Community empowerment and the public schools: Can educational professionalism survive?

Cases of very close, participatory ties between school and community are still rare enough to be newsworthy. However, educators and those who train them seldom quarrel today with the notion that active parental participation, close school-community connections, a family-oriented outreach into the community, and even some added services to families (e.g., parenting education, family counseling) are vital ingredients of modemday pedagogy. School-community relations has finally come of age as a key component of responsible professionalism in education-a movement influenced heavily by the considerable respect accorded the work of such figures as Comer (1980), Comer, Haynes, Joyner, and Ben-Avie (1996), Coleman (1994), Epstein (1988, 1990), Dryfoos (1994), and Goodlad (1987). Lay-professional tensions continue to surface in many of the studies of community-relations experimentation (see Cibulka & Kritek, 1996). However, by no means do the tensions of today appear to be as threatening to either parent or professional as that implied in the strong tradition of separation (between home and school) which has long been a key myth of