Full-Service Community Schools

Across the nation education reform efforts are focusing on high standards. At The Eisenhower Foundation we believe that to attain high standards students must be ready to learn. Full-service community schools, built around a strong instructional core, offer a wide range of programs and services to support the physical, emotional and social grounds for children to learn. These programs and services may include extended day programs, health care, nutrition and counseling. These schools involve parents and community members to support education. In the Eisenhower Foundation model, the school partners with a lead community-based organization to provide these services or facilitate access to these services. Typically, full-service community schools are open early in the morning until late at night, weekends, and throughout the year to provide services to the students and their families.

The Eisenhower Full-Service Community School Program uses a replication process that fosters continuous improvements, thus allowing replication at an increasingly larger scale. The role of the Eisenhower Foundation in the replication of the full-service community schools consists in: (1) identifying the lead community-based organizations (CBOs) to partner with the schools, (2) providing technical assistance in defining the local project coordinator positions, (3) facilitating the establishment of collaborative ties between the CBOs and the schools, and (4) providing technical assistance to develop the work plans and implement the phase of the program. Not only does the Foundation provide technical assistance, but it also creates the conditions for staff's ongoing learning and self-monitoring, so that both the local teams and the Eisenhower Foundation can draw lessons about successful practice. A National Cluster Training Workshop, an electronic discussion forum for the lead staff from the three sites, phone calls, and site visits are means of developing and fostering a learning community of developers of full-service schools across these three sites. The process of planning and implementing full-service schools at these three sites is being documented by a process evaluation being carried out by the Foundation at this time.

At present, six schools are replicating the Eisenhower Full-Service Community School model, three are in their second year of operation and three are in their planning phase. Initial successes of the schools that have been incrementally adding key components of full-service community schools are: increased homework completion, better attendance, and improved behavior and academic performance.

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