Service learning, currently popular among communitarian-minded American educators, recently received a large dose of political legitimacy in "What You Can Do for Your Country," the report of the Commission on National and Community Service. This article examines the commission's proposal and explores, through a case study of urban school…

This book tells the stories of four urban middle schools that have undergone deep transformation while participating in the Middle Grades Improvement Program (MGIP), an initiative that has nurtured fundamental change in school climate, structure and classroom practice in 16 urban districts and 65 schools in Indiana. The support of the Lilly…

The amount of time students spend in classrooms is relatively short--"13% of the student's waking hours in the first 18 years of life" (Walberg, Paschal, and Weinstein, 1985). They are developing intellectually, socially, and emotionally all the time, and parents are their models and teachers most of the time. This report describes and…