Technical Assistance for Community Schools: Enabling Strong Implementation. Policy Brief

A growing number of states are launching community school initiatives to ensure family and community engagement, provide enriched and expanded learning, and offer integrated supports for students. Several states are providing technical assistance to support the high-quality implementation of community schools, either through the state education agency or regional and local partners. This brief offers examples from the National Center for Community Schools and from New York, New Mexico, and California showing how technical assistance can build capacity through consultation, training, coaching, and knowledge building. These examples indicate the ways that states are designing technical assistance (TA) systems to support practitioners, the value of providing differentiated TA supports, and the impact of cross-sector partnerships on TA provision.