About Bringing School Home
Bringing School Home (BSH) is an innovative national research demonstration program designed to close the achievement gap for children of low-income families.
In Boulder County (CO), where BSH is initially focused, only 47% of low-income, Hispanic children are reading at grade level by the 4th grade, putting them on a trajectory of economic insecurity as adults.
Massive amounts of school-based initiatives have been tried, but the achievement gap remains stubbornly resistant.
We know that in the first 18 years of a child’s life, only 9% is spent in school, leaving a 91% potential for learning beyond the classroom. Bringing School Home seeks to step in to this 91% home-centric time, to change the arc of potential for each child, creating campuses of learners at home.
Boulder Housing Partners and I Have A Dream Foundation™ have spent 20 years pioneering this model that uses quality, affordable housing as a platform for IHAD’s intensive educational support program. Together we believe we can close the achievement and opportunity gap by:
- Using housing as the platform to an expanded learning partnership with school districts and community partners; bringing learning as a guest into the home and into the community;
- Using housing policy to create a home-based and community-accepted expectation of learning and of success; and
- Buttressing that expectation with a seamless and persistent system of supports that refuses to let a child fail
Policy Ideas that Underlie Bringing School Home (pdf)
www.BringingSchoolHome.org
Participating in Bringing School Home at BHP