Year two study of a community, school, and university partnership for urban schools: Identifying resources which support the academic achievement for African American students

Educational reform in large urban school districts has produced little success among African American students. From the implementation of Brown vs. Board of Education Topeka (1954) to NCLB (2001), academic achievement of African American students have historically performed below their white and Asian counterparts. The effects of imposed segregation, discrimination and under resourced educational institutions where students of color predominate have negatively impacted the achievement of African Americans. In order to transform education to support equitable opportunities for African American students and other ethnic minority students to learn, education must undergo a re-culturation process that takes into account how to change the norms, behaviors, language, expectations, and modes of interactions among the people who work in schools. This process can be supported through community-school-university partnerships. Researchers will use a case study to investigate what ongoing processes, including co-construction, does a community-school-university partnership demonstrate as it continues to work toward school transformation following its first year of operation; including strategies to overcome the barriers that persist to co-construction. Also the study seeks to examine in what ways do the types of resources resulting from the community-school-university partnership contribute to the academic achievement of African American students.