On their own, schools and families may not be able to support the academic success of every student (Kirst, 1991). In particular, language minority students, including immigrants and the U.S. born children of immigrants, may not receive appropriate educational services due to a mismatch between the languages and cultures of the schools and those of their communities. To enhance support for these students, many schools have partnered with community-based organizations (CBOs) groups committed to helping people obtain health, education, and other basic human services (Dryfoos, 1998). The programs they operate promise to assist students in ways that lie beyond the schools' traditional methods (Dryfoos, 1998; Heath & McLaughlin, 1991; Melaville, 1998). This research brief will provide some findings of a national study of school/CBO partnerships.

Researchers from the Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence (CREDE) collected descriptive data on partnerships that promote the academic achievement of language minority students. After a nomination process, 62 of 100 identified partnerships were selected to study. Thirty-one completed a survey and 17 of these partnerships were visited. Survey and site visit data indicate that the majority serve clients who are all or nearly all English language learners. One third of the 31 serve only Spanish speakers. The others serve multilingual populations in which speakers of Spanish are most numerous, followed by Vietnamese, Haitian Creole, Chinese languages, Lao, and Tongan. Typically, students are referred to the programs based on teachers' concerns, grade point average, testing results, limited English proficiency, attendance, or personal and family problems—but students also enroll voluntarily.

Three types of CBOs join with schools to support language minority students:

• Ethnic organizations. For example, the Filipino Community of Seattle partners with the Seattle Public Schools to operate the Filipino Youth Empowerment Project.

• CBOs whose only function is a school partnership. The Vaughn Family Center in Pacoima, CA was established to partner with one elementary school.

• Multi-purpose service organizations. The Chinatown Service Center operates the Castelar Healthy Start program at a Los Angeles elementary school with tutoring for students as well as health and other family services.

Most of these CBOs are nonprofit organizations.

R is a dynamic, interpreted programming language designed for statistical computing. In contrast to languages more traditionally used in software development and engineering, code analysis and tools for code analysis are not common in the R community, with some notable exceptions. Nevertheless, a general framework that facilitates the development of novel code analyses for R is valuable. This dissertation presents a collection of strategies and software for static analysis of R code. Two of the three parts focus on type inference, a specific kind of static analysis which attempts to determine the type of data produced by each expression in the code.

The first part describes a framework for creating static analyses and transformation of R code based on contemporary techniques and research. The framework provides tools to search code for specific syntactic patterns, extract information about different ways in which code can be evaluated depending on run-time conditions, and examine how data propagate from definitions of variables to expressions which use those variables.

The second part presents a static type inference strategy for R code. The strategy leverages the static analysis framework developed in the first chapter. In contrast to languages like C and Java, R code is generally not annotated with types and there is no built-in syntax to add type annotations. Thus type inference is necessary in order to get information about types. Information about types is useful for transforming and translating code, checking code for errors, and reasoning about code.

The third part presents strategies for collecting type information from foreign routines written in C and called from R. The type inference strategy for R code can more accurately infer types if it has type signatures for these routines. Even in C code, the R type of an R object does not have to be specified in the code, so type inference is non-trivial.

Language minority students, including immigrants and the U.S.-born children of immigrants, may have to contend with a mismatch between the language and culture of their schools and those of their homes and communities. To broaden the base of support for these students and to help address their academic needs appropriately, some schools have been partnering with community-based organizations (CBOs). This report outlines findings from a study of school/CBO partnerships that promote the academic achievement of language minority students. It describes the types of CBOs that partner with schools, the ways that partners work together, and the work that they do. Crucial elements of program success are discussed, as well as challenges that partnerships may face. There are recommendations from experienced partners that may benefit new partnerships.