Research suggests that participation in co-curricular and extracurricular activities improves students' academic outcomes, but less is known about the mechanisms by which these programs impact students' educational trajectories. This study examines psychosocial factors linking participation in an urban debate league (UDL) and academic performance…

Youth homelessness is a distressing trend in the United States (U.S.). In 2013, more than one million homeless students were enrolled in the U.S. public school system. The District of Columbia, the nation's capital, is also experiencing a surge in the number of homeless youth. In April 2015, one in every twenty-four students attending the District…

The article discusses behavioral and sociodemographic conditions of Black males in the U.S. and presents counseling strategies, prevention programs and efforts, and recommendations for practice and policy as means of helping Black boys and Black men to minimize and transcend the challenges within U.S. culture and within themselves. In addition,…

This article summarizes African Americans' ongoing struggle for quality education in Milwaukee, Wisconsin by utilizing school district data and secondary sources. The historic integration effort in the Milwaukee Public Schools system is outlined and the impact of sustained segregation, in the midst of significant changes to Milwaukee's social and…

Despite the intense focus on the achievement gap that exists between African American, Latino, and other students of color and their White counterparts, the achievement gap discourse keeps us locked in the deficit paradigm. This article challenges us to look at the inherent fallacies of the achievement gap discourse and place students' academic…

An investigation undertaken to clarify existing research relating relevant cognitive factors to discrepant school achievement of White and Black children indicates that significant differences exist between them. However, studies of discrepant achievement and the prediction of success must employ more specific criteria if results are to be…

Chronicles the history of two Ohio Valley school districts. The creation of one black and one predominantly white district is a history of segregation, while the merger of the two 20 years later tells a story of desegregation. Primary and secondary historical data provide accounts from various perspectives of school segregation and desegregation,…

Lower class black and lower class white first-grade children learned an unorganized and an organized list of words to test Jensen's hypothesis of racial differences in mental abilities. Both groups of children performed significantly better on the organized list with comparable means for each list. Most of the predicted relationships were not…

Teachers need not live in a ghetto to gain knowledge of their students' experiences. All that is needed is an awareness of the general lifestyle experiences of ghetto children and youth and the use of a little imagination in relating these experiences to the teaching process. (Author/EB)

Economic level, home environment and culture are factors associated with economic discrepancies between disadvantaged and advantaged groups. Intervention, in the form of parent and infant training programs and compensatory education, can improve students' chances of academic success if it incorporates the components of early intervention and…

Compared selected characteristics of high schools attended by students admitted to and denied admission to the University of California Berkeley (UCB) in 1998 and 1999 and California high school students overall. Discrepancies between school characteristics were found for the first two groups in 1998, but by 1999 the high school profiles of these…

In a study of black students in five different essentially black schools, it was found that peer influence or the predominant socioeconomic class of a school does exert a considerable impact. In primarily middle class schools, lower class males are elevated in terms of expected occupational success in contrast to lower class males in predominantly…

Findings of studies conducted in the United States and western Europe are used to examine the relative impacts of race and socioeconomic status on pupil achievement and subsequent behavior. Guidelines are proposed for making school integration more meaningful and effective. (EB)

From a review of studies of the relationship between cultural experience and language development, it is evident that ways must be found to aid children from impoverished backgrounds to use their basic intelligence to operate in the verbally oriented tasks demanded in the academic domain. (Author/EB)