This monograph on Best Practices in Enhancing School
Environment has been developed under contract with the
Department of Defense. While its focus is to help military
connected schools to better address the needs of their
military students, what we present has relevance for all of
our children in all of our schools.
First, a few words on how the extraordinary programs you
are going to read about were selected. We began by undertaking
a review of the literature, identifying those programs
aimed at improving school engagement and connectedness
with the goal of identifying those programs that have been
empirically shown to have an impact. From that literature we
then used a nomination technique to identify the “best of
the best”—the one school that exemplifies the principles that
make effective programs work. The schools that you will
read about and view on the DVD provided in the back cover
have been selected not because they are extraordinary but
rather because they are ordinary. These schools have put into
place with limited resources, programs and interventions that
any school can do. Some of the schools we have selected are
in urban inner city settings and others are in rural communities.
Some target children at the elementary school level and
others at junior high and high school. Some are military
linked and some are not. What we highlight is what these
schools do to make their programs work.
It is our hope that you will come away from the monograph
and DVD saying that we too, in our school, can do these
things that will help all our children feel more connected
and ready to learn.