There is growing evidence that out-of-school factors, such as physical and mental health, family support, and social and emotional development, significantly affect student learning (Berliner 2009). To address challenges related to poverty, schools are being charged with serving as a focal point in providing and coordinating support services for…

As the COVID-19 crisis exposed inequities in civic, funding, and programmatic policies -- often grounded in systemic oppression and White Supremacy -- community based, youth-focused organizations, such as Creative Youth Development (CYD) programs, were catapulted into unplanned changes in order to survive. In this tumultuous environment,…

In 2015, College Futures Foundation launched the Community Philanthropy for Student Success Initiative (CPI) to engage a cohort of community foundations across California as partners and leaders in reducing statewide disparities in college completion rates. Through CPI, College Futures endeavored to build the capacity of participating foundations…

This original teaching idea for a semester-long course encompasses a team-based project in which students worked together to create persuasive campaign materials for a local community health organization. The purpose of this project was for students to apply learned concepts related to theories and principles of persuasion to a real-world…

This playbook provides ways in which Community Based Organizations (CBOs) can blur the lines between high school, postsecondary education, and the workforce. CBOs play a significant role to Raise the Bar for student success by developing an "education-to-workforce system" that focuses on Unlocking Career Success.

This article presents a study that explored the implementation of a "Say Yes to FCS" Teaching Camp, a local community initiative in Texas, to address the critical shortage of family and consumer sciences (FCS) teachers in secondary schools. Aimed at incoming 9th- and 10th-grade students, the 4-day camp offered hands-on learning…

This article examines the racializing processes throughlining the meaning-making of a Guru Vandana--an annual teacher appreciation event organized by many Asian Indian communities across the U.S.--that took place in a Midwestern city in 2019. Guided by a framework of transmodalities (a novel lens for the analysis of multimodal semiosis) and…

Schools often experience rapid turnover among teachers of color. Yet research and practice highlight the importance of teachers of color in the K--12 education system. As such, school and district-level administrators, educational leaders, and students need to conceptualize and develop new approaches aimed at sustaining Indigenous and Latinx…

International development partnerships are characterised by inherent power relations with community partners often seen as needing assistance in fixing their problems. In this paper, we discuss the limitations of this perspective on the example of gender equality in the Pacific. We explore applied theatre tools to work with a variety of…

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is impacting people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) significantly. Early data on the impact of COVID-19 suggests that people with IDD are experiencing more severe health outcomes compared to the general population. In addition to their elevated health risks, people with IDD, like the…

Some teacher education programs have incorporated community-based experiences for teacher candidates. Based on the experiences of developing and implementing a community-based practicum in our teacher education programs, the authors conducted a small exploratory case study, aimed at examining and critically considering community-based experiences…

Historically, girls' education has been problematic in Afghanistan, where girls' education was challenged or even banned by many groups of people and regimes. Recent years have seen significant improvement; starting with one million boys and no girls at school after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the Afghan education system grew ninefold and now…

California Community Colleges (CCC) served over 20,000 Justice-Impacted Individuals (JII) between 2021 and 2023, and the California State University (CSU) system saw a 280% growth in the number of justice-impacted students participating in their PRb program pursuing graduate studies between 2018 and 2021. (CCC Chancellor's Office--Data Mart, n.d.;…

Mental health challenges for youth continue to be a growing concern. Youth-serving organizations have the potential to play a significant role in recognizing the signs and symptoms of mental health challenges in youth. The Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA) training course is widely used to equip adults working with youth with skills to support…

Child Trends and Start Early have partnered to better understand what early childhood systems builders need to build and support more equitable systems. The briefs in this series, called Conversation Starters, define a new framework for early childhood systems that center families' experiences and raise key considerations and next steps for…