The development and validation of a measure of adolescent future expectations associated with work, education, family, health, and church/community participation is presented. The 25-item measure was administered to a sample of 389 7th- to 12th-grade urban poor and working-class Chilean students. Results of an exploratory principal axis factor…

Title I, Part A, of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) provides financial assistance through State Educational Agencies (SEAs) to Local Educational Agencies (LEAs or school districts) and public schools with high numbers or percentages of disadvantaged children to help ensure that all children meet challenging state academic content and student…

Thirty-two middle class and 32 lower class southern Brazilian pre-adolescent (M=12.8 years) and adolescent (M=15.7 years) participants were individually interviewed regarding their perceptions of who (adolescent or parent) should determine the adolescent's actions in cases where the parents and adolescent disagree over the action choice.…

Research and knowledge of violence against impoverished women continues to be limited. To achieve a more comprehensive understanding of violence against impoverished women and therefore inform prevention and intervention efforts for this population, the authors report on recent (past 6 months) physical, sexual, and psychological violence among 898…

The authors facilitated a Theatre for Development training workshop for Save the Children UK with a number of children in three villages in northern Bangladesh in 2000. In 2005 they revisited the young people, unofficially and informally, to assess for themselves if there had been any impact of the TfD on their lives. They asked what the young…

The objectives of the study were to model the developmental trajectories of physical aggression (PA) from toddlerhood to pre-adolescence and to identify risk factors that distinguish typical (normative) from atypical developmental patterns. Ten cohorts of approximately 1,000 children (n = 10,658) drawn form a nationally representative (Canadian)…

The debates over the 2003 reauthorization of Head Start highlighted a controversy about the devolution of federal early education policy. At the center of the debate is the concern that state control of early education programs will reduce the quality and effectiveness of federal support for children living in poverty, and their families. The…

Homelessness affects people of all backgrounds, races, and religions. Whether the number of homeless people is 300,000 or 3 million, as some estimates claim, there are too many people in America who struggle to find shelter daily, making homelessness one of the most serious problems facing the nation today. This discussion, designed for the…

This report details findings of one year of a seven-year study of the relationship between pre-college enrichment experiences and the development of academic ethos, or scholar identity, in disadvantaged adolescents, both African American and European American. Under the auspices of the University of Tennessee, Project EXCEL examines the…

Catholic schools in the United States are engaged in a struggle to balance mission and market concerns. This paper presents a survey that explores the reasons why predominantly non-Catholic parents chose to send their children to a Catholic elementary school. The paper also examines the Catholic school's responsiveness to market forces as it…

An examination of service delivery in early childhood education in Ireland reveals that the lack of a national policy has led to a great variation in services, little possibility for assessing and regulating quality, and a very limited choice for many children and their families. This article describes Ireland's system for early education…

In 1994, the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) in Washington state subsidized child care for about 35,000 children each month, with financial support provided in part by federal funds. The primary objective of this survey, the fourth in a series, was to set local maximum rates for subsidy programs based on the private-paying child…

An exploration of the economic and historical causes of homelessness is combined with accounts of individuals and families who are on the streets or in shelters and how they came to that point. Following an overview of the problem of homelessness and its causes, nine chapters present stories of homeless individuals, friends, and families. These…

School choice for poor children is likely to be an issue in many state and congressional races. Lawmakers and parents need to pay close attention to the quality of academic evaluations of school choice programs. Evaluations of the program in Milwaukee (Wisconsin) provide a case in point. In 1990, Milwaukee instituted the nation's first publicly…

This book is about teenage pregnancy among Latina teenagers in East Los Angeles (California). It focuses on teenage pregnancy and motherhood among economically disadvantaged Latinas aged 17 and under. The young mothers in this study were participants in a series of intervention efforts to prevent repeat pregnancy at a family planning clinic. This…