Giving Compass' Take:

• Betheny Gross, writing for The 74, explains that schools need guidance and help from the surrounding communities in order to provide the best education possible.

• How can education donors also play a role in helping enhance schools and school resources?

• Read more about the future of education and jobs.

Schools can’t do it all. We have known this for a long time, yet we often seem to deny this reality in policy and action. For decades we have piled expectations onto our schools, asking them to develop scholars, citizens, and workers and to provide for the academic, nutritional, social, and developmental needs of children. Schools, as critics are quick to point out, invariably fall short of these expectations.

But that hasn’t stopped us from adding still more. Today we look to the future of work and see an urgent need to better develop children’s complex reasoning, creativity, and mental agility. We look ahead to a time when our society will be forced to address the causes and consequences of climate change, rising income inequality, and aging populations and are pressed to provide children with the intellectual and emotional capacity to take on those issues.

We look at our children today and see so many of them dealing with the mental and physical effects of trauma brought on by the stress of poverty, addiction in families, and exposure to violence and racism. And we look to our schools to take on all of these issues. Schools have been working hard to deliver on these needs in important ways. Educators are beginning to engage in discussions about the principles of trauma-informed care and what they mean for the work of schools. Schools have been providing both extracurricular and academic opportunities that engage students in the world outside school in meaningful ways. Schools have also taken up the call to develop students’ capacity beyond their academic skills to include pillars of social and emotional learning.

At the end of the day, though, schools must have partners to meet these needs.No one is better equipped to connect children with their community than community members themselves.

Read the full article about how the future of education depends on communities by Betheny Gross at The 74