Connecting school, home, and community resources is essential to the well-being of children and youth and to enhancing equity of opportunity for them to succeed at school and beyond. With this in mind, many initiatives and policy reports have focused on addressing the widespread fragmentation of supports for families and their children.…

The federal "Promise Neighborhoods" program underscores the importance of all children and youth having "access to great schools and strong systems of family and community support that will prepare them to attain an excellent education and successfully transition to college and a career." From this perspective, this brief stresses the importance…

Education cut-backs are likely to worsen in the short run. This makes it imperative for policy makers to reverse trends toward lopsided cutbacks that decimate efforts to address factors interfering with learning and teaching. Furthermore, it is essential to move forward in more cost-effective ways by unifying student and learning supports and…

This report continues a series analyzing proposals and blueprints for transforming schools from the perspective of how well they delineate ways to enable equity of opportunity for "all" students to succeed at school. The focus of this report is on the July 2010 draft of CCSSO's (Council of Chief State School Office's) "Model Core Teaching…

As Secretary Arne Duncan recognizes, turning around schools that are not doing well is a formidable task. It is also a task about which many ambiguities and controversies swirl. Given all the uncertainties associated with turning around, transforming, and continuously improving schools, it is essential to keep analyzing deficiencies in blueprints…

Anticipating Congressional hearings related to reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act, this report provides an analysis of preliminary hearings and related reports and proposals. The specific focus is on whether the reauthorization process is likely to include a substantive discussion of what is needed to enable all children to have an equal…

Recent policy and program analyses conducted by the Center for Mental Health in Schools indicate that few support staff are full participants at school and district tables where major school improvement decisions are made, and that student support staff are therefore not appropriately accounted for in school improvement planning and…

The beginning of a school year provides an opportunity to review school improvement action plans to ensure that all students have an equal opportunity to succeed at school, address barriers to learning and teaching, and engage/re-engage students in classroom instruction. Five major concerns require particular attention: (1) Welcoming and Ongoing…

Once again, early education has emerged as a major policy and program topic. And, while the importance of early education is undisputed, the increasing calls for "Universal Preschool" and full-day kindergartens have yielded considerable controversy. Our specific interest in public policy for preschool programs stems from our concerns about…

Despite much public emphasis on school improvement, it is evident that too little proactive attention has been paid to improving what schools do to address barriers to learning and teaching. This issue of the quarterly newsletter of the Center for Mental Health in Schools includes the following features and regular segments: (1) Who at the School…

As schools pursue their mission to educate and as communities pursue the aim of improving the quality of life of their residents, major initiatives have been introduced and progress is being made. At the same time, it is evident that there remains considerable fragmentation and significant gaps in some of our efforts to assure no child is left…