Diverse Partnerships for Student Success: Strategies and Tools to Help School Leaders

Diverse Partnerships for Student Success is based on the deep conviction that schools function best in collaboration with the larger community. It offers strategies and tolls to help educational leaders create successful partnerships in a socioeconomically and culturally diverse society and presents information on how to identify relevant demographic trends to address the educational, cultural, vocational, and recreational needs of students and citizens. Grounded in ISLLC and NCATE standards, the book offers comprehensive, research-based information; concrete program ideas; and numerous Internet sites for additional help in creating and sustaining family and community engagement. It presents strategies for involving people_individually and collectively_in agencies, businesses, and organizations to mobilize the resources of the entire community. Diverse Partnerships for Student Success will assist educational and community leaders in developing, implementing, and sustaining a comprehensive partnership system that helps all children succeed academically.

Table of Contents:
1 Foreword 2 Educational Partnerships: Principles and Strategies 3 Understanding the Community and the Status of Families and Youth 4 Diversity and Multiculturalism in America 5 Essential Role of Communities 6 Home and School as Partners 7 School-Community Collaboration 8 School Public Relations—Bridging the Gap 9 Community Relations in a Political Context 10 School Safety and Crisis Management 11 Planning and Evaluating a Comprehensive Educational Partnership Plan 12 Making Friends before You Need Them

About the Author :
Larry E. Decker is the Charles Stewart Mott professor and eminent scholar chair of community education at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida. He was formerly associate dean of the College of Education and director of the Mid-Atlantic Center for Community Education at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Virginia A. Decker is managing editor of Community Collaborators in Boca Raton, Florida. Formerly, she was the facilitator of the National Community Education Computer Network, an international teleconferencing system. Pamela M. Brown has held several leadership positions in local government and state social services agencies. She is currently the Ernest Melby fellow at Florida Atlantic University where she gained her master's degree and is now completing her Ph.D. in educational leadership.

Review :
School and community leaders will find powerful strategies for working together to assure the success of our young people. Discourse on the future of our nation’s educational system must reflect the changing societal landscape and consider the increasing demands and expectations placed on today’s educators. The authors of Diverse Partnerships for Student Success: Strategies and Tools to Help School Leaders have offered such dialogue, providing readers with a thoughtful examination of how school leaders can collaborate more effectively with parents, community members, and other education stakeholders to improve schools and help young people become successful adults. This is an excellent reference for the 21st century school leader and is one that should be added to your collection of education resources. Diverse Partnerships for School Success underscores the vital role for collaboration in the education of our nation’s children by calling not only for partnerships between schools and parents, but also for partnerships between schools and communities. Its authors clearly understand that schools alone cannot take full responsibility for education, and they offer an insightful, practical guide to school administrators for how they can reach out and engage the other stakeholders. This book provides educators with important “how to” information for developing and sustaining successful partnerships with families and communities. If we are genuinely committed to strengthening our public schools and closing the achievement gap, it can’t be accomplished without the support and participation of the families and community it serves. The authors have dedicated all their professional lives to community education and partnership building—I hope you take advantage of their expertise. After reading the book, I was very impressed with its focus on developing school leaders who have the capacity for creating enlightened school visions, building supportive educational partnerships, broadening communication to include active school communities, and becoming strong public relations advocates for their schools. This type of focus for creating politically astute, and public relations savvy, school administrators has been a sorely missing component in traditional higher education preparation programs and in the ongoing professional development of school leaders....The authors remind us that good administrators must know how to establish strong community partnerships in order to develop the comprehensive resources necessary to meet the complex and myriad needs of all children....This book will assist principals in learning the skills necessary for creating positive school cultures that welcome, and are inclusive of, the larger community, such as parents, community organizations, social service groups, and after-school programs. Diverse Partnerships for Student Success is an outstanding resource, a solid foundation on which educational leaders can build effective and imaginative connections to support students of all backgrounds. We must increase public responsibility for public education if we truly desire an effective, humane, and sustainable student achievement improvement strategy. Diverse Partnerships for School Success emphatically reminds us that our best schools are robust and dynamic collaborations between communities and schools. This insightful book is both conceptual and practical, a real tool for citizens and educators juggling dozens of competing academic and accountability demands. Only by increasing public understanding of the needs of schools will we be able to make public education our #1 public priority. Many institutions, including ours, have long known how critically important it is for schools to create and maintain strong partnerships with families and communities. For the past 70-some years, we have helped develop and support ways for schools to be fully engaged with their communities. This book delivers the latest practical information about how to do this as both an educational and a community leader in today's 24/7, media/marketing-focused global environment. Diverse Partnerships for Student Success is a timely addition to a growing body of work on school, family, and community partnerships, collaborative leadership, and public engagement in education. Educational administrators and those who train and supervise them will find much in the book that is useful and informative. The book offers multiple, well-developed rationales for why school outreach and partnerships are important including relevant statistics on schools, students, and families pulled from a variety of sources. The book also offers a variety of web resources to help educational leaders learn more about different approaches to and resources for diverse partnerships. Readers ...will leave the book with a heightened awareness that effective schools are collaborative schools, and a clear understanding of the types of collaboration in which schools can and should engage to achieve important goals for students, families, and communities. The book succeeds in stressing the importance of a systematic and deliberate approach to partnership planning; competent, politically astute, collaborative school leaders for effective partnerships; and a strong sense that the time for diverse partnerships is now.