Institutions and community-based organizations that serve their communities are creating positive opportunities for students and families. Over 20 years, "Excelencia" in Education has prioritized bringing national attention to the programs, institutions, and people making a positive difference for Latino students and their communities.…

From 2009 to 2010, the Community Food Security Coalition advocated for more federal support and funding for farm-to-school programs as Congress considered reauthorizing the Child Nutrition Act. Farm-to-school initiatives aim to improve the quality and healthfulness of student meals through the inclusion of more fresh fruits and vegetables provided…

In Pacific Rim countries parents of children with developmental disabilities have organized peer support organizations. One form of peer support is Parent to Parent based on one to one connections between two parents. The movements to create and sustain peer support in the U.S., New Zealand, China, and Korea are described. Qualitative evidence…

Urban schools reflect their surroundings. Urban areas are becoming characterized by great diversity in race and class as the racial and ethnic makeup of the United States changes. In most urban schools, where the majority of students are minorities and large numbers live in poverty, the teacher attrition rate ranges from 30% to 50% within the…

Parents have a fundamental right to guide the upbringing of their children, and government has an obligation to respect that right. The nonpublic school community in the United States provides parents with important options for the education of their children. Faith-based and nonsectarian private schools, along with a growing number of children…

Residents of Appalachia, especially those in rural Appalachia, are generally considered to be medically underserved. In fact, cancer mortality in Appalachia, especially in rural Appalachia, is higher than it is in the remainder of the United States. Developing from the Appalachia Leadership Initiative on Cancer, the Appalachia Cancer Network (ACN)…

Poverty and unemployment aren't spread evenly across cities or regions, but rather are concentrated in disinvested urban neighborhoods and rural communities around the country. These communities are home to the nation's most vulnerable children and families. Despite some signs of improvement in economic conditions for families in the United…

This article uses the puzzle of diverging trajectories of immigrant citizenship in the United States and Canada to build a new approach to the study of citizenship and political incorporation. I consider three existing models of citizenship: an approach that considers citizenship adoption as the product of cost/benefit calculations; an approach…

Concerns about declining political participation in the United States have once again raised the question of how young people get involved in politics. This project focuses on engaged youths and explores the personal trajectories, people and institutions that encouraged them to become engaged with their communities. The report also discusses how…

In this article, the author reports some 3,800 near-simultaneous "house parties" organized throughout Pennsylvania to call on their federal lawmakers to put more money into education. The parties, in which three-quarters of them were organized by teachers such as Jane Dugdale, are the main election-season event of a new coalition of…

"Engaging Residents to Improve Results for Children and Youth, Families and Communities" is a "Toolkit" that is the product of an international working group composed of delegates from six participating nations--Chile, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States. In 2002, the working group set out…

Americans rely on public schools to educate and prepare almost 50 million students to become productive members of society. Yet many public schools, particularly those in large cities, face significant challenges: over-crowded classrooms, shortages of highly-qualified teachers, low student achievement, achievement gaps, access to preschool, and…

Rural work-education councils are free-standing voluntary associations of community leaders averaging around 21 to 25 voting members who are organized by task-specific action committees working to improve and expand educational and economic development options and thus ease the education-to-work transition in rural America. There are currently…

Intended to chronicle the still-emerging concept of career education, this monograph contains 10 papers prepared during the 1979-80 academic year. In the first paper career education is discussed in terms of its role in developing employability/adaptability/promotability skills. The strong emphasis in 1979-80 on making career education a community…