Older cities in the United States have long been trying to "bring back" the middle class in order to increase tax base. The poor quality of schools and the presence of public housing often were cited as deterrents for attracting higher income families. When the 2000 Census data revealed improvements in many cities, some elected officials…

Students of color are consistently underrepresented in honors and gifted programs nationwide, and even high-achieving students share many of the risk factors with their low-achieving peers. The study presented in this paper employed mixed methods to investigate the relationship between the design of a rigorous college preparatory program, the…

Using a resilience framework, the authors examined the protective effects of parental support, self-disclosure to parents, parent-initiated monitoring of adolescent behavior, and relationships with school personnel on three critical problems of adolescents: substance use, gang involvement, and perceived threats to safety at school. The sample…

The purpose of this article is fourfold. First, it identifies a growing international interest on the part of educators and school officials in finding effective ways to mentor especially poor and minority students toward academic success. Second, it reviews the literature on mentoring as it pertains to this population. Third, it details a case…

This report was based on the responses of more than 1,000 school employees to a survey on the physical environment at their schools. Many of the responses revealed some startling building conditions, from students who have to wear coats and gloves in class to rats and mice entering classrooms through windows and cracks in walls. The report…

This guide is designed to assist schools with their Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program and William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan (Direct Loan) Program cohort default rate data. The guide is intended as a reference tool in understanding cohort default rates and processes. Material is organized into four parts: (1) Introduction; (2) General…

The paper aims to make a methodological contribution to the education segregation literature, providing a critique of previous measures of segregation used in the literature, as well as suggesting an alternative approach to measuring school segregation. It also provides new empirical evidence on changes in the extent of socio-economic segregation…

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…

With increasing national and international support for the development of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) curricula in American medical schools, it is essential to measure what learners know and believe about CAM in order to assess outcomes of new teaching efforts. This paper describes the development and initial results of a survey…

Three types of privatisation are identified--involving demand-side financing, reforms to the educational supply-side and "de facto" privatisation, where responsibilities are transferred to the private sector, through the rapid growth of private schools, rather than through reform or legislation. Although "de facto"…

In this study, kindergarten children's scores on nine cognitive tasks were evaluated as potential predictors of poor achievement in first grade. A set of five tasks successfully identified 83% of children who were poor readers in first grade, while just three tasks identified 72% of children who were poor achievers in math in first grade. There…

This paper discusses how the topic of homelessness was explored for a course through research and a final project which consisted of a performance of personal narratives. The paper: (1) recounts how the script was created; (2) describes and shows the actual reproduction of the script; (3) presents a brief analysis of the script; and (4) describes…

PAVE (Partners Advancing Values in Education) was founded in 1992 as an independent, non-profit organization by civic and business leaders who believe that all families deserve equal educational opportunities for their children. The primary focus of PAVE is to provide low-income families in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with financial assistance so they…

A study, part of a 5-year investigation (1991-1995) of patterns of implementation of literature-based instruction in schools serving large numbers of children from low-income families, recounts children's literacy experiences as observed in a third-grade classroom in an urban school in upstate New York. The primary goal was to understand the…

Often, reports on poverty present official statements and analysis about its causes, but an official statement is not the same thing as poor people expressing themselves. This report records the life histories of five families living in extreme poverty with the belief that future problems cannot be addressed without an accurate understanding of…