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This article describes the significance of academic enrichment and English as a second language in a community-based professional development middle school. As an example of a university-school partnership that is responding to the needs of its students, parents, and community, the Baylor University School of Education has partnered with the Cesar Chavez Middle School in the Waco Independent School District. Middle schools are critical in our communities because it is at this level that so many students decide to continue or drop out. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

A study investigated the extent to which positive moral values are included in reading and social studies textbooks. Random samples of social studies textbooks (published by Harcourt Brace, D. C. Heath, Scott Foresman, Silver Burdett and Ginn, and McGraw-Hill) and reading textbooks (published by MacMillan/McGraw-Hill, Harcourt Brace, and Houghton Mifflin) on the adopted list for Texas (a list also used by other states) at the third- and fifth-grade levels were examined. A "moral values matrix" consisting of religious, individual, and social/secular values was used as a basis for the examination of the moral content of each sample. A single inclusion of a moral or value from the matrix meant that the textbook was judged as having fulfilled the matrix category. Results indicated that the social studies textbooks at both grade levels contained 75% or more of the values in the matrix. Results also indicated that while the reading textbooks at both levels contained only about 50% of the values in the matrix, the textbooks focused on family life and relationships. Findings suggest that the charge of a lack of positive values presented in social studies and reading textbooks appears to be unfounded. (Contains two figures illustrating aspects of the moral values matrix and a figure of data.) (RS)

A university education professor invited an urban middle school principal to "give me 50 of your most academically challenged students who need additional support to be educationally successful." What followed is an ongoing lesson in how achieving educational success is a family and community affair. One community-based middle school's attempt to build family legacies and transform its surrounding geographic community through academic enrichment for students and English as a Second Language (ESL) for their parents is described. (Contains 6 figures.)

Becoming Good American Schools: The Struggle for Civic Virtue in Education Reform. By Jeannie Oakes, Karen Hunter Quartz, Steve Ryan, and Martin Lipton. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000. 343 [...]