A large body of literature examines disparities in school funding across districts. Berne and Stiefel (1984) developed the standard framework for measuring school finance equity, and the measures catalogued there have been applied extensively to assess funding disparities across districts. Much of this literature has focused on measures of…

Comedian, actor and philanthropist Bill Cosby made headlines earlier this year, and not for a starring role in a new TV show or because of a multimillion-dollar gift to a college or university, but for his comments surrounding low-income African Americans at an event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision,…

This article examines the effects of living arrangements on the well-being of mothers with a serious mental illness. Analyses of data from a National Institute of Mental Health-funded study of an urban, primarily African American sample of 379 mothers with mental illness revealed few differences in parenting or social functioning between mothers…

Introduction: Having a mentor during residency is often linked to greater success in professional development. The present study compares changes in the percentage of residents with mentors in 1999 and in 2004, while considering current residents' perceptions of their mentors, with particular attention focused on what role race and gender might…

The effects of a voluntary summer reading intervention were assessed in a randomized field trial involving 552 students in 10 schools. In this study, fourth-grade children received eight books to read during their summer vacation and were encouraged by their teachers to practice oral reading at home with a family member and to use comprehension…

This article summarizes results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) that show measurement education to be a major weakness in the United States, particularly for minority students. The middle school measurement topics assessed by NAEP and TIMSS include…

This study demonstrates the utility of integrating birth certificate record data with an existing disability-tracking database for the purpose of evaluating early identification efforts. The authors examined referral rates of preschool-age children for several known disability risk factors. Low birthweight, low maternal education, and prematurity…

The national demographic transformation that has become more evident in the last decade was easily foreseen at least 10 years ago. Our future student growth is as predictable: In a mere 35 years, White students will be a minority in every category of public education as we know it today, and non-English-proficient students will grow significantly.…

Just before the Fourth of July weekend in 1966, the U.S. Office of Education quietly released a report that would shake the beliefs upon which many educators and social reformers had staked their work. Titled "Equality of Educational Opportunity," the mammoth, 737-page study reached the unsettling conclusion that school might not be society's…

Black children generally receive poorer sociometric nominations compared with Whites. This effect is not fully understood because Black children rarely hold a classroom majority and teachers' race is rarely investigated. Research from a person-environment perspective suggests that the effects of children's race depend on the racial composition of…

Purpose: The performance of low-income African American preschoolers (36 to 52 months old) on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Third Edition (PPVT-III; L. M. Dunn & L. M. Dunn, 1997) was examined to provide a norm for assessing the performance of this population and to explore the link between socioeconomic status (SES) and language scores on…

This study provides the basis for customizing culturally responsive social work health promotion programs aimed at eliminating breast cancer screening and mortality disparities between white and African American women. Survey data collected from a random sample of 853 women in rural North Carolina were used to explore the impact of psychosocial…

The author examined age, gender, and ethnic differences in the self-perceptions of 112 low-income children who were assessed with the Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance (PSPCSA) at Head Start and kindergarten. Children's self-ratings of competence were overly optimistic across the 4 subscales of the PSPCSA during the 2…

Planning adult literacy education in developing nations is largely viewed as a technical process reserved for government officials at the Ministry of Education. This empirical study argues that in Botswana, state sponsored adult literacy asserts its hegemony and stifles learner participation and district initiatives. The paper provides an overview…

Black and White students who enrolled in college by age 20 were selected from a national probability sample, in order to estimate the prevalence of having children and the effect of having a child on probability of graduation with a bachelor's degree. Black students reported significantly higher rates of having children than White students, but…