Higher education policy and research tend to be dominated by the messaging systems of the North. De Sousa Santos argues that we need to start listening to the South and that we need to develop a sociology of absences. This paper attempts to engage with some of these absences by deconstructing participation in higher education, in quantitative and…

The conventional view of poverty in the European Union countries is based on a relative measure, which defines all those with incomes below 60 percent of the median as poor. In the U.S., poverty is defined according to an absolute measure--the federal poverty line computed by the Census Bureau--which was $21,200 for a family of four in 2008…

In this article, I examine the contested and racially coded cultural politics of creating mixed-income schools in mixed-income communities. Policymakers claim deconcentrating low-income people will reduce poverty and improve education. However, based on activist research in Chicago, I argue these policies are grounded in "culture of…

Zimbabwe, like most of Sub-Saharan Africa, has been hard-hit by HIV/ AIDS. National estimates reported by the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare put the prevalence rates of HIV in the age group between 15 and 49 at 15.3% (World Health Organization [WHO], UNICEF, & UNAIDS, 2008). This is one of the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in the…

This article examines, by way of a case study, a community where groundwater has been highly contaminated with nitrate and how that situation brings together matters of public policy, environmental justice, and emerging technology. The Mountain View community lies in an unincorporated area of Bernalillo County, New Mexico; the neighborhood is 77%…

This article explores the complex process of school change over a six-year period in one high-poverty, urban elementary school in a northeastern city of the United States. The school included in this instrumental case study was identified by its State Department of Education as "being in need of improvement" in March 2000. Findings…

Increasingly influential theories hold that the "teenage brain" suffers cognitive flaws that impel risk taking. Aside from warnings by leading researchers that brain science is insufficiently advanced to yield definitive findings that teenage behaviors are internally driven, the belief that adolescents take excessive risks has been developed using…

Researchers have given increased attention to the teaching and learning of mathematics since the release of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)'s Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (PSSM). Despite the clear and focused goals, recommendations, and standards set by the NCTM (2000), a majority of classrooms continue to…

Inner-city crime is a motivating factor for middle-class flight. Therefore, crime is a cause of suburbanization. Movement of the middle and upper classes to the suburbs, in turn, isolates the poor in central-city ghettos and barrios. Sociologists and criminologists have argued that the concentration of poverty creates an environment within which…

Arts Impact summarizes lessons learned at the ArtsBridge Program. It is informed by in-depth participant observation, logic modeling, and quantitative evaluation of program impact on K-12 students in inner city schools and arts students at the University of California Los Angeles over a two year period. The case study frames its analysis through a…

Current federal legislation, such as No Child Left Behind and The Race to the Top, have elicited high levels of accountability for increasing student reading achievement. Professional organizations and researchers encourage educators to organize schools into professional learning communities (PLCs) to improve student learning. Despite the…

Each year, the Foundation for Child Development and the Child and Youth Well-Being Index Project at Duke University issue a comprehensive measure of how children are faring in the United States. The Overall Composite Child Well-Being Index (CWI) is based on a composite of 28 "Key Indicators" of well-being that are grouped into seven…

There is a construct of collective responsibility which is evident when teachers believe that increased teacher efforts result in increased student learning. The group of teachers in a school that believe their efforts are crucial in the learning process, and are willing to take responsibility for all students, regardless of the students' aptitude…

This paper investigates the socioeconomic contexts navigated by low-income children enrolled in the Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP), as they made the transition from preschool to elementary school. The authors focus on the following two questions. First, do families' exposure to poverty-related risks (i.e., low income, maternal…

Using the Evidence-Based Model developed by Odden and Picus (2008) as a conceptual framework in correlation with the Ten Strategies for Doubling Student Performance (Odden, 2009) for comparison, this study examines the school-level resource allocation strategies used to improve learning for struggling readers in high-minority, high-poverty, urban…