This "Fourth Annual Report Card" marks a new chapter for the Boston Opportunity Agenda. For the first time, the Boston Opportunity Agenda is reporting student outcomes across Boston Public Schools and Catholic and charter schools. This provides a comprehensive baseline view of the education pipeline for the city's K-12 students. The…

Communities face powerful challenges--a high-school dropout epidemic, youth unemployment, teen pregnancy--that require powerful solutions. In a climate of increasingly constrained resources, those solutions must help communities to achieve more with less. A new kind of community collaborative--an approach that aspires to significant,…

The present study was designed to examine factors that led to the academic success of two rural secondary schools in New Mexico. The primary focus was on the characteristics and behaviors of leaders in two high-achieving rural schools and how these factors might have contributed to achievement of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in school year…

There is a need within health, physical education, recreation, dance, and sport programs to increase community engagement via experiential learning. The Chase Charlie Races are presented in this article as a model pedagogical strategy to engage community youths and families in a training program and running event to help promote fitness. Key…

Through cross-disciplinary and participatory processes involving key stakeholders from the Zambian education sector, as well as from the traditional leadership structure, a localized HIV/AIDS-prevention strategy, Interactive School and Community Approach (ISACA), was developed and implemented throughout one province between 2002 and 2006. The…

This study examines the motivations of American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) educators currently enrolled in an educational leadership preparation program aspiring to educational leadership positions within AI/AN communities. Understanding the motivation of AI/AN educators to become school leaders may assist in increasing the pool of AI/AN school…

This article, by Lynda Abbott and Richard Grayson, offers a fascinating example of collaboration between school and university, focused on the development of a community archive. The project--run as an extra-curricular activity--was originally inspired by a concern to preserve the personal stories of those whose lives were affected by the Second…

This study explored how graduate coursework can impact urban teachers' knowledge, skills, and dispositions regarding family and community involvement. (Note: California requires graduate work for teacher certification.) Specifically, the research investigated how teacher attitudes toward family and community involvement changed after taking a…

In this article, the author expands on "The Scandal of Social Work Education," a National Association of Scholars study documenting the commitment to left-wing "social justice" in social work programs at ten major public institutions. He presents a critical exploration of social justice ideology in academic and professional mental health training…

This dissertation explores the notion of participatory community mapping (PCM) for Indigenous knowledge production. Three major questions were posed in the study. First, how can PCM foster Indigenous knowledge production and documentation? Second, how can PCM be used to include local voice and input in mapping projects, and third, how can adult…

The mission of San Diego Met High School is to prepare students for college and the workforce through active learning, academic rigor, and community involvement in a small school setting. Because personalization is a key component of the school culture, advisories of 20-25 students work with the same teachers for all four years. Advisers, parents,…

Community engagement was a relatively unknown concept in South African higher education until the late 1990s. In response to the call of the White Paper on the Transformation of Higher Education (1997) for "feasibility studies and pilot programmes which explore the potential of community service in higher education" the Joint Education…

We present data from a survey of deans at colleges and universities throughout the USA on the relative status of disciplines. Findings indicate that the relative status of Sociology within the academy is low, although there are several specific areas of high status--namely, concerning community involvement and engagement. Our analyses also…

Background: Health educators have discussed the importance of the eight component Coordinated School Health Program (CSHP) approach to facilitate the success of school health education. Conducting a School Health Index (SHI) assessment of the CSHP is an important early step for improving the health, environment and academic success of youth.…

This article explores to what extent citizenship education for lifelong learning should be based on a more "political" or civic republican conception of citizenship as compared to a liberal individualist conception, which emphasizes individual rights, or a communitarian conception, which emphasizes moral and social responsibilities. It…