The purpose of the present study was to compare the understanding of conventional time concepts by urban preschool children reared in poverty with that of their peers not raised in poverty. The questionnaire used in this study was based on the original work of Ames. Thirty-six children ranging in age from three to five years of age participated in…

According to the Head Start Act (1998), children are income-eligible for the program if their "families' incomes are below the poverty line." There are a number of statutory exceptions to this general rule and, according to the Head Start Bureau, the result is that about 6 percent of the children in the program are not poor. But the major national…

The aim of this study was to assess rates of childhood disability as indicated by functional limitation of motor, sensory, or self-care skills in children living in severely-distressed neighborhoods. For a neighborhood in the US Census Track to be considered severely distressed, three of the following four characteristics need to be present:…

Gordon Berlin discusses the nation's long struggle to reduce poverty in families with children, and proposes a counterintuitive solution--rewarding the work of individuals. He notes that policymakers' difficulty in reducing family poverty since 1973 is attributable to two intertwined problems--falling wages among low-skilled workers and the…

In the past few years, an explosion of user-generated content has flooded the Internet. The dramatic drop in the cost of digital video equipment and the increased accessibility of the Internet create a unique opportunity to allow youth to create meaningful content. Today youth around the world can leverage technological tools to give voice to…

Background: Africa is in an orphan-care crisis. In Zimbabwe, where one-fourth of adults are HIV-positive and one-fifth of children are orphans, AIDS and economic decline are straining society's ability to care for orphans within their extended families. Lack of stable care is putting thousands of children at heightened risk of malnourishment,…

Traditionally there has been a theoretical view that raising tuition fees will undermine education equity and social welfare. This study examines the effects of different tuition policies on both these factors. A statistical analysis is made on the theoretical relationship between higher education tuition fees and dropout probability, which leads…

This paper documents changing patterns of concentrated poverty in nonmetro areas. Data from the Decennial U.S. Census Summary Files show that poverty rates--both overall and for children--declined more rapidly in nonmetro than metro counties in the 1990s. The 1990s also brought large reductions in the number of high-poverty nonmetro counties and…

America's most highly qualified teachers are underrepresented in America's most challenging schools. Across the nation, only about 15% of America's expert teachers teach in high-poverty, underachieving schools. Most expert teachers teach in schools with fewer racial minority students, fewer students from low-income households, and fewer students…

After the collapse of the USSR, Kyrgyzstan became an independent Central Asian state in 1991. Since its independence, there have been enormous changes in the political, social and economic life of the young state, which strives to become a democratic and aspiring market-oriented economy. Its education system has also begun experiencing changes.…

In this article, the author shares her experience teaching English to adult learners at the American Cultural Center in Dakar, Senegal, a poor, primarily Muslim country and former French colony in West Africa. Her class was composed of about 30 students, whose age ranged from about 18 to 50. They were mostly men and mostly Senegalese, along with a…

Rather than continued reliance of high-stakes tests to increase student achievement, a practice for which the author feels there is little supporting evidence, the author urges for educators and educational leaders to work co-operatively to enact insightful, data-driven policies to improve student achievement. In this article, the author argues…

Research in the neurobiological, behavioral, and social sciences has dramatically increased our capacity to provide effective intervention for economically disadvantaged children. According to Neuman, however, U.S. policymakers have made little use of this body of research to improve the prospects of children at risk. This article discusses seven…

Objective: To investigate factors influencing rural and urban adolescents' food perceptions during a time of nutritional transition in Cameroon, Africa. Design: Qualitative in-depth interviews. Settings: Yaounde urban and Bandja rural areas. Participants: Fifteen adolescents 12 to 15 years old purposely selected from schools in urban and rural…

This study is one of the first to investigate the relationship between low birth weight and cognitive outcomes in an urban, poor, prospectively designed African-American birth cohort. Multivariate analyses of the Pathways to Adulthood study, a subset of the Johns Hopkins Collaborative Perinatal study, compared low birth weight African-American…