Early determinants of college attendance and degree attainment for economically disadvantaged minority youth were examined in the present study. The study sample (n = 1,379) was drawn from the Chicago Longitudinal Study (CLS), an ongoing investigation of a panel of low-income minority children born in 1980, growing up in high-poverty neighborhoods…

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation spawned a plethora of standardized testing services for all the high stakes testing required by the law. We argue that one-size-fits all assessments disadvantage students who are English Language Learners, in the USA, as well as students with limited economic resources, special needs, and not reading on…

The Houston Independent School District (HISD) has provided prekindergarten classes for Houston area four-year old students since the 1985-1986 academic year. The focus of the program has been beginning literacy and oral language development that support individual needs as well as the language and cultural backgrounds of children. The central…

Over her 30-year career as a certified teacher, researcher, and university teacher educator, the author has planned, facilitated and refined educational experiences for children from pre-kindergarten through adolescence, as well as for adults who teach (or were preparing to teach) in New York, Connecticut, Texas, and Arizona. During the summer of…

On January 25, 2011, United States President Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union address to Congress and to the nation. As part of that address, President Obama articulated his vision for American education and stated that America had "to win the race to educate our kids" (Obama, 2011, state of the union). Mr. Obama's speech…

Policymakers in Minnesota have made assessing and improving student science performance a priority (Minnesota High Tech Association 2010a,b). Minnesota has supported several statewide initiatives to promote science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)--including a grant from the National Governors Association to increase science learning…

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between student poverty levels, defined by the number of students identified as economically disadvantaged by qualifying for free and reduced lunch and school climate. The literature review examined school climate and culture, effects of student socioeconomic (SES) status on education,…

California has long been viewed by the rest of the nation as leader in many areas, including education. The state's K-12 and higher education systems were once the envy of other states. Of late, though, the news from the Golden State has not been so rosy. For the last three decades California has faced increased demands on public services while…

Compared to 2010-2011, the cost-effectiveness of the AISD CTE program improved in 2011-2012. Also, CTE may be more successful than the regular curriculum at achieving the effect of college readiness among AISD Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students.

The current study aims investigate the relationship between participants' neighbourhood perceptions and social capital and resident well-being using data from the Neighbourhood Renewal Project (NRP; n = 7855). Resident well-being was positively associated with the quality of the physical environment and safety of the neighbourhood, but negatively…

Multiracial youth are thought to be more vulnerable to peer-related risk factors than are single-race youth. However, there have been surprisingly few well-designed studies on this topic. This study empirically investigated the extent to which multiracial youth are at higher risk for peer influenced problem behavior. Data are from a representative…

Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to examine whether child temperament differentially predicted academic school readiness depending on the quality of classroom interactions for 179 Head Start preschoolers. Teachers rated children's temperament as overcontrolled, resilient, or undercontrolled in the fall and reported on children's…

Research Findings: A theory-based 2-factor structure of preschoolers' emotion knowledge (i.e., recognition of emotional expression and understanding of emotion-eliciting situations) was tested using confirmatory factor analysis. Compared to 1- and 3-factor models, the 2-factor model showed a better fit to the data. The model was found to be…

Temporal associations in the relationship between emotional-behavioral difficulty and academic achievement were explored in 2 samples followed from 6th through 8th grade. The first sample comprised 280 students entering an economically disadvantaged urban middle school and the second comprised 318 students entering an affluent suburban middle…

Motivational theorists in psychology have moved away from individual-based approaches to socio-cognitive and socio-ecological models to explain student engagement and motivation for learning. Such approaches consider, for example, the influence of family and neighborhood environments as important constructs in youth behavior. In this study, links…