Voices in Urban Education: Community Partners

To ensure that all children have the learning opportunities that can enhance what schools can provide, schools, school systems, and communities have begun to forge systematic links between schools and other agencies and organizations. These partnerships take many forms. In some cases, schools and private organizations are working together to build curricular programs that draw on the resources and talents of the partners. In others, municipal leaders are spearheading efforts to place schools at the center of learning communities, in which a variety of civic agencies and organizations support student learning and the schools stimulate economic and community revival. This issue of Voices in Urban Education spotlights some of these efforts. In an introductory essay, Hal Smith lays out a vision for an "education system" that includes, but is not limited to, schools. Such a system looks more like a web, with multiple connections among the partners, than a wheel with schools at the hub.