Briefly describes a service-learning grant program and provides examples of elementary, middle, and high school projects awarded grants in 1996. Projects included efforts to educate the community about river pollution, multicultural murals, and a school activities news show. Includes application form and general guidelines and suggestions. (MJP)

Stresses the importance of experiential educators being prepared to teach environmental education to students in specific contexts. A model for urban African American students includes the introduction and selection of a relevant local environmental issue; teaching strategies to investigate the issue; and techniques for initiating environmental…

The law mandating Chicago's (Illinois) school reform (Public Act 85-1418) is about governance and the control of education, more than it is about educational reform. Nevertheless, the law has had a positive impact; and despite their limitations, local school councils have gained insights into school processes and community involvement. (SLD)

Examines the pitfalls and obstacles of applying a professional historian's standards to the practice of writing and researching local history. These include unreliable and incomplete records as well as sponsoring agencies that prefer sanitized legends to historical accuracy. Nonetheless, praises local history as a rich resource and recommends…

Describes a study of two community colleges and ten community college administrators to determine whether federal policies had influence on these institutions. Proposes a new policy framework, based on the findings, with five dimensions: (1) federal research support; (2) federal tax laws; (3) federal student financial aid; (4) funded mandates; and…

This discussion paper raises important issues for the future of Utah's public library services, specifically, the state's bookmobile service. Federal dollars used to support daily bookmobile operations in 22 counties will come to an end with the expiration of the "Library Services and Construction Act" in 1996. Beginning in 1997, the…

This issue of the Goldfinch focuses on communities. Ethnic groups, religious groups, schools, families, even the Internet, are used as examples of communities in Iowa. Forced communities are exemplified by migration, law, natural disasters, and sometimes education. Photographs from Iowa's past show the changing nature of communities and encourage…

During the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the "New Religious Right" increasingly exerted influence on the development and implementation of educational policies and programs in the United States, particularly at the local level. The movement will probably continue to directly and indirectly affect several important school activities in…

Of the 19 projects conducted as part of the Defense Conversion Adjustment (DCA) Demonstration administered by the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Work-Based Learning, 8 tested the worker mobility approach. The projects, which shared the common goal of helping dislocated defense workers find high-quality jobs, tested one or more of the…

This paper summarizes the results of a study of the local consequences of implementing statewide minimum competency tests. For American education to be the best in the world, the use of statewide and nationwide standardized testing as a primary policy tool for stimulating reform must be discontinued. Second, school district responses to such…

This paper presents a set of general observations about state-sponsored school improvement initiatives with data from several sources. One major source is the Research for Better Schools, Inc., Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), implementation study, "Facing the Challenge: Selected Programs and Practices of the Urban Initiative's Operation School…

The St. Louis (Missouri) Regional Child Care Partnership was created in 1990 to improve child care in the St. Louis and Metro East areas, where the quality, availability, and affordability of child care are community-wide problems. The partnership was formed by the Child Day Care Association of St. Louis and the St. Louis branches of the Junior…

Given the increasingly multi-ethnic school population and the lack of democratic political traditions in many students' cultural backgrounds, new ways to educate for citizenship are essential. The paper recommends developing multidisciplinary approaches to teaching civic identity and civic writing. It describes how a New Jersey school district…

Abuse of alcohol and other drugs causes a variety of problems in a community. Accordingly, this is a manual for use by groups of citizens working to build a broadly based community alcohol and drug abuse prevention program. It includes both a systematic framework which a coalition can apply to its community, and a detailed case study of one…

This guide is intended to assist states and service delivery areas (SDAs) in addressing the new oversight responsibilities and opportunities stipulated by the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) with respect to management information system (MIS) issues in evaluating JTPA programs. The first chapter discusses the general requirements of a JTPA MIS…