New York's Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) is described with emphasis on its effect or lack of effect on access, urban students, and middle-income parents. Its role within the three major higher education systems in the state--SUNY, CUNY, and the independents--is examined. (LBH)

The controversy between tuition tax credit and the Carter Administration's proposed tuition grants is examined. Opposition to the tax credit plan from various sources is discussed, as well as its advocates' contention that it would help middle-income college students. (LBH)

Students from middle-income families are losing their Guaranteed Student Loans this fall as the changes in the Higher Education Act are implemented. The changes are aimed at making sure loans would be provided only to the lowest-income students. (MLW)

Demographic forces will change U.S. higher education. Leaders of higher education need to gain more direct experience with the national diversity in age, in ethnicity, and in regions. Suggestions for dealing with the inevitable changes ahead are provided. (MLW)

Teachers' social origins influence their reactions to students. Low-status and minority students experience difficulties in the classrooms of high-status teachers. Outcomes of these relationships are that the students are seen as less mature and less is expected of them. A model of teacher-pupil background congruence is proposed. (Author/VM)

"Falling Apart," a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, indicates that America practices internal colonialism and continues to subject Blacks to "semislavery." The North American slavery system is traced from 1650, and it is shown how characteristics of that system have continued to the present. (PS)

This study proposes the creation of Education Empowerment Zones (EEZs) in Ohio's major cities as part of a strategy to reestablish the competitive advantage of the inner city. Combining community schools and an expanded education voucher available to the middle class, EEZs could lead revitalizing efforts by enticing middle-income families with…

Examines how the junior college is used by groups who formerly have not entered college--those from low-income families, especially disadvantaged minority group members, and the academically less successful of all strata and races. (Author/JM)

Cognitive control over impulsive behavior on a Luria-type task was examined for 165 middle- and lower-socioeconomic status (SES) children in nursery school and first grade. Specific impulse control problems were found for both middle- and lower-SES children in nursery school. By first grade, only the lower-SES children continued to exhibit this…

Argues that the lower class uses language to maintain social relationships more than to communicate information, and that lower and middle class differences in language usage explain much of the academic failure of disadvantaged and minority children. Proposes a functional approach for studying how language, socialization, and academic achievement…

It was hypothesized that distinctive verbal processing styles would be characteristic of different social classes and different sexes, and that these differences could be largely explained by earlier socialization experiences. (BW)

Tested assumption that variability in home literacy environments has no effect on individual differences in reading development. Found that variability in shared reading interactions was significantly related to growth in phonological awareness even after accounting for the effects of age, oral language, and phonological awareness at the beginning…

Neoconservative advocates of private and religious school choice are trying to exploit the dissatisfactions of poor, predominantly minority parents to create a publicly funded private school system free of public control and oversight. This alternative system would inevitably reproduce and legally sanction the "separate but equal"…

Fewer students from families with moderate incomes are enrolling at colleges and universities with the drop greatest for highly selective private and public institutions. The trend may be a result of increasing costs of college attendance and of fewer numbers of families in the middle-income group. (DB)