AVID--Advancement Via Individual Determination--is a California program that empowers students to take responsibility for their own learning and develop the academic and interpersonal skills allowing them to take rigorous college-prep courses. AVID's pedagogy is based on intensive writing, inquiry, and collaboration. (MLH)

Because more than 3.75 million children are being raised in households headed by a grandparent, this article attempts to describe contextual aspects of custodial grandparent families. Implications for working with custodial grandparent families, as well as suggested strategies for building close collaborations, are also provided. (Author/DB)

A Toronto (Canada) outdoor program enables disadvantaged urban youth to connect with nature locally. Incrementally, participants take on increasing responsibility and more challenging tasks. An annual canoe race takes place within the city. A planned leadership and environmental center will provide experiences to reconnect Canadians to their…

Examines how theory can contribute to solving problems of practice in school in ways that motivate and engage all students, describing an inner city secondary level vocational school in Ireland. The paper discusses how a theory of peer learning was used to address problems while encouraging students to collaborate on issues relevant to their…

Examines the plight of urban students within general and special education programs, discussing traditional identification, assessment, and intervention issues that consistently magnify their plight and suggesting ways to ameliorate these problems. Describes the role of general and special educators in helping urban students succeed. (Contains…

Documented reports of four Canadian teachers' experiences in kindergarten emergent-literacy program to determine the following: (1) changes in classroom literacy activities; (2) difficult and easy program components; (3) students' capacity for literacy learning; and (4) project satisfaction. Concluded that researchers need to involve teachers when…

Describes predicaments students may face if their families are temporarily homeless, which can seriously affect their health and education. A study of temporarily homeless Scottish families shows that teachers may be unaware of such situations and the ramifications for student health, school attendance, and school performance. Creative inservice…

The use of ability grouping is frequently justified on the grounds that it is an effective means of raising attainment. Little large-scale quantitative research has been undertaken since the introduction of the National Curriculum in England and Wales. The aim of this article is to examine the effects of setting on students' achievement in…

One of the main goals of recent education reform efforts, including NCLB, is to close the achievement gap between disadvantaged and minority students and their wealthier, white peers. In this article, the authors present data showing that closing those gaps once they have emerged is no easy task. (Contains 10 endnotes.)

Florida's Opportunity Scholarships faced their most crucial test in June 2005, as the state supreme court heard arguments in a case about the constitutionality of the voucher program. In more than an hour of oral arguments in "Bush v. Holmes," held June 7, in Tallahassee and shown live on the Internet, lawyers sparred over the…

Debate over the proper identification and placement of gifted children in public schools is not new. But the pressure put on public schools by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 has brought advocates and opponents of gifted education into starker conflict. This presents a chance to reexamine the foundational premises of the argument in…

Empirical research shows that poor emotional competence is an early risk factor for the development of psychopathology. Numerous school-based prevention programs have been developed with the goal of decreasing behavior problems. Several of these programs include a discrete emotions component, but none of them are solely or primarily guided by…

This study examined relations among cortisol reactivity and measures of cognitive function and social behavior in 4- to 5-year-old children (N=169) attending Head Start. Saliva samples for the assay of cortisol were collected at the beginning, middle, and end of an approximately 45-min testing session. Moderate increase in cortisol followed by…

Based on qualitative research conducted from 1998 to 2001, this article describes classroom interactions in a high school and examines two uses of rules: one associated with confinement, and another associated with cognitive skills development. Though the two forms overlapped, the first was more prevalent in self-contained classes, and the second…

This paper argues that teachers' recognition of children's cultural practices is an important positive step in helping socio-economically disadvantaged children engage with school literacies. Based on 21 longitudinal case studies of children's literacy development over a 3-year period, the authors demonstrate that when children's knowledges and…