In 1999, the Southern Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) interviewed leaders from Hispanic, African American, Native American, and Asian communities in Arkansas and Oklahoma to understand what keeps parents and others from participating in community forums. After conducting more than fifty interviews, SEDL developed seven steps to help…

This publication reviews a public-engagement program entitled "Calling the Roll: Study Circles for Better Schools." The program, which was implemented with help from the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, called for policymakers to interact with the public in study circles in Arkansas and Oklahoma. The report relates what the…

As a result of the America Reads Challenge Act of 1997, numerous tutoring programs have been established to help ensure that every child reads independently by the end of third grade. This book describes exemplary America Reads programs across the country as well as other effective early literacy interventions, including Reading Recovery, the…

Basic education programs in Africa are most successful at the community and school levels. At the community level, program implementers search for parents who are motivated, informed, and skilled at creating an environment conducive to student learning. In classrooms, they look for greater numbers of children experiencing a high quality,…

England's non-profit School Works project was initiated to respond to the challenges of updating school infrastructure by showing the links between design and education, producing beautiful schools which further learning, and working in new ways with new partnerships. The first part of this "toolkit" guide explains the thinking behind…

This document contains 14 reports on education reform in Africa. Research was carried out in the 1990s to better understand the dynamics and techniques of policy change. Questions explored included: What are some of the key elements in education policy reform in Africa? How effective have the tools available to USAID been in guiding and supporting…

In an era of devolution in much social policy, many initiatives seek to improve child, youth, and family well-being through locally-governed, data-driven partnerships. These partnerships are not limited to savvy technical reform of policies or programs. They target a change in political will, policy agendas, and policy implementation arrangements,…

This booklet describes the CORAL (Communities Organizing Resources To Advance Learning) program within five California communities: Pasadena, Long Beach, San Jose, Fresno, and Sacramento. This initiative, begun in 1999, is committed to a community-based and community-building approach to supporting learning and focuses on improving academic…

This monograph considers the work of Enda-Tiers Monde, an international nongovernmental organization (NGO) based in Dakar, Senegal, which has many facets: street schools for working children, art and music shows for marginalized youth, town planning programs, income generation activities for prisoners, and drugs and AIDS prevention campaigns. The…

Two well-known observers offer different interpretations of the future roles and powers of local school boards. (Author/WM)

Describes the development and operation of the Hazel Park community education program, the effects of the program on school support, and shows how community education became "internalized" into the "establishment." (DN)

As programs are getting underway, it is becoming evident that the new colleges will grow to become the community and the community will see itself in the challenging new perspective of the community college. The community college is the catalyst to restore vision and confidence in small communities. (Author/KP)

As the judiciary proved inadequate to protect the right to vote of newly emerging politicized groups, other institutions were called upon to deal with the growing problem of political participation--a challenge to the traditional American optimism regarding this question. (Author/JM)

Describes a National Catapult Contest in which modern students of Latin "match wits" with the ancients. (HW)

Reviews a book by Theodore Sizer that aims to expose some educational delusions and to speculate on viable educational alternatives. Sizer asserts that the accepted purposes of education are honored only in the breach, and proposes that the unitary school be replaced by multiple schools for different kinds of learning. He contends that educational…