Describes qualities of a good preschool child-development program: Competent staff, parent partnerships, administrative support, and school board support. Provides list of online resources. (PKP)

Interviewed young women with social, emotional, or behavioral difficulties during their school years, examining alternative schooling and professional support they received. Explores current issues in the press and academic literature about the underclass, single motherhood, work and unemployment, and professional support, arguing for an…

Federal legislation passed in 1994 and the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration program (CSRD) encourage high-poverty Title I schools to adopt prepackaged research-based models of schoolwide reform. The nine components of CSRD and key ingredients for its implementation are discussed. Eleanor Roosevelt Elementary School (Vancouver, Washington)…

Describes reforms at Berniss Elementary School (Spokane, Washington) from 1992 to 1999. A Title I school serving poor and immigrant neighborhoods, Berniss showed dramatic improvements in standardized test scores. Reform strategies included hiring four facilitators as peer coaches to encourage reform, changing teaching methods to promote active…

Examined relations between alternative representations of poverty cofactors and promotion processes, and problem behaviors of 6- and 7-year-olds from disadvantaged families. Found that single-index risk representations and promotion variables predicted aggression but not anxiety/depression. An additive model of individual risk indicators performed…

This study addressed 2 questions: (a) Can preschoolers who will fail at reading be more efficiently identified by targeting those at highest risk for reading problems? and (b) will auditory temporal processing (ATP) improve the accuracy of identification derived from phonological processing and oral language ability? A sample of 227 preschoolers…

During the summer vacation children who are economically disadvantaged experience declines in reading achievement, while middle- and high-income children improve. Previous research has demonstrated that the most widely implemented intervention -- sending economically disadvantaged students to summer school -- has not led to increases in reading…

The experience of poverty has a pervasive impact on the health (including mental health) of children and their parent(s), on family functioning and on the life course of children. The aim of this paper is to consider the relevance of poverty to our understanding of the health (and mental health) of children with intellectual disabilities in the…

In this chapter, the author discusses immigrant newcomer populations and their experiences with K-12 schooling in preparation for and access to postsecondary education. Much attention has been paid to the concept of immigrant optimism, namely, that immigrant parents are optimistic about their children's futures, including their educational…

Over the last few decades, the energy literature has been dominated by a theory of transition. The theory of transition is based on the notion that households gradually ascend an "energy ladder", which begins with traditional biomass fuels (firewood and charcoal), moves through modern commercial fuels (kerosene and liquid petroleum gas…

Poor children confront widespread environmental inequities. Compared with their economically advantaged counterparts, they are exposed to more family turmoil, violence, separation from their families, instability, and chaotic households. Poor children experience less social support, and their parents are less responsive and more authoritarian.…

The article provides an abridged version of a report prepared for the lawsuit, Williams v. State of California. The report first examines the achievement gap for English learners in California. Second, it reviews evidence in seven areas in which these students receive a substantially inequitable education vis--vis their English-speaking peers,…

In this study we investigate the contribution of achievement in team sports to adolescent girls' self-esteem development. Adolescent girls (N = 247) from racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds were surveyed as part of a larger study investigating the development of poor urban youth. Participants responded to items tapping global self-esteem,…

The extent to which colleges and universities provide opportunities for students from the most economically disadvantaged families is an important indicator of the potential for U.S. higher education to promote intergenerational mobility. Yet the measurement of "opportunity" for low-income students at the level of individual colleges and…

The historical black universities (HBUs) in South Africa were established by the apartheid government to serve black students banned from attending segregated white-only universities. These universities were poorly funded compared to the white-only universities. The poor funding affected their output (research and postgraduates) adversely. With…