Kelsey
Community Schools and Development
In the international development arena community development approaches and more collaborative styles of project management are commonplace. Communal approaches, like mobilization and inclusion of many stakeholders and beneficiaries who take “ownership”, or responsibility, of their own development processes are used for small agriculture programs up to large nation-building programs. Inclusion of stakeholders and beneficiaries from the preplanning process to the monitoring and evaluation of outcomes, transparency of the program, active participation by all interested and sustainability are some important elements in community development.[i]
Communal approaches to education, specifically, works towards including individual stakeholders with a student, teacher, school, or community centered approach[ii], down to engaging all stakeholders on the local, regional and national level seen in the collective impact model developing community schools.[iii] Strive Together, [iv] a non-profit in Cincinnati, OH, is a lead-agency working as a facilitator of change of public schools in Cincinnati through the collaboration of organizations and individuals from teachers, parents, organizations working in school and child development, up to national interest groups promoting change in the education system. This type of organization has taken a grass-roots approach to community development, which usually engages immediate stakeholders and beneficiaries and reached out to all non-profits, government organizations, and for profits and asks them to work together to make headway while providing a lead-agency to be the connecting fabric in this new web of networking.
For other communal approaches to education, beneficiaries (students) are represented by stakeholders (schools, parents, and their communities) and their respective collaborations and networks. One of the most successful approaches to communal education is the model presented by the Children’s Aid Society and their national research group the National Center for Community Schools (NCCS) who has developed a model community school and implementation strategy to promote communal approaches to education from the lowest level of engaging stakeholders and beneficiaries up to the highest levels of lobbying national government on education reform, regulation and redistribution.
In neither of these models are the types of structures found in public policy frameworks presented in readings for this week by Lowi (1964) and Wilson (1989). Experts, or “power people” as Wilson (1989) called them, play an informative role in community development, but stakeholders are held responsible to how that information is interpreted, useful, and activated. In the community school model, experts are wholly ignored after a teacher has received a teaching credential, and all the power is left up to the implementer, the teacher, to interpret policy as they see fit in their classroom. In the community-based approach this is referred to as “ownership” taken by stakeholders ensures the “sustainability”, or longevity, or a program implemented.
Policy frameworks are very beneficial for understanding the power dynamics surrounding wording of policies pursued, as well as who the implementer of the policy will be and where grass-roots or communities can re-exert their authority. After these readings, I am left wondering whether the only policies born out of democratic methods and are reflective of the constituents of the official policy makers or their agencies, are policies that happen through “entrepreneurial” or “majority” politics when grass-roots stand up against special interests or when there is no special interests conflicting with them. I then wonder if we can even talk about communal approaches to education, and social provisions, from a national perspective. Or what the real division between interest groups and grass-roots organizations are. Can sometimes grass roots really be business interests cloaked in uninformed mass protests, and visa versa?
Wilson (1989) argues that through the lowering of barriers (i.e. costs, venues to participate) of participation in the political process interest groups were not able to capture decision making groups any longer as more people were politically organizing. I wonder if that is actually the case, or if groups just began to take sectors into their own hands, like that of the community school organizations once they grew tired of the status-quo.
[i] One example of Community development by the Kellogg organization: http://www.abcdinstitute.org/docs/kelloggabcd.pdf
[ii] Mavis Sanders, Building School-Community Partnerships, Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2006.
[iii] Kania, John and Mark Kramer. “Collective Impact”. Stanford Social Innovation Review. Winter 2011. Web. 25 October 2012. http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/collective_impact
[iv] http://www.strivetogether.org/
Other Resources:
Lowi, T. J. (1964). Review: American Business, Public Policy, Case-Studies and Political Theory. World Politics, 16(4), 677–715.
Wilson, James Q., (1989) Chapter 5: “Interests” in Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It, BasicBooks.
Community Schools and Development
In the international development arena community development approaches and more collaborative styles of project management are commonplace. Communal approaches, like mobilization and inclusion of many stakeholders and beneficiaries who take “ownership”, or responsibility, of their own development processes are used for small agriculture programs up to large nation-building programs. Inclusion of stakeholders and beneficiaries from the preplanning process to the monitoring and evaluation of outcomes, transparency of the program, active participation by all interested and sustainability are some important elements in community development.[i]
Communal approaches to education, specifically, works towards including individual stakeholders with a student, teacher, school, or community centered approach[ii], down to engaging all stakeholders on the local, regional and national level seen in the collective impact model developing community schools.[iii] Strive Together, [iv] a non-profit in Cincinnati, OH, is a lead-agency working as a facilitator of change of public schools in Cincinnati through the collaboration of organizations and individuals from teachers, parents, organizations working in school and child development, up to national interest groups promoting change in the education system. This type of organization has taken a grass-roots approach to community development, which usually engages immediate stakeholders and beneficiaries and reached out to all non-profits, government organizations, and for profits and asks them to work together to make headway while providing a lead-agency to be the connecting fabric in this new web of networking.
For other communal approaches to education, beneficiaries (students) are represented by stakeholders (schools, parents, and their communities) and their respective collaborations and networks. One of the most successful approaches to communal education is the model presented by the Children’s Aid Society and their national research group the National Center for Community Schools (NCCS) who has developed a model community school and implementation strategy to promote communal approaches to education from the lowest level of engaging stakeholders and beneficiaries up to the highest levels of lobbying national government on education reform, regulation and redistribution.
In neither of these models are the types of structures found in public policy frameworks presented in readings for this week by Lowi (1964) and Wilson (1989). Experts, or “power people” as Wilson (1989) called them, play an informative role in community development, but stakeholders are held responsible to how that information is interpreted, useful, and activated. In the community school model, experts are wholly ignored after a teacher has received a teaching credential, and all the power is left up to the implementer, the teacher, to interpret policy as they see fit in their classroom. In the community-based approach this is referred to as “ownership” taken by stakeholders ensures the “sustainability”, or longevity, or a program implemented.
Policy frameworks are very beneficial for understanding the power dynamics surrounding wording of policies pursued, as well as who the implementer of the policy will be and where grass-roots or communities can re-exert their authority. After these readings, I am left wondering whether the only policies born out of democratic methods and are reflective of the constituents of the official policy makers or their agencies, are policies that happen through “entrepreneurial” or “majority” politics when grass-roots stand up against special interests or when there is no special interests conflicting with them. I then wonder if we can even talk about communal approaches to education, and social provisions, from a national perspective. Or what the real division between interest groups and grass-roots organizations are. Can sometimes grass roots really be business interests cloaked in uninformed mass protests, and visa versa?
Wilson (1989) argues that through the lowering of barriers (i.e. costs, venues to participate) of participation in the political process interest groups were not able to capture decision making groups any longer as more people were politically organizing. I wonder if that is actually the case, or if groups just began to take sectors into their own hands, like that of the community school organizations once they grew tired of the status-quo.
[i] One example of Community development by the Kellogg organization: http://www.abcdinstitute.org/docs/kelloggabcd.pdf
[ii] Mavis Sanders, Building School-Community Partnerships, Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2006.
[iii] Kania, John and Mark Kramer. “Collective Impact”. Stanford Social Innovation Review. Winter 2011. Web. 25 October 2012. http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/collective_impact
[iv] http://www.strivetogether.org/
Other Resources:
Lowi, T. J. (1964). Review: American Business, Public Policy, Case-Studies and Political Theory. World Politics, 16(4), 677–715.
Wilson, James Q., (1989) Chapter 5: “Interests” in Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It, BasicBooks.
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