It seems that everybody agrees that it is important to form strong partnerships between schools, homes and their communities, but there is a decided lack of information about how to go about achieving that goal. In 2010, President Obama signed the executive order, White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics which includes provisions for strengthening home and community partnerships with schools. The President pointed out that only about half of all Latino students earn their high school diplomas on time and even if they do graduate, they are half as likely to be prepared for success in college. Only 13% of Latinos have bachelor’s degrees and 4% have graduate degrees. The executive order included measures to provide funding for early childhood programs from early day care to pre-school and funding for “promise communities” and other “Public-private” partneships aimed at community education reform. The need for more Latino teachers was also discussed. Just in case people erroneously think that this order is aimed at helping immigrants, the White House pointed out that 78% of ELL students were born in the USA but that 82% report Spanish is the language most often spoken at home. No concrete examples of partnership programs were specified, but funding was made available for a wide variety of them from day care through college (White House, 2011). In 1994, Decker and Decker presented a paper in Australia that outlined four major components that should be included in community and school partnerships. These include diverse educational services, interagency cooperation and public-private partnerships, involvement of citizens in decision making, and participation in community improvement efforts. This model has the school as the center of the community that is involved in all other aspects of the community including helping families connect with the resources they need in all areas of life. They stressed that for these partnerships to be successful, strong leadership would be needed. They also said that community education is a process, and not a program. Since communities vary widely, no program can offer a one size fits all plan. Also in 1994, Martha de Acosta presented a paper in North Carolina that said for partnerships between the school, home and community to be successful, we need changes in the ways that pre-service teachers are prepared. They point out that most pre-service teachers are young, white members of the middle class and do not understand the reality of the communities in which they will be working. According to this article, very few teacher education programs were providing much coverage of the topic. The author suggests that would-be teachers have field experiences that explicitly have them interact in the community so they can have real experiences for reflection and preparation to become a member of the community. These experiences can include service in community agencies other than the school. In 2002, Brown, Amwake, Speth and Scott-Little published an article reporting that efforts to build home, school and community partnerships are difficult and time-consuming. They conducted research about the Framework and Training guides used by the regional educational centers. This training includes four sessions organized around eight elements. The training materials are designed to include everything that is needed, including scripts, handouts, slides, etc. A large number of people were surveyed and some barriers to training were given: lack of time, lack of funding, and a lack of interest of possible collaborative partners. Of the groups that used the training materials, most did not use the complete set. Instead they used part of the training and may have modified it. The greatest impact of the training was …show more content…
They also pointed out that there are many types of household structures and any effort must be sensitive to the culture of the community that is to be served. One of the important points made is that many members of minority groups or lower socio-economic families is that they have bad memories of their negative experiences in school and do not feel comfortable in interacting with teachers who do not understand their realities. They also point out that community partnerships fall on a continuum between helping families address basic needs to encouraging involvement in the community and political