Federal policy changes for Head Start (HS) elevate the importance of measured academic performance over other traditional program aims, particularly those associated with the social-emotional development of children. Concerned about the possible effects of these changes on children, based on observations and interviews, detailed portraits of…

This paper looks at the perspectives of 22 young adults concerning their upbringings and life experiences, experiences in inner city and suburban schools, after leaving school, and later in a privately funded urban GED preparation facility in a large southern city. Specifically it addresses the conceptions students have about school and their…

There seems to be a global consensus that girls' education is a commonsensical solution to issues as wide-ranging as poverty, fertility, human trafficking, and terrorism in the global south. In this article, I inquire into how this common sense about girls' education is produced and sustained. I examine how two radically specific happenings--the…

Despite the strong argument for investing in young children and the many types of interventions and delivery mechanisms that have been developed, knowledge on Early Childhood Development (ECD) programs' effectiveness in low-income settings remains thin. Yet a growing number of programs in developing countries contain interventions seeking to…

The roughly one-quarter of U.S. eighth graders who score below basic on national assessments of reading are poorly equipped for the reading demands of secondary school. They struggle with summarizing and making text-based inferences (NCES, 2013). Intervention in middle school needs to be comprehensive, both because of the heterogeneity of the…

States require a measure of poverty that captures all family resources net of taxes and nondiscretionary expenses and uses thresholds reflecting current needs in the state to assess the well-being of families under current and alternative policies. This paper describes the implementation of a poverty measure for the State of Connecticut based on…

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…

To address gaps in achievement between more- and less-affluent students, states and districts need to ensure that high-poverty students and schools have equitable access to educational resources. Traditionally, assessments of resource equity have focused on per-pupil expenditures and more proximal inputs, such as teacher credentials and class…

Sister R., the first author, is a Dominican Sister of Peace. Until recently, Sister R. had been the director of the Maya Ministry Family Literacy Program, working with the Maya Community in Lake Worth, Palm Beach County, Florida. She described her work with these indigenous, preliterate, hardworking peoples as "a university of the poor"…

In today's hyper-connected world, children's exposure to technology as a tool to communicate, learn, and socialize has increased exponentially. As teachers and parents recognize the demands for increased use of technology among young children, they should be able to identify and address the challenges associated with such exposure. Cyberbullying,…

The purpose of this study was to measure the self-directed learning of educators and explore the differences between and among the variables of age, level of education, position, school district ratings, levels of poverty and affluence, and gender. The Survey of Adult Learning Traits (SALT) authored by Hogg was used as the instrument to measure…

Since the 1980s' decoupling of the formal study of second language acquisition from pedagogical concerns, the social relevance of such research has been of little concern. Early studies, in the 1970s, of uninstructed adult learners' acquisition of morphosyntax pointed to social implications: these working class immigrants had varying levels of…

Purpose: Farmer-to-farmer extension offers a potentially low-cost and wide-reach alternative in supporting agricultural innovation. Various approaches are being promoted but information on their impact and sustainability is sparse. This study examines experiences of Self Help Africa and partners in Ghana, Uganda and Malawi. It asks: What is good…

Pre-colonial Africa was neither an educationally nor a technologically unsophisticated continent. While education was an integral part of the culture, issues of language identification and standardisation which are subject to contentious debate today were insignificant. Children learned community knowledge and history by asking questions instead…

This article profiles William Hite, Jr., a longtime educator and administrator, who began his career more than two decades ago as a high school athletic coach. Hite says his biggest passion is educating young people. And one of the best ways to serve students, he says, is by listening. Hite, 51, assumed his duties as Philadelphia's new…