Giving Compass' Take:

• Marcus Gaddy and Theresa Anderson fill readers in on the benefits and complexities of two-generation partnerships with schools, which connect parents and children with essential services.

• What are two-generation initiatives? Why is it difficult to find effective ways to bring them into schools? How do two-generation partnerships with schools provide families with important skills and services necessary to break cycles of marginalization?

• Learn more about two-generation partnerships, both inside of schools and out.

Schools act as anchor institutions in many communities, providing social services and amenities that families use on a regular basis, such as safer public spaces, health clinics, food banks, and counseling. Two-generation (2Gen) initiatives aim to promote many of these benefits by providing coordinated and complementary services for parents and children.

High-stakes accountability policies typically measure schools against how they achieve on standardized tests, and not doing well can bring major consequences, including school closure. That laser focus on educational outcomes makes schools tricky 2Gen partners—on the one hand, they can be exceptionally invested in 2Gen as a holistic family model to support students; on the other hand, they don’t always have the luxury of time for the model to work or second chances if it doesn’t.

Community Properties of Ohio has figured out one way to involve its local elementary school in meaningful 2Gen interventions. From those efforts, we can share lessons about how to build 2Gen partnerships in schools.

  • It placed a full-time community-school liaison within the school to help the principal manage the 2Gen collaboration and the organizational partners operating in the school.
  • It offered meaningful family services within the school, including professional mental health services, child and family coaching, and community engagement specialists.
  • It built buy-in with district leaders, which will prove critical as they seek to replicate the school-based 2Gen model in other communities throughout Columbus.

2Gen school partnerships can be strong, but they take work, as the Columbus experience shows. Building an initiative responsive to the school’s needs was a process with multiple setbacks. But the partners’ commitment to problem-solving around the school’s constraints has been the key to creating a lasting and successful partnership.

Read the full article about two-generation partnerships with schools by Marcus Gaddy and Theresa Anderson at Urban Institute.