Community Schools

There has been a lot of buzz about community schools in recent years. What is a community school? It’s a school that not only tries to control education but other services as well. This can include health care and social service.



While this is technically accomplished through partnerships, it effectively gives schools even more control over childhoods. I have not seen any of these schools in person, so I could be missing something. I have read about their benefits. The only information about performance that I have seen has come from organizations that believe in the concept, so unbiased information is pretty much nonexistent.

What are the benefits? Children whose lives are further controlled by the schools do better in the schooling process. They apparently have higher graduation rates and fewer school absences. That means that even the supporters have failed to provide any evidence of practical benefits. There have been no proven educational or societal benefits to the community schooling model.

Obviously, I’m skeptical. If the schools have been so disastrous with American education, why would we want them involved in health care and social services? This comes off more as a power grab than anything.

As an individualist, I have frequently criticized the schools for controlling too much. For example, why should the place you are expected to learn math determine which sports opportunities are available to an individual? I have long insisted that the schools connect too many unrelated tasks in order to control childhoods. Community schools seem to embrace the exact opposite of my views. They insist that they need to control even more.