This report examines efforts on the part of advocates in New York City to draw Hispanic parents into the bilingual education movement. Parent involvement in New York has included a wide variety of educational and political endeavors. Parents have participated in the activities of public educational and political organizations in ever widening…

This handbook was written to demonstrate the procedure for setting up and running a citizen advisory council for vocational education programs. Organized into seven sections, the handbook provides information on the background and purposes of an advisory council, procedures for establishing a council, council operations, the council role, public…

Perhaps a four-way partnership of state education departments, colleges, school districts, and teacher organizations will be able to design a respected and satisfying form of teacher training. (Author/IRT)

The Penn State Mini Medical School is a high-impact community engagement program created and led by the Office of Continuing Education at the Penn State College of Medicine. The broad goals of the program are to respond to the general public's intense desire for health and medical information, to educate the community about biomedical science and…

Although parents and citizens in each community should be encouraged to participate in the educational policy-making process, it has been shown that public access to school board meetings is thwarted in many subtle ways. To gain information that would help to balance the interests of privacy and public access in every school district, the State…

This annotated bibliography cites 49 studies of effects of parent involvement on children's academic achievement and the performance of schools. The research tends to treat three broad approaches to parent involvement, namely those that attempt to: (1) improve the parent-child relationship in the context of the family; (2) integrate parents into…

This report provides descriptions of strategies for dropout prevention at the secondary level and presents examples of programs that successfully utilize these strategies. The information is based on data from a review of nearly 200 programs at secondary schools across the four-state Western region that includes Arizona, California, Nevada, and…

In our global information society, citizens of most nations, states, and communities have the opportunity to compete for jobs to produce standardized products of about the same quality. It is smart people--not smart machines--that separate one competitor from another. The foundation of a healthy economy for Kansas is people, the human capital,…

In 1987-88, some 150 American Indian students, parents, tribal leaders, and educators participated in seven regional dialogues on the reforms needed in American Indian education. Participants gave a clear message that Indians want direct control over educational institutions serving their children, curriculum reform to make cultural retention an…

This guide is written for teenagers who may be considering becoming active in their communities. It explains ways teens can increase their power and effectiveness in community life and some of the things they will encounter along the way. It begins by emphasizing the importance of community service, illustrating the ways that teens already may be…

Between 1979 and June 1990, the Training Student Organizers (TSO) Program has motivated nearly 7,400 students and their teachers to organize over 260 environmental improvement projects serving their schools and neighborhoods in the New York City area. The projects run the gamut from clean up campaigns, murals, and letter writing efforts to energy…

Issues related to decentralization, with a focus on community involvement, are discussed in this paper. The 20th-century Indonesian experience is analyzed to illustrate the process by which a national administrative reform policy develops, and to identify contributing and inhibiting factors relating to the implementation of decentralization. The…

The basic premise of this handbook is that effective bilingual programs can occur only within a school context that is itself effective. A foreword argues that: (1) bilingual education programs must be better integrated into the mainstream of local school district programs, and (2) limited-English proficient (LEP) students should be assigned to…

A proposed 3-year project in Albany, New York will train 90 senior citizen volunteers to work in rural special education classrooms and with handicapped children and their parents in the children's homes. The project goal is the creation of a network of training systems and personnel to assist schools in improving special education services.…

Rural economic development presents a paradox of growth in population and jobs without corresponding improvement in local economic well-being. Four forces may impede nonmetropolitan development efforts. Growth of multiestablishment corporations makes traditional regional economic development models unrealistic. Rural industrialization is socially,…