Recent Publications by Eva Gold
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A New Conception of Parent Engagement: Community Organizing for School Reform
This chapter provides an indicators framework for understanding the contributions of community organization to school reform and a theory of change model that shows the link between school improvement and the work community organizing groups…
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Making Children Larger and Cracks Smaller: The Role of a Participatory Evaluation in School Restructuring – Executive Summary
The executive summary to a report on a participatory evaluation project where a group of teachers and school counselors in a set of neighborhood schools worked to create reforms that would address student dropout. This…
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Philadelphia Story: Building Civic Capacity for School Reform in a Privatizing System – Executive Summary
Following the 2001 state takeover of the School District of Philadelphia, a new governance structure was established and an ambitious set of reforms went into effect, generating renewed public confidence in the district. Despite this,…
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Looking for Indicators of the Impact of Community Organizing for School Reform
This report series, produced through the Education Organizing Indicators Project, presents a methodology for documenting the contribution of community organizing to school reform. The Project stemmed from the perceived need to make the positive impact…
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Strong Neighborhoods, Strong Schools: Successful Community Organizing for School Reform
This report, the overview document for the report series ‘Strong Neighborhoods, Strong Schools,’ presents a process for documenting the contributions of community organizing to improving schools through an Indicators Framework for Education Organizing. The Indicators…
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Parent Education in an Urban Neighborhood: An Evaluation of the McKinley Family Center for Child Development
The McKinley Family Center for Child Development, located in a poor multicultural urban neighborhood, is one of several programs in the Philadelphia School District designed to help parents be their child’s first teacher. This report…
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Time to Engage? Civic Participation in Philadelphia’s School Reform
Philadelphia is at the forefront of a national trend towards privatization in education, making school reform in Philadelphia a topic of national and local consequence. The Philadelphia school district has created a new governance model,…
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Critical Literacy and School Reform: So Much to Do in So Little Time
Student voices have largely been absent from the development of school reform efforts. This essay argues for the inclusion of these voices, noting that youths often have important insights into efforts to improve their schools.…
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Challenges to Freshman Year Interventions in Philadelphia
Philadelphia made early investments in reforms designed to address the challenges of large neighborhood high schools, including supports for the critical ninth grade transition year. Well over a decade later, our research shows that freshman…
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Strong Neighborhoods, Strong Schools: Successful Community Organizing for School Reform – Executive Summary
This one-of-a-kind research project documents the results that empowered parents achieve in improving academic achievement and in strengthening community capacity.
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Supporting Teen Parents and Their Children: Second Year Evaluation Report of Philadelphia Parents as Teachers
A second-year evaluation of Philadelphia Parents as Teachers (PPAT), a support and education program for adolescent parents at two Philadelphia high schools. This report builds on a previous evaluation of PPAT looks at characteristics of…
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Home to School: Numeracy Practices and Mathematical Identities
Drawing on a perspective of mathematics as situated social practice, we focus on 4 children in an urban preschool classroom and follow those children between home and school sites to shed light on urban children’s…
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Encouraging Young Scientists: Science All Around Us
A report to the Please Touch Museum on the Science All Around Us Project, funded by the National Science Foundation. This project combines specially designed kits with teacher training to accomplish this goal to encourage…
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Context, Conditions, and Consequences: Freshman Year Transition in Philadelphia
This policy brief focuses on the School District of Philadelphia’s high school selection process and the ways in which it reinforces and compounds inequities that already exist among the District’s tiered system of selective, non-selective,…
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Strong Neighborhoods, Strong Schools: The Education Organizing Indicators Framework: A User’s Guide
This guide is designed to help foundation program officers, educators and organizers understand and use the Education Organizing Indicators Framework to understand and advance the work of community organizing for school reform. The guide first…
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Building a Community Resource: A Report on the West Philadelphia Family Center in its First 18 Months
The West Philadelphia Family Center helps parents with young children tackle various problems related to school, housing, health, and employment issues. This report was written as a formative evaluation of the center in 1994. The…
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Privatization ‘Philly Style’: What Can Be Learned from Philadelphia’s Diverse Provider Model of School Management (Updated edition with important new information and findings)
This edition of Privatization ‘Philly Style’ updates the 2005 publication of the same name, providing important new information and findings. Philadelphia’s diverse provider model is an intervention aimed at persistently low-performing schools. It is the…
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Family Literacy Initiatives: First Year Report
An evaluation of the first year performance of the Family Literacy Initiatives in Philadelphia. Examines how these programs, funded by PNC Bank through the Children Achieving Challenge, address the literacy needs of children and adults…
