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This paper examines the social and economic impacts of Mexican immigration on Fresno (California). Since the early 1980s, immigration to California has been dominated by illegal immigrants from rural Mexico seeking agricultural jobs in rural California. This rural migration impacts urban centers in agricultural regions; these impacts lag the dramatic and obvious effects on rural communities and are primarily the result of movement of second-generation immigrants to urban areas. Data for Fresno and Fresno County are presented on population growth and trends, ethnic composition, employment, unemployment, income, poverty rates, ethnic groups in the school population, limited English proficiency among students, and welfare recipients. Intensive family interviews with farmworkers who had received legalized status during 1986 immigration reforms found that few had moved into nonagricultural jobs, pursued formal education or other training, or acquired fluency in English. Their children, however, had enrolled in public schools, had learned English, and were moving to Fresno and other urban areas seeking nonfarm employment. Nevertheless, the second generation's odyssey to urban areas has been generally unsuccessful. It is suggested that the "Latinization" of rural central California has made assimilation unnecessary for Mexican immigrants, and this lack of assimilation negatively affects their children when they move to other areas. Recommendations are offered concerning immigration policy, educational needs, and development of nonagricultural employment opportunities. An appendix outlines Fresno County employment by sector, 1973-90. (SV)

Individually and collectively, institutions of higher education possess considerable resources--human, fiscal, organizational, and intellectual--which are critical to addressing significant social issues. Additionally, these institutions are physically rooted in their communities. Therefore, investing in the betterment of their immediate environments is good for both the community and the institution. However, it is recognized that higher education institutions often fall short of making a real impact in their home communities. Therefore, a conference was convened to examine the current and evolving role of higher education institutions, particularly those operating within the context of coalitions, consortia and state systems, to catalyze change on issues affecting communities and society as a whole. Specifically, the focus of the conference was to develop and strengthen an understanding of how higher education might work more effectively with communities and it is believed that consortia or collaboratives of higher education institutions, along with community partners, can learn from one another. The papers offered in this monograph are the result of the Wingspread Conference on "Higher Education Collaboratives for Community Engagement and Improvement", conducted on October 27-29, 2004, in Racine, Wisconsin. The conference, the second of a three-part series, was sponsored by the National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good at the University of Michigan School of Education, the Johnson Foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The papers presented in this monograph are: (1) Reflections on Community-Campus Partnerships: What Has Been Learned? What are the Next Challenges? (Barbara A. Holland); (2) Reflections on the Wingspread Experience (Bruce L. Mallory); (3) Higher Education Collaboratives for Community Engagement and Improvement: Faculty and Researchers' Perspectives (Ira Harkavy); (4) Challenges to Community-Higher Education Partnerships: A Call to Action (David Cox and Sarena Seifer); (5) Mission and Community: The Culture of Community Engagement and Minority Serving Institutions (Maurice C. Taylor, Brighid Dwyer, and Sandra Pacheco); (6) Research Universities Working Together to Serve Multiple Communities: The Committee on Institutional Cooperation Engagement Initiative (John C. Burkhardt and Rachel Lewis); and (7) Partnering with the Old North State (Judith Welch Wegner). "Partnerships for Engagement Futures", an introduction by Ryan E. Smerek, Penny A. Pasque, Bruce Mallory, and Barbara A. Holland, is included. Individual papers contain tables, footnotes, and references.

This paper questions whether public concerns about educational quality and slow economic development in Appalachia are being addressed adequately and suggests that the problem of lagging educational performance is rooted in the social and economic environment within which schools operate. Recent high unemployment in south central Kentucky and its relationship to low educational attainment in the region is examined and research is cited which suggests that opinion-shaping leaders and power brokers who enter the region as a socioeconomic elite are very important to progressive, modernizing educational change. Thus, the significance of change to the community, such as a new industrial plant, is linked to whether it brings a significant component of educated, administrative personnel with aspirations congruent with the requirements of a modernized society. These people exert influence by way of example (before parents and children), and through participation in school-support activities, educational administration, and political action. The paper recommends reconsideration of development policies that welcome labor-intensive businesses with large numbers of unskilled jobs. Instead, it is suggested that a new emphasis on education--not on working to establish seniority in low-skill jobs--should be seen as the way out of poverty, and that policies should welcome industries that employ more educated people. It is concluded that there is a need "progressive" firms to the community. Five references, three tables, and one map are included. (TES)

There is no present consensus regarding long-term consequences of rural industrialization on society. Since 1950, smaller rural communities in the South and Southwestern United States have gained in industrialization due to their generally low-wage non-union labor supply and lower tax structure, both attractive to industry seeking greater profits. The aggressive state and promotional leadership in the South along with federal, state, and local subsidies have proven that even very small communities can attract industry if they are eager to do so and prepared enough to deal positively with the mixed social and economic consequences. Positive economic results such as increased per capita income and more people escaping poverty are offset by more dubious social consequences including unimproved community services, psychological readjustments for workers, weakened horizontal community ties, and outside leadership. The solution to the question of a changing rural social structure lies not in unguided rural industrialization but in a purposive set of policy alternatives based on community values and goals, and in locally-designed means of achieving those goals (including the creation of new capital structures to keep capital working and multiplying at the local level). (SB)

Atlanta, the fourth-fastest gentrifying city in the United States, is comprised of neighborhoods close to the city center and seat of urban wealth, that suffer from high poverty rates, unemployment, and low literacy rates. One neighborhood school has been ranked as one of the lowest in the state. To combat historical under-performance, Atlanta Public Schools (APS) created an initiative that regenerated the community in the face of gentrification. The purpose of this case study using interviews and survey data with thematic content analysis was to understand the role of school district leadership in the creation of a new framework, replacing the original public school with a long record of failure.

