Unmaking Goliath

Unmaking Goliath

Author: James DeFilippis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-06-01

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 1135943613

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Arguing against those who say that our communities are powerless in the face of footloose corporations, DeFilippis considers what localities can do in the face of heightened capital mobility in order to retain an autonomy that furthers egalitarian social justice, and explores how we go about accomplishing this in practical, political terms.


New York City Public Schools from Brownsville to Bloomberg

New York City Public Schools from Brownsville to Bloomberg

Author: Heather Lewis

Publisher: Teachers College Press

Published: 2015-04-26

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 0807772569

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When New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg centralized control of the citys schools in 2002, he terminated the citys 32-year experiment with decentralized school control dubbed by the mayor and the media as the Bad Old Days. Decentralization grew out of the community control movement of the 1960s, which was itself a response to the bad old days of central control of a school system that was increasingly segregated and unequal. In this probing historical account, Heather Lewis draws on new archival sources and oral histories to argue that the community control movement did influence school improvement, in particular African American and Puerto Rican communities in the 1970s and 80s. Lewis shows how educators with unique insights into the relationships between the schools and the communities they served enabled meaningful change, with a focus on instructional improvement and equity that would be familiar to many observers of contemporary education reform. With a resurgence of local organizing and potential challenges to mayoral control, this informative history will be important reading for todays educational and community leaders.


The Great School Wars

The Great School Wars

Author: Diane Ravitch

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2000-07-14

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 9780801864711

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Named one of the Ten Best Books about New York City by the New York Times


Organizing for Community Controlled Development

Organizing for Community Controlled Development

Author: Patricia W. Murphy

Publisher: SAGE Publications

Published: 2003-01-23

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 1506382797

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"It is a worthy book, with probably the best collection of resources anywhere for those trying to combine organizing and development." --SHELTERFORCE MAGAZINE Organizing for Community Controlled Development is about renewing and revitalizing local living places through shared grassroots work focused on stimulating racial unity, civic vigor, and economic fairness. It proposes a detailed model for understanding the communities we call home and for guiding residents and their allies to strengthen local assets, reduce distress, and make and control needed social, political, and economic plans for change. This book′s coast-to-coast and beyond set of down-to-earth case studies aims at helping readers understand what are effective and what are ineffective methods for tackling renewal. Key Features Cases and their assessments: These offer ways that small communities across the globe today can honor diversity and civic responsibility and build programs that promote and facilitate year-around participation, while maintaining fruitful links to the governments, businesses, foundations and other institutions that can provide essential resources for change "How to" chapters: These chapters contain detailed, tested techniques for recruiting, planning, fundraising, communicating, leadership growth, and other skills and processes that are part of the book′s model which combines community organizing and community economic development. Suggestions on how and why authentic renewal groups can lay claim to resources adequate to carry out quality programs and projects with lasting impact: Throughout, the authors propose how organizing, planning, and implementation activities can be carried out with widespread inclusion of residents and other parties of interest, thereby insuring authenticity, ownership and support. Technical chapters on making a long-range plan for a renewal organization: Making a plan for a small community and all its interests is covered from building social strength, securing adequate resources, building a community′s financial assets, and creating affordable housing, to transforming a local shopping area, and boosting workforce development. Intended Audience: The book was written for students who aspire to work as community organizers, and all those who practice organizing and community development whether as volunteers or professionals.


Communities in Action

Communities in Action

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2017-04-27

Total Pages: 583

ISBN-13: 0309452961

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In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.


Developing criteria and indicators of community managed forests as assessment and learning tools: objectives, methodologies and results

Developing criteria and indicators of community managed forests as assessment and learning tools: objectives, methodologies and results

Author: Nicolette Burford de Oliveira

Publisher: CIFOR

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13:

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This report explores criteria and indicators (C&I) for monitoring and assessing the sustainability of community managed forests (CMFs), and offers some insights into methodological tools and conceptual approaches for C&I development. The research was intended to explore the potential value of C&I to forest communities, their partners and their representative organisations to legitimise and enhance management, including strengthening of control over forest resources and facilitating the equitable distribution of the costs and benefits of forest management. The C&I for CMF tests involved six forest communities and their partners in Central Province, Cameroon, the Amazonian state of Pará, Brazil, and West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Each test was of approximately one-month duration. The core teams included an ecologist, a social scientist and a forest management specialist. Local involvement was an essential element of the research process. Facilitators enabled the active participation of community members in the critical appraisal of the C&I. After each field test, academics, policy makers, representatives of local and national non-governmental organisations, and representatives of other forest communities reviewed the emergent ‘draft’ C&I. Over 750 statements of principles, criteria, indicators and verifiers were generated by the tests. There is an evaluation of C&I testing processes and C&I for CMF development methodologies, as well as an analysis of the C&I for CMF. The comprehensive coverage of issues related to the sustainability of CMFs makes this report a valuable reference for those interested in implementing C&I for CMF, and for other users and purposes. These may include: researchers or policy makers analysing intersectoral impacts on CMFs; practitioners assessing and developing collaborative CMF initiatives; development planners and project managers evaluating or planning initiatives; and professors seeking guidance on incorporating community forestry into curricula for rural development, forestry and anthropology students.


Legal Rights, Local Wrongs

Legal Rights, Local Wrongs

Author: Kevin G. Welner

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2001-09-20

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0791489841

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Based on an examination of four school districts facing the prospect of court-ordered detracking, Legal Rights, Local Wrongs challenges fundamental assumptions about the opportunities for equity-minded educational reform. Welner studied districts across the country in San Jose, California; Wilmington, Delaware; Woodland Hills, Pennsylvania; and Rockford, Illinois. These case studies show how white upper middle class parents exercised a disproportionate amount of power in local school policy making, and how that power was wielded to hinder reform opportunities intended to benefit low-income students of color. He shows how many school reforms must arise and develop within cauldrons of political interests and conflicting values and beliefs. This reform context is very different from the politically neutral environments presupposed by conventional school change literature. The book's political and normative focus accordingly examines the least often addressed—and yet most daunting—obstacles standing between America and the just, equitable schools portrayed in American rhetoric.


Persistence and Change in Rural Communities

Persistence and Change in Rural Communities

Author: A. E. Luloff

Publisher: CABI

Published: 2002-11-08

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 9780851997773

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In the 1930s and 1940s the US Department of Agriculture undertook detailed studies of six US rural communities representing various patterns of social and economic change that were affecting rural America. These studies became classics in the literature on rural communities, and for the past half-century have helped to develop major theoretical perspectives in community sociology.Fifty years later the same study areas were revisited by a team of rural sociologists, with the goal of assessing what changes have occurred and what community characteristics have persisted. This book assesses these changes in rural life."This volume is an important addition to the sociological literature on rural communities."Willis Goudy, The Agricultural History Review, 2003