Re: Frameworks for Transforming How Schools Offer Student and Learning Supports

Howard Adelman & Linda Taylor at the Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA have been receiving requests for a compilation of the frameworks they have developed with respect to the systemic transformation of student and learning supports. So, they have developed a new resource aid that (1) highlights four fundamental, systemic concerns related to transforming student and learning supports and (2) offers frameworks for addressing them.

From the Preface:
If school improvement efforts are to be effective in enabling all students to have an equal opportunity to succeed at school, we all must move significantly beyond prevailing thinking. Current policy and practice is a grossly inadequate response to the many complex factors that interfere with positive development, learning, and teaching. Policy that perpetuates narrow-focused, categorical approaches to problems must be revised since it promotes an orientation that overemphasizes individually prescribed services to the detriment of prevention programs, results in marginalized and fragmented interventions, and undervalues the human and social capital indigenous to every neighborhood. School improvement policy must be expanded to support development of the type of comprehensive, multifaceted, and cohesive approach that can effectively address barriers to learning and teaching. Needed is a fundamental, systemic transformation in the ways schools, families, and communities address major barriers to learning and teaching. Such a transformation is essential to enhancing achievement for all, closing the achievement gap, reducing dropouts, and increasing the opportunity for schools to be valued as treasures in their neighborhood.