The children born this year--2004--will be eleven years old in 2015--the age of primary school completion in most countries. This is the MDG (Millennium Development Goal) generation--for whom the international community has pledged that by 2015, all children will be able to complete primary schooling. Ensuring good early child development is the…

In this short essay, Douglas J. Besharov argues that Congress should mandate an honest assessment of Head Start's strengths and weaknesses to enable the program to more effectively enhance early childhood education. He discusses evidence of Head Start's limited effectiveness and proposes that it begin operating based on research.

This Issue Brief describes the percentages of students in grades 12 or below who used computers or the Internet in 2003. Data for this Issue Brief come from the October 2003 Computer and Internet Use Supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS). The CPS is a sample survey representative of the civilian noninstitutional population in the…

Parents, policymakers, business leaders, and the general public increasingly recognize the importance of the first few years in the life of a child for promoting healthy physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development. Yet many children face deficiencies in the years leading up to school entry in terms of emotional support, intellectual…

This report explores the Cleveland voucher program and its impact on Cleveland students, discussing the key questions that parents, the public, and policymakers are asking. It reviews how vouchers are funded, the actual cost of vouchers to taxpayers and the state, and what choices are really available to students whose families opt for vouchers.…

This digest examines features of both process and impact evaluations to help officials of youth programs assess the programs for which they are responsible. With proper planning, evaluation can be part of a program without having to compete for attention and resources with the services the program is trying to provide. A process evaluation…

This book is a resource for educators in any setting who are trying to implement school support teams. New legislation requires states to establish systems of intensive and sustained support for schools that receive Title I funds. School support teams are to become the primary component of these systems. These support teams, external groups of…

This book presents lessons learned after 4 years of Promising and Effective Practices Network (PEPNet), a project of the National Youth Employment Coalition that identifies and promotes criteria of effective practice in youth employment and development. The book, which provides a cumulative summary of all PEPNet programs, is a resource that brings…

This study of six young urban African American men, all in grades 10 or 11 at the time of the study, examined their experiences and the meanings they constructed of the high school diploma, their experiences in classrooms, and their relationships with family members and peers. The perspectives of these young men point to the importance of…

In 1997, the Wake County Public Schools, North Carolina, began a 3-year community-wide collaboration between existing programs and agencies expressly intended to coordinate efforts to serve at-risk children and their families. The Safe Schools Healthy Students grant program was built on 17 strategies aimed at addressing risk. Strategy 17 called…

Every 10 years, the national census describes the number of U.S. residents and their characteristics. This decennial census, however, is subject to error. This report summarizes what is known about census undercount and methods used to adjust census data, emphasizing the undercount of children and minorities. The Census Bureau reported that more…

This report presents results from a 3-year evaluation of the Title I "Success for All" (SFA) schoolwide program being implemented at four elementary schools in the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District, Alaska. SFA meets the criteria of Title I regulations and has a strong reading component with frequent assessments of student…

This manual provides information and suggestions about supporting at-risk youth in Colorado and how to enhance their learning. It provides a framework for working with at-risk youth, but its objectives and strategies can be modified as conditions and needs change. The first section provides an overview of at-risk youth in the new millennium, and…

This paper reports results of the first systematic analysis of the progress of standards-based reform in U.S. school districts. Using data from a recent national survey of school districts (n=2,700) and a companion national survey of schools (n=1,177), it is found that not only do districts appear to play an important role, bigger districts appear…

This report represents one component of a project to examine how recently or whether enacted federal education reforms, put into place through the reauthorization of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (Improving America's Schools Act of 1994), are being implemented in high poverty schools. The first part of the report…