Independent schools have significantly increased their public purpose commitments over the past decade. Their initiatives carry them beyond community service to broader school engagement with their communities. Articles in this magazine by Al Adams and others, the creation of school organizations that serve the broader community, and the growth of…

The two-year community college is a hundred-year-old phenomenon, locally funded and distinctly American, yet increasingly exportable. Serving ever more varied roles while being challenged economically, legislatively, and academically to meet progressively higher expectations in the United States, the American community college has been discovered…

Over the past 70 years, all states in the United States began to publicly subsidize kindergarten using state revenue. The variation in adoption dates across states allows for a unique opportunity to measure the effectiveness of the largest early education program implemented in recent history. The significant, immediate increase in the…

This qualitative comparative case study examines the workforce training programs offered in a US community college and the vocational and technical programs offered in a comparable Chinese postsecondary institution. The study sought to identify transferable qualities and characteristics that could contribute to improving the workforce training…

High school teachers today work in challenging, high-accountability instructional environments, striving to meet the needs of upwards of 100 learners per day. Rapidly growing numbers of English-language learners (ELLs) in U.S. classrooms have added to these pressures. Rather than using collaborative structures to face these challenges, the…

Shifting Gears was launched in 2007 by the Joyce Foundation, a Chicago-based organization focused on improving the quality of life of citizens residing in the Great Lakes region of the United States. The primary goal of Shifting Gears is to increase the number of low-skilled, low-income Midwestern adults who obtain college-level occupational…

This article examines the genre of syllabus in higher education. In particular, it focuses on the intertextuality and interdiscursivity of paper-based and web-mediated syllabi and the ways they are used to promote links between various academic--classroom and research--genres and discourse communities. The corpus consists of ten syllabi with…

The role of the school psychologist has evolved from serving as a gatekeeper for special education eligibility to that of a change agent within the school. This shift in professional focus positions school psychologists with the capacity to make an impact beyond the school setting. This article provides an example of how the consultative skills…

This article will address important puzzles about community colleges and their roles with baccalaureate delivery. To that purpose, the article is organized into five key sections. First, the rationale underlying the community college baccalaureate (CCB) and key policy issues will be described. Second, a glossary of terms will be offered to provide…

Although higher education institutions in the United States have long claimed to teach for civic purposes, only recently have explicit goals related to the development of civic capacity and engagement been included in college and university curricula. The purpose of the study was to advance theoretical and practical understanding of the role of…

The research reported here tested the factor structure of a measure for sense of community in community organizations, and it evaluated sense of community's potential as an empowering organizational characteristic within an organizational empowerment framework. Randomly selected community organization participants (N = 561) were surveyed as part…

In this article, the authors report on an assessment project they recently conducted at their open admissions community college to assess student work at the end of the basic writing sequence. The authors' focus for this project was on the way students used essay structure. They gathered artifacts from students who were deemed "ready" by…

Going inside the prison to teach is similar to traveling to a foreign country and encountering a new culture. When educators enter the prison, they experience a physical and social distance from other groups such as teachers on the outside, prison system employees, community members, and even family. Although educators who teach college in prison…

This article--the first in the Council for the Study of Community Colleges (CSCC) Review Essays Series--reviews the literature concerning education-abroad opportunities for community college students. The article examines the benefits accrued to students through overseas study, briefly notes the history of education-abroad programs, and summarizes…

Education involves socialization so that individuals become productive members of society. At present, in the United States, educational transitions are primarily viewed in terms of their location in an outcomes-oriented process and framed as helping people achieve the American Dream, but in terms of the status quo national economic interest. But…