This article is the subject of an educational assignment at University of California-Berkeley supported by WikiProject Sociology of Poverty and the Wikipedia Ambassador Program during the 2011 Q3 term. Further details are available on the course page. |
Sociology NA‑class Mid‑importance | ||||||||||
|
Hi Aixle,
I got a chance to review your draft. You've made a great deal of progress on your article, "Full-Service Community Schools". Bravo! The topic is important, and you cover a number of important issues relating to the topic. In what follows, I will go through the list of non-substantive concerns and assess how well you have addressed them in this draft.
1. Your contribution does NOT appear to be cut and paste from an existing source without prior citation. Thank goodness!
2. In your lead section, you could do a better job of providing a stand-alone, concise summary of the whole article. My suspicion is that you don't have a great sense yet of where and how to develop the article further, and this is interfering with your ability to provide a more concise and coherent opening summary. Once you attend to the former, you'll be able to do the latter.
3. Your article is not jargon-filled. At this point, I would not worry about this issue.
4. You do not yet have links to other Wikipedia articles of relevance, although there are many that you could/should have, including the following: links to all articles referenced that are available online; Jane Addams and Hull House; John Dewey; Great Depression; World War II; Elementary and Secondary Act of 1965; Head Start; Community School Act of 1978; all of the relevant non-profit parties; Full-Service Community Schools Act of 2009; all of the federal legislation of the past decade that you mention and that have webpages; links to specific programs that fit under the umbrella of full-service community schools that are generally well-known, such as the Harlem Children's Zone.
5. At the moment, yours appears to be an "orphan" page. You can change that by providing links to all or most of what I listed above.
6. Your contribution is made with a neutral tone and based on statements that are verifiable. You could do a much better job, however, of citing sources. For instance, in "The Problem" section, you mention findings from studies about the effects of social class status on outcomes. You cite Rothstein, but your contribution would stand on much firmer ground if you were to cite more than one study. Indeed, there's a wealth of research on each of the relationships you mention. It makes sense to me to provide references for each of them--health (set of references); academic achievement (set of references); transition to adulthood--employment, etc. (set of references). Each of your paragraphs suffered from this "deficiency" to some extent. BACK UP YOUR STATEMENTS WITH REFERENCES!!!
7. I do not know if your "facts" are from reputable sources, because you do not provide a list of full citations.
8. Your contribution is generally clear; your language is generally free of redundancies, ambiguity and misunderstanding. There is at least one way, however, in which you could be clearer. Yours is an article on "Full-Service" community schools, but throughout the article, it seems as if you go back and forth between full service and regular community schools. I think the distinction needs to be made clear throughout. It appears that full-service schools evolved over time from the community schools model and is the most recent instantiation of such models. To the extent that this is the case, make this clear, and explain how this evolution happened. What goals do full service community schools have that are distinct from "community schools"?
The section on "partnerships in practice" seems a bit out of place. Consider moving. Maybe a discussion of these partnerships would fit better in a discussion about the history of full-service movements.
You do not mention specific programs that could be categorized under this umbrella, such as the Harlem Children's Zone. A list of these programs would be a great contribution, with wikilinks to pages that might already be in existence.
Also, I think it is worthwhile to include a section that addresses debates about the pros and cons of full-service community schools. I can't imagine that everyone thinks this is a good idea.
What were implemented policies--Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965; Community Schools Act of 1978; and Full Service Community Schools Act of 2009--responses to? Why were they implemented and changed? What forces pushed for these changes, and what did they hope to achieve? You should link/integrate this with the section on "The Problem".
And finally, what about the effectiveness of these programs? What research has been done to determine the extent to which the costs associated with these programs are worth the benefits? What are the benefits? What does research indicate?
9. Correct grammar, verb tenses, and spelling for the most part. Please check, however, for a few typos and other issues here and there. The article is not free of these issues.
11. You do not provide enough information on important issues related to your topic. Here are the areas I think you need to develop a discussion around: the five key areas that are necessary for a child to succeed. In addition to listing each of these out (as you do), also describe what each of these would look like, and provide examples. You lead with this, but then it goes nowhere. Your discussion of the history of full-service movement is probably the most developed section. It could be developed further, however, with a more elaborate treatment of the key legislative acts that created opportunities to develop these types of schools--Elementary and Secondary Education Act; Community Schools Act of 1978; and then the Full-Service Community Schools Act of 2009. To the extent that Wiki pages already exist for some, you don't have to go into great detail, but you do have to provide more information than you currently do. And what of the federal legislation over the past decade? You list, but then do not explain how each of these seek to address the defined social problems. The "Community Schools as an Anti-Poverty Mechanism" section is pretty barren and relies heavily on quotations. Clearly, there is need for intervention in this section, which is particularly concerning to me, because this is the section that very clearly links your topic to the subject of the course. How do you plan to rectify?