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Transition to High School: School ‘Choice’ and Freshman Year in Philadelphia
The School District of Philadelphia’s tiered system of selective, nonselective, and charter high schools, and the process for high school choice, has created real variation in the degree to which high schools can successfully meet…
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Learning in Multiple Worlds: An Examination of the Intersection of Home and School Mathematics Practices
This paper reports on the outcomes of a one-year pilot study of young children’s experiences with numeracy/mathematics activities both in school and with their families. The aim of the study is to learn about the…
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An Evaluation of the Science Resource Leaders Program
An evaluation of the Science Resource Leaders Program, which was funded by the National Science Foundation and administered jointly by the School District of Philadelphia and PATHS/PRISM. SRL sought to train a two-person team of…
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Blurring the Boundaries: A Case Study of Private Sector Involvement in Philadelphia Public Schools
This article describes the private sector involvement in Philadelphia public schools under the state takeover. This is a case study that focuses on the political and institutional context in which Philadelphia’s Diverse Provider Model has…
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Memorandum to the Alliance Organizing Project: Evaluation, 1998-1999
This report describes Research for Action’s follow up study from its initial 1997-1998 report. The initial report examined the ways in which the Alliance Organizing Project’s community organizing projcess trasformed parents’ ideas about their roles…
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Uneven Playing Field: Demographic Differences and High School ‘Choice’ in Philadelphia
Every fall, eighth graders participate in the School District of Philadelphia’s high school application and admissions process, vying for spots in a tiered system of public high schools across the city. This policy brief looks…
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Reframing Accountability for Urban Public Schools
Based on their research with community-organizing groups, Eva Gold and Elaine Simon from Research for Action and Chris Brown from the Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform describe four strategies for building public accountability…
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Creating Supports for Academic Achievement: A Report for the Teen Parent Family Center
A formative evaluation of the Teen Parent Family Center at Martin Luther King High School in Philadelphia. The authors examine the efficacy of the Center at supporting adolescent parents in their academics and parenting. This…
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Making Progress: Longitudinal Outcomes Evaluation of the Say Yes to Education Program Kindergarten – 5th Grade
Say Yes to Education (SYTE) is a scholarship guarantee program that pledges to young children from disadvantaged backgrounds a fully paid, post-secondary education along with academic and social supports that follow children and their families…
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Philadelphia’s Renaissance Schools: A Report on Start Up and Early Implementation
In April 2009, Superintendent Arlene Ackerman announced her reform plan for the School District of Philadelphia (the District) – Imagine 2014. Among other major initiatives, Imagine 2014 laid the groundwork for Philadelphia’s Renaissance Schools Initiative.…
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Bringing Community Organizing into the School Reform Picture
Community organizing is growing in importance as a means of achieving and sustaining urban school reform. The authors identify eight distinct areas in which community organizing groups are connecting community capacity to school improvement. Leadership…
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Making Children Larger and Cracks Smaller: The Role of a Participatory Evaluation in School Restructuring
A report on a participatory evaluation project where a group of teachers and school counselors in a set of neighborhood schools worked to create reforms that would address student dropout. This paper was written as…
Publication
Philadelphia Story: Building Civic Capacity for School Reform in a Privatizing System
Following the 2001 state takeover of the School District of Philadelphia, a new governance structure was established and an ambitious set of reforms went into effect, generating renewed public confidence in the district. Despite this,…
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Clients, Consumers or Collaborators?: Parents and their Roles in School Reform During Children Achieving, 1995-2000
The School District of Phila’s reform plan, Children Achieving, based the new leadership roles for parents on the belief that ‘fundamental change in the education of children will not occur without a transformation in the…
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Youth as Civic Actors: High School Reform in Three Philadelphia Neighborhoods
Philadelphia unfolds out from its downtown skyline into a diverse swath of neighborhoods, each with its own story of richness and struggle-and each with its own public high school. In 2002, and still today, many…
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Report to the National Urban League on Parent Councils
This report looks at the establishment of five new Urban League Parent Councils. In gathering information, Research for Action sought to understand how this cohort of Parent Councils built on the knowledge culled through implementation…
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Blueprint for Secondary Education in Philadelphia: The Planning Process, 2006-2008
Between fall 2006 and spring 2008, the Philadelphia Education Fund (the Ed Fund) and the School District of Philadelphia (the District) co-convened a planning process for secondary education reform. The planning process brought together partners…
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Strong Neighborhoods, Strong Schools: Appendix: Case Studies
The appendix brings together the five case studies of community organizing groups carried out as part of the Indicators Project on Education Organizing. Each report describes the background and context of the organization’s work and…
