[3] The "school emerges as a community hub, a one-stop center to meet diverse needs and to achieve the best possible outcomes for each child.
[10] Given the five conditions of learning mentioned above, FSCSs can bring together a package of different components and services:[11] A number of community school models have sprung up around the country.
The University of Pennsylvania's West Philadelphia Improvement Corps is an example of a full-fledged community school, with extended hours and a range of one-stop services.
[8] The Elizabeth Learning Center in California is an example of a pre-K through Grade 12 community school, which has child and family support services integrated into the educational restructuring.
Their goal is to create learning opportunities and services to help students develop academically, emotionally, physically, and socially.
[20] In 1889, Jane Addams established a Hull House in Chicago, which brought health and educational services to working families in immigrant neighborhoods.
[21] Addams's work, based on an English model, was founded on "the theory that social ills are interconnected and must be approached holistically.
[20] The rise of the Head Start Program in 1965, "was a tacit acknowledgement by the government that schools alone are not enough to address the underlying problem of social poverty.
[24] The Working to Encourage Community Action and Responsibility in Education (WeCare) Act amends Title I of ESEA and requires "states and local educational agencies (LEAs) to assess the nonacademic factors affecting student academic performance and work with other public, private, non-profit, and community-based entities to address those factors.
Children in lower-income households: have poorer health; suffer from undiagnosed vision problems; lack adequate dental care; have poor nutrition; are more likely to develop asthma; and are more likely to be born premature or with low birth weights.
In order to raise student academic achievement, lower-class children must live in better social and economic conditions.
In recent years, policymakers have focused on how to achieve higher test scores without addressing the influence of poverty.
[32]Traditional public schools may not have the capacity to address all of the challenges and barriers that face children living in poverty or in low-income households.
Through its partnerships, community schools can address a wider range of the issues facing these children and families.
Dryfoos and Maguire (2002) propose that children in different communities face significant barriers to learning that schools cannot overcome alone.
[33] They argue that FSCSs can help overcome many of those barriers in the following ways: Michael Engle (2000) discusses the development of research around the relationship between education, human capital, and economic growth.
He discusses conclusions by other researchers since the 1950s around the high rate of returns on individual investments in education as measured by income.
Engle concludes that, "Money for schools could be regarded not as consumption spending but as an investment in human resources that will pay off in the future.
"[34] This conclusion emphasizes the importance of investing in schools, in order to have high rates of returns in regards to income.
Additionally, Wilensky and Kline argue that the widely believed notion that public schools are meant to prepare students for jobs and economic productivity is false and risks failure at the outset.
[18] They argue that advances in educational attainment "cannot compensate for the deterioration in real earnings of young workers that have characterized the American economy since 1973.
Families living in poverty and middle-class families face differences in regards to childrearing and children's health—including vision, hearing, oral health, lead exposure, asthma, use of alcohol, smoking, birth weight, and nutrition—and have difficulty attaining and fully utilizing government aid.
[31] While these differences, may not significantly affect the academic achievement gap between classes on an individual basis, "together, they add up to a cumulative disadvantage for lower-class children that can't help but depress average performance.