Those of us who serve the discipline of parks, recreation, tourism and related professions have long struggled with visibility and viability on university campuses. This struggle is magnified by the absence of an adequate umbrella term and the variability in the names of our academic programs and the colleges in which we reside. For some, the…

Alvin Thompson, former president of the California Council on the Education of Teachers (CCET), describes how he became involved with the CCET, and how the cultural environment of the CCET shifted from a "Pink Tea" society to one of political action focused on the real needs of the schools for which teachers are prepared. Thompson…

Where dominant models of urban school reform often regard immigrant communities as obstacles that must be managed or reduced, the two projects analyzed in this study ("Alianza" and the Project) regard the community as a powerful source of knowledge and as partners working towards educational improvement (Nygreen, 2009). This paper…

An engaged metropolitan university can play a critical role in transforming its region by using its resources for the solution of problems and the improvement of the citizens' lives and livelihoods. California State University, Fresno has impacted its region through university-led collaborations and partnerships such as the Fresno Regional Jobs…

This issue of the NCEDL Spotlight Series newsletter adds California and Ohio to a re-analysis of findings from an earlier report looking at the move to establish a state pre-kindergarten program for 4-year-olds in Georgia, Illinois, New York, South Carolina, and Texas. Key figures in political and educational circles in these seven states were…

Among the major educational policy shifts in recent years has been the establishment of state-funded prekindergarten programs. This study extends an earlier one of the development of prekindergarten policy in five states by focusing on policy development in two additional states, California and Ohio. Potential informants in each state who were…

This paper describes the work of an unusual kind of change facilitator lacking formal authority or educational expertise. Founded in 1993, Partners in School Innovation is a nonprofit organization that supports whole-school change efforts in schools serving low-income communities across the San Francisco Bay Area. It commits to 3- or 5-year…