Community Schools as an Effective Strategy for Reform

Research literature finds that community school models offering various agreed-upon features provide an excellent social return on investment and significant promise for providing opportunities for learning and promoting well-being in students and communities.

This brief by Julia Daniel, a doctoral student at the National Education Policy Center and Jon Snyder, Executive Director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, summarizes the empirical basis for several features of community schools.

Compared with schools that do not follow the community school model, successful community schools across the United States have reported students achieving higher math and reading proficiency and increases in graduation and college going rates. Community schools that commit to a vision for developing comprehensive school–family–community collaborations have the greatest potential to address the needs of the whole child in ways that strengthen families, schools, and neighborhoods.