Comments on "Psychotherapy, classism, and the poor: Conspicuous by their absence" by Laura Smith (see record 2005-11834-002). This article might have improved Smith's argument that prejudice and oppression (classism) are significant obstacles preventing the poor from receiving psychological services if she had presented evidence to…

U.S. federal policies do not provide a universal social safety net of economic support for women during pregnancy or the immediate postpartum period but assume that employment and/or marriage will protect families from poverty. Yet even mothers with considerable human and marital capital may experience disruptions in employment, earnings, and…

Examined how interdisciplinary team practices and classroom instructional practices affected student achievement in high poverty middle schools in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Found that when the combined effects of family poverty level, teaming and common planning time, and duration of teaming were considered, there was a relationship…

Describes socioeconomic status and ethnic differences in school readiness and the educational practices needed to boost early achievement in less ready students. Emphasizes access to literacy experiences, better teacher preparation and support, and integration of special services in high-quality classroom instruction. Asserts that teacher quality…

As part of a commitment to eliminate child poverty, the British government has established Sure Start programs across the country. Sure Start programs are very similar to U.S. Early Head Start initiatives; their stated aim is to improve the health and well-being of disadvantaged families and children before and from birth. The article describes…

Background: Disadvantaged communities are increasingly the target for interventions. Sure Start was launched in England in 1999 to tackle child poverty and improve child and family services, with Sure Start Local Programmes (SSLPs) targeted at relatively small areas of marked deprivation. However, they are located in a range of different types of…

This study examined the relationship between end-of-year grades and the academic, behavioral, and social characteristics of rural African American youth. Participants included 392 7th and 8th grade students from 2 rural middle schools in the south. Participants were African American and were from 2 communities that have child poverty rates…

The mathematics achievement levels of U.S. students fall far behind those of other developed nations; within the United States itself, the students who are falling behind come predominantly from high-poverty and high-minority areas. This article reports on a series of analyses that followed 4 cohorts of students from 3 such schools through the 5th…

This study analyzes structural forces affecting state patterns of parental presence within grandparent-grandchild coresidence by testing demographic, social change, policy environment, and social problems models. The project combines published state-level data with the 1970, 1980, and 1990 Census Public Use Microdata Samples. While factors…

Studies suggest that three and four-year old children who are exposed to preschool have a greater chance of academic success throughout their schooling. This article highlights a five-year case study of children of poverty who attended a structured preschool in Salinas, California. The longitudinal study exposed various components of a successful…

This article examines the implementation and effectiveness of Middle Start, a regional, comprehensive school reform design, focused specifically on middle-grade schools and young adolescents. Utilizing individual school self-study data and employing a quasi-experimental design, factors such as the implementation of interdisciplinary teaming…

The world has made great strides in providing primary education to the poor, and the donor community has financed much of the effort. However, the standardized achievement tests developed in many countries show unbelievably low outcomes. One of the reasons why such is happening to many countries is that their schools' have lower time on task.…

Rural learners represent a diverse and significant part of the student population. Although research shows that the overall percentage and types of students with disabilities are similar in rural and non-rural school districts, greater proportions of rural students live in poverty, which places them at higher risk for disability. This article…

In this paper, we conceptualize and develop an index of sociodemographic risk that we hypothesize will be an improvement over the standard poverty measure as a measure of risk for children's development. The poverty line is widely used in government statistics and in research but is also widely acknowledged to have multiple shortcomings. Using…

State and federal accountability reforms are putting considerable pressure on schools to increase the achievement of historically low-performing groups of students and to close test score gaps. In this article, we exploit the differences among the large number of elementary schools in New York City to examine how much schools vary in the…