Gary Wehlage

Community Collaboration: If It Is Such a Good Idea, Why Is It So Hard to Do?.

In the face of todays challenging social and family conditions, policy analysts have recently argued that schools and other human service agencies charged with nurturing and supporting children must find ways to collaborate to use their resources more efficiently and effectively. Communities are being urged to create collaborative organizations to coordinate disparate human service providers as a fundamental strategy in addressing the needs of at-risk youth. Collaboration is intended to provide a more holistic, comprehensive, and effective set of responses to children whose problems tend to be complex and multifaceted (Bruner, 1991; GAO, 1992; Goode, 1990; Lassen & Janey, 1991; Melaville, 1991; Melaville & Blank, 1991; Melaville, Blank, & Asayesh, 1993; Rist, 1992). A reading of the literature suggests that the time has arrived for collaboration

Restructuring Urban Schools: The New Futures Experience

The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s New Futures Initiative is an effort to increase the life chances of disadvantaged youth by promoting institutional change in the schools and other youth-serving agencies in several medium-sized communities. The research reported here was conducted over the first three years of the five-year initiative and focuses only on the educational portion of New Futures. The findings are not conclusions about the effectiveness of New Futures, but rather they offer a mid-point assessment of attempts at restructuring a set of targeted schools to better serve at-risk students. In general, it was found that educational initiatives have not yet stimulated the restructuring of these schools. For the most part, interventions were supplemental and left the basic activities and practices of schools unaltered. Little change could be found in the social relations between educators and students; curriculum and instruction left students unengaged in serious academic work; new roles for teachers and administrators largely failed to materialize; and schools were unable to find ways of collaborating with other institutions, both public and private, to strengthen their educational resources. Despite these disappointing findings, New Futures has succeeded in bringing together most of the major stakeholders concerned with youth in each community. Important dialogue has developed, and the inadequacies of the first set of interventions appear to have stimulated a reconsideration of how to change schools to make them substantially more effective. Finally, the need for a policy-making collaborative responsive to the problems of youth has been recognized.

The marginal high school student: defining the problem and searching for policy

Abstract The central issue explored in this paper concerns those principles and objectives that should guide the formulation of policy aimed at the marginal high school student. Recent efforts to make these youth more employable through specialized and remedial programs are examined. After the general ineffectiveness of such programs is noted, an analysis is offered which links delinquency and adolescent development theory. The concept of adolescent social development is explored along with the effects of experiential education programs as a context for stimulating this development. Finally, to promote the use of programs which provide for adolescent social development, a policy of modified vouchers is advocated.