Community Schools: Addressing Poverty, Inequality, and Education

This essay provides an overview of community schools in the United States, highlighting their dual role as educational institutions and community hubs. It explores the various out-of-school barriers that affect children, such as poverty, food insecurity, and health issues, and how these barriers impact educational outcomes. The essay delves into the historical and current roles of community schools in addressing poverty and inequality, emphasizing their importance as a response to the needs of distressed communities. It examines the federal government's commitment to educational equity, including the implementation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), and how these initiatives support community schools. The essay also addresses the impact of ESSA in providing opportunities to improve the performance of schools and promote safe, healthy, and supportive environments for students, while consolidating separate programs to provide well-rounded education.

Running head: COMMUNITY SCHOOLS
COMMUNITY SCHOOLS
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author’s note

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Community schools
Community schools refer to the public funded community schools in the United States,
that works both as an educational organization and also as a centre of community life. The
community schools help to provide an all-round improvement in children by providing them
with appropriate opportunities of resources for a good teaching-learning experience (Heers et al.
2016).
Community schools appoint the teachers and other community personalities to create
high excellence of schools that follow a unified curriculum of both academics, social services,
services for the development of youth, health promotion, and development of a sustainable
environment. It has been stated by Epstein, (2018) that community school is thus a place and a
set of partnership, connecting a school, the families of schools and a surrounding community. A
community school thus can adopt to collaborate with the other actor of the society that
traditionally have been operating independently for the children and their families. Moreover, it
can be stated that the community schools particularly work for children, who are likely to face
more difficulties throughout their educational career. It has been developed for offering better
education to children (Min, Anderson & Chen, 2017).
Out of school barriers to learning
According to Maier et al., (2017), various out of school barriers like growing up in a poor
neighbourhood, food insecurity, homelessness and low socioeconomic stats are some of out-of –
school barriers for children. Unhealthy neighbourhood like the toxic wastes and the harmful air

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quality in addition with unequal health care services access that can cause chronic diseases in
children such as asthma, dental problems, and undetected vision have increased the number of
absenteeism in the community schools. Furthermore, it has also been stated that children coming
from poor families are likely to quit from the schools. There are researches that have found out
that children coming from lower social economic class score less on assessments of vocabulary
and the communication skills, the familiarity with the numbers, copying and symbol use and the
ability to indulge in cooperative play (Ladd, 2012). Lack of proper education and employment
turn the younger generation to take up illegal activities in the neighbourhood. Children from
homes having food insecurity have shown smaller achievements in both reading and
mathematics than the food –secure counterparts. The food unsecured teenagers are more likely
to repeat a grade than the food secured children (Nazmi et al., 2019).
Role of the community schools as a response to poverty and inequality
It has been stated in the reading by Maier et al., (2017), that the educators, the community
leaders and the various supporters have viewed the community schools as an influential response
to the requirements of the neighbourhood suffering from distress, poverty of homelessness.
Schools have long been serving as “community social centres’ since the early 20th era when the
philosophers tried to make urban schools at the time of increasing urbanization and
industrialization. At that time these schools were constructed in order to serve the urban poor.
Schools like Franklin High in East Harlem area , played the role of a life support systems for the
community of poor people.
Most importantly, the community schools played an immense role in the struggle for the
African – American for quality education and spreading the concepts of equality and fraternity.

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The community controlled schools at time tried to amend the deteriorating urban education and
make the schools affordable for those coming from the low income households. The schools
collaborated with the black parents to promote democracy. However, all these noble initiatives
suffered from absence of administrative support, lack of finance and disagreement from some of
the educators who had worried about their professional standings and responsibilities.
Just like then, the current community schools have also been struggling to collaborate
with the other entities like the institutions foe higher education, or community based non-profit
organisations. Rates of Childhood poverty are much higher in United States than the other
industrialised countries. As of 2016, 33 % of the people living in poverty are children. Another
equally startling report states that the 60-75 % of the Americans will live below the poverty line
for at least one year of their entire lives. Currently schools play a big role in mitigating poverty
like teaching about social justice and rights, offering equal academic opportunities and providing
school supplies like clothes, snacks and other basic necessities in times of crisis of crisis. Some
of the other notable approaches taken by the community schools involves integrated student
support to address the structural barriers for the student’s educational success (Min, Anderson &
Chen, 2017). Family and engagement within the community practices such as including the
family members in partnership in their education and involving the community members in the
governance of school and decision making. The community schools now provide extended
learning opportunities like out-of –school programs, that takes place outside the traditional
schools for providing enrichment and other learning opportunities.