This paper addresses the changing definitions of "community" as addressed in the research literature. Beginning with Tocqueville's description of individuality in the United States, the paper identifies the following designations for the term "community": (1) "Modern Communitarians"; (2) "Communities of Memory"; and (3) "Moral Commitment and Responsibility." The paper also addresses critical views of the problems of power and difference by examining "Communities of Choice" and "Communities and Otherness." The paper reviews the role of civic life and discusses thinkers, such as Arthur Schlesinger, advocating a new covenant and those seeing conflict and ambiguity in developing modern identities. The paper concludes with challenging questions regarding the roles of school in developing community and outlines the social mission of the school to aid students in community participation. (Contains 30 references.) (EH)

This paper reports on an experimental multimedia project in a preservice teacher education course at the University of Guam. The multimedia project was aligned with the critical pedagogy in cultivating transformative intellectuals. Participants of the project investigated critical issues in their communities and presented their projects by using a multimedia tool. By doing this project, students developed their awareness of critical issues in their communities and the role educators could play in changing the situation. It was found that technology sustained students' motivation and interest, enhanced the challenge of the project, and unleashed students' creativity. The paper argues that technology can be a powerful tool in support of the pursuit of transformative pedagogy. (Author/AEF)

This paper reports on a longitudinal study of four urban schools that sought to develop professional community as part of a restructuring process. The study focuses on how restructuring affected teachers' work over a 3-year period. It reports that the absence of structural conditions can impede the growth of professional community; however, their presence cannot ensure such growth. In addition, the creation of professional community is not an automatic consequence of teacher empowerment or school autonomy. Data support the notion that the most central social and human resources supporting the growth of school communities are: (1) teacher expertise related to cognitive and skill outcomes for classroom practice; and (2) leadership supportive of teacher efforts, including their cognitive and skill acquisition. Such supportive leadership contributes to the development of a base of trust and respect, the creation of an environment open to improvement, and the creation of a sense of efficacy emanating from successful efforts of the staff toward improvement and increased student learning. (Contains 8 references.) (GLR)

This article challenges researchers and practitioners to reconsider the utility of insider/outsider constructs of the rural school superintendency. We draw on case studies of two diverse rural Rust Belt communities and the school superintendents to demonstrate the new demands placed on rural superintendents given changing social and economic community structures. We assert critical place-conscious leadership as potentially responsive to contemporary rural realities, but provide a number of suggestions for theoretical development to increase applicability to the realities of the rural superintendency in practice.

Community change approaches have increasingly involved participatory practices in which community members directly impacted by an issue participate in implementing change efforts. However, community participation as a practice and approach does not always include youth participation. Within the field of youth organizing, young people are envisioned as community assets capable of contributing to solving youth-identified community issues. In youth organizing campaigns, young people identify a community need or issue that they face, research the factors contributing to the identified issue and follow through with action projects that address this issue to benefit their communities. Employing a qualitative research approach, this article examines six organizing groups and discusses capacity building and organizational learning to support youth organizing and youth-led social change work. This article further discusses the impacts of youth organizing and political education trainings on extending the systemic analysis of emerging organizers. Finally, this article discusses implications for the field.

This paper explores the impact of marketization on the management of primary schools in an English country town and compares them to nursing homes and fast food restaurants as service providers. The focus is on the teachers' responses in teaching and classroom to government-initiated changes resulting from changing residential patterns in the town and the publication by the local newspaper of confidential, national assessment results. Two elementary schools out of 32 were selected for a 4-term case study. Data were gathered from weekly observation of teachers, informal discussions with staff, informal observations of staff meetings, and semi-structured interviews with seven teachers. Government initiatives had a profound effect on the role of the teachers in the form of intensification of their work, increased managerialism through the increased delegation of responsibility, increased external controls, and the loss of classroom autonomy. As the traditional autonomy of the teacher in the classroom was threatened; teachers provided dual accounts. Publicly, they expressed support for the new innovations but when they spoke confidentially they expressed feelings of restriction in their contribution efforts by government controls. Teachers felt that government initiatives created a parents' charter for choice and diversity, but denied this charter to teachers. (Contains 15 references.) (NAV)

