Crespar Findings 1994 1999

This double issue presents summaries of the scholarly and practical-reform accomplishments of the first five years of the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk (CRESPAR). This bold, five-year initiative addressed several of the problems that most directly challenge the values and practical aspirations of modern democracies. The included articles emphasize how CRESPAR has focused on the schools in many of America's most challenging communities. It has both helped local schools improve themselves and advanced the nation's research base. This issue was written in commemoration of the life and work of John Henry Hollifield, Jr., founding coeditor. For 28 years, Hollifield served as an editor and administrator at Johns Hopkins University's Center for Social Organization of Schools. When JESPAR was just an idea, Hollifield was one of the people who most strongly advocated its development. He had a ready smile, a fine editorial touch, and a relentless will to produce each excellent issue. This issue, summarizing much of the research from CRESPAR's first five years, is presented by the full team of authors in his loving memory.

This volume presents the Talent Development evaluation framework, an approach for evaluating urban school reform interventions deeply embedded in the work of the Howard University Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed At Risk (CRESPAR) and the Talent Development Model of School Reform. The CRESPAR Talent Development (TD) evaluation approach is rooted in several traditions of evaluation that intentionally seek engagement with contexts of practice. These traditions include responsive, participatory, empowerment, and culturally competent approaches to evaluation. The CRESPAR TD evaluation approach also takes up themes of inclusiveness and partnership advanced by the recent promotion of multiple methods in evaluation. With these themes, the TD evaluation approach is viably grounded in well-accepted evaluation concepts and principles. The approach further seeks to be practical, useful, formative, and empowering for the many individuals served by TD evaluations and to give “voice” to persons whose perspectives are often ignored, minimized, or rejected in urban school settings. Beyond such grounding and ambitions, the CRESPAR TD evaluation framework seeks to re-position evaluation in low-income urban contexts as accountable, not only for producing accurate and relevant information on the program being evaluated, but also for enabling and contributing to the program’s social betterment and social justice intentions. This re-positioning is effected primarily by a collaborative, co-constructionist model for evaluation in which CRESPAR program developers, implementers, and evaluators – along with key program stakeholders – partner together in envisioning, implementing, and evaluating programs that are responsive to and make cultural sense in the context at hand. CRESPAR TD evaluators are contextually and culturally engaged and are responsible for this engagement. This volume highlights the approach’s five major themes: engaging stakeholders, co-construction, responsiveness, cultural and contextual relevance, and triangulation of perspectives.

"Cultural Diversity and Education" is designed to help pre-service and in-service educators clarify the philosophical and definitional issues related to pluralistic education, derive a clarified philosophical position, design and implement effective teaching strategies that reflect ethnic and cultural diversity, and prepare sound guidelines for multicultural programs and practices. Provides teachers and administrators with a succinct, yet comprehensive, overview of multicultural education and what it means for classroom teaching. Strong emphasis on curriculum and reform. "For pre-service and in-service school teachers."

Strengthen programs of family and community engagement to promote equity and increase student success! When schools, families, and communities collaborate and share responsibility for students′ education, more students succeed in school. Based on 30 years of research and fieldwork, the fourth edition of the bestseller School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, presents tools and guidelines to help develop more effective and more equitable programs of family and community engagement. Written by a team of well-known experts, it provides a theory and framework of six types of involvement for action; up-to-date research on school, family, and community collaboration; and new materials for professional development and on-going technical assistance. Readers also will find: Examples of best practices on the six types of involvement from preschools, and elementary, middle, and high schools Checklists, templates, and evaluations to plan goal-linked partnership programs and assess progress CD-ROM with slides and notes for two presentations: A new awareness session to orient colleagues on the major components of a research-based partnership program, and a full One-Day Team Training Workshop to prepare school teams to develop their partnership programs. As a foundational text, this handbook demonstrates a proven approach to implement and sustain inclusive, goal-linked programs of partnership. It shows how a good partnership program is an essential component of good school organization and school improvement for student success. This book will help every district and all schools strengthen and continually improve their programs of family and community engagement.

For the first time, this book brings together three controversial topics: homogeneous grouping of students within classrooms by ability or achievement criteria, tracking of students into courses of study by the same criteria, and retention of students in their present grade so that they repeat a year’s work instead of being promoted. The editors solicited syntheses of research on these topics from outstanding scholars with a variety of views.