Background: Growing health disparities have a negative impact on young people's educational achievement. Community schools that involve deep relationships with partners across multiple domains address these disparities by providing opportunities and services that promote healthy development of young people, and enable them to graduate from high…

Community schools have always rooted their work in a solid body of research about what it takes to promote student success, including parental involvement in children's education, rich and engaging out-of-school experiences, student wellness and family stability. Because the community schools strategy, on its face, makes sense--and because the…

Portland State University's (PSU) reputation as an engaged, urban-serving university continues to distinguish it both nationally and locally. Key partnerships with local, public, and private partners provide students, faculty, and staff with remarkable opportunities to contribute to the physical, social, and economic development of the Portland…

Partnerships between schools and businesses are becoming more frequent and more reciprocal as the two find common interests; the Salem-Keizer (Oregon) Public Schools provide a nationally recognized example of such a partnership. Salem's program began in 1981 with a joint school board and Chamber of Commerce policy statement. Despite economic…

The Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN) Community Schools Initiative is a community-driven model that allows each school community to design the programs that fit neighborhood needs, while working toward core goals that stretch across all SUN Community Schools. In this article, the author describes the history of SUN Community Schools and its core…

This handbook provides a practical guide for local communities to use to establish work education councils. It deals both with the role which such a council can play in a community and with the process for setting up a work education council. Following an introduction that discusses the work education council concept and demonstration project, the…

Three separate papers related to the Oregon Right to Read program are contained in this document. The first paper discusses the program and its objectives, considering such topics as staffing, preparation, organization and management of a quality community reading program, maintenance and dissemination of materials and information, the…

This article, based on the experiences of the Ainsworth (Oregon) Parent Teacher Association, offers a step-by-step guide for parents who wish to bring computers into their children's schools. Ways to build public and school support, do necessary planning and research, evaluate available equipment, and implement the program are suggested. (PP)

This document describes a community resource plan developed for rural special educators at a small elementary school near Salem, Oregon. The plan was designed for the specific needs of rural special educators, who generally have greater need for materials, personnel support, and financing than their urban counterparts. The resource plan includes:…

IPAR, whose name originally stemmed from its official name--Institute for Public Affairs Research, Inc.--is described as a nonprofit organization operating in Portland, Oregon, and designed to bring students and their teachers into closer contact with all aspects of the working world by (1) recruiting community resources as speakers in classroom…

The program assessment guide presented in this document is designed to help the district and individual school administrators, counselors, teachers, and other support staff assess the effectiveness of their career education programs. Section 1 discusses the "what and why" of career education program assessment. Section 2 contains the…

Designed as a component of a pilot career exploration project at Vale Middle School, Vale, Oregon, this guide is directed toward helping any school implement the concept of career education. The guide is divided into three sections. Section 1 offers ideas that give support to the background and justification for the concept of career education.…