This book examines the efforts of Valley Interfaith--a community-based organization in the south Texas borderlands--to improve the living conditions of low-income residents and immigrants and the public schools their children attend. Valley Interfaith is unusual in that it crosses the boundary separating the worlds of community organizing and…

This manual, designed to help public libraries in Arizona to plan their summer reading programs for children, celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Arizona Reading Program. The material in the manual is prepared for libraries to adapt for their own uses. Chapters of the manual include: (1) Introductory Materials; (2) Goals, Objectives and…

Project Leadership Excellence Achievement and Performance (LEAP) was designed to respond to the needs of gifted students enrolled in secondary schools in rural areas. This paper describes Project LEAP's implementation in four rural Oklahoma high schools with high American Indian enrollments and high percentages of low-income families and limited…

The Partnership for Family Involvement in Education is a grassroots initiative to increase opportunities for families to be more involved with their children's learning at school and at home, to strengthen schools, and to improve student achievement levels. This CD-ROM from the Partnership contains materials and resources on family involvement in…

This guide provides Maryland teachers with information regarding how to evaluate and improve service-learning. Seven suggested practices for school-based service learning were derived from interviews with 80 Maryland teachers actively engaging their students in service learning. These seven best practices, which might provide a framework for…

The school reform movement has been a major societal and political agenda item for nearly two decades. As a result of the pressure stemming from the movement to make schools more effective, many changes have occurred. The most obvious of these changes is an increased emphasis on assessment. Furthermore, school counselors, like teachers and…

Seventh grade students in three schools in different communities in the Midwest were described by parents and teachers as not exhibiting acceptable responsibility for their own learning and not showing respect or ownership for their learning environments. This paper describes a program designed for improving these students' responsibility for…

Presented in a question-and-answer format, this guide provides information to assist teachers of students with disabilities in writing quality Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). Following an introduction explaining the purposes of the IEP, the guide is organized around seven important steps in creating IEPs: (1) describe the student; (2)…

This document presents an action plan to solve the problem of inadequate English-as-a-Second/Other-Language (ESOL) instruction in high school content area courses and to increase effort and motivation among ESOL students. ESOL students often do not have sufficient command of English to do very well in content-oriented courses (such as history,…

In 1998 the authors published research with NFER (National Foundation for Educational Research) "Family Numeracy Adds Up" showing how parents and children had gained from fourteen pilot family numeracy programmes. It showed strong evidence of the double benefits of work with families. Children have an early boost in their learning and…

For more than a decade, many researchers and practitioners have endorsed a "positive youth development" approach, which views adolescents as active contributors to their own development and as assets to their communities. As part of this shift, youth are increasingly being invited to engage in community governance. In youth…

This report summarizes some Austin Independent School District (AISD) activities to support parent and community involvement during the 2005-2006 school year.

This article discusses the redevelopment process in the context of views of developers, potential newcomers to a redeveloped area, and the residents of such an area. It is a qualitative accounting of the similarities and differences of these groups and how and why they are either willing or unwilling to participate. (Author/SSH)

Describes a comprehensive program utilizing pull-out programs, enrichment, and individualized mentorship contracts for gifted/talented students, grades 1-12, in Poland School District (Ohio). Participant selection factors include parent nominations, teacher recommendations, achievement test scores, peer identification, and self-evaluation.…

Defines primary prevention in mental health as the building of health and competencies from an early age to prevent adverse psychological outcomes. Describes potential approaches to primary prevention for young children, such as early detection and intervention; helper therapy; mental health education; competence training; social system…