Description:
Learning experiences occur in a variety of environments. By helping K-12 schools build stronger relationships with community organizations, Community for Learning (CFL) helps tap into the various resources that can help educators meet the needs of students from many different backgrounds, with many different needs. Libraries, museums, social service agencies and even homes are just a few of the places CFL begins to make connections. Health and family issues as well as academic achievement are major concerns of CFL's thrust to improve schools. (http://www.temple.edu/lss/cfl.htm)

Goal:
"Community for Learning™ is a model for comprehensive and continuous School Improvement. CFL guides schools in providing powerful forms of instruction to ensure high standards of academic outcomes for all students. This model recognizes that learning occurs in environments outside the school, and that conditions for learning must be established at home and in the community. Community for Learning™ helps all students learn, even those children who are faced with challenging circumstances."

(Goal Statement, Community For Learning, retrieved November 21, 2003 from http://www.adi.org/cfl/)

Approach:
"Each CFL school has a full-time facilitator, who oversees Implementation and assists with training. Districts with clusters of CFL schools generally appoint a project coordinator, who serves as the liaison between schools, the district office, and Mid-Atlantic Regional Educational Laboratory for Student Success (LSS). The project coordinator, the facilitator, and the principal develop a site-specific plan that mobilizes the school’s resources in support of classroom and community-wide implementation.

Teachers and specialists from different areas of expertise work together to meet the diverse academic and social needs of individual students. Through an instructional component called Adaptive Learning Environments Model (ALEM), students with Special Needs join their peers in inclusive classrooms. A diagnostic process is completed for the purposes of assessing students needs. They learn in small units and are continually assessed by the teacher. At the same time they are taught the skills they need to plan for themselves and monitor their own progress. This allows students to be able to progress at their own pace. They advance when ready and have the option of taking on more challenging work if desired. Students who are not advancing at a suitable rate receive the individualized attention necessary to assist them.

Site-based Teams are coordinated to facilitate successful implementation of curriculum. A principal, facilitator and representatives from each subject area or grade level meet twice every month to discuss relevant issues. A Support team consisting of a principal, CFL facilitator, social worker or counselor and two to four parents also meets twice monthly to work on connections between the school and outside agencies. Leadership training is provided for all principals, school staff and interested parents.

CFL’s instructional component is called "adaptive learning": the teacher adapts the instructional approach to meet the data-determined learning requirements of the individual student. CFL brings together and coordinates practices that have been used in classrooms and schools for years. It reconfigures these ideas to create a coherent program that has a positive effect on student achievement. The teacher diagnoses learning needs when students enter a new unit of instruction, develops individualized learning plans (prescriptions) for each student, monitors student progress by checking work and providing feedback, and keeps records to chart student achievement. CFL emphasizes the student’s self-directed learning and motivation for sustained learning success.

Standard CFL Classroom Management strategies include:

1. Prescriptions
2. Self-scheduling boards
3. Wait-time activities
4. Learning centers
5. Teacher calls
6. Leveled lessons

(http://www.adi.org/cfl/)

research:
A CFL consultant recently analyzed student achievement data for all schools that adopted the model in 1998 (19 schools, all in New Jersey) and 1999 (42 schools in New Jersey and four other states). Data consisted of statewide assessment scores in reading and mathematics in multiple grades. The consultant found that after three years of implementation, 1998 CFL schools had made greater progress than the state as a whole on 63 percent of the reading measures and 68 percent of the mathematics measures. After two years of implementation, the 1999 CFL cohort had made greater progress than the state as a whole on about half the measures. This suggested that student performance tends to increase as schools have more time to implement the model (Redding, 2002).

Several earlier studies examined student achievement at smaller numbers of CFL schools. For example, one study focused on five schools in the District of Columbia that began implementing CFL in fall 1996, plus one school that adopted the model in fall 1997. The six schools had been identified as among the lowest performing in the district. Despite substantial student and staff turnover, the schools made considerable progress in implementing CFL. From fall 1997 to spring 1998, there were statistically significant changes in classroom practice on 11 of 12 critical dimensions of ALEM, the model’s instructional component. On the Stanford 9, all six CFL schools exceeded the district-mandated improvement standard of 10 percent gain from fall to spring. The mean gain for the CFL schools was comparable to that of other targeted assistance schools in the district (Wang & Manning, 2000). (Retrieved from www.nwrel.org on 1-28-04).


The following sources provide further documented research on the effectiveness of CFL:

Redding, S. (2002). Community for Learning effectiveness study. Unpublished manuscript.

Wang, M. C., & Manning, J. (2000). Turning around low-performing schools: The case of the Washington, DC schools. Philadelphia: Laboratory for Student Success.

Wang, M. C., Oates, J., & Weishew, N. (1995). Effective school responses to student Diversity in inner-city schools: A coordinated approach. Education and Urban Society, 27(4), 484-503.

Brookhart, S. M., Casile, W. J., & McCown, R. R. (1997). evaluation of the implementation of continuous progress instruction in the Fox Chapel Area School District 1995-1996. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University.

McCombs, B. L., & Quiat, M. (2000). Results of pilot study to evaluate the Community for Learning (CFL) program. Philadelphia: Laboratory for Student Success.

McCombs, B. L., & Weinberger, E. (2000). National study of the Community for Learning program: Relationships between program implementation, learner-centeredness, and student academic and non-academic outcomes. Unpublished manuscript.
(Bibliography retrieved from www.nwrel.org on 1-28-04).

Costs:
CFL estimates that the first year of implementation will cost approximately $30,000 per school. Because the program utilizes existing resources and no specially designed curriculum materials need to be purchased the cost is relatively low. (http://www.temple.edu/lss/cfl.htm)

Implementation Sites:
Van Ness Elementary
1150 5th Street SE
Washington, DC 20003
202-698-3818
Contact: George Moore

Grant Elementary
159 North Clinton Avenue
Trenton, NJ 08609
609-989-2640
Contact: Veronica Taylor

Warren East Middle School
7031 Louisville Road
Bowling Green, KY 42101
270-843-0181
Contact: Beverly Dillard

As listed in NWREL's catalogue of school reform Models, January 1, 2004, NWREL catalogue 01/01/04