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Federal commitment to the educational equity
The main goal of the community school is in line with the goal of the 1965 Elementary
and Secondary education Act. This was the foundation of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War
on Poverty” (McLaughlin, 1975). The law assisted to bring education in the forefront of the
national attack on poverty and was dedicated to provide quality education services equally to
everyone. Since then, the policymakers have carried out persistent experiments with new tactics,
using education as the tool for fighting with poverty. The federal government has the
accountability to ensure and high quality education free of cost, for all the students by protecting
their civil rights. It also provided the resources for the needy ones using public data and high
quality of research (Castrechini & London, 2012). Among the various approaches that has been
taken by the federal government included Learning centers, development of promise
neighborhood full service community schools. New localities have been adopted for the
development of new schools. Community schools have been developed in placed like New York
City, San Francisco, Oregon, Oakland and Salt Lake City. Schooling models have been
introduced to develop new schools and are adopting instructions that are data driven, fineness in
the teaching and headship, culture of high prospects, regular and rigorous tutoring, increased
school day and years.
ESSA new opportunities for supporting the community schools and addressing the out of
school barriers
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was signed by President Obama on December
10, 2015, that is the revised version of the 50-year-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act
(ESEA) to improve the condition of the community schools. Unlike the earlier years, the school
drop outs have reduced drastically with time (ESSA, 2015).

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ESSA have presenting an opportunity for the schools to develop evidence based school
improvement strategies for improving the performance of the schools. ESSA had been
collaborating with the other schools and the community based services and programs to foster a
safe, healthy and supportive student academic achievement. They have been working to provide
the school based mental health services, including the early identification of the mental health
symptoms. They are also responsible for conducting the out of school activities like conduction
of the athletic programs and supporting a healthy lifestyle including provision of nutritional
assessment , regular and structured physical education programs and activities. It has been
reported by Baquedano-López, Alexander and Hernández, (2015), that ESSA tends to distribute
the power balance from the federal government to the societies and the States, such that the local
communities and the States have the flexibility for building community schools. ESSA makes
sure that the federal government equally provides funds to the Local School district and the State
educational agencies. They help the schools for establishing an integrated form of curriculum,
suitable for the children as per their age groups.
ESSA keeps tracks on the schools about their standards, including the identification of
inequalities, use of the school level needs assessment and the evidence based interventions.
ESSA also encourage the development empowerment of the stakeholders like the educators by
consultation and development activity.
It has been stated by ESSA, (2017) that a school wide tiered model should be built for the
prevention and addressing the behavioural issue in children. ESSA has also consolidated separate
programs in to block grants that is to provide the students with access to a well-rounded
education, improve the conditions for learning and enhancing the use of technology in learning.
Under ESSA, the leaders and the educators play a challenging role of not only building ne

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accountability system, but at the same time designing a framework for eradicating any
inequalities that can come in the way of education.
In conclusion, it can be stated that since 19 century, the community programs had been
playing important role in addressing the equality in society, providing scopes for children with
low economic status to get all the opportunities to experience a good teaching and learning
experience. Similarly, the present community schools had also been trying to address the
academic as well as the social needs of the community children, ensuring, that they get proper
opportunities to establish their future.

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References
Baquedano-López, P., Alexander, R. A., & Hernández, S. J. (2013). Equity issues in parental and
community involvement in schools: What teacher educators need to know. Review of
Research in Education, 37(1), 149-182.
Castrechini, S., & London, R. A. (2012). Positive Student Outcomes in Community Schools.
Center for American Progress.
Epstein, J. L. (2018). School, family, and community partnerships: Preparing educators and
improving schools. Routledge.
Epstein, J. L., Sanders, M. G., Sheldon, S. B., Simon, B. S., Salinas, K. C., Jansorn, N. R., ... &
Hutchins, D. J. (2018). School, family, and community partnerships: Your handbook for
action. Corwin Press.
ESSA, Equity of opportunity and addressing Barriers to Learning, (2017). Access date :
28.3.2020. Retrieved from: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED565303.pdf
Heers, M., Van Klaveren, C., Groot, W., & Maassen van den Brink, H. (2016). Community
schools: What we know and what we need to know. Review of Educational Research,
86(4), 1016-1051.
Ladd, H. F. (2012). Education and poverty: Confronting the evidence. Journal of Policy Analysis
and Management, 31(2), 203-227.
Maier, A., Daniel, J., Oakes, J., & Lam, L. (2017). Community schools as an effective school
improvement strategy: A review of the evidence. Palo Alto, CA, Learning Policy
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Min, M., Anderson, J. A., & Chen, M. (2017). What Do We Know about Full-Service
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Nazmi, A., Martinez, S., Byrd, A., Robinson, D., Bianco, S., Maguire, J., ... & Ritchie, L. (2019).
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