Common Causes

The movement to link family-support services to schools has too often traveled on a separate track from academically oriented school reform--and bypassed teachers completely. So the Danforth Foundation has kicked off a project to try to connect the two movements at the classroom level.

The foundation has selected 20 Title I elementary and middle schools in five states for the project, which will help teachers design strategies to restructure their classrooms, form partnerships with parents and community agencies, and use Title I funding more creatively.

Katharine Hooper-Briar and Hal A. Lawson, two experts in school-community collaboration at Miami University in Ohio, are the lead consultants for the Successful Schools project and have begun preliminary...