent decline in most of the indicators used to describe social capital. But why have we seen this decline over the past several decades? Using a vast amount of data collected over the past 25 years, Putnam (2000) has concluded that four main factors are responsible for the decline in social capital:

•   Pressures of time and money, especially in dual career families, that work against community involvement

•   Suburbanization, commuting, and sprawl

•   Privatization of leisure time through electronic entertainment, such as the television

•   The replacement of the long civic-minded generation (born between 1901 and 1924) by their less involved children and grandchildren

An educator may find this decline in social capital of general interest but could be tempted to ask, How does this affect my school? In his book, Putnam reports a correlation between social capital and student performance. Social capital is highly correlated with student scores on standardized tests and the rate at which students stay in school. He offers some possible explanations for why social capital has such a marked effect on educational outcomes. First, in communities where there are higher levels of social capital, teachers report higher levels of parental support and lower levels of student misbehavior. There seems to be a sense of connectedness and accountability associated with social capital. Another reason why students may perform better in communities with high levels of social capital is that they watch less television. There is a negative correlation between the average amount of time that kids spend watching television and the average level of adult involvement in the community (Putnam, 2000). It appears that children are drawn into more productive uses of leisure time in communities where the levels of social capital and public involvement are higher.

Research over the past 30 years has verified that when families are involved with their children’s education, children do better in school and the schools they attend are better (Henderson & Berla, 1994; Henderson & Mapp, 2002; U.S. Department of Education, 1994). Family involvement means children attend school more regularly, demonstrate more positive attitudes and behaviors, complete more homework, earn higher grades, receive higher scores on standardized tests, graduate from high school at higher rates, and are more likely to enroll in higher education. Henderson and Mapp (2002) recently completed a literature review of 51 studies that examined the impact of school, family, and community connections on student achievement. The research they reviewed confirms the value of family involvement in improving student achievement, but the evidence also points to the important role that communities play in the education process. Henderson and Mapp (2002) reported that community organizing resulted in upgraded school facilities, improved school leadership and staffing, higher quality learning programs for students, new resources and programs to improve teaching and curriculum, and new funding for afterschool programs and family supports (p. 57). They note that high levels of parent and community involvement are among the important factors that characterize high performing schools. Clearly, family and community involvement play a role in helping students achieve their full potential. For more detailed information regarding specific studies on the relationship between family/community involvement and student achievement, consult the Web site for the National Center for Family and Community Connections with Schools