The Harvard Family Research Project separated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to become the Global Family Research Project as of January 1, 2017. It is no longer affiliated with Harvard University.
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Fall 2002 School-Based Services: Traditional and Emerging Models to Address Barriers to LearningMargot A. Welch
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Margot A. Welch, Ed.D.
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Harvard University
9/19/02 – Introductions and Overview, History #1
Where do we come from? Reviewing the course and expectations, adjusting and distributing reading expectations based on size and experience of group. We begin to explore the history of services in schools.
Assignments
Adelman, H., & Taylor, L. (1997, July). Addressing barriers to learning: Beyond school-linked services and full-service schools. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry.
Bolman, L. G., & Terrence E. D. Modern approaches to understanding and managing organizations (pp. 1–27).
Discipline-specific handouts: psychology, social work, nursing, guidance counseling
Halpern, R. Fragile families, fragile solutions: A history of supportive services for families in poverty (pp. 1–28). (Introduction)
Sedlak, M. (1997, July). The uneasy alliance of mental health services and the schools: An historical perspective. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 67(3), 408–422.
Madeleine's Special Education: A Family Story – role-play to be distributed in class
9/26/02 – History, Organizational Perspectives #1
How does thinking about history and using simple organizational perspectives help us understand the state and structure of services for children, youth, and families today?
Today we role-play Madeline
Assignments
College Entrance Examination Board. (1986). Keeping the options open.
Mass. School Counselors Association. Comprehensive developmental guidance and counseling curriculum guide and role statement revision (pp. 5–27).
Fine, M. Framing dropouts (pp. 63–69, 164–171).
Hart, P., & Jacobi, M. From gatekeeper to advocate: Transforming the role of school counselor (pp. 39–64).
10/3/02 – Real Work #1: School Guidance, School Nursing
Speakers: Ron Johnson, Guidance Counselor, Boston; Jan Parsons, Guidance Director, Natick
Practitioners talk with us about the realities of their work as service providers in schools.
Assignments
Comer, J. P. Waiting for a miracle (pp. 44–73, “My work”).
Lubove, R. The professional altruist: The emergence of social work as a career (pp. 5–49).
Schorr, L. B., & Schorr, D. Within our reach: Breaking the cycle of disadvantage (ch. 10, “Lessons of successful programs”).
10/10/02 – Real Week #2: School Psychology, School Social Work
Speaker: Miriam Goldberg, Psychologist, Newton; Jonathan Korin, Social Worker, Malden
Practitioners will talk with us about the realities of their work as service providers in schools.
Assignments
Lipsky, M. Street level bureaucracy (pp. 3–12).
Crowson, R. L., & Boyd, W. L. (1993, February). Coordinated services for children: Designing arks for storms and seas unknown. American Journal of Education, 101, 140–177.
Schorr, L. B. Common purpose: Strengthening families and neighborhoods to rebuild America (pp. 47–55, 282–292, “Schools as beacons of hope,” “Strengthening community supports for school success”).
Joe: What's It All About? – Role-play to be distributed in class
10/17/02 – Organizational Perspectives #2
We continue to consider how thinking about organizational perspectives helps us understand the state and structure of services for children, youth, and families.
Today we role-play Joe.
Assignments
Chaskin, R. J., & Richman, H. A. (1992). Concerns about school-linked services: Institution-based versus community-based models. In R. Behrman (Ed.), The future of children: School-linked services. Packard, 2:1.
Comer, J. P. School power (ch. 12, “Sharing expertise”).
Dryfoos, J. Full service schools: A revolution in health and social services for children, youth and families (pp. 77–96, “School-based clinics: A look at pioneer programs”).
10/24/02 – Introducing New Models #1
Speaker: Rita Olans, President, Mass. Coalition of School-based Health Centers
Reviewing premises of new school- and community-based models of providing services, we hear from two speakers to better understand an example of a statewide initiative and the school-based health center. Memo #1 due.
Assignments
Dryfoos, J. G. Full service schools: A revolution in health and social services for children, youth and families (ch. 5, 7, “Realizing the vision: Two full service schools,” “Putting the pieces together”).
