This newsletter includes three articles on the theme of leadership development, particularly in relation to high-risk students or Mexican American communities. "Coca-Cola Valued Youth Program: 'Because All Children Are Valuable'" (Linda Cantu) shares some success stories from the program, which recruits high-risk students to be tutors of…

Examines individual, family, and community factors identified in the literature as affecting achievement, attainment, and aspiration among African-American youth in junior and senior high school. In considering the complex interactions between achievement and attainment, it is necessary to review ways that achievement is measured and the…

Children's outcomes are strongly correlated with those of their neighbours. The extent to which this is causal is the subject of an extensive literature. An identification problem exists because people with similar characteristics are observed to live in close proximity. Another major difficulty is that neighbourhoods measured in available data…

This paper addresses the shortage of physicians providing medical services to rural communities in Queensland, Australia. Queensland is the fastest growing Australian state, but it has the lowest ratio of total doctors to population. Data indicate there may be twice as many patients per rural doctor compared with the city, which represents a…

This book explores the nature of indigenous education, outlining key elements of American Indian perspectives on learning and teaching. It advocates developing a contemporary, culturally based, educational process founded upon traditional tribal values, orientations, and principles, while simultaneously using the most appropriate concepts,…

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)