Reading the tea leaves

Senate testimony is hardly a formal indicator of how things are going to play out in reality - but this is an interesting nod to community-based partnerships in Arne Duncan's opening statement during his confirmation hearing:

Education has been my life's work, starting on the South Side of Chicago where I grew up along with my sister and brother, as a part of my mother's inner city after-school tutoring program, Sue Duncan’s Children’s Center, where I learned to, as she says “cherish every child.” Her remarkable courage and dedication has been a constant source of inspiration to me. The Children’s Center is an example of the type of partnership needed to support the learning of every child – in this case though a partnership among parents, community volunteers, school staff, philanthropies, and a university. With different sets of partners, examples like this across the country, in urban districts and rural communities, have demonstrated that, given opportunity and support, every child can learn. As the President-elect has said, these kids are our kids, and their education is the responsibility of us all.

Will the Department of Education issue a call for community-school partnerships? It would be great to see...

Hat tip to the NC Forum's Friday Report

A bailout for public education

Synopsis of the conversation to date:

• K-12 Education: We want a bailout.
• House Democrats: Will $120 billion tide you over?

Thoughts?

Update: It turns out that $120 billion was a lowball number; the actual number going to public education is $142 billion over two years.

Building infrastructure in the partnership field

I have said for some time that, within the next 5-10 years, people who know how to build community/school partnerships are going to become some of the most important people in K-12 education. Whether they are found within schools, district offices, chambers, businesses, coalitions or foundations, these people are the solution to many of the challenges we currently face in education – problems that are not going away anytime soon.

I believe that community/school collaboration is critically important. It’s the reason I started my company. It’s the reason we started the Business/Education Partnership Forum, published our guides and survey reports, and created the Effective Education Partnerships Conference. And it’s the reason we’ve just launched the K-12 Partnership Report, a subscription-based newsletter highlighting best practices, case studies, and much more. All of these are initiatives designed to build infrastructure in the partnerships field – to connect professionals and disseminate information on what works.

But we’re just one company –if we’re going to build an industry network, we all need to play a role. If you look at other professional fields, they have a level of structure that we lack, including publications (books, newsletters, etc.), directories, associations, events, original research, and more. To elevate the prominence and practice of partnership development, we need to put these things into place as well. Only then can we connect with, and learn from, one another; raise awareness of the value of partnerships as a means to support, improvement, and reform; and begin to forge the national legislative and corporate relationships we need to further advance the field.

(As an aside: I know that there are some excellent organizations already in place, including some operating at the state level, such as TAPE, FAPE, and MACEF; and that there are some excellent national groups, such as NSFA and MENTOR, focused on one band of the very large partnership spectrum. I’m suggesting that there needs to be a national umbrella organization for the many types of partnership models out there, operating as a membership and/or advocacy/lobbying group, much as NAPE used to do.)

So I’m asking everyone to think about how they can help to create the industry connections that we need. Regardless of the type of initiative, there are many roles to be filled: you can serve as a leader, an organizer, a volunteer, or an underwriter. And there are many types of initiatives that need to be tackled: creation of a national organization; production of new research (practices, scope of the field, pilot programs, etc.); development of a professional certification model; and much more.

If you want to make something happen, let me know: we want to help.

Launch of K-12 Partnership Report

I'm very pleased to announce the launch of the K-12 Partnership Report, a subscription-based newsletter three years in the making. For those interested in building community-school partnerships, you can find a downloadable sample copy at www.kprnewsletter.com.