The Co-Nect (Cooperative Networked Educational Community for Tomorrow) project is a winning K-12 design with 3 components: a restructured school community featuring self-managing clusters of students, teachers, administrators, and community members; a radically transformed curriculum based on key-concept projects and seminars; and a flexible and…

key to facilities planning and successful bond issues is involving public. Taxpayers are unlikely to support superintendent's plan but will certainly vote for their own plan. Success means ensuring fiscally uncluttered pathway, retaining an architect, and working with demographer. Appointing broad-based community task force of about 30 members,…

Community education must address issues that affect a variety of cultures at different levels. Public school desegregation processes offer opportunities for restructuring schools to be more responsive to community needs, for enhancing race relations, and for improving the economic viability of a community. (JOW)

Site-based management can be effective way to empower teachers and communities to improve schools. Success will ensue only by involving entire staff in change process, realigning power structure, and using time effectively. Third goal can be accomplished by rearranging school day to allow morning teacher meetings and 10:00-4:00 student attendance…

Adolescents share the basic needs for food, shelter, physical safety, access to health care, and transportation to essential services. Although mindful of survival issues, educators and community agencies must cooperate to design and implement programs to meet early adolescents' developmental needs for positive social interaction, structure and…

In Temple Independent School District (Texas), the success of strategic planning is evident in increased community and parent involvement, renewed public confidence, and a sense of control over the future. Over 250 community and school people participated in developing the district's plan. Site-based strategic planning extended active involvement…

Four steps toward changing educational policy and politics are (1) create a coherent community conversation about the new literacies; (2) change the level and kind of discourse in schools and districts; (3) conduct literacy audits; and (4) study problems that arise from this process and address them. (SK)

Administrators across the nation have encountered vigorous challenges against textbooks, practices, and procedures that critics find laden with occult and New Age values. Attacks are becoming more aggressive, better organized, and well financed. This article and accompanying sidebars discuss pressure group tactics and ways to counter them. The…

Presents the results of a study of 24 superintendents who served in 1 rural school district for 12 years or more. The superintendents interviewed shared demographic information, insights into their school boards, and professional opinions concerning the reasons for their longevity. Most-cited reasons were a stable school board, open communication,…

In 1986, Lilly Endowment launched Middle Grades Improvement Program as a major initiative to meet young adolescents' needs. This article describes development of the MGIP's "building public support" component. A survey of Indiana schools involved with this component showed that most districts developed new programs involving schools,…

Alabama's Rural Elderly Enhancement Program is a nurse-initiated project developed on a model of community participation and empowerment. The program's initial goal was to maintain the health and independence of the elderly; it was expanded to an intergenerational focus with an involvement with youth. Most of their target population is African…

Inner-city schools are plagued with problems, including huge central bureaucracies; dumbed-down, irrelevant curricula; scant resources to provide well-compensated teachers, supplies, smaller classes, and social workers; and de facto segregation. Transformative choice, operating on free market principles, is breaking up bureaucracies, demanding the…

The Workers' Educational Association conducted two projects in Northern England to develop community involvement through adult education. The projects demonstrated the part that local communities can play in setting their own agendas for community regeneration. (SK)

Presents some examples of how reading education and the community can come together. Divides the presentation into two types of community involvement: bringing the community into the schools and integrating classrooms into the community. (MG)

Georgia's Certified Literate Community Program is a state-supported, community-based effort that provides all levels of instruction--from basic skills to technical writing--to adults at all educational levels. The goal is to enable every capable adult to attain reading, speaking, writing, problem solving, and comprehension skills. (SK)