This booklet offers a set of guidelines for developing a community-based coalition dedicated to improving the education of at-risk minority students. The guide offers and is organized around the following nine-step plan for the development and implementation of strategies to mobilize a community: (1) "the initiation: build core support"; (2)…

Describes how one community (1) realized it had a problem with disaffected and troubled youth; (2) began to learn about the problem; (3) gradually shaped a youth program and then expanded it to reach younger teens; and (4) regained its young people. (SR)

A project initiated by the Auburn University (Alabama) program in music education in the College of Education and the Auburn University Cooperative Extension Service brought together school and community groups from targeted communities in Alabama to plan a conference to initiate thinking and develop action strategies for enriching the lives of…

Two different approaches to community involvement in the schools are demonstrated by participants in the School-Community Connection initiative of the Institute for Responsive Education. The Wisconsin school district connects students to the outside environment, while the Hawaii district brings supportive networks into the school to nurture…

This paper discusses the potential of school district-based and community-wide approaches to dropout prevention, and provides a summary of the goals and expected outcomes of the Consortium on Dropout Prevention, and the Urban Dropout Prevention Collaboratives Program. The Consortium on Dropout Prevention was formed to cooperatively gather and…

Describes the Cooperative Alternative Program (CAP), Coleman (Texas), an example of the way a rural high school for at-risk students has established a sense of community while improving the achievement of its rural students. This case study shows how CAP faced its economic and collaborative challenges. (SLD)

A practicum strategy was designed and implemented that focused on reducing the negative impact of adverse environmental conditions in one particular neighborhood in a town in Alberta (Canada) with a population of 8,500. Children in this neighborhood were served by one elementary school (enrollment 383), from which the strategy was implemented. The…

Educators are challenged to develop specialized programs to serve the varied cultural norms, beliefs, and values espoused by different Native American tribes. To counter bureaucratic pressures toward uniformity, individual schools must foster development of shared school-community culture. To assist at-risk students, schools and communities must…

Since 1980, the percentage of ethnic minority students at Golden West College (GWC) has nearly doubled. To meet the English language needs of this rapidly growing student population, a speaking and listening course was introduced into the curriculum in 1982, followed by a pronunciation course in 1985. Both courses were part of the…

Describes the purposes and methods of full-service schools, which focus not only on children's academic development, but also their physical health, mental health, and social development. Provides advice for developing full-service schools from the experience of the four-year LEARN Program in California. (JPS)

The National Alliance of Business (NAB) surveyed the 12 sites that participated in the Compact Project to develop and implement programs of business-education collaboration. NAB studied start-up activities, key players, conditions for collaboration, accomplishments, challenges, and future plans. Program outcomes indicated that building successful…

A group of three conference papers, all addressing the subject of effective programs to decrease the number of school dropouts, is presented in this document. The first paper, "Systemic Approaches to Reducing Dropouts" (Michael Timpane), asserts that dropping out is a symptom of failures in the social, economic, and educational systems.…

The paper describes a successful effort at collaboration among a college reading program, a neighborhood self-help agency, and a public school. The three-way partnership was formed to improve the literacy levels of 12 behaviorally disturbed children in the fifth and sixth grades. The project involves whole language reading instruction and…

Over 10 years, the researchers studied community-based organizations (CBO) for young people, eventually examining the work of approximately 120 youth-based organizations in 34 different cities. A look at these organizations and the young people they serve shows that CBOs offer a means of reaching at-risk youth, and that they can have a significant…

This document reports the findings of Project Respond, a program designed to develop a model for assessing and addressing risk to children in the St. Louis community. Section A concerns: (1) a definition of risk; (2) effects of profound sociological risk on children; (3) social and economic costs of sociological risk. In Section B, the Project…