Call and Response

Ivory A. Toldson, Editor-in-Chief

The Call - and - Response component is aimed at disseminating the research and findings on successful practices generated by HU/CRESPAR projects to the wider community of educational policymakers, school-based professionals, and the general public. This is an especially crucial aspect of the HU/CRESPAR agenda because many reform efforts require the active commitment of a broad range of educational stakeholders, especially those in the areas with large numbers of children placed at risk. A range of venues for these critical dissemination efforts have been used, and still others are being considered to achieve this important goal.

Existing resources, particularly those affiliated with Howard University, are essential to our efforts. The Journal of Negro Education (JNE), now in its eighth decade of continuous publication, serves as the major gateway for presenting critical discussions and evaluations of this work. The relationship between HU/CRESPAR and the (JNE) is truly a symbiotic one. The JNE is historically committed to focusing on issues incident to the education of one of the nation's largest placed-at-risk populations, namely African American participants in the U.S. educational system. It thus leads its prestige within and its broad access to the educational community, the expertise of its staff, to the fulfillment of HU/CRESPAR's goals of disseminating cutting-edge research-based information about programs and practices affecting students in need.

Fostering communication between HU/CRESPAR, community groups, and education professionals also involved the Call-and-Response team in coordinating the significant participation of CRESPAR researchers at important scholarly meetings such as the annual meetings of the American Education Research Association (AERA) and the National Council of Measurement in Education (NCME). A range of other approaches, from seminars, workshops, dialogue forums, roundtables, and brown-bag luncheons, to newspaper features, press releases, and electronic and visual media have also been employed in Call-and-Response efforts.