"We need more than individual value systems; we need a shared vision. A nation is held together by shared values, shared beliefs, shared attitudes. That is what enables a people to maintain a cohesive society despite the tensions of daily life. That is what enables them to rise above the conflicts that plague any society. This what gives a nation its tone, its fiber, its integrity, its moral style, its capacity to endure." - John W. Gardner on Civic Action & Community Engagement
New Research: Mission Promise Neighborhood

San Francisco’s Mission Promise Neighborhood (MPN) is a federally-funded Promise Neighborhood initiative that supports community-based organizations, schools, and other public agencies to work in defined neighborhoods and build integrated supports for children and youth from cradle to college and career.  Since 2013, the Gardner Center has partnered with MPN to support implementation and ongoing assessment of the initiative. This report draws on perspectives from school principals, family engagement staff, teachers, and community partners regarding the ways in which implementation of MPN supports has advanced the initiative’s goals.

Expanding Learning Opportunities for Youth & Their Families in the Mission Promise Neighborhood: An Interim Assessment
New Research: Oakland Community Schools
This report presents findings from the second year of our research collaboration with Oakland Unified School District, which focused on three primary areas: 1) the role of the district in supporting community school implementation; 2) the experience of newer community school sites, as well as district staff, to better understand the process by which schools become community schools; and 3) understanding the expanding reach of community school implementation in OUSD as well as the relationship between community school participation and student outcomes through analysis of available administrative data.


Gardner Perspective: Amy Gerstein
"While I have observed plenty of change in the region over time, the widespread and pernicious effects of income inequality currently impacting youth and their families astonished me."



Policy Brief: Alternative Schools
Gardner Center Associate Director Jorge Ruiz de Velasco and  Daisy Gonzales, Associate Director of Policy Analysis for California Education, review approaches to accountability for alternative schools in a new brief published as part of the PACE Continuous Improvement Series.
Find Us at AERA 2017
Look for the Gardner Center at the 2017 AERA Annual Meeting in San Antonio. 

Symposium
Actionable Research to Advance Equity: Insights from Three Research-Practice Partnerships featuring:
  • Evolution of a University-District Research-Practice Partnership: Strategies and Challenges by Erica Messner & Jacob Leos Urbel
  • The Influence of Power, Place, and Politics: The Dynamics of Cross-Sector Collaborations by Jamila Henderson & Amy Gerstein
  • Promoting Learning and Action: Building Practitioners' Capacity to Engage in Inquiry and Use Data by Hadar Baharav & Elizabeth Newman

Symposium 
Family Engagement in Promise Neighborhoods: A Critical Look at Interventions in Four Federally-Supported Sites

This symposium will include a presentation by Jorge Ruiz de Velasco and Laurel Sipes focusing on San Francisco’s Mission Promise Neighborhood (MPN).