Discusses the philosophical underpinings of providing public assistance to the poor based on the 'desert' model. Argues that society has a moral obligation to provide subsidized medical care to all poor people. (AOS)

The promise of education at a private Baltimore (Maryland) school rests in the idea that scholarship is the key to autonomy, self-determination, and self-fulfillment. The Park Heights Street Academy serves as a haven for the able adolescent who has been misplaced for social, political, economic, or academic reasons. (Author/MLF)

Examines America's responsibility, in a period of economic recession, to the poor of other countries and to the illegal immigrants within the U.S. The author concludes that resident illegal aliens should have their status legalized and be offered social services, while policies for new immigrants should be reformed to encourage legal immigration…

The author argues that in certain sectors of a society, especially a developing one, the best plan for educational development may be no plan. To illustrate, he analyzes the day-to-day survival problems of the Latin American urban poor and the ways that formal schooling exacerbates these problems. (Author/SJL)

Three sets of factors that are strongly and consistently productive of academic learning are student ability and motivation, amount and quality of instruction as well as the social-psychological morale of the classroom group, and the educationally stimulating qualities of the home environment. (Author/MLF)

Act 101 funds provide special classes, counseling, and tutorial support for participating academically, economically, and culturally deprived college students. (Author/IRT)

Cognitive consequences of play and exploration were examined by assigning 36 economically disadvantaged preschoolers to one of three treatment conditions: sociodramatic play training, exploration training, and free-play control. (MP)

Utilizing ethnographic data on several rural families, the economic rationality of the rural poor is demonstrated to be implicit in their behavior. Identification is also made of some of the constraints within which these consumer decisions are made. (JC)

Finland's efforts to develop parity between university and nonuniversity higher education sectors are evident in its creation of 22 experimental "ammattikorkeakoulu" (AMKs). These "polytechnics" are gaining increasing centrality in European higher education systems, but have not increased accessibility for women and lower…

Of a sample from the National Educational Longitudinal Study who were high school seniors in 1992, nondisadvantaged and vocational track participants were more likely to be employed in 1996 than disadvantaged and nonvocational students. Vocational track participants were more likely to be employed over 20 hours per week. (SK)

Massachusetts study finds that increases in district's special-education costs are not due to district policies and practices, but to three external factors: medical advances that have increased the survivability of children born with disabilities, the deinstitutionalization of special-needs children, and the higher percentage of children living…

Three models (threshold, identification/commitment, social inequality gap reduction) were used to examine effects of extracurricular activities on 12th-grade and postsecondary outcomes. As the identification/commitment model predicted, school-based extracurricular activities were more beneficial than out-of-school activities. Consistent with the…