Over three consecutive years, Chinese secondary school students experiencing and not experiencing economic disadvantage (n = 280 and 2,187, respectively) responded to measures of perceived family life quality (parenting attributes and parent-child relational quality) and emotional well-being (hopelessness, mastery, life satisfaction and…

Lawrence Mead addresses the problem of nonwork among low-income men, particularly low-income black men, and its implications for families and children. The poor work effort, he says, appears to be caused partly by falling wages and other opportunity constraints but principally by an oppositional culture and a breakdown of work discipline. Mead…

Individual differences in reading and cognitive processing among a sample of generally poor readers were studied in order to answer two major questions: Do they have a specific cognitive style that favors global-simultaneous strategies and a weak sequential strategy? If they do not have a distinct cognitive style or strategy, but are merely poor…

SES has long interested researchers investigating school achievement. Its effects are often addressed by studying predictors of achievement in economically disadvantaged samples living primarily in biological families, confounding genetic and environmental influences. Little is known about SES's purely environmental effects. We measured them in…

Although most teachers are finished with their formal education, their desire to learn has not been extinguished. As important as initial teacher and administrator preparation are, the ability of a school leadership team to maximize the potential of each staff member is perhaps