School-Community Partnerships

A number of EDC projects work in partnership with both schools and communities, knitting together collective, multidisciplinary approaches to improving students' health and education. The success of a school improvement effort often hinges on communication and relationships between educators and community members. EDC projects view every school as a community resource, and every community as a resource for the schools.

Lorain City Schools Smaller Learning Communities (SLC)

The Lorain City School District’s Smaller Learning Communities (SLC) project provides professional development, career development, college awareness activities, and summer school programming in support of six SLCs. EDC conducts a project evaluation that focuses on changes in student performance attributable to the project and the degree of integration of professional development in the classroom.

Ford PAS Alternative Energy

A collaborative effort between EDC’s Education, Employment, and Community Programs and the Center for Educational Resources and Outreach, the Ford PAS Alternative Energy project builds on the successful Ford PAS interdisciplinary high school curriculum developed by EDC in collaboration with the Ford Motor Company Fund. This new project is expanding and strengthening the science content of the existing Ford PAS materials, creating a course focusing on the physics and engineering aspects of alternative energy and expanding the module on environmental issues to create a full biology course.

Assessment Framework for Seminarians

EDC is designing and facilitating a process involving eight Roman Catholic seminaries in the development of assessment measures for seminarians. The project draws upon EDC’s previous work in developing skill standards and assessment tools based on those standards. The project will result in an occupational analysis, rubrics that integrate both the occupational responsibilities of priests and the behavior attributes promoted during seminary formation, and a framework for designing portfolios rooted in these materials.

Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Employment Services for Youth Offenders

The Employment Services for Youth Offenders Project provides training and job placement services to youth, ages 16 to 21, involved in the justice system. Job training and placement focuses on high wage/high demand occupations. EDC provides technical assistance to project management and to partner organizations. EDC will develop a report that analyzes the barriers local employers confront when hiring adjudicated youth.

VOICES for Youth

VOICES for Youth recruits and trains full-time volunteers from an interdenominational network of faith-based organizations in Cleveland, Ohio. The volunteers provide comprehensive mentoring services to adjudicated youth. EDC has developed training modules and conducts training sessions for volunteers affiliated with the project. EDC is also developing a report that reviews the type and extent of services faith-based organizations in the Greater Cleveland area provide to youth.

Guardians of the Mangroves

A lush mangrove forest with its wealth of tropical plants, animals, and sea organisms, one of the most biodiverse wetland habitats on the planet, thrives just off the coast of Colombia. For children in a local neighborhood, the mangroves are a gateway to discovering ecology—and computer software.

College Bound in Arkansas

Researchers at EDC are working with school leaders around the country to boost the involvement of Latino parents in their children’s education, recently focusing on an Arkansas county with one of the fastest-growing Latino populations in the United States. Researchers will work with leaders from the Helen Tyson Middle School, part of the Springdale Public Schools, to apply lessons from the EDC project PALMS—Postsecondary Access for Latino Middle-Grades Students.

"College Knowledge" for Latino Communities

Nearly half the U.S. Latino population ages 18–25 have not completed high school, and only 15 percent earn a postsecondary degree, according to a recent report by the Education Commission of the States. To improve students’ opportunities for higher education, EDC developed the project known as PALMS (Postsecondary Access for Latino Middle- Grades Students).

Leaving a Legacy

Community-level programs are often at a loss when their funding ends. How can they continue to offer services to clients? What aspects of their programs should they work hardest to sustain?