On marginal farms, and in agriculture in general, sustainability is largely guaranteed by a broad range of survival strategies, closely interlinked and embedded in the household structure of typical family farms. This paper reports results of a socio-economic study carried out among Belgian farmers, focusing specifically on the opportunities…

Through a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the staff and faculty of Colorado State University and the Poudre School District collaborated to implement an "Even Start" family literacy project to reduce the level of poverty and illiteracy for families in the Poudre Valley Mobile Home Park. To truly establish a partnership based…

Based on the guiding principles of the symbolic interactions theory, the authors used symbolic interaction theory to understand the views and meanings attached to welfare, poverty, and poor families, as well as to decipher grandmothers' policy recommendations. The culturally variant perspective provided a conceptual lens that placed grandmothers'…

This action research project on critical literacy in a high poverty area in Toronto, Canada becomes the practical backdrop for examining how critical literacy can be developed and applied in regular classroom situations. Educators identifying patterns within classrooms that prevent students from participating fully in all aspects of a democratic…

This study examines the effects of changes in family structure on children's economic well-being. An initial shift-share analysis indicates that, had the proportion of children living in female-headed families remained constant since 1970, the 1998 child poverty rate would have been 4.4 percentage points lower than its actual 1998 level of 18.3…

A number of models have been proposed to explain the relationship between family structure and adolescent problem behaviors, including several that consider parent-child relations, family income, stress, and residential mobility. However, studies have not explored whether the different types of communities within which families reside affect the…

Children's problems are just as acute as before. The percentage of children living in poverty is especially high. Between the ages of seven and fifteen, the percentage of poor children in 2001 was 38.5 percent, whereas among the population at large the figure was 27.6 percent. Moreover, families with a higher number of children are not provided…

Extracurricular activities, particularly sports, have a long-standing tradition in public schools. However, the cost of running extracurricular programs has risen steeply. In many districts, state and local funding is shrinking, and extracurricular activities are often the first items to be put on the chopping block. In this article, the authors…

Three types of privatisation are identified--involving demand-side financing, reforms to the educational supply-side and "de facto" privatisation, where responsibilities are transferred to the private sector, through the rapid growth of private schools, rather than through reform or legislation. Although "de facto"…

Examined prospective associations among poverty-related family stress, coping, involuntary stress reactivity, and psychological symptoms in a sample of 79 rural, low-income adolescents. Poverty-related family stress predicted adolescents' anxious/depressed and aggressive behavior 8 months later, controlling for prior symptoms. Coping interacted…

The Broad Acres clinic is one of 1,500 school-based health centers nationwide that bring a wide range of medical, nutritional, and mental-health care to millions of students and their families. The centers provide an important safety net for children and adolescents--particularly the more than 10 million today who lack health insurance, according…

Title I provides extra instructional services designed to raise achievement for low-performing students in schools with relatively high poverty rates, and for all students in many of the nation's highest-poverty schools. To learn more about how well Title I students are performing academically, the Center on Education Policy (CEP) compared…

"New Jersey Kids Count 2011" again documents both advances and setbacks in key areas that affect child well-being--poverty, health, child protection, education, including early learning, and adolescent well-being. To better gauge New Jersey's progress in essential areas, a "New Jersey Kids Count Report Card" that identifies…

America's high schools are hemorrhaging talent at the rate of seven thousand students every school day--a steady drip that grows into a tidal wave of more than 1.2 million dropouts each year, a number equal to the entire population of Dallas or San Diego. Jobs that require relatively little education are increasingly done by machines or shipped…

In late January through early March of 2003, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) grade 4 and 8 reading and mathematics assessments were administered to representative samples of students in approximately 100 public schools in each state. The results of these assessments were announced in November 2003. Each state also carried…