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Citation:

Schorr, L. B. (1997). Common purpose: Strengthening families and neighborhoods to rebuild America. New York, NY: Doubleday.

Annotation:
The author's overarching theme is that it is time to move beyond programmatic issues about what does or does not work in helping children develop into educated, healthy adults. Factors that contribute to highly effective programs are identified. The author suggests that the more ways schools offer parents to become partners, the more effective the connections can become. Schools should not be asked to take full responsibility for both a service reform and community building agenda; intermediaries can and should help with this. In the most depleted neighborhoods, support services at the school are not enough, and there must be experimentation to find the best ways to build on what has been learned about how communities can organize for universal school success. The author advocates forgetting about one-time fixes, overnight results, and arguments about top-down or bottom-up approaches and recognizing that school transformation requires substantial help from outside personnel in the form of expertise and wisdom that can come only from families and the community.