Schools: Reading, Writing and Building Assets

Many schools are caught up in issues such as truancy, poor student achievement, high student dropout, drug use, vandalism, violence, and other issues. Although these issues are important, focusing on them seems to have little lasting impact on young people. 

More and more parents, citizens, educators, and policy makers are beginning to understand the mission of schools within a comprehensive framework of developmental assets, developed by Search Institute. 

Several characteristics make asset building a powerful perspective for schools to adopt: 

• Asset building provides an understandable, manageable framework for thinking about a school's mission. 
• It is a positive framework, which gives energy and vision to schools' efforts. 
• It is consistent with many major strategies for educational reform.
• It reduces fragmentation. Instead of introducing a new curriculum each year to address the latest public concern, asset building provides a framework and strategy that effectively and consistently address many issues on an on-going basis. 
• It provides a common ground on which diverse communities can start building together toward shared values. 
• It empowers everyone in a school. And since everyone has asset-building power, healthy development becomes the responsibility of all members of the school community. 
• It recognizes schools as part of a larger community, rather than as a separate entity, thus opening doors for partnerships in the community on behalf of youth.