This paper explores the relationship between community stability and school conflict in a small rural Texas school district. Data included school district records; newspaper archives; and interviews with school district officials, community members, and officials of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). Texas County (a pseudonym) is composed of two communities (Richards and Burnett) with an overall ethnic composition of 55 percent Anglo, 35 percent Hispanic, and 9 percent Black. Richards and Burnett have seen their economic base seriously eroded in recent years, and in 1983, their school districts were consolidated to form the Texas County Consolidated Independent School District (TCCISD). Conflict began in TCCISD in 1990 over minority hiring practices and the lack of Hispanic teachers. The conflict evolved from charges of racism against the superintendent and a principal to a concerted effort backed by LULAC to change the way in which members of the TCCISD board were elected (to allow more Hispanic representation). The conflict within TCCISD is analyzed in terms of the "principles of rural organization": (1) centripetalism, the tendency of various social and economic forces to centralize themselves in one location; (2) inclusiveness, which works to hold community residents together; and (3) social distinction, by which the residents of one rural community distinguish themselves from residents of another rural community. Economic decline and the changing ethnic composition of the school district have broken the assumed cohesiveness of the community along racial and ethnic lines and forced into the open Hispanics' feelings of exclusion. (KS)

This paper summarizes a 22-month ethnographic study of rural Shandon (California), a community that demonstrates the social and demographic changes resulting from agricultural intensification in rural California. Changes in the Shandon area's agricultural production have produced a demographic shift from the homogeneous Anglo-American farming and ranching community of the 1960s to the current heterogeneous community, where over one-third of the population consists of Mexican-American farm laborers producing high value, labor intensive, specialty crops. This shift was documented by school district records. A strong ethnic boundary separates Shandon's American and Mexican communities, but flagrant systematic discrimination is found only in the rental housing market. Children of both groups readily cross the ethnic boundary, influenced by systematic integration and small class size in Shandon schools. Consequently, Mexican-American children have graduation rates and occupational mobility equivalent to Anglo children. Because of low wages, a prosperous agriculture in California actually has added to the number of local poor, and has done so in the form of an ethnically distinct immigrant population. In areas similar to Shandon, the scale and composition of foreign immigration stimulate a nativist reaction and increase ethnic tensions in the absence of racially divided labor markets, racially based systems of exploitation and discrimination, or economic crises. (RAH)

This paper explores the challenges to higher education and the academic community in light of increasing ethnic and cultural diversity. Knowledge is not objective, neutral and separate from the knower but knowers are all implicated in the ways they construe knowledge. Consequently a minority student shares her own story of immigrating to the United States from Argentina and of attending institutions of higher education as a member of an ethnic minority. She explores the challenges that diversity present to the dominant culture and community and the problem of how to construct a community centered on differences. Emancipatory knowledges provide a framework and language to build community on the basis of diversity. Emancipatory knowledges force individuals to make sex, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity and other differences central to the construction of community. They direct individuals and institutions to examine the particular ways in which political, cultural, and institutional practices support a community centered on differences. Emancipatory knowledges make people aware that to build community, institutions must be transformed. Emancipatory knowledges are centered on the analysis of texts as social and historical constructions that reflect the author's subjectivity. (Contains 38 references.) (JB)

This paper overviews a proposal for implementing an adult literacy program in a small tribal community in northern Alberta (Canada). The program would enhance participants' ability to manage change affecting the community's economic, social, and educational circumstances. Recent data indicate that 24 percent of Native Americans in northern Alberta lack literacy skills, 31 percent of students leave school before completing the 9th grade, and 85-97 percent of students do not complete school. Nose Creek is a remote, tribal community of 25-30 Cree, half of whom are adults. Local services are minimal and include a two-room portable public school, electric power (for some), and one mobile phone. Public schooling up to grade 9 is provided in English by one teacher and a local aide. Very few students leave their communities and families to pursue a high school education. Recently, the community has been challenged by social changes that have eroded the traditional economic base and increased the community's dependence on government assistance. Community members realize the importance of literacy development in confronting their changing circumstances and have identified three primary uses for literacy: to improve their ability to effectively communicate with public agencies, to increase their understanding of community management and interaction with mainstream society, and to develop entrepreneurial and employment skills that promote economic independence. Based on these needs, a proposed model for adult literacy education was developed by the Northland School Division, Alberta Vocational Center (AVC)-Lesser Slave Lake, Grande Prairie Regional College, and Nose Creek elders. Based on nontraditional premises, the proposal addresses objectives, learning strategies, curriculum development, instructor role, learning resources, program and student evaluation, program administration, and funding. (LP)

Community development depends on capable, visionary local leaders and on informed and active citizens. Thus, in the long run, education for all citizens may be the most critical ingredient to the success of rural community development programs. Schools can further contribute to the development of rural communities by providing an explicit community focus to educational programs. This paper describes the declining economics of rural America in the 1980s, manifested in lost farms, closed businesses, unemployment and underemployment, eroding tax bases, and the inability of local governments to provide needed services. These changes are not just cyclical, but part of a broader restructuring of the national economy. Community capacity to alter this process can be affected by investment in education, with students benefitting through higher earnings and communities benefitting from improved schools and the increased productivity of better educated individuals. Schools can also make explicit contributions to community development by delivering quality education to all students, expanding their mission to include meeting the community's broader educational needs; teaching about the community and how it works; focussing on modern technology; leadership skills, and entrepreneurial abilities; and increasing public awareness of community educational needs. This paper contains 34 references. (DHP)