Improving Schools Through Community Engagement: A Practical Guide for Educators

Engage your community and help students achieve their full potential!

Americans see public schools as a critical community resource and rank education as a priority second only to the economy. How can educators harness this public interest in education to bring parents, families, and communities to action for our schools? Improving Schools Through Community Engagement addresses these questions and more in this invaluable source of methods and strategies for educators to initiate action.

Involvement of family and community members has a significant impact on student achievement. This handy resource provides a framework that education leaders can use in designing and implementing initiatives to more effectively engage the public by:

• Framing a clear focus for community engagement 
• Identifying and including representatives from each diverse constituency group
• Developing an understanding of the varied perspectives of these groups
• Presenting strategies to encourage constituent involvement and action

A more engaged community results in improved teaching and learning. The energy of parents, teachers, and communities working together starts small and spreads over time. The possibilities for action are limitless!

Kathy Gardner Chadwick, Ph.D. in marketing from Northwestern University, is the Husby-Johnson Chair of Business and Economics at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. Prior to joining the faculty at St. Olaf, Kathy taught marketing at the University of Minnesota and worked as a marketing research analyst at 3M Company in St. Paul, Minnesota. For the past 20 years, she has served as a marketing consultant to a wide variety of organi-zations in both the private and the not-for-profit sectors. Her interest in community engagement stems from her back-ground in marketing and her passion for education, combined with her opportunity to serve as a faculty member in a leadership development program for Minnesota educators, funded by the Bush Foundation. Conversations with K–12 educators over a period of several years convinced her that community engagement can address many of the challenges facing today’s educators as they work to help students achieve at a higher level. Believing that “actions speak louder than words,” she has been actively involved in her commu-nity’s public schools, serving as co-chair of the local elemen-tary school site council, volunteering for district-level task forces, and regularly attending school conferences. She lives in Bloomington, Minnesota, with her two teenaged children, Claire and Jim.