This book provides basic data on educational attainment, achievement, and practices for each state and the United States as a whole, with a focus on the academic-achievement gap between minority and white students. The first part provides an overview of the national picture of education, describing academic achievement, expenditures and…

This paper seeks to make sense of the new diversity in the United States, with a focus on immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean. Some key facts and figures about contemporary immigrants are presented, looking at their patterns of settlement and comparing their distinctive social and economic characteristics to major U.S. racial-ethnic…

This report presents information across states on a number of education indicators. It offers state profile information about students and their achievement, teachers, and standards for student learning. It also includes special data about the education of children in poverty and the assistance they receive toward achieving state standards through…

This study of six urban children ages 8-12 years challenges the prevailing misconception that poor city children are troubled, passive, and unintelligent. The research involved interviewing children about how and what they played and having them discuss drawings that they made about play. Guided by these children, who live in New York's East…

The 1996-97 school year marked the third year of a 4-year grant from the Texas Education Agency's Division of Adult and Community Education for funding the ASPIRE/Even Start program operated by Communities In Schools-Central Texas Inc. (CIS). The broad purpose of Even Start is to help break the cycle of poverty and illiteracy in families by…

The poverty affecting 14.5 million U.S. children living below the poverty line poses long-term effects, including risks to health, educational achievement, family stability, and employment prospects. This report provides compelling evidence of the substantial costs of poverty among children to our nation's economic well-being, and shows that…

An urgent educational crisis threatens the futures of a growing number of Asian Pacific American students, both immigrant and American-born. This crisis is largely invisible to most Americans, even to many in the teaching profession, because many see all Asian Pacific American students as members of a model minority destined to excel. This image…

This paper examines patterns of change in the number of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) recipients in nonmetropolitan and metropolitan Texas counties, 1980-1990. Specifically, the paper analyzes how changes in AFDC enrollment can be explained by demographic and socioeconomic characteristics and the extent to which factors explaining…

The high poverty rate (13.8 percent) among Nebraska's children is cause for concern, since there is strong evidence that poverty can hinder development and adversely affect children's ability to become productive adults. It is commonly assumed that poor children live in families where parents could work but do not. Yet in Nebraska, of poor…

The contributors to this yearbook attempt to explain the reasons for the poor fit between schools and poor, immigrant, linguistically different, and racial minority students. The problems that confront schools because of changing populations and increased diversity are discussed in the following chapters: (1) "The Old Problem of 'New…

Many nineteenth-century reformers tried to improve the lot of the poor by improving the poor themselves, attributing many of the problems of the poor to bad behavior or bad character, and this approach did not end in the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries. As a strategy, improving poor people has consistently given education a starring role.…

The World Assembly addressed the theme of women, literacy, and development from the perspectives of international leaders, countries, and the host country. Critical issues related to education, social and political status, and the environment, poverty, and population were treated in plenary sessions; afternoon workshops were held on such topics as…

Many studies of the well-being of families who have left welfare since 1996 leave out families who are not faring well and have been forced to turn to emergency service providers for help. In response to this gap, the Community Monitoring Project (CMP) examined families who had left welfare since 1996 and sought help from 180 local community…

Noting that the inherent stressors associated with single parenting and the practical advantages of having another parent share the decision-making and emotional responsibility for children are supported by considerable research, this paper examines the effects of single parenthood on children's social and cognitive development and family…

Against the backdrop of evolving welfare policies in California following the approval of federal welfare reforms in 1996, the Growing Up in Poverty Project is examining how single mothers and their children fare as they move from cash aid to jobs, the types and quality of child care arrangements selected, and if mothers' access to child care…