Chapter 2: Two Concepts of Community Engagement: Interviews With Don Davies and Martin Blank

In 1971, I was working for John I. Goodlad, dean of education at UCLA, on a White House paper to present the state of education. I was assigned the task to include parents and education. Only one name emerged in my research review: Don Davies. Davies’s work since that date has established parent involvement as essential to school life in a democracy. Thus, for this volume I felt that Davies’s thinking across the years was fundamental to everyone’s grasp of where the field of study emerged and its broad scope in 2015.

Another name that is key to the community school concept and reform is Martin Blank. The second volume of the Family–School–Community Partnership (FSCP) series was planned to address the “C” of FSCP. Ollie Moles, U.S. Office of Education Research Institute, suggested that I contact Martin Blank at the Institute of Educational Leadership in Washington, DC. Filled with hope, energy, and ideas, Blank’s vision for a coalition of community schools became a key chapter in that volume. His vision for schools includes a school that serves as the hub for the services of the surrounding community focusing on the needs of the school’s students. During the past decades, he has spearheaded a movement that has brought thousands of schools into its ranks. In March 2014, the Coalition of Community Schools National Forum in Cincinnati brought together schools districts, schools, and FSCP scholars and school reformers from across the country.