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Developing Community-Empowered Schools
Mary Ann Burke and Lawrence 0. Picus
Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin Press, 2001. 116 pages, $24.95.
For at least the past decade, public schools have been developing programs to promote community involvement in education, and many federal programs require some parental involvement in the schools. However, many educators want to go beyond limited parental participation efforts and create schools that actively involve community stakeholders. In Developing Community-Empowered Schools, Mary Ann Burke and Lawrence 0. Picus argue for the creation of "a community-empowered school..in which all members of the community-administrators, teachers, school staff, students, parents, and members of the local community at large-participate in efforts to achieve a school's goal of improving student performance" (7).
Burke and Picus have written a how-to manual for educators who want to increase community involvement in their schools. This is not a book of theory or one that lingers on the philosophical question of why one should create a community-empowered school. (For readers who want to know the answer to this question, the authors provide a suggested readings list.) Instead, the book explains the steps for creating such a school. The book is filled with sample worksheets, checklists, and an entire section on how to train educational staff and volunteers in order to build effective school-community partnerships.
The book begins with a brief discussion of the value of schools as community...