Using data from the first cycle of the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, this study examines the impact of junior kindergarten on children's later skills in math, above and beyond regional differences and individual/household factors. It was hypothesized that earlier schooling would better prepare children for first formal…

Webster Middle School, situated in a large Midwestern city, serves primarily an African-American, lower-to middle-class population. As with many other schools in similar geographic and demographic situations, the academic performance of its students was very poor, the physical facilities were in decay, and enrollments were dropping, with only 250…

This article investigates the contribution skills development can make in promoting South Africa's wider socio-economic development. It provides a broad overview of the emerging gap between those who are benefiting from South Africa's transition to democracy and those who are not. Overcoming these worsening social conditions has become a major…

Of all of the medical specialties, child and adolescent psychiatry has the most severe shortage of practitioners. This shortage is even more pronounced in economically disadvantaged and rural areas. The American Indian population is younger, more economically disadvantaged, and more rural than the general U.S. population (United States Census…

This paper presents the eighth-grade students--Misha, Ashley, Tandie, and Henrietta--in Mrs. Olen's math class in a high-poverty school, who work with members of a local nonprofit organization to collaboratively create a multi-textual, digital project on poverty and its connections to homelessness. The focal project on problems and solutions…

President Bush says that the No Child Left Behind Act is working, pointing to student-achievement results from a single subsection of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and tentative Reading First data. But the evidence available to support his claim is questionable. The data Mr. Bush cited are from just the "long-term…

Introduction: This study used quality of life and resilience as theoretical frameworks for evaluating predictors of outcomes for adults who received foster care services alumni of foster care and were diagnosed with a physical or psychiatric disability while in foster care. Method: First, outcomes for foster care alumni with and without physical…

Job Corps, administered by the Department of Labor, is an employment and training program aimed at providing severely disadvantaged youth with a comprehensive array of services, generally in a residential setting. A study conducted meetings with Department of Labor (DOL) officials, analyzed national data on program participants, and visited six…

A distillation is presented of the ideas, facts, trends, conclusions, and recommendations presented during a 2-day conference on strategies to reduce urban poverty. The meeting addressed two main approaches to reducing urban poverty: economic opportunity and human development, and the linkages between them. Urban poverty was set in the context of…

Women of Hispanic origin are one of the fastest growing groups in the United States. In 1983 there were 5.1 million Hispanic women aged 16 years and older in the United States, but by the end of 1993 they numbered nearly 8 million. Women of Mexican origin remained the largest subgroup (4.7 million), followed by those of Puerto Rican (919,000) and…

This paper presents findings of a study that determined the contribution of selected factors to the ability of 15 school districts within the Toledo, Ohio metropolitan area to generate revenue over a 7-year period, 1982-88. Data were obtained from the Ohio Department of Education and the Ohio Department of Taxation. Simulations were prepared for…

This review of research and literature examines issues related to the identification of potentially gifted students from groups most likely to be underrepresented in gifted education programs, including racial and ethnic minority groups, economically disadvantaged students, and those with limited English proficiency. Three major reasons for…

Governments have traditionally left the plight of street children and working children, who by some counts number over 100 million, to individuals and nongovernmental organizations, including many religious organizations. As a result, there are a multitude of small, uncoordinated, but highly effective projects throughout the world concentrated in…

This report provides a snapshot of homelessness in America as it exists today, and as it can be expected to exist in the future. By further dismantling the safety net that protects many families living on the edge, policymakers will ensure that the numbers of homeless and destitute families increase, creating a new era of homelessness dominated by…

The magnitude of student mobility was examined in the Texas public schools by reporting how many students are moving, when and where they are moving, and who is moving, and by clarifying the relationships between mobility and academic performance at the individual student, campus, and district levels. While the study's primary focus was on…