PHILADELPHIA — Today, Research for Action (RFA) released a progress report which reflects on the first year implementation of the city’s Community Schools initiative. The report tracks indicators of thorough Community School implementation consistent with national best practices.
“To ensure that Community Schools will have the greatest possible benefit for students and residents, it is vital that we draw on best practices in the planning, data collection and early implementation stages with our first cohort of nine schools,” said Chief Education Officer Otis Hackney. “We have to lay the right foundation for the programs and partnerships we’re bringing into schools, and the progress report shows that we are on the right track. As the report demonstrates, we’ve taken care to seek public input on the process and work with each of the school communities to make sure that we’re effectively matching services with needs.”
“Our work is built based on best practices and lessons from other places, so we are very pleased to see that our work lines up to national standards and is on track. While the first school year of implementation is too early to evaluate student outcomes, we still wanted to take stock of where we are in building capacity for added services in each school,” said Community Schools Director Susan Gobreski. “The progress report shows that we’re taking the necessary steps for long-term success. It is also gratifying to see that we are already moving on some of the areas identified for development in the report. Because we’re comparing our work to research-supported best practices I am confident that we will see a positive impact on students and communities in the years to come. I am also extremely appreciative of Research for Action and Ford Foundation for their investment in strengthening our initiative. This is a useful tool that will help guide our continuous improvement work as we build out the community schools strategy in our current 12 schools and expand over time to 25 schools.”
“In all of our schools we value the importance of setting standards for success and using evaluation for continuous improvement,” said District spokesman Lee Whack. “We welcome the Community Schools Progress Report as an important part of that process as we work together to address the needs and concerns of the children of Philadelphia.”
RFA researchers developed the Community Schools Progress Report framework based on promising practices documented by national organizations and other cities where Community Schools are implemented. Examples of success indicators include the collection of school and community data, goal-setting and planning processes, alignment of services to community needs, and outreach to families and community.
To track Philadelphia’s implementation of Community Schools and provide a public update on process, researchers reviewed publicly available city and school-level documents and interviewed Mayor’s Office staff, including the coordinators who are based in schools.
Report Summary:
All of the nine schools in the first cohort are on track in the areas of:
- Development of Community School Committee
- Data Collection on the Needs of the School and Community
- Data Collection on School/Community Resources
- Ongoing Outreach to School, Families and Community
Schools were either on track or at an emerging stage as of Summer 2017 in the areas of:
- Community School Planning and Progress Monitoring
- Service Partnership Development and Support
There are no areas where no progress was found.
Researchers also tracked the progress made by the Mayor’s Office of Education’s central office, which runs the initiative and provides strategic support to the schools. As of Summer 2017, the Mayor’s Office was on track in the areas of:
- Development of Community School Committee
- Public Input from the Community
- Shared Leadership
- Community School Selection
- School and Community Data Collection Support
- Financial Resources to Sustain Community School Initiative
The Office of Education is at an emerging stage in the area of Outcomes, Measures and Improvement Planning.
