Commentary: Racial Division, Research, and Building Human Capital

• Published in: American educational research journal Vol. 54; no. 1_suppl; pp. 164S - 167S
• Main Author: Orfield, Gary
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01-04-2017; American Educational Research Association
• Subjects: Educational Experience; Educational Research; Elementary Schools; Human Capital; Low Income Students; Racial Differences; School Administration; School Effectiveness; School Turnaround
• ISSN: 0002-8312; 1935-1011
• DOI: 10.3102/0002831216680471

The article ''Transforming Educational Experiences in Low-Income Communities'' analyzes the efforts of a highly impoverished small elementary school to provide the kind of wrap-around services children in very poor communities need to give them a fair chance to succeed. For a child from a low-income family, what happens in the non-educational part of his or her life is often far more determinative than what happens in the classroom. In the absence of family resources and knowledge of the system, the school can become very important in connecting children to essential resources. As a faculty advisor to Harvard's Collaborative for Integrated School Services (1900-2003), Gary Orfield saw successful examples in various parts of the country. Full-service schools, however, never became a basic part of educational reform, though research shows that out-of-school conditions greatly impact school success. This article links the school's success to the social capital of the staff and a well-connected school principal but argues that efforts were limited by the tension between the Latinos who made up more than two-thirds of the school's enrollment and the African American and American Indian children and parents who often felt neglected. [This article offers a commentary of "Transforming Educational Experiences in Low-Income Communities: A Qualitative Case Study of Social Capital in a Full-Service Community School" (EJ1155359).]