Profiles nine low-spending, high-performance districts located in small to medium-sized, largely white communities boasting stable economies and a high quality of life. Although the districts are labelled "cheap" for various reasons, their superintendents ascribe success to superior, autonomous staff; high expectations for students; and…

Challenging conventional characterization of teenage girlhood as a wasteland of depression, low self-esteem, and passive victimhood, this book presents accounts of young girls showing how their voices are shaped and constrained by socioeconomic class. Based on a year-long study involving conversations with white adolescent girls from the working…

Social class and ethnic differences in the use of the three conceptual styles of cognitive performance (Relational, Descriptive, and Categorical) were examined in this study of 112 grade-school boys. The subjects were divided into four groups, black and white middle class, and black and white lower class. Two instruments were used to assess…

Orem (Utah) High School is a suburban, predominantly white high school that consciously strives to create a welcoming atmosphere, where students are treated with respect, programs are varied and innovative, and fun and participative decision making are highly valued. The school's participation in the National Network for Educational Renewal has…

In a study of academic attribution patterns, teachers were asked to suggest causes for the successes and failures of students whose backgrounds had been manipulated to provide various combinations of social class (middle, lower), race (White, Asian American), and gender. It was found that teachers cited causes internal to the student more often…

A study examined the match between the vocabularies of children of different ethnic and socioeconomic status groups and the school vocabulary revealed by readability formulas and word lists. The Spache 1040 and the Dale 769 readability formula word lists were used as indicators of school vocabulary in the early primary grades, and a corpus of talk…