This study examines the ethics and politics of knowledge across 15 distinctive community-engaged research projects. We focus our analysis on interviews with community partners and consider their perceptions of research, academic research partners, motivations for partnering, and the benefits and challenges of community-engaged research. We…

This paper documents the initial process by which a San Diego middle school, located in a low-income and predominantly Hispanic neighborhood and repeatedly failing to meet No Child Left Behind provisions, restructured into an academically rigorous, detracked charter school. The discussion of the political experience and working relationships…

Details the history of California's experience with large-scale writing assessment. Describes the introduction, development, and scoring of the California Assessment Program, later renamed the California Learning Assessment System (CLAS). Discusses controversies over removal of certain writing prompts and objections to CLAS. Notes that funding for…

The analogy of pregnancy and birth is used to describe the founding of a Waldorf-style charter school in southern California. Advice is given for dealing with the sponsoring district, bureaucracy, politics of educational reform, standardized testing, and parent community. Sidebars present the mission statement, grant excerpts, timeline, required…

This presentation identifies factors which contributed to the rise of gifted/talented education programs in California from 1960 to 1987, factors contributing to the demise of such programs, and recommendations for improving the California Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) Program. Recent years have brought about a lessening of the program's…

This report examines political conflict in decision making in three public schools, and describes how the Teacher Participation Project (TPP), which was implemented in two of the schools, sought to minimize such conflict by institutionalizing local governance structures for teachers. The report consists of two parts. Part I investigates various…

Americanization is in the end a task for the individual citizen and not for the Government. The individual can be successful in so human a problem only by having a sympathetic knowledge of this task and of those with whom he must deal. To supply at least the foundations of this knowledge is the purpose of this book. The contents are taken largely…