This article documents how an MSW student in an introductory community practice course took her class assignment and over the course of two years revitalized, democratized, and transformed a sclerotic, corporate-run Home Owners Association (HOA). While the community analysis assignment required the student to interview six of her neighbors, the…

Recent demands for community representation in planning raise basic questions as to the nature of the community. This article likens the community to theatrical fiction, maintained through variously-staged dramatic performances. (Author/LR)

After all the money spent, jobs allocated, new machinery and programs introduced, after all the publicity and conflict, and after all the bold rhetoric about the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Demonstration School District, New York City, the children of the district cannot read as well today as they did five years ago. (Author)

Six school board members discuss the most crucial community relations problems facing their school system and what their school boards can and should do about them. (MF)

The professional mental health community, which had romanticized the concept of community control, is presently becoming disenchanted with it due to the lack of facility and skills for working with it. The task is to understand and evaluate community control and to alter only those aspects found destructive to community well-being. (DM)

The study evaluated two early intervention programs for rural preschool handicapped and developmentally delayed children to determine the degree of integration into the community and program-community interaction. Analysis of 6 months of observation in the two programs resulted in the following conclusions: (1) administration of early intervention…

Among the first of the Model Cities programs, Dayton's program was directed by African American community activists, who instituted important school and neighborhood reforms but blocked efforts to racially desegregate the public schools. The story of Dayton's Model Cities Demonstration Project raises important questions about whether urban renewal…

This dissertation examines how stakeholders in an Appalachian Kentucky high school addressed educational problems that they targeted for reform. Set against the backdrop of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), this ethnographic study describes the challenges of effectively coupling top-down state mandates with bottom-up advocacy and…

This dissertation, which won the Dissertation of the Year Award, examines how stakeholders in an Appalachian Kentucky high school addressed educational problems that they had targeted for reform. Set against the backdrop of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), this ethnographic study describes the challenges of effectively coupling top-down…

The Philadelphia Commission on Decentralization and Community Participation offers plans for reforms on the school and district level. On the school level, three options are suggested: (1) informal community participation in decision-making; (2) advisory participation in the form of an elected or appointed committee from the community; or, (3)…

A year-long ethnographic investigation examined how stakeholders in an Appalachian Kentucky high school addressed educational problems that they had targeted for reform while resisting state priorities and policies mandated in the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA). Contrasts KERA objectives with cultural themes prominent in this poor…

This article addresses ways school board members can work to engage the community in school-improvement efforts. Some suggestions: Commit your time and talents; demand clarity and simplicity; listen; use the grapevine; work with the media; and be honest. Includes an extensive list of recommendations within a "community relations checklist." (WFA)

This book explores how community functions in "Bremer," a small rural town in eastern Washington. Human interactions in a variety of contexts are analyzed within a framework that posits three distinct eras of social and economic organization: community-control, mass-society, and information eras. Contexts examined are farming (the…

One of the results of rural school district consolidation has been the potential for schisms that develop among the divergent populations with distinct traditions, culture, and customs. This paper presents research on an Appalachian school district that remains in cultural turmoil after 25 years of consolidation. The population of the three…