Harris Sokoloff

Medical Center. It has a "cc by-nc-nd " Creative Commons license" (Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives) For more information, please contact digitalcommons@exch.library.tmc.eduSokoloff: Commentary on: "For Safety's Sake" Public schools in America have, in many ways, become the solution of choice for many, if not all, of our social ills. Indeed, it almost seems that, for every social ill, we design a program for schools to implement to solve it. If children need to be vaccinated, fed, clothed, provided health care, body mass index calculated, etc., we can count on somebody to develop a “program ” to address that social ill and for our state legislators to mandate its application in schools. On one reading, this seems more than reasonable. After all, where better to provide health and other public services to children than in the institution where they are required to be? Moreover, schools cannot carry out their primary mission—educating America’s y...

Deliberative City Planning on the Philadelphia Waterfront Development and revitalization in Philadelphia has suffered for years under the weight of a political culture that discourages public input. Backroom deals and personal relationships have often seemed to define the "public interest. " This is the story of one attempt to give the public a voice in city planning and development.

For more than a decade, scientists at Search Institute have committed themselves to identifying, assessing, and documenting the developmental implications of human “assets” (Leffert et al., 1998). As Peter Benson explains in chapter 2, assets represent psychosocial resources that have been linked conceptually and empirically to optimal development in youth. The resources identified thus far include environmental qualities (i.e., the 20 external assets) and individual characteristics (i.e., the 20 internal assets; see Chapter 2, Table 1). These 40 assets have been identified through a systematically scientific investigatory sequence. A reasonably comprehensive analysis of relevant developmental, psychological, and social science literature (Scales & Leffert, 1998) informed the construction of a paper-and-pencil survey measure that, over the past decade, has been administered across a relatively wide range of ages and grade levels (grades 6–12) across economic and cultural subgroups. Aggregating survey responses across hundreds of settings with hundreds of thousands of children, Search Institute investigators have produced an encouraging and heuristically exciting body of evidence linking measured asset levels with selected developmental outcomes.

This paper presents reflections on the thinking and work accomplished by participants in two roundtables on the geospatial industry of the future. Under a Department of Labor grant, AAG, GITA and the Wharton School’s GIS Lab, convened two Leadership Roundtables on the

This paper presents reflections on the thinking and work accomplished by participants in two roundtables on the geospatial industry of the future. Under a Department of Labor grant, AAG, GITA and the Wharton School’s GIS Lab, convened two Leadership Roundtables on the

@CIT:Development and revitalization in Philadelphia has suffered for years under the weight of a political culture that discourages public input. Backroom deals and personal relationships have often seemed to define the “public interest. ” This is the story of one attempt to give the public a voice in city planning and development. @TX: For over thirty years, the Philadelphia waterfront at Penn’s Landing has been stuck at the intersection of public interest and private development. A landfill built in 1976 as public space on the Delaware River, Penn’s Landing was conceived as a major destination that would bring visitors to the region. 1 The intervening years have seen many attempts to develop the site. Still, Penn’s Landing remains a mere vestige of urban renewal’s best intentions. Disconnected from the city by ten lanes of highway, the site has continually defied development. The summer of 2002 saw the sixth failed development proposal, 2 and Mayor John F. Street and his development team quickly set about finding a new developer for the site.

A case study of a school district/university partnership for school restructuring is described it this paper. The collaborative effort focused on improving educational quality rather than changing the organizational structure; the goal was to turn all relationships within the school into learning relationships. The partnership focused on the core tasks of teaching and learning and changing thy interaction among teaching professionals. Activities included the cultivation of both formal and informal leadership and the evolution of a new quasi-governance structure--a Change Council composed of district educational representatives who participated in university-led training sessions. The shift to a collaborative focus most strongly affected the role of the principal, who is in the middle between school-based and districtwide initiatives and between teachers and the superintendent. The principal's "middleness " may

Invited commentary on the article "For Safety’s Sake: A Case Study of School Security Efforts and their Impact on Education Reform" by Rachel Garver and Pedro Noguera. Comments Sokoloff, Harris (2012) "Commentary on "For Safety's Sake: A Case Study of School Security Efforts and Their Impact on Education Reform"," Journal of Applied Research on Children: Informing Policy for Children at Risk: Vol. 3: Iss. 2, Article 14. Available at: http://digitalcommons.library.tmc.edu/childrenatrisk/vol3/iss2/14 This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/gse_pubs/237 Public schools in America have, in many ways, become the solution of choice for many, if not all, of our social ills. Indeed, it almost seems that, for every social ill, we design a program for schools to implement to solve it. If children need to be vaccinated, fed, clothed, provided health care, body mass index calculated, etc., we can count on somebody to de...

With increasing frequency, people in both the government and civic spheres are asked to find and use evidence-based solutions for community problems: solutions that have been proven to produce effective results. Public sector employees often lack the resources and time to mine for promising practices to address challenges their cities and towns are facing. In response to this need, Fels Research & Consulting Group created the Promising Practice series, which compiles public sector solutions on timely subjects in accessible reports. This report is the fourth in the Promising Practices series. To view the Promising Practices series, visit: www.fels.upenn.edu/Consulting-Publications Disciplines Education This report is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/gse_pubs/482 Fels R e s e a R c h & c o n s u lt i n g Building Common ground Public Engagement Promising Practices About the Fels Institute of Government The Fels Institute of Government is the University of Pe...

Development and revitalization in Philadelphia has suffered for years under the weight of a political culture that discourages public input. Backroom deals and personal relationships have often seemed to define the "public interest." This is the story of one attempt to give the public a voice in city planning and development. Comments Reprinted from The Deliberative Democracy Handbook : Strategies for Effective Civic Engagement in the TwentyFirst Century, edited by John Gastil and Peter Levine (San Francisco:Jossey-Bass, 2005), pages 185-196. This book chapter is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/gse_pubs/58 1 @RHR:Deliberative City Planning on the Philadelphia Waterfront @RHL:The Deliberative Democracy Handbook @CN:CHAPTER THIRTEEN @CT:DELIBERATIVE CITY PLANNING ON THE PHILADELPHIA WATERFRONT @CAU:Harris Sokoloff, Harris M. Steinberg, Steven N. Pyser @CIT:Development and revitalization in Philadelphia has suffered for years under the weight of a p...

A theory of thematic curriculum emerged during the development of a unit on pets, entitled Pets & Me. The unit was designed through a school/university partnership for children pre-school to grade 5. Analysis of data collected during the unit's development and field tests supports a dynamic view of curriculum that challenges policy makers to rethink policies that begin from a view of curriculum as a static list of "facts" to be learned or "topics" to be mastered. Reflection on the project led to the differentiation of three distinct constructs: (1) facts and information, (2) topics, and (3) themes. Each of these three constructs plays a different role in children's learning. Facts focus on basic information and narrowly defined ideas understood as discrete items. Topics provide a context for facts and information, and present a way of organizing discrete bits of information into classes of experience recognizable by scholars within traditional disciplines...