Over the last twenty years, many American cities have turned to neoliberal policies and practices to reform their school systems. Hoping to boost achievement, city school systems have turned to initiatives for charter schools, closed public schools, and have hired temporary teachers through programs like Teach for America. Despite these efforts at reform, US cities still face intractable problems of lagging academic achievement among students, many of whom are low income and/or Black and Brown. Some have argued that these past efforts have failed because they do not address the outside-of-school factors impacting achievement, like poverty. To meet that challenge, cities like New York, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Albuquerque are trying another strategy called community schools. Community schools are schools which provide a range of services to address the needs of students, families, and communities. The theory is that these schools will address the outside-of-school factors that prevent low income students from coming to and performing in school, thereby improving achievement. This roundtable will explore the possibilities and challenges of the community schools strategy with a discussion leader who has been directly involved in the community school initiative in Baltimore, MD at the policy and local levels.
