THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY IN THE CITY GHETTO FORMS A COMPLICATED CHAIN OF DISCRIMINATION AND LOST OPPORTUNITIES FOR WHICH ALL AMERICANS PAY. COSTS ARE INCURRED FROM POOR EDUCATION, UNEMPLOYMENT, WASTE OF INDIVIDUAL TALENT, RISING CRIME RATES, MILITARY SERVICE REJECTION RATES, AND OTHER SOCIAL PROBLEMS. THE EDUCATION LINK IN THIS CHAIN IS THE…

A study relating mothers' language styles and techniques of family control to children's cognitive development was conducted with 163 urban Negro mothers from the lower and middle classes and their 4-year-old children. The following conclusions were drawn: (1) There was a significant negative correlation between responses of status-oriented…

Case histories evaluate the effectiveness of recent and current retraining programs for unemployed workers under Federal, state, municipal, and union-management auspices, judging them by their success in placing workers in useful employment in distressed economic areas. Data on various aspects of retraining programs under a wide variety of…

This manual attempts to "present the basic information that the teacher-leader must know for an inter-ethnic classroom." It is the author's thesis that "the most urgent of all educational challenges is not curriculum or instruction. It is the challenge of changing sociocultural relations, while simultaneously improving curriculum and instruction."…

A group of rural sociologists initiated this 1958-1965 research project for the purpose of increasing knowledge about social and economic adjustments of low-income people in the rural areas of the South. Factors found to be associated with the adjustment of low-income families and individuals were anomia, level-of-living, joint decision making,…

The findings of several tests are used to describe some learning disabilities and patterns common in lower-class Puerto Rican and Negro children. In particular, perceptual dysfunction is pointed to as a major causal factor in the reading problems of the disadvantaged. In one urban slum school, 40 percent of first graders showed serious dysfunction…

Focusing on blacks, the study examined the effect of neighborhood racial composition on the relationship between socioeconomic status and current fertility. The sample of 611 black and 5,027 white once-married women aged 20-29 living with their husbands was drawn from the neighborhood characteristics files of the 1970 Public Use Samples of the…

The success of the Developmental Skills Program offered at Los Angeles Southwest College, a 96% black institution, is indicated by an average student grade equivalent gain of 2.3 years in one semester; a 5 year average accelerated academic growth rate that is 5.9 times the rate of academic growth black inner-city students have experienced in the…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 12 titles deal with the following topics: correlates of reading achievement in Mexican-American children; Latino communication patterns; the semantic distance and semantic judgment of English monolingual and Spanish/English…

This report describes an after school pre-kindergarten program which sought to upgrade the reading and math readiness, and develop English-as-a-second-language skills for 45 pre-kindergarten neighborhood children. Pupils were selected for the program on the basis of family background information and pupils' inability to speak English because of…

This study investigates two hypotheses: (1) that black children experience more conflict over their racial identity than white children, and (2) that black children are less likely to identify with occupational role models than are white children are investigated in this study. Drawings of a person by 167 black and 156 white primary school…

Statistics on population growth, social characteristics, population distribution, employment and income, and ethnic groups are presented in this report. Among the highlights of the report are the following findings: the population grew by three-fourths of one percent during 1974, a slightly higher rate than 1973 but substantially lower than the…

In order to identify minority attitudes toward occupational education, a survey form was developed and administered to a stratified random sample of 85 high school students, 85 community college students, and 80 community residents in the college's primarily Black service area. In 17 tables, the authors note the composition of the group by sex,…

Vocational and technical education can provide economic mobility for individuals as well as economic development for communities. However, the literature and the results of this study indicate that the persons who could profit most from vocational education programs, those in lower status groups, know very little about such programs. A five…

Data which taps aspects of traits said by Oscar Lewis to comprise a "culture of poverty" were examined for poor and non-poor families varying in ethnic background and residence. Before comparing the incidence of poverty culture across ethnic and residence lines, the question "Do alleged poverty culture traits become more pronounced as level of…