As school districts nationwide work to implement the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, they may be inadvertently accelerating the departure of experienced teachers and failing to adequately support new teachers. The Alliance for Excellent Education believes that this problem requires a two-pronged solution: financial incentives for…

This paper examines the changing socioeconomic composition of English and Welsh schools over 11 years following the Education Reform Act of 1988, using many indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage and methods of measuring the changing spread of disadvantage among schools (segregation). It explains how to assess segregation (percentage differences…

This paper considers the possible impact of market forces on educational achievement in English and Welsh secondary schools. A major argument made by market advocates in favor of extending programs of school choice was that this would drive up standards. However, despite 12 years of relevant experience in the United Kingdom, it remains very…

This study compared New American Schools (NAS) classrooms to non-NAS classrooms in the high poverty San Antonio, Texas, school district. NAS promoted whole-school reform to address lagging achievement and lackluster school reform attempts that produced little meaningful change. The study investigated whether NAS designs extended beyond changes in…

This study explored the relationships between adult economic outcomes and three key factors during adolescence: schooling, family background, and county of residence. The empirical analysis was based on data covering the period from 1979-1996. Data came from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The study examined a sample of people ages…

This paper outlines a theory for understanding social class in men's lives, and argues that poverty and depression are a function of social class and internalized classism. It begins by defining poverty, then explains the Social Class Worldview Model, which is a subjective social class model, and the Modern Classism Theory, which allows clinicians…

Leadership is situational and cannot be predicted or necessarily taught. This book is the distillation of ideas and practices derived from interviews with some of education's top leaders. Chapter 1, "Forming Beliefs," makes the point that teachers and administrators must carefully learn about excellence and then find the elements of excellence…

New York State's system of financing education needs reform. Children in school districts where poverty pervades do not receive an adequate education; disparities in available funding resources have produced uneven levels of school spending among school districts; and state-aid formulas fail to correct for differences among districts. Children in…

This analysis compares districts that educate the highest percentages of poor students with districts that educate the lowest percentages of poor students (it does not analyze the District of Columbia or Hawaii because each is served by a single school district). The study analyzed a specially constructed database containing demographic and…

This paper examines the importance of providing high quality education to all U.S. children, recommending that the federal government fully fund Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and target part of this increased investment to middle and high school reform. Currently, school districts receive approximately $889 per poor…

This digest presents a description of three innovative interventions designed to support student literacy acquisition outside the classroom in low resource communities. It begins with a discussion of literacy related issues in low resource environments, noting that an increasing number of children who are not acquiring a basic education live in…

Despite the national decline in child poverty and low-income rates in the United States since the early 1990s, the rates in California have surpassed those of the nation. This report, the first in a new series on child poverty in individual states, provides a demographic profile of California's low-income families, highlighting the high number and…

The field of developmental psychology offers new insights into the link between the quality and nature of early relationships with caregivers to the healthy social, emotional, and cognitive development of young children. Three dimensions of child care seem to make the most difference: the interactions between young children and their caregivers,…

At the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000, world leaders adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which set targets for reducing poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women by 20151. The need for additional development funding, if the MDGs are to be achieved by 2015, is…

This report presents student-level achievement results for two groups of schools in Tennessee: (a) four charter schools that began operation in 2003-2004; and (b) three new charter schools that were established in 2004-2005. These two cohorts were therefore completing their second and first academic years, respectively, at the time the achievement…