Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Community-Based Learning: A Study Of A Model Dropout Prevention Program, Robert D. Shumer

School K-12

Dropout prevention is a major concern of school districts throughout the country. In Los Angeles it is estimated that 39% of students fail to graduate from high school. Nationwide, the rate is not too much different, especially in inner city communities where large numbers of Hispanic and African-American youth attend school. While dropout rates have been traditionally high for decades, people continue to ask, why? Many billions of dollars have been spent trying to answer this question and many programs have been developed which attempt to address some of these problems. No one has come up with a comprehensive answer …

Educating For Social Responsibility, Sheldon Berman

Service Learning, General

Schools must help students fight their feelings of powerlessness by developing their sense of community and their confidence that they can make a difference in the world.

Democracy's Next Generation, Donna Fowler

Civic Engagement

A recent study conducted for People For the American Way recommends three ways schools can help students develop the values and habits of responsible citizenship.

Youth Policy: The Monthly Report On National Youth Programs And Issues (October/November 1990), Youth Policy Institute

Special Topics, General

This report features California Gets a "D"; 90% of American Students Don't Pass?; Volunteerism Up; Is Poverty a Reality in America?; and Girl Scouts: Programs Help Youth at Risk.

National Service: The Overview, Unknown

Service Learning, General

An INDEPENDENT SECTOR national survey report indicates that many Americans are not being asked to volunteer. Among the 41 percent who were asked to volunteer in the past year, 87 percent actually did. Among the 57 percent of those who were not asked, only 30 percent volunteered. These findings suggest that if more Americans are asked to volunteer, the proportion of the population that volunteers can be measurably increased.

Uno Student Housing Survey, Robert F. Blair

Publications

For many years the University of Nebraska at Omaha has been considered the urban campus in the University of Nebraska system. Part of its mission was to meet the educational, research and service needs of the Omaha metropolitan area. UNO was able to meet this urban mission as a commuter campus since most of the students were already living in Omaha.

Student Service Learning And Student Activities -- A Perfect Fit, Deborah Craig

Higher Education

"A thousand points of light ... Lifetime national service ... Be part of the solution ... The volunteer initiative ... Corporate volunteerism ... " These and other slogans have become popularized during the past few years as the "Me Generation" is being replaced by the "We Generation." Yes, volunteerism is once more in vogue, but the issues of the '80s and '90s arc different from those of the '60s. Vietnam and civil rights versus illiteracy and homelessness. Today's issues are less personal for today's typical college students. Very few of them have personally experienced illiteracy or having been homeless. But …

Nebraska Preschool Child Care, 1988 - A Survey Of Parents On Access To Quality Child Care, Patricia A. Funk

Publications

A survey of child care arrangements for Nebraska preschool children was conducted in 1988 by the Center for Applied Urban Research (now, Center for Public Affairs Research), University of Nebraska at Omaha, under the direction of Dr. Christine Reed. The purposes of the survey were to document the characteristics of the child care arrangements used in 1988 by Nebraska parents with preschool-age children and to identify household characteristics associated with the different types of child care that parents chose.

Results from the survey were incorporated with other research data into the report, "Child Day Care Policy Issues in Nebraska" (Reed …

Visions For Greater Fremont Strategic Action Plan, Center For Public Affairs Research (Cpar)

Publications

The city of Fremont, Nebraska, has a proud history beginning with its founding in 1856. Wagon trails that once went through the town were soon transformed into railroads, contributing to the industrialization of the city before the turn of the century.

Today, Fremont is a city of 24,000 people. Although the population has remained relatively stable over the past 30 years, the economy has continued to grow. The City of Fremont, the Fremont Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Fremont Chamber Industrial Foundation have been actively promoting growth and development during the last decade. Although the 1980s were dominated by …

Teaching Twenty-First Century Citizenship: Social Psychological Foundations, Allan R. Brandhorst

Civic Engagement

Effective American (U.S.) citizenship in the Twenty-first century may require a shift in the value orientation which currently characterizes American life. Two components of the American value system are becoming increasingly dysfunctional. American social science, and accordingly the social studies curriculum, has become narrowly focused on an economic model of human decision-making. Such a one-dimensional model of man, because it invalidates by omission justice-based models of decision-making, leaves American society with a reduced capacity for addressing social dilemmas, particularly commons-type problems. Secondly, American cultural life has been dominated by a heavy and one-sided commitment to primary control. Such an imbalance, …

Nebraska Department Of Social Services' Child Support Enforcement Unit Demonstration Project: Final Evaluation Report, Chris Marshall, Vincent J. Webb

Publications

In July 1987, the Nebraska Department of Social Services successfully applied to the U.S. Family Support Administration's Office of Child Support Enforcement for funds to conduct a Demonstration Project. This Demonstration Project, "The Nebraska IV-D/IV-A Intake and Phone Collection Project," was designed to increase telephone activities and improve intake practice as part of the ongoing child support collection activities. It was expected that such improvements would result in an increased level of absent parent location and an increased level of child support payment.

