Disability increases and decreases among selected families of different ethnic types in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas were investigated relative to increases in: education of the homemaker, level of family income and occupation of main income source, and size of family. Sample populations were metropolitan Texas blacks (n=294), Hawaiian…

A cluster of social psychological variables--academic motivation, self-concept, and significant others influence--as they intervene between other independent variables and the child's status projections, were examined in this study. Data came from an extensive questionnaire survey, conducted in 1969, of 1,412 lower social strata mother-child…

The study presented here was designed to further the understanding of black student performance in biracial, academic settings. The purpose of the research was to assess the association between black students' perceptions of prejudice among white instructors and grade deflection (discrepancy between grade expected and grade received) in the…

The first paper, "Introduction: The culture of poverty hypotheses and their import for social science and social policy," discusses three related hypotheses developed by Oscar Lewis concerning the poor with respect to the views of the other contributors to this volume bearing on those hypotheses. The second paper, "Family structure, poverty, and…

As part of the implementation of the Joint Policy Statement on Equality of Educational Opportunity, Michigan's State Board of Education conducted its first public school racial census in the spring of 1967. Information was collected about the racial composition of: (1) student bodies and staff by school building and (2) central office staffs of…

The seminar began with a report of some research that W.M. Phillips, Jr. had done in Newark. Three purposes guided the design of that study of educational change and race from 1958 to 1972: First, there was the fundamental curiosity to discover the changing nature of participation by the Black community in the creation and implementation of public…

This paper summarizes the findings of three studies used to develop a language assessment instrument and to explore the relationships between language, cognitive development, and reading achievement in poor children. A sentence repetition task provided scores for function word omission, function word correct and reconstruction word correct. These…

This paper presents a study designed to develop a better understanding of the needs of minority families with preschool children in Idaho. The project had three aims: to determine the general needs of families, to find which services were known and utilized, and to identify services adequately meeting needs. Four minority populations were included…

This report is a study of school integration in Missouri 20 years after the United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. During the course of the study a number of school districts were visited. In most cases, the superintendent of schools or a high ranking administrator was interviewed. The method of…

This paper presents three different educational models for inner-city children. The first, the Learning by Doing Program, a preschool and kindergarten summer program at Saint Mark's Parish, proposes to meet the needs of inner-city children by developing cognitive growth necessary for further learning experiences and by preparing them to enter…

Preliminary research testing the reliability and the validity of the "Thinking About My School" (TAMS) instrument is reported, and extensive data and analyses are included for the benefit of those who wish to do further evaluative work. Instructions for scoring and appropriate conditions for administering TAMS to students with low…

Although there is a proliferation of educational programs aimed at improving language, there have been only meager attempts to produce measures for diagnostic and evaluative purposes. The project herein described is an attempt to devise a test that could be used: (1) to identify specific speech deviations of black ghetto students in order that…

The purpose of this pilot study was to provide data from which tentative conclusions could be made about adults and their ability to handle literary abstractions. A sample of 93 inmates (all male, 26 Negro, 67 white) at Sumter Correctional Institution was randomly chosen and asked to verbalize their reactions to four comic strips and to write…

In 1969, 385 Louisiana Cooperative Extension Service aides conducted an eight week nutrition education program (expanded to 12 weeks in three parishes) for over 18,000 low income homemakers and children in 31 parishes. Initial interviews were used to ascertain nutrition habits and influences thereon, knowledge levels, homemakers' age and…

In this study, the status ordering of a four-man group working on a task requiring discussion and decision was predicted on the basis of status characteristic theory. Two of the group members were white; two were black. They were matched as to age, height, and also on a combined index of socioeconomic status and attitude toward school. The…