In this study, the authors examined the school experiences of middle-class African American parents and students, because they are largely overlooked in the professional literature when it comes to underachievement and parent involvement. Although No Child Left Behind (NCLB) highlights parent involvement and school accountability through the use…

Entry-level kindergartners in classrooms from five middle class school districts were given a test of letter identification and children who scored at or below the 30th percentile on the test were classified as "at risk" for early reading difficulties. Half of these children were randomly assigned to a project-based intervention condition where…

Oppositional culture theory is a widely accepted explanation for disparities in academic performance between middle class Whites and middle class African Americans. The authors make the case that oppositional culture theory has its roots in cultural deficit theory popularized in the early 1960s and present a significant body of evidence to refute…

This report presents the results of a study examining the effects of rapidly rising tuitions at the nation's "elite" private colleges and universities, and the impact on the enrollment of middle-income students. The paper traces the income background of Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE) schools and shows how students from…

Brazil's education of its emerging middle class is compared in this paper with the U.S. community colleges' education of their middle and lower class constituency. First, introductory comments argue that, just as there are stratified technological levels within the labor market, levels of knowledge can also be distinguished, pointing to access to…

The awareness and knowledge of developmental milestones among health practitioners need to be enhanced to better enable early identification and intervention with children who have delays in development, intellectual deficit, and developmental disabilities and are residents in low-and middle-income countries. To meet this end, a simple one-page…

EDUCATORS ARE NOT ADEQUATELY FINDING WAYS TO DEAL WITH THE DISADVANTAGED IN AMERICA. THEY ASSUME THAT THEY MUST MAKE THE DISADVANTAGED CONFORM TO AND FUNCTION IN THE DOMINANT MIDDLE-CLASS SOCIETY. HOWEVER, WHILE THE MIDDLE CLASS SEEMS TO FAVOR A HOMOGENIZATION OF ALL CULTURES, SOME MINORITY CULTURES RESIST THIS PRESSURE AND FAVOR A SOCIETY IN…

Data from many governmental and nongovernmental sources are gathered to emphasize that many people now are kept out of college because of student charges, especially tuition; and that a major effort is needed to help reverse the trend toward higher student charges and lower enrollment rates. It is shown that the rate of full-time college…

Fiestaware, the brightly colored dinnerware first introduced in the United States in 1936, has been a cultural phenomenon from its inception. This paper seeks to explain the extraordinary popularity of Fiestaware and to understand the role the ware occupies in U.S. popular culture. Fiestaware achieved enormous success, in spite of its introduction…

The relationship of social class and racial prejudice to the home management skills of black Americans was the focus of this study. A questionnaire (a copy of which appears in an appendix) was used to interview a sample of 100 people divided into four subgroups: low social class blacks, low social class whites, middle social class blacks, and…

Assesses the relationship between the childrearing attitudes of 93 adult subjects and their perceptions of their parents' attitudes toward them during childhood and adolescence. Implications of the varying patterns for males vs. females and parents vs. nonparents are discussed. (SDH)

Interviews in 10 squatter settlements in Caracas challenge Oscar Lewis'"culture of poverty" theory by showing marked differences among barrio residents reflecting variations in occupations, education, employment, and use of credit. (Author)

Do sampling biases introduced in studies requiring a large amount of time make those samples less representative than the samples in studies requiring less subject involvement? This question was explored in the context of mother-infant interaction studies by comparing maternal attitudes of two groups of primiparous mothers: 20 mothers who…