Comprehensive And Integrative Planning For Community Development, Ronald Shiffman, Susan Motley

Partnerships/Community

Over the years, both the public and nonprofit sectors have moved away from comprehensive, community-based planning strategies, lured by "quick fix" of a project-by-project development strategy. Unquestionably, these projects have directly benefited some poor individuals and families. More often than not, however, they do little to increase the economic vitality of the community in which the project is developed. To deal effectively with the issues of community disorganization and poverty and to broaden participation in the community renewal process, we must examine in today's light the originally envisioned community development corporation model and its principles. We need to plan, initiate, …

Congress Likely To Pass Kennedy's National Community Service Measure, The Committee On Labor And Human Resources

Special Topics, General

A bill by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), the National and Community Service Act, S.1430, should have little trouble gaining congressional approval next session, unless President Bush's Points-of-Light Initiative can muster sufficient support within Congress to challenge it. Kennedy's proposal recently gained strength as a bipartisan effort when Sen. James Jeffords (R-Vt) and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) signed on in mid-November as the 22nd and 23rd co-sponsors. Over twenty national service-related bills were introduced in the first session of the 101st Congress. Components of many of these bills ended up in S.1430, which further suggests that the bill stands very good …

Youth Service: From Youth As Problems To Youth As Resources, Bonnie Benard

School K-12

New Paradigm "Youth as problems, or youth as resources? Communities with problems or communities with resources?" These opening sentences to Reaching Out. a recent book on establishing community service programs for youth, encapsulate a critical issue I see confronting anyone relating to or working with young people, whether as parents, teachers, community folk, or prevention advocates and other helping professionals: the framework or perspective from which we view youth in our society today. Whether we view youth as problems or as resources determines not only our expectations for our youth and our actions towards them, but also the type of …

Social Interactions Of Secondary-Aged Students With Severe Handicaps: Implications For Facilitating The Transition From School To Work, Janis Chadsey-Rusch

Disabilities

The social interactions of a group of 10 students with severe handicaps attending a junior high school campus were described with the use of narrative recording procedures. The students were observed when they arrived at school, during lunch, and when they were engaged in vocational training. In addition, teacher perceptions of behavior were measured, and parents were interviewed regarding their childrens' future vocational opportunities and their social relationships with their peers. The results from this study indicated that (a) these youth of transition age were involved in more task-related than nontask interactions, (b) they were engaged in more interactions with …

Legal Issues In Combining Service And Learning, Michael B. Goldstein

Special Topics, General

A basic guide to the legal issues involved in programs that combine educational goals with direct involvement in the community - essential reading for any program administrator. The term "school" is used throughout to indicate any educational institution -elementary, secondary, or postsecondary, public or private - which may sponsor a student service-learning program. The term "agency" denotes any public or private community-based organization which may provide work opportunities or training or supervision of students at work sites. Portions of this analysis of legal issues in internships and experiential learning first appeared in Legal Issues Resource Booklet, by Michael B. Goldstein …

Service-Learning Advances School Improvement: A Position Paper From The International Service Learning Initiative, Barbara Gomez

Special Topics, General

The base on which the United States is built is participatory democracy -achieved only when all citizens are included in choice and decision-making. Nothing could be worse for our nation than to have our children feel alienated from the communities in which they attend school. For more than 200 years the rest of the world has been watching our progress, and as we have succeeded they have made efforts to emulate our sense of individual freedom and collective responsibility for governance.

Bringing Old And Young Together, Jane Angelis

Intergenerational

"I just can't get it all done!" It is the classic lament of the teacher stretched too thin by the demands of the classroom. Imagine what educators could accomplish if we only had enough help...

Intergenerational Programs: A Manual For Success, Ramona Frischman

Intergenerational

Although there are always social issues which much be faced by educators and by society, three issues in particular demand attention in the 1990s. Racism, sexism, and a third "ism" - one relatively new to our vocabulary - ageism. Referring to the discrimination against a group or an individual because of age, ageism is most often practiced against members of two distinct groups in our society: those over 60, and those under the ago of 18.

Training Student Organizers Curriculum (Revised Edition), Michael Zamm, Robert Ortner, Beverly Deangelis

Curriculum

This second edition of the Training Student Organizers Curriculum has been written to reflect the project organizing experiences of students, teachers and staff participating in the Council on the Environment of New York City's Training Student Organizers Program (TSO) since the first edition of the curriculum was published in 1983. We have expanded the lessons/narratives in Part I to include more information on environmental issues and have also added lessons and/or narratives for specific environmental action projects. The "how to's" of project organizing are described, step by step, in specific improvement projects in Part I, and reviewed as a total …

Differences In Interpersonal Values Among Students Involved In Volunteer Service, R. Thomas Fitch

Higher Education

A study of college students involved m. community service volunteer activities found that students' interpersonal values differed relative to whether they were involved through religious, Social Greek, or service organizations.

Omaha Conditions Survey: 1990, Center For Public Affairs Research (Cpar)

Publications

This report summarizes responses for the North Omaha sample; findings from the metropolitan sample are presented in a separate report series. After a look at the demographic characteristics of the 200 adult respondents, the report examines the North Omaha area's quality of life, employment, and housing conditions. Next, ratings of the best and worst facets of life in the Omaha area are highlighted. The fourth section of the report provides details on North Omahans' satisfaction with a variety of services, facilities and programs. The final two sections focus in greater detail on two issues - labor force experiences and crime …