Virtually every Government programme for children and every Government Department in the UK is expected to involve children and young people in its policy development and service delivery (Children and Young People's Unit, 2001). It is the new orthodoxy. Yet, hard questions are often avoided when reciting the mantra of participation. Why bother?…

This article chronicles the evolution of legislation for Texas open-enrollment charter schools to their implementation by demonstrating how these schools have (or have not) used their freedom from state-mandated requirements to develop innovative learning environments as well as to bring innovative curricula into the classroom. The investigative…

This chapter reviews the research on school composition and peer effects from three comparative perspectives--Catholic and public schools, single-sex and coeducational schools, and small and large schools. Most of the research is sociological, focuses on high schools, and draws on national samples. The chapter seeks to discern cumulative trends in…

Conflicting perspectives on the parent's role in the infant/toddler classroom can play a significant role in early educational settings. A recent ethnographic study of an Early Head Start program in New York City focused on conflict of this nature and raised the following set of questions: What sort of power and privilege should parents be given…

The author's students were an unhappy, skeptical group of middle school students. Many of them had emotional issues. Many had drug addiction and prostitution in their broken and poverty-ridden families. Her school, which is a small charter school in a remote Arizona town, was a place of last resort for these students, who probably would not…

In 2001, the U.S. government allocated $4.5 billion to after-school programs through the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) grant directed at high-poverty, low-performing schools. Since 2003, 6,800 rural and urban public schools have been served around the country, at county, city, and district levels as well as some organizations…

This article explores the student resistances that shape orientations to schooling. Drawing on a study of Latina/o youth, I examine how race and gender influence whether they perceive education as oppressive or useful in resisting oppression. The key lever that may alter their perceptions is how school and society treat Latinos differently from…

Todd County, South Dakota, is synonymous with the Lakota Rosebud Reservation. It stretches across the state's south-central edge, bordered on one side by the better known Pine Ridge Reservation, where the American Indian Movement got its start, and on another side by Nebraska. Until the 1970s, generations of Indian children were forced from their…

Over the years, the author has observed the vicious cycle that undermines the effectiveness of and access to good basic education in her own village and family, and in poor rural areas in general. Located in one of the most deprived areas of rural Ghana, there is a huge "reality gap" between school and children's everyday lives. The weak…

A few years ago the National School Reform Faculty (NSRF) revised its mission statement to include language about working to "foster educational and social equity." The revision makes sense to the author as a graduate student in urban education and a former Philadelphia middle school teacher, as well as in her role as a facilitator of Critical…

The Augmented Staffing model of the Chicago Public Schools (Illinois) is a reduced class size, full-day program that includes almost 6,500 elementary school students served under Chapter 1 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The effects of this program were studied, examining the level of teacher knowledge about the program and…

Project Aprendizaje was designed to ease the transition of Latino immigrant students to life and education in the United States. In 1991-92, the project admitted 153 male and 145 female students of limited English proficiency plus 1 student of unspecified gender in grades 9 through 12 at Seward Park High School in Manhattan (New York City). The…

This book presents a study of the ways in which home and school experiences affect the literacy achievement of a group of elementary school children from low-income families. Chapter 1 describes how the study differs from other literacy research. Chapter 2 describes the community where the research took place, some of the families studied, and the…

Even Start is a family support program focusing on family literacy and school readiness. These first seven issues of the "Look at Even Start" newsletter cover topics such as transition between preschool and kindergarten, collaboration between programs and between parents and programs, ways Even Start programs respond to parents' needs…

There is abundant theoretical support for the value of Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) at the elementary school level, but there has been relatively little research to document its effects. This paper explores the relationship between DAP and student achievement among low-income students in St. Paul, Minnesota, using research from an…