Advocates for civil rights, environmental justice, and movements promoting social justice require data and may lack trust in public authorities, turning instead to academic scientists to help address their questions. Assessing historical exposure to toxic chemicals, especially in situations of a specific industrial source of pollution affecting a…

Strapped for cash, a Massachusetts high school creates its own venture capital fund to incentivize teachers to create programs that improve student learning. The result has been higher test scores and higher job satisfaction. One important program is credited with helping close the achievement gap at the school, while others have helped ambitious…

The Boone Hope Foundation has given away over $130,000 in gift cards, rent checks, and eyeglasses--all targeted to help students with emergency needs related to food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare in its rural Iowa community. This is the story of teachers from a typical Midwestern school--relatively small and certainly not affluent--who have…

The Common Core of Standards project has strong national support, but it will not succeed if it doesn't involve teachers in grassroots development activities. The initiative should involve local consortia of schools in working with the new standards, assessments, and support tools. Local teachers would design teaching units and then share these…

Establishing rapport between researcher and participants when conducting ethnography is essential to the successful outcome of the research. However, when participants are unwilling to engage, a different approach must be adopted. This article is an examination of the appropriation of a situated learning model during fieldwork with a group of…

Poverty and unemployment aren't spread evenly across cities or regions, but rather are concentrated in disinvested urban neighborhoods and rural communities around the country. These communities are home to the nation's most vulnerable children and families. Despite some signs of improvement in economic conditions for families in the United…

Describes a personal experience in the effort to avoid widespread herbicide spraying. Provides insights for building a successful campaign: involvement, finding support, acceptance of differences of opinion, autonomy from political factions, and not assuming people are closed to healthier alternatives. (MCO)

Describes the establishment and results of a study committee asked to review existing pesticide policy, vegetation management programs and provide improvement recommendations in Thurston County, Washington. (MCO)

This case study concerns the forming of a Marietta, Ohio unity committee, entitled Citizens for Social and Racial Justice, in response to the local Ku Klux Klan's (KKK) request for a parade permit in order to demonstrate against blacks in this city. Marietta, the county seat of Washington County, Ohio, has a population composed of both white and…

The recurrence of stories throughout California communities using narrative art to strengthen themselves led to an inquiry that is described in this report. The research question was: how can different ways of discovering and presenting local stories in public contribute to the strengthening of community? The inquiry had six components: (1) a…

Timber operators, ranchers, corporate timberland owners, environmentalists, state government, and local schools in rural northern California formed an alliance to save the local salmon from extinction. The community's struggle toward consensus was an attempt to abandon the polarization that arises from power struggles. Local nonprofessionals were…

In 1979, the Learning Enrichment Foundation was established with assistance from the York Board of Education, as a not-for-profit community development corporation devoted to the promotion of multicultural arts enrichment, the provision of child care services, and mounting employment-training schemes, particularly for youth. The group's…

This paper reports on the progress of eight Chicago-based community initiatives designed to redefine social services and broaden social responsibility for the development of children and families. The paper has three sections describing: (1) general background on the children, youth, and families initiative; (2) early lessons from an initiative in…

The Child Care Coalition has been monitoring the number of high-quality, safe, accessible, and affordable child care spaces in Pasadena, California, since 1989. In addition, the Coalition has worked to expand the availability of child care through such programs as the Northwest Child Care Trust Fund Loan Program, which offers loans to child care…

The St. Louis (Missouri) Regional Child Care Partnership was created in 1990 to improve child care in the St. Louis and Metro East areas, where the quality, availability, and affordability of child care are community-wide problems. The partnership was formed by the Child Day Care Association of St. Louis and the St. Louis branches of the Junior…