As editors Sara L. Hartman and Bob Klein acknowledge, rural places have long experienced systemic inequities that decrease rural students' access to education, yet many rural schools and communities have found creative means to make up for the dearth of outside resources. "The Middle of Somewhere" brings to light a wide variety of…

"Applying Cultural Historical Activity Theory in Educational Settings" harnesses research and development for educational improvement, bridging the gap between research and practice. Exploring how collaborations between researchers and practitioners can be used to co-construct solutions to real-world problems, this book considers key…

When the Model Work Standards were first crafted more than two decades ago, they were built on the premise that quality child care jobs are the cornerstone of high-quality services for children and families. The intent of these standards is to make it possible for those who choose family child care as a career to reasonably and responsibly support…

In this comprehensive practitioner guidebook, the Northeast Resiliency Consortium colleges have shared their work and have collaborated to develop a competency model, along with a rich and robust set of principles, strategies, resources, and guidelines for helping students develop strong resiliency. The Resiliency Competency Model outlines the…

Previous scholarship has outlined possible models of civics education but have neglected to provide frameworks for evaluation of the way such educative programs contribute to ongoing active citizenship amongst the participants. This paper explicates a framework that can be used to analyse how effectively programs are developing active citizenship…

It is a truism of American social policy that our nation has great success generating innovative programs that improve outcomes for participants--but that we are far less effective at moving from small, "boutique" programs into broadly applied solutions that improve the prospects of large numbers of individuals. This is certainly true in…

Social return on investment (SROI) offers a new strategy to measure and communicate the value of outcomes achieved by programs that provide social, health, and education services to children and their families. It can be a powerful tool for demonstrating the monetary value of programs and services and for communicating that value in a way that can…

Social return on investment (SROI) analysis offers a practical new approach for measuring and communicating the value of outcomes achieved by programs that provide social, health, and educational services to children and their families. This guide highlights the key steps in conducting SROI research, issues in data-gathering and analysis, as well…

The changing demands of the 21st century--and the students growing up in it--are generating fundamental challenges to historical assumptions about what education looks like. The challenge today is to provide a deeper level of personalized learning to each and every student so that all can achieve mastery of the Common Core standards and other…

Now, more than ever, the baby-boomer administrators are retiring in massive waves. Some researchers have predicted as high as 75% turnover by 2011 for education alone. For many years, not much attention has been placed upon succession planning or developing new leaders in some colleges; others have tended to create stockpiles of leadership…

The Lancaster (PA) school district is working with the Chamber of Commerce and industry to bring resource persons into classrooms and to provide staff for adult career retraining. Program objectives include identifying areas for school/community interaction and mutual gain. Partnership benefits are shared among business, community and schools: to…

Kentucky's SOS (Sharing Our Selves) Learning Networks are community-owned, volunteer-run, informal learning/development programs incorporating community needs and the skills/knowledge/experience of individuals regardless of academic credentials. The Cooperative Extension Service administers the programs. Interested community members list subjects…

Because of their special ties to the community, community-based organizations (CBOs) are often able to be more responsive to the needs of local or special populations than can mainstream institutions such as schools and government-funded employment services. CBOs such as Service Employment Redevelopment (SER), the National Urban League, and…

The author defines community education and identifies those components which seem to facilitate an ideal relationship between a school and its neighborhood. Criteria for evaluating the community education emphasis of a particular school are included. This article is part of a theme issue on community education in Hawaii. (SJL)

The authors support role changes for educational practitioners who work with children and youth with disabilities as they make important transitions. Principles from critical pedagogy and disability studies are summarized to provide a new theoretical framework to support role changes. Rather than needs-based services that focus on helping those…