Action Teams in Action: Interviews and Observations in Three Schools in the Baltimore School---Family--Community Partnership Program

Forty-nine schools in Baltimore are working with the Fund for Educational Excellence and the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed At Risk at Johns Hopkins University to establish comprehensive, permanent programs of partnership with their families and communities. To better understand how these schools are building and improving their partnership programs, administrators, teachers, and parents serving on Action Teams for School-Family-Community Partnerships were interviewed. This article focuses on how Action Teams in three schools—two elementary and one middle—use the Framework of Six Types of Involvement to develop more effective school-family-community connections. The demographics of each school, the partnerships being developed, and the results being obtained are described. The conclusion presents nine key insights derived from the school interviews that should be useful to other schools working to establish effective, comprehensive, and permanent school-family--community partnership programs.