Gathering Data and Describing Partnership

North Miami Beach Senior High School is a multicultural institution comprising students from different racial backgrounds (Stinson et al., 2011). The school recognizes the importance of community involvement in supporting student learning and achievement. As a result, the school has established two different programs that target the involvement of parents/families and the larger community respectively. As evident in the previous analysis, the parents/families program seems to be more effective than the program targeting the larger community. In this regard, the school needs to redesign the current program to enhance the involvement of the larger community to support student achievement. This paper proposes measures that the school can utilize to strengthen this program to integrate community resources towards better student learning and achievement.

Part 1 Assess Your Current Reality

PTSA NMB is a community engagement program implemented established at North Miami Beach Senior High School. This program has played a critical role in enhancing student learning and outcomes as it promotes the involvement of parents and family members in their childrens learning. PTSA NMB helps improve student learning and outcomes at the school by providing resources to support parental involvement in the learning process (North Miami Beach Senior High School, 2012). In addition, this program has helped create a network through which external stakeholders (parents and family members) engage in learning programs/processes and support the children.

While this program has played an essential role in improving student learning at the school, low academic progress remains a major issue. Currently, students at North Miami Beach Senior High School are making far less academic progress compared to similar students in the State of Florida (Great Schools, 2021). This implies that students in this school begin at a low academic point and end up falling behind their peers. The significantly low academic progress of students in the school is evident in the low test scores. Currently, the school is ranked 9,220 in the National Rankings in terms of how well it prepares students and their performance on state-required tests (College Board, 2018). The school is placed in the bottom half of all schools across the state for overall state-required tests.

Based on the school year results for the academic year 2017-2018, the percentage of students achieving proficiency in Math at North Miami Beach Senior High School is 25% (Public School Review, 2019). This was significantly lower than the state average of 58%. Moreover, those achieving reading proficiency in language arts or reading is 32%, which was lower than Floridas average of 55%. At the same time, the school has a higher student-teacher ratio of 20:1 while the State of Floridas level is 16:1.

These statistics and trends indicate that students at North Miami Beach Senior High School are experiencing problems relating to academic progress. Despite measures undertaken by the school to enhance their learning and programs, they are falling behind their peers as they begin at a lower academic point/level. Consequently, these students experience challenges relating to annual academic improvement and college readiness measures. Therefore, North Miami Beach Senior High School needs to adopt measures that would help enhance the students year-over-year academic outcomes and college readiness.

To realize students academic improvement and improve their college readiness,...

…This strategy would involve career-oriented externships and career mentorship initiatives by community professionals to help enhance students learning and outcomes. Such mentorships can take place in workshops and engagement events like music and art programs.

Part 5 - Evidence Base

The establishment of community engagement programs in school is a time-consuming, demanding, and costly initiative, but with significant benefits in terms of improvement of student learning and outcomes. According to Garza & Kuri (2014), partnerships with community members involve a series of activities and meetings between the different stakeholders. These meetings and activities are time-consuming, demanding, and costly as they explore different aspects of the partnerships. The various stakeholders involved in this process examine the needs of the students, current programs, and their effectiveness to ensure that the initiatives achieve their respective goals and objectives. As a result of the series of meetings and activities involving various stakeholders, the process is relatively complex but valuable (Wang, Lai & Wang, 2016). Moreover, existing literature shows that the complexity of this process is linked to the need for active engagement of different stakeholders, community-school relationships, and input into community activities.

In conclusion, North Miami Beach Senior High School has established community involvement programs to help enhance student learning and outcomes. Despite the impact of these programs in improving student outcomes, students at the school fall behind their peers in terms of year-to-year academic achievement and college readiness. The low academic progress of these students is evident in their performance as well as proficiency in math and language arts/reading in comparison to the state average. Therefore, the school can address this issue through partnership…