A successful charter school does more than educate and train children: it unites a community. That is the keynote of this bulletin, an edited version of remarks delivered at a luncheon by one of the founders of a charter school in Albany, New York. It describes the process of creating one particular charter school and the lessons learned from the…

This study attempted to assess family empowerment with participants in Access Vermont, a multilevel crisis intervention project for children with emotional disturbances and their families. The study used the Family Empowerment Scale, a scale based on two dimensions of empowerment level (comprised of family, service system, and community/political)…

This paper examines the concept of "empowerment" and analyzes contrasting perspectives on the empowerment of parents that have informed developments at national and local levels in the United Kingdom and also in the United States and other countries. Empirical data illustrate the limited impact these approaches have on a group of…

This paper chronicles the experiences of nine adolescent girls who participated in a 3-year science, mathematics, and technology program for Appalachian girls. The girls lived in two West Virginia communities (one rural, one urban). Most of the girls were poor; six were African American. Descriptions of the girls' neighborhoods and local…