Gear Up: The Importance Of Community Development In Urban Schools

Pedro Noguera, a phenomenal urban sociologist and a professor at New York University confronts the problems which exist in our nation’s education system in his book, City Schools and the American Dream: Reclaiming the Promise of Public Education. Noguera describes what he views to be the main problems facing urban education and suggests strategies for improvement. From years of experience as a teacher and school board member, he reflects on what he believes to be the real problems. Noguera blames the school’s failures on students, parents, and teachers which leads to blame local government officials or policymakers. Noguera states in City Schools and the American Dream, “The central argument of this book is that until there is a genuine commitment to address the social context of schooling — to confront the urban condition — it will be impossible to bring about significant and sustainable improvements in urban public schools” (pg.6). Noguera believes that we must address the central problem to make any type of solutions for improvement.

Community development involves changing the relationships between ordinary people and people in positions of power, so that everyone can take part in the issues that affect their lives. It starts from the principle that within any community there is a wealth of knowledge and experience which, if used in creative ways, can be channeled into collective action to achieve the communities' desired goals.

With the workforce becoming more competitive in today’s economy, the educational requirements have increased. By the year 2020, approximately 65% of all jobs in the United States will require a postsecondary education and/or further training proceeding high school education (“Recovery”). One thing that is not increasing is the rate of college enrollment of students from the Detroit Public Schools or college enrollment in general. There are many factors that contribute to this problem, just as there are also many solutions that may help assuage it. The main reason why students from Detroit Public Schools are not enrolling in postsecondary education institutions has to do with their financial situation.

As a new charter school located in a vibrant neighborhood in Wilmington, our school has worked directly with neighbors, community groups, local nonprofit organizations and local elected and government leaders to establish a good relationship and prepare the way for our students and families to benefit from our neighborhood and location. The Brandywine neighborhood where our school is located is in the center of downtown Wilmington, easily accessible to many local businesses and government agencies, and area neighborhoods, by foot and by public transportation. We have worked extensively with local community groups, agencies and organizations to ensure that the relationship between our school and the community is mutually beneficial. When

This summer I worked in New York City at Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), which is a non-profit organization for poverty-stricken children and families in Harlem, providing free support in the forms of parenting workshops, a pre-school program, three public charter schools, child-oriented health programs that serve approximately 13,705 children and 13,784 adults. The Harlem Children’s Zone Project has expanded the HCZ’s comprehensive system of programs to nearly 100 blocks of Central Harlem and aims to keep children on track throughout college and into the job market. The organization is made-up of about twenty two programs in total that ensure there are no gaps in-between one phase to the next. For instance if a student needs to take a year off before attending college, HCZ has created programs that will stick with the student during this time frame, in other words providing these students with a strong support group so they are held accountable to attend college in the future. The HCZ is “aimed at doing nothing less than breaking the cycle of generational poverty for the thousands of children and

Charity Productions in partnership with the College of Architecture’s Texas Target Communities Program at Texas A&M University have collaborated together to develop a set of solutions in response to the pre-existing neighborhood conditions throughout Harris County in Houston, Texas. The conditions of these particular neighborhoods have created a pattern of disparities throughout Harris County to be recognized as constraints to residents in impeding their ability to become affluent members of society. Texas Target Communities and Charity Productions have taken a step further to not only provide an analysis of evidence for these disparities but to identify the assets present in these communities to formulate feasible and cost effective solutions.

The purpose of this paper is to identify common issues of concern in my community, Huntington Park. In order to identify those issues, I will interview four individuals that live in Huntington Park. The goal of this paper it to identify the problems within the community that are affecting people every day and identify when and how it started, why is it happening, who is getting affected, and what has been done. Each person will be interviewed separately to identify if there are common and current issues, challenges, concerns, or problems that have or have not been resolved in the community. Each person will be notified that their interview will consist of the interviewer taking notes and will be used for school purposes. Upon approval, this

This paper presents an analysis of the evaluation report on “Hennepin County Community Works: 20 Years of Transforming Places for People: An Evaluation of Past Performance and Lessons Learned with Recommendations for the Future. The report was viewed on October 23, 2015 and can be found on this link: http://www.hennepin.us/~/media/hennepinus/your-government/projects-initiatives/community-works/cw-evalulation-report-2014-final.pdf

In developing this Plan, the City undertook an extensive community engagement process to understand the community’s aspirations and to establish a foundation based on the vision for the future.” Yes, there are developments aside for continuing to provide the best quality of education, transportations, housing and job

In this assignment, I will review the funding proposal of Alicia Saathoff. I am the Committee Chairperson for the Budget and Finance Committee for the City Council in Columbus Nebraska. Alicia’s funding proposal focuses on a non-profit unarmed patrol service named Community Strong. Community Strong’s mission is to provide quality, responsible, and nonbiased protection service to all Columbus residents by reducing crime and building positive relationships throughout the community. I will decide if Community Strong will help the city of Columbus as well as provide capital funding to Alicia’s proposal.

Of the three schools examined only the government school, Glenmore Park, was determined to have an Index of Community Socio–educational Advantage (ICSEA) value below the national average, with a large percentage of the distribution falling in the middle and lower quartiles (ACARA, 2016h). The two non–government schools recorded ICSEA values above the national average, with Bethany Catholic distributed fairly evenly across the middle and top quartiles, while the school population distribution for Penrith Anglican was heavily concentrated in the upper middle and top quartiles (ACARA, 2016g, 2016i).

In Maryland, 75 hours of community service are required for students to graduate. Getting in the way of many after school activities, students should not be required to have community service hours to get a diploma.

We want the community that we are working with to have healthy and safe areas for their children to grow up in. We believe that our program will be able to provide those spaces. By allowing the children of the community to have areas that are geared towards them and their learning we hope to create a healthy relationship towards children and education. By lowering the crime rates we also hope to see less children joining in on the crime and more children joining in on education and success. Our programs are centered towards helping children find happiness and hope in education as well as helping those who are willing to to their involvement with crime. We offer those who are willing a helping hand in turning their lives around and a chance to better their community and it’s future. The public health of the community in Inglewood is a huge part of our program and we believe that our ideas, volunteers, and dedication can turn the community

Education reform is a topic that every student, parent and teacher should be interested in because it effects everyone in the community. Many different approaches to education reform have been tried, and even though they seem to work for the time being, there are always more improvements that need to be made. One of the best ideas that has been discussed in the most recent years is getting the parents and students more involved in the actual reform process. Many school administrators see a problem with involving students, even though they are the ones most affected by the changes within schools. Student’s opinions should be taken into consideration because they are the ones who see what happens inside the school and within the classroom, and are the most affected by it. Involving parents and students in the reform of their schools will improve the quality of education, improve parent and teacher relationships and reduce parent and student complaints.

As we grow up all we think as young adolescent is “when I would become an adult that I wanted to be…” Up until now, no child would have ever thought there was a process before becoming an adult or what it meant to become an adult. Before becoming an adult they have to enter a phase known as emerging adulthood, a stage in life where many people starts to experience not being a full-fledged adult or a period of instability and exploration. Many people in the community have thought of many cases that emerging adults have to complete in order to become a full-fledge adult or even consider an adult and that was ensuring academic performance. Main reason many people would consider this was the importance of keeping the community whole. To do that many citizens within the community have to be educated to have the level of education that most jobs require or to live in a more stabilize life. However, the most important part of ensuring academic performance is the way it forces you to develop the skill time management. Ensuring academic performances helps in the end and allows development of the host in many different ways.