'Lagniappe' Comes To Education

By Deborah B. Smith

If you've visited New Orleans, you no doubt recognize one of our favorite words--"lagniappe." You've seen it on breakfast menus offering country sausage and grits, on dessert menus featuring bread pudding with whisky sauce and pralines, and in our newspapers, listing great jazz performances. Now a school-university partnership is bringing lagniappe--"a little something extra"--to education in New Orleans.

This "something extra" is a dedicated army of psychology and psychiatry professionals; social-work and education professors; undergraduate, graduate, medical, and psychiatric students; administrators from both public and private universities; and local and national funders. Bound together by a common determination to address the needs of inner-city children, they are working in close collaboration with public school teachers, board members, administrators, and parents in a one-of-a-kind undertaking. Their joint efforts have infused some of New Orleans' most distressed schools with new knowledge and vigor, replacing frustration and business-as-usual with reflection, collegiality, and enthusiasm.

Based on the child-development principles of James P. Comer, and built on the structure and operating principles of the Yale University Child Study Center's School Development Program, our school-university venture provides the teacher training customarily offered by such partnerships--and much more. We've learned how to bring multiple benefits to students and schools while at the same time bringing "value added" to the partners and major players. Because this multifaceted approach has worked so well for us, we want to share our observations on what makes it work in order to help others build expanded partnerships that benefit all parties. But first a bit of background on...