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Philadelphia’s Renaissance Schools Initiative: 18 Month Interim Report
This report presents Year One (2010-11) school level achievement and attendance outcomes and case study findings from fall 2011 that focused on school leadership and instruction.Thirteen schools were included in the first year of Philadelphia’s…
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Meanings of Cultural Participation at the Neighborhood Level: A Focus Group Analysis
This report was prepared for the Philadelphia Cultural Benchmark Project, a collaborative project between Research for Action, Audience Insight LLC, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Social Impacts of the Arts Project (SIAP). It draws from…
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Friends for School Purposes: Learning Communities and their Role in Building Community at a Large Urban University
An analysis of the Learning Communities program at Temple University in Philadelphia, launched in 1993 with funding from the Pew Charitable Trusts. The program was created with the aim of improving the experiences of first-semester…
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Strong Neighborhoods, Strong Schools: Case Study: Alliance Organizing Project
The Alliance Organizing Project (AOP) is a Philadelphia-based, single-issue parent organizing group with the goal of making parents and families ‘full partners’ in public school reform. AOP was formed in 1995 as a component of…
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Getting to Outcomes: A User’s Guide to a Revised Indicators Framework for Education Organizing
Research for Action (RFA) has been among those engaged in education organizing research and has drawn on its previous efforts–as well as the knowledge built by community organizing groups and other researchers–to create this User’s…
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Numeracy Practices and Classroom Imperatives: Chutes and Ladders Travels between Home and School
This conference paper reports on a one year pilot study carried out in an elementary school in Philadelphia, located in a low-income working class African American neighborhood. It discusses a young child carrying his mathematical…
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Networking Across Boundaries of Place, Culture, and Role: A Report for the Bread Loaf Rural Teacher Network Funded by the Dewitt-Wallace Reader’s Digest Foundation
A four-year evaluation of the Bread Loaf Rural Teacher Network established in 1992 at Middlebury College with grant funding from the DeWitt-Wallace Reader’s Digest Foundation. BLRTN seeks to accomplish two goals: 1) invigorating teaching of…
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Bringing a Public Voice to the School Governance Debate: The Campaign for Better Schools and Mayoral Control in New York City (Executive Summary)
In this two-year study, Research for Action (RFA), working in collaboration with Jeffrey Henig of Teachers College, assessed the formation and development of a coalition of organizing and advocacy groups, funded by the Donors’ Education…
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Strong Neighborhoods, Strong Schools: Case Study: Austin Interfaith
Austin Interfaith, founded in 1985, is a multi-issue group made up of forty-five religious congregations, schools, and other institutions. Austin Interfaith is an affiliate of the Texas Industrial Areas Foundation Network, which developed the Alliance…
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Youth Courts and their Educational Value: An Examination of Youth Courts in Chester, Pennsylvania
In the 2011-12 school year, the Stoneleigh Foundation commissioned Research for Action (RFA) to conduct a study of Chester Upland School District’s (CUSD) youth courts. The purpose of the youth court model is to allow…
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Boosting Adolescent and Young Adult Literacy: An Examination of Literacy Teaching and Learning in Philadelphia’s Accelerated High Schools
In 2010-11, the School District of Philadelphia (the District) operated thirteen accelerated high schools that served approximately 2,000 under-credited, over-age students. Each of the accelerated schools was managed by one of seven external providers, each…
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Reforming Alone: Barriers to Organizational Learning in Urban School Change Initiatives
A review and synthesis of findings from evaluations of nine separate professional development initiatives implemented in urban schools. This article identifies school and district policies and structures that have the unintended effect of depleting or…
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Bringing a Public Voice to the School Governance Debate: The Campaign for Better Schools and Mayoral Control in New York City (Year One Report)
In this two-year study, Research for Action (RFA), working in collaboration with Jeffrey Henig of Teachers College, assessed the formation and development of a coalition of organizing and advocacy groups, funded by the Donors’ Education…
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Strong Neighborhoods, Strong Schools: Case Study: Oakland Community Organizations
Oakland Community Organizations (OCO) is composed of several dozen faith-based organizations whose congregants participate in OCO through the religious institution to which they belong. Affiliated since its inception with the Pacific Institute for Community Organizing…
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Reframing Accountability for Urban Schools: Efforts from the Ground Up to Improve Public Education
This paper, presented at the 2005 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) discusses the contributions of community organizing to current conceptions of accountability for the improvement of public schools. According to the…
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A Report to the Alliance Organizing Project on its Work with Parents
This report documents the experience of parents as they form parent leadership teams at their local schools and build relationships with administrators and teachers.
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Bringing a Public Voice to the School Governance Debate: The Campaign for Better Schools and Mayoral Control in New York City (Year Two Report)
In this two-year study, Research for Action (RFA), working in collaboration with Jeffrey Henig of Teachers College, assessed the formation and development of a coalition of organizing and advocacy groups, funded by the Donors’ Education…