Learning Supports: Bringing School, Family, and Community Together Schools and districts, of course, can build in structures that provide an integrated, sustained pathway of learning supports that foster resilience and enables all students to succeed and thrive. UCLA psychologists Howard Adelman and Linda Taylor’s research (2008), developed over the course of 30 years in the field, places student learning and well-being at the center and draws in every component of support—social-emotional, physical, and academic—to create an integrated continuum of coordinated support. The aim is to move away from the fragmented approaches that have marginalized learning supports for students, leading to poor cost effectiveness (up to 25% of school budgets used in limited and redundant ways) and counterproductive competition for sparse resources—to one that marshals the full strength and force of the school, family, and community. Closing Thoughts Not all students come to school ready and able to learn every day. Many students face barriers including poverty that interfere with their ability to be physically or mentally present, and these barriers prevent them from benefiting from quality instruction. To help all students succeed, districts must transform fragmented services into a fully integrated continuum of supports (Chang and Leong, 2018; Howard and Adelman, 2008) and promote independent reading and robust classroom libraries. There is a growing recognition that partnership between families and school staff is not only required to achieve educational excellence for all children, but also to improve our schools. Many states across the U.S. are adopting new standards for assessing teacher and school leader performance, and many of those standards include an expectation of proficient practice in family and community engagement (Mapp, Carver, and Lander, 2017). For all of us in the work of supporting our children, the goal is clear: we aim to better meet our children’s needs by strengthening the connections among schools, families, and communities. Students benefit academically, emotionally, and physically when all the adults in their lives come together and form a continuous, coordinated, and collaborative circle of care around them. The research of Adelman and Taylor, Mayes, Gilliam, and Mapp, together with the work of educators, policy-makers, families, and community partners represented in this research compendium, show us how we might accomplish this worthy and vitally important goal.
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SOCIAL JUSTICE
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