Student, Family & Community Ownership
Category : Creating and Sustaining the Conditions
Level : School or System
To what extent is the more and better learning time effort responsive to and owned by students, families, and communities, locally and broadly? Do schools work with communities (individually or as organized groups) to remove system barriers to implementation?
Creating equity in our schools requires the participation of a broad cross-sector coalition. This includes youth, parents, and community organizing groups. As stakeholders of more and better learning time approaches, these groups are uniquely situated to ground education issues within larger social and economic systems, directly address issues of power, and build the democratic capacity to sustain expanded learning programs over time. Communities must be informed and politically organized to participate as equal partners in decision making about the effort.
- Students, parents, and community members are given meaningful opportunities to choose expanded learning designs, help guide curriculum, and engage in and help govern implementation (authentic surveying of community needs, ongoing advisory boards, decision-making power).
- There is evidence of public accountability and democratic participation in more and better learning time design and implementation.
- Students use learning time to identify and address education and social problems in their schools and communities.
- There is evidence of a broad representative base of people and organizations invested in creating and sustaining more and better learning time efforts at the school and system levels.
- There is evidence of co-ownership across the effort, including explicit vision, strategy, and action plans; streamlined policies for school community partnerships; and regular cross-sector meetings, projects, and campaigns.
- There is evidence that the school works to identify power dynamics and create norms, procedures, and processes that maximize democratic participation and enable meaningful engagement of all partners.