12. Links should be provided to publicly available versions of all primary sources, and citations should be done properly.
13. References are not done, much less done properly. See the technical guidelines.
15. Include the "educational assignment" template on the article's discussion page.
s3berkeleysoc
S3berkeleysoc (
talk) 18:22, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi Aixle,
I'm so sorry for the late review. I was confused - I'd planned a review of Beeberger's article on the feminization of poverty and had emailed her about where she wanted me to comment on her work, but it looks like my name has been added to your review for the first pass, so let me add a few thoughts to what Sandra has already enumerated here. Since she has done such a through job, I'll try to be a bit more loose with my ideas and suggest some places you could expand your topic.
1. I agree that the article could benefit from a more detailed discussion of what full service community schools look like, both in theory and in practice. I agree that you will find good examples at the Harlem Children's Zone, the schools run by the New York children's aid society, and some local examples in SF/Emeryville/Oakland city schools plans. Who are they partnering with, what services are they offering, what types of logistical/budget/political challenges do schools of these types face.
2. What is also missing for me, as a classmate, is your understanding of how this topic - in particular - grows out of a larger understanding of poverty and how to ameliorate it. You get into this a little bit at the end, but I think the whole article would be stronger if you lead with this idea. This is very much the language/theory of practice for those who promote full service schools. There is a very strong, 2-part argument that A) poor kids aren't getting necessary services like health/dental/vision that they need and that B)schools can be the center of a move towards educating/supporting the whole child; which both leads to better learning outcomes and better life outcomes. I'd look to the political arguments made by Geoffry Canada (HCZ) or Tony Smith (OUSD) for some very good examples of these arguments.
3. You might give a bit of background/history on what community schools are defined against. I'm especially thinking about our discussions in Janelle's neoliberalism class about the move towards a very individualized, market-based, personal-gain way of thinking about the value of education. You should look at Michael Engel's argument in " http://www.amazon.com/Struggle-Control-Public-Education-Michael/dp/1566397413" for a very good discussion about how we've moved increasingly away from communitarian educational goals. Community schools are, in many ways, a response to this. I'll bring you my copy! This might be a place to incorporate Sandra's idea that you need to bring in the pro/con arguments.
4. I also agree that I'd like to see more stats and figures. I'm also trying to imagine what sorts of questions would lead me to look up your article. I think the average interested wiki reader would have questions about the scope and scale of the movement, the types and kinds of community schools, the places where they're thriving and/or not gaining traction. I imagine a person moving to Oakland wondering "so, what's the deal with these 'community schools' I'm hearing about?" - and wanting to know a lot more about how radical/new/tested/etc. this model is.
5. As always, I think there is a strong racial element to the history/discussion/politicization of community schools. HCZ is an excellent example of this. I'd love to see a couple of sentences or a small section that address the debate both within and without the community schooling movement about who needs community schools, who community schools are best for, and then why. This conversation (similarly to the charter school debate) has a very strong racial component.
6. Finally, I think as an ed person I'd like to see the FSCS model discussed in the wider context of school choice, the political talk about the "diversification of schooling markets", and some of the other changes to the schooling landscape of the past 20-30 years. You do a good job of telling us that the community school model grew out of previous reform movements and schools of thinking, but where do these stand now? How might be categorize community schools in the continuum of schooling options, political arguments, etc?
Looking forward to seeing how the article develops!
Best,
Leah
LeahEdith (
talk) 06:31, 31 October 2011 (UTC)LeahEdith
Hi Aixle12,
I have moved your recently created article Full-service community school, into "user space", which means you can now find it at: User:Aixle12/Full-service community school. It looks like the article could do with a little more work before it becomes a full Wikipedia article. In particular you might like to read WP:CITE which tells you how to cite references in your article and perhaps our guidelines on [{WP:NPOV|maintaining a neutral point of view]]. Good luck with the article, it is coming along. Best, Sparthorse ( talk) 05:54, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Aixle12/Full-Service_Community_School#cite_note-0
Hi Aixle, below is my substantive review of your Wikipedia article. Please let me know if you have any questions: [email protected] I reviewed your article by going down each section and suggesting what information to include or take out. I looked at all your references and they are fine. Your references do contain more relevant and detailed information that you could include in your wikipage. Good luck with finishing the wikipage!
Yang Ylor916 ( talk) 19:35, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
Introduction
Full service community school vs. community schools
Clarifying Terminology
Need for community schools
History of the Full Service School Movement
Community schools and its impact:
Other resources to examine:
Articles are ranked on a scale of 1-5 on four dimensions: trustworthy, complete, well-written, and objective. How would you rank the article you've reviewed on each of these dimensions?