This paper reports on a Canadian qualitative case study project funded by the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario. The paper describes success stories of students and communities affected by poverty from a diverse sample of eleven elementary schools throughout the province of Ontario. Over the period of one school year (2007-2008) and…

Educational disadvantage is an essentially contested, political concept. At the same time there is a "phoney consensus" surrounding the issue, i.e., policy debates on the topic often fail to reflect this contestation. This lack of awareness of the political context to the debate is evident in relation to the targets and measures set for…

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides food, nutrition education, breastfeeding support, and health care and social service referrals to nutritionally at-risk low-income pregnant women, new mothers, infants, and children through age 4. This report offers updated estimates of the population that…

A chronicle of the success of a small Catholic school on Long Island, N.Y. in overcoming poverty, race, and language for the 65 male students it has served in grades 5-8 for eight years. The authors posit that the secret of the school's success resides in creating goals, agency and pathways for success in its students, creating a climate of hope…

In order to profit from the economic growth in their society farmers can (1) increase the yields of their crops and animals, (2) switch to the production of high value products for which there is an increasing demand in the market, (3) increase the labour productivity on their farm, (4) find non-farm sources of income for some or all of their…

Community strategic visioning is a citizen-based planning process in which diverse sectors of a community collectively determine a future state and coordinate a plan of action. Twenty-one communities in rural Montana participated in a multi-phase poverty reduction program that culminated in a community strategic vision process. Research on this…

There is a growing optimism among international organizations such as United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can transform developing countries such as Nigeria to developed ones in a relatively short time. Experiences from Asian and European countries such as India, Bangladesh, Malaysia,…

On the basis of official statistics, poverty has halved in Ghana over the period from 1991 to 2005. Our objective in this paper is to assess how far this fall was linked to the creation of better paying jobs and the increase in education. We find that earnings rose rapidly in the period from 1998 to 2005, by 64% for men and by 55% for women. While…

Conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) have two main objectives: reducing poverty and increasing the human capital of children. To reach these objectives, transfers are given to poor households conditioned on investments in their children's education, health, and nutrition. Targeting mechanisms used by CCTs have been generally successful in…

This qualitative study in a Midwestern US city examines how school and community-based organizations support homeless students' connections to education-related resources and relationships. Drawing from organizational brokerage theory, which delineates how individuals' chances to thrive are shaped by the organizations in which they participate,…

This article examines how anti-poverty policy has considered the role of culture and how it ought to do so. While some have explained poverty as a function of the presumed cultural deficiency or distinctiveness of the poor, we suggest that these explanations have not been convincing and that policy requires a broader and more sophisticated…

This article examines the opportunities and limitations presented by organizing an undergraduate field research methods class as a policy think tank working for a government client. Organized as such, the course had both the learning objectives of a traditional undergraduate methods class and the corporate objectives of a policy think tank (i.e.,…

Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, a federal program to provide additional assistance to academically struggling students in high-poverty areas, has long contained a provision called the "supplement-not-supplant" requirement. This provision was designed to ensure Title I funds were spent on extra educational services…

Through its commodity program, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) provides commodity foods at no cost to schools taking part in the national school meals programs. Commodities include raw ground beef, cheese, poultry, and fresh produce. Like federal food safety agencies, the commodity program has taken steps designed to reduce microbial…

This paper explores understandings of gender equality and education and the nature of global goal and target setting, drawing on empirical data collected in central and local government departments in Kenya and South Africa reflecting on their implementation of Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1, concerned with poverty, MDG 2, concerned with…