The Working Poor Project is a joint activity of the Chicago Urban League, the Latino Institute, and Northern Illinois University. Its purpose is to study the nature, extent, and impact of working poverty in seven counties in the Chicago (Illinois) metropolitan area. Phase I of this project developed a statistical profile of the area's working poor…

This study explored the attitudes toward higher education of Mexican Southern Baptists in California. Interviews with 15 families and questionnaires completed by 126 high school students show that members of this group hold positive attitudes toward higher education but financial constraints pose an obstacle too difficult for many of them to…

In 1988 the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) Commission for Educational Quality produced a separate study of trends in population, education, and employment, looking ahead to the year 2000. The SREB Challenge 2000 goals have been the subject of detailed benchmark reports semi-annually since. This year, there are 12 reports in the…

This report presents data on a wide range of geographic, demographic, social, economic, and housing characteristics for the foreign-born population of the United States. Data for the native population are included for comparison. Data come from the March 2000 Current Population Survey. The core of the report is 22 sections presenting information…

This study investigated the relationships between teachers' education and their instructional style, focusing on one Latina elementary teacher working with English language learners. It examined what beliefs guided her choice of literacy instruction, how school structure impacted instruction, and the roles of culture and gender in literacy…

California policy makers and institutional leaders are making critical policy, programmatic, and budgetary decisions affecting segments of the state's population that lack sufficient levels of formal training and education. These decisions are occurring at a time when five critical trends are converging in the state. These trends are: (1)…

A gap in standardized achievement-test scores among different groups of students has existed since the inception of standardized testing. The gap between white and African-American schoolchildren was the primary impetus behind much of the social policy devoted to desegregating schools in the second half of the past century. Through a combination…

Effective instructional practices are crucial to addressing the educational crisis facing many Hispanic students in the United States. The number of Hispanic students attending public schools has increased dramatically in recent decades, yet Hispanic students as a group have the lowest levels of education and the highest dropout rate of any…

This book investigates the value of school-based mentoring (SBM) in the lives of adolescent African America and Latino males and offers alternative, more positive ways in which society can embrace them. Understanding that mentoring is a cultural practice, this book informs schools and communities of the roles and responsibilities that they have in…

Since the late 1980s, school choice has become a popular education reform strategy. Parents who select which school their child attends do so for a variety of reasons, including academic, religious, or moral environment, and convenience. Differences in the proportion of students who attend an assigned school and those who attend a school selected…

Two studies examined adolescent students' achievement values. Study 1 participants were 146 male and 161 female African American seventh and eighth graders attending an all-black middle school. Using sociometric procedures, participants nominated classmates whom they admired, respected, and wanted to be like. These nominations were combined to…

This report looks at the past two decades and the impact of the growth of Hispanic and Asian populations and how they are being affected by school segregation, desegregation, and resegregation. School segregation of Hispanics has increased dramatically during a period in which the nation's Hispanic enrollment has also soared. Segregation has also…

Recognizing the need to increase the number of people from ethnically defined populations serving as research scientists in the mental health field, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) created the Minority Access to Research Careers program in 1979. This program, now known as the Career Opportunities in Research Education and Training…

This study used current data from a cohort of eighth graders in the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 to test whether dropping out of high school and other measures of educational performance and involvement influenced the likelihood of having a school-age birth for whites, blacks, and Hispanics. Three major sets of independent…

The Preschool IDEA Oral Language Proficiency Test: Spanish (Pre-IPT:Spanish) developed by W. Williams and E. Dalton (1989) purports to determine the level of oral language proficiency for preschool children, aged 3 to 5 years. The instrument is designed to identify the dominant language of bilingual or primarily Spanish-speaking children, and the…