This report focuses on Hispanic American culture in the schools of the lower Rio Bravo Valley (Texas) through impressions and descriptions of the interrelationship of school and community. School culture is defined as reflecting the shared characteristics and uniqueness of the community cultures around the school. The school cultures of the Valley…

A study was done of student achievement and its relation to family and community poverty in light of 20 years of education reform and Chapter 1 funding since 1966. The study used the following three long-term studies of American high school students, in which measures of achievement and socioeconomic standing are meant to be comparable among…

Data are presented from structured interviews conducted with 340 youths from the Monroe-Pratt neighborhood of Baltimore (Maryland). Interviews reveal lifestyle and community environmental factors that increase the risks of youth experiencing failure in educational and occupational attainment. Suggestions are made for improving the educational…

This paper examines factors in the very low college participation rate in certain south-central Pennsylvania counties, in order to develop strategies for increasing participation. The paper examines college participation through a series of interviews with elementary school students, recent high school graduates not attending college, school and…

Because the ultimate power to control school reform is in the hands of the superintendent or some other similarly positioned administrator, the reforms tend to benefit some student or constituency groups more than others. Judging from the personal characteristics of most superintendents and the political context of the superintendency itself, it…

This publication features thirteen articles on community involvement. Several programs and individuals concerned with the role of the community in educational development and improvement are discussed. The main points made in all of the articles are: 1) research on community involvement appears limited, and 2) research "experts" are grass roots…

Much of the legal and regulatory public policy discussion has centered around the model of the community broadcasting station, a station which is licensed to serve a particular community and which broadcasts a combination of Public Broadcasting System-supplied and locally produced programs. Typically, these stations are controlled by a single…

This commentary on Enrique Gracia's (2003) article, "Social Isolation from Communities and Child Maltreatment: A Cross-Cultural Perspective," discusses the relationship of neighborhood context to child maltreatment. The difficulty of sorting out individual and contextual factors is emphasized, along with the problem of clearly defining the unit of…

Census and student questionnaire data for 382 African-American and 3,467 white high school students from suburban San Francisco (California) indicate consistent positive relationships among grades and family status, level of parental education, and a two-parent home only for the white majority. The community context is important in understanding…

Describes a case study of 12 elementary schools (emphasizing 2 schools) affected by the Chicago School Reform Act, focusing on local contexts and features of school communities that advance or impede change. Results demonstrate the importance of neighborhood contexts and school leadership and the complexities of applying technical expertise. (SLD)

Results of two longitudinal studies in a southwestern city suggest that local interpretations of the legalization program of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act affected program outcomes by expanding the scope of the program beyond the participation rate projected by national policymakers. (SLD)

Family literacy programs must acknowledge the family as the primary place of learning, and developers of family literacy programs and curricula must focus on the family unit as a whole, building upon the cultural and knowledge capital of the entire family and acknowledging gender and age power relationships within the family. Educators must…

The limited coverage of blacks in "The Virginia Gazette" during integration marked a symbolic step toward greater, or equal inclusion of black society in the newspaper but proved far from fulfilling the newspaper's role as a community newspaper. Personal interaction between blacks and whites in Williamsburg (Virginia) did not occur very…

This literature review summarizes and analyzes the current literature on variables predicting high school dropping out and the relationship between those variables and language minority youth (defined as those who are national origin minorities by birth and who speak, in varying degrees, languages other than English). After the introduction, which…

Beginning with a review of recent literature on social conflict, this study adopts Coser's distinction between realistic conflict, which seeks to balance both sides of a disagreement, and nonrealistic conflict, which seeks domination by only one party. Where nonrealistic conflict develops in intense labor-management disputes in public school…