Grossman, J. B., Walker, K., & Raley, R. (2001, April). Challenges and opportunities in after-school programs: Lessons for policymakers and funders. P/PV. Available online: www.ppv.org/ppv/publications/
publications_description.asp?search_id=8&publication_id=120l.
Halpern, R. (1999). After-school programs for low-income children: Promises and challenges. In R. E. Behrman (Ed.), The future of children: When school is out. David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
10/31/02 – New Models #2
Speakers: Maureen McGoldrick, Student Support Coordinator, Boston
Today we think about classroom- and building-based, extended service models that do not focus exclusively on the mental health needs of kids.
Assignments
Cahill, M. Beacons: A union of youth and community development. In Toward collaboration, youth development, youth programs, and school reform.
Clark, H., & Engle, R. The Children's Aid Society: Summary of research findings, 1992–1999.
Distributed in class:
Children's Aid Society. (2001, September). Building a community school (3rd ed.). New York.
CISS. (2002). Building bridges: Nurturing full service schools.
Melaville, A. I., & Blank, M. J. (1998). Learning together: The developing field of school-community initiatives. Charles Stewart Mott.
11/7/02 – Full Service/Community Schools #1: Children's Aid Society and Beacons – Two Model Programs
Speaker: Erica Herman, Director, Gardner Extended Services School, Boston
One speaker will make real some of the reading for this week about the widely disseminated Children's Aid Society community school model.
Assignments
Gardner, S. L. (1992). Key issues in developing school-linked, integrated services. In R. Behrman (Ed.), The future of children: School-linked services. Packard, 2:1.
Iscoe, L., & Keir, S. Revisiting the school of the future: The evolution of a school-based services project. Hogg Foundation.
Merseth, K., Elmore, R., & Schorr, L. (1999). Schools, community-based interventions and children's learning and development: What's the connect?
11/14/02 – Full Service/Community Schools #2: Implementing models
Speaker: Anne Greenbaum, Boston Excels
In this second week devoted to the full service/community school model, we attend to implementation issues in some detail, with the help of an experienced program coordinator and director who can help us to understand some of the “on-the-ground” challenges of sustaining community school programs.
Assignments
Gomby, D. S., & Larson, C. S. (1992). Evaluation of school-linked services. In R. Behrman (Ed.), The future of children: School-linked services. Packard, 2:1.
Horsch, K. (1998). Evaluating school-linked services: Considerations and best practices. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Family Research Project.
Schorr, L. Common purpose: Strengthening families and neighborhoods to rebuild America (ch. 4 and 5, “A new focus on results” and “Finding out what works”).
11/21/02 – Program Evaluation
Speaker: Karen Horsch
Understanding new approaches to program evaluation with these complex models illustrates the importance of evaluation and its relationship to program improvement. An evaluator with experience in assessing complex models of school-linked services walks us through the “logic model” and its value for ongoing program evaluation.
Memo #2 due
Assignments
Fine, M. (1993). [Ap]parent involvement: Reflections on parents' power in urban public schools. Teachers College Record, 94, 682–710.
Roderick, T. A school of our own: Parents, power, and community at the East Harlem Block Schools (pp. 7–47, ch. 1 and 2).
Schorr, L. B. Common purpose: Strengthening families and neighborhoods to rebuild America (pp. 301–379, ch. 9).
Centerville: School-Community Issues – Role-play to be distributed in class
12/5/02 – Parent Engagement
Exploring the dynamics and intricacies of parent involvement as it relates to achievement, parent empowerment, and community-building.
We role-play Centerville.
Assignments:
Cohen, L., Baer, N., & Satterwhite, P. (1994). Developing effective coalitions: An eight-step guide. Contra Costa County Health Services Department.
Harkavy, I. (1996). Organizational innovation and the creation of the new American university: The University of Pennsylvania's Center for Community Partnerships as a case study. In R. M. Lerner & L. A. K. Simon (Eds.), Outreach universities for America's youth and families: Building university-community collaborations for the Twenty-First Century.
Knapp, et al. Paths to partnership: University and community as learners in interprofessional education (pp. 35–56, ch. 2, “Identifying what collaborative professionals need to know”).
Pittman, K., & Cahill, M. (1992, July). Pushing the boundaries of education: The implications of a youth development approach to education policies, structures and collaboration.
Shirley, D. Community organizing for urban school reform, pp. 223–240.
12/12/02 – School-Community Collaborations
Speaker: Carole Siegel, Pittsfield Public Schools
The complexities of collaboration influence program design in many ways. We will discuss readings and hear from a social worker who has had wide experience with community coalitions and school-community collaborations.
12/19/02 – Reports From the Field #1
1/9/03 – Reports From the Field #2
9/10/02 – Class Memos and Final Projects
Class Memos
In this class, you will submit two brief memos (memo #1 is due October 24th, memo #2 is due November 21st.) Memos—absolutely no more than 5 pages—are intended to be opportunities for you to connect information that you are gathering from readings, class discussions, class speakers, and activities with ideas or presuppositions that you may have had about school-based services before taking this class. They can focus on ideas related to (a) models or practices of delivering school-based services or to (b) society's attitudes and assumptions about models and the meaning of “social services” to any particular “population.” You may choose to use the memos to reflect about some aspect of your own experiences with services, your previous expectations or assumptions, your professional plans for the future, or what you are learning here at HUGSE. You should be specific in these memos, identifying particular ways that speakers or readings or activities are making you think differently about services. How so? Why? Which readings? What particular ideas? What particular observations that guest speakers have made? What particular aspect of a class activity? The memos are intended to be opportunities for you to speculate, think on paper, “journal,” in a sense, to yourselves and to me, about what you think the particular satisfactions and frustrations might be of working as a service provider—in a school or a community-based organization, where models of services are traditional or more comprehensive. Believe me, I want the process of memo-writing to be useful to students!
Final Projects: Fall 2002 – 2003
Goal
To become thoroughly familiar with the kinds of issues that influence the delivery of services in a particular setting or with a particular population that interests you. The project gives you an opportunity to design a model that will provide more integrated and comprehensive services for children, youth, and families than are currently available. Your model will reflect some of what you have learned from readings, class activities, and field experiences completed as components of this class. You may work alone or in pairs. You are expected to document the sources of your ideas and observations. If you decide to work in pairs, you should also devote part of the reflective section of the final paper to describing how the collaborative process influenced the project for each of you, individually. Everyone will need to have made a first visit to the site by November 7th. We will hear reports from all sites during our final two classes.
Site Selection
Choose a subject in which you have some professional interest. You may want to think about finding a site that is geographically convenient, too. You should expect to interview 6–8 practitioners in different roles who are addressing the kinds of needs that you are interested in responding to yourself. If you don't have easy access to a site, we can probably help you find a match through the CISS network. If you chose a site where you are currently working as an intern, your “reflective” piece of the project should include some commentary about ways that the additional observation and interview processes for this project influenced your practicum or work experience there.
Contents of Final Project
- Describe the setting. What's the model of services now in place? Where are services provided? How many are served? What ages? What's the size and ethnic composition of the community? The size and composition of the staff? What's the scope of programs offered? Is there a mission statement? Is there something about the history of the project that helps us understand why it is the way it is today? Get a sense of people's “job descriptions” so you can understand their professional orientations, roles, and responsibilities.
- Explain your relationship with the site. How much time—over how long a period—have you spent at the site? With how many people did you speak? What are their roles and how long have they been doing the work? What kind of understanding is there among providers about the availability of your paper to others? (This is not recommended.)
- Identify problems and resources. What do informants see as current problems in the service delivery system? What are their unmet needs? What obstacles seem to them to prevent improvement? Similarly, what strengths and resources are identified that could be drawn on to improve services? By whom? What is particularly satisfying about the work? Notice how people in different roles identify the same or different challenges and gratifications.
- Recommendations. How would you revise the services? You don't have to start from scratch—though you can if you want to—to sketch out a new plan for the setting. If you were a “consultant” to this setting you might not necessarily be able to find vast new resources for your plan. Thus, in addition to constructing programmatic suggestions, you will want to make recommendations that help providers meet needs more effectively. Think about the issues of evaluation and replicability.
- Reflections. Spend at least a full page thinking about how your understanding of services and your design for a new plan reflect what you have learned from specific class readings, classroom activities, and the process of data-gathering? What have you learned?
Make this paper useful for your own professional development!
Free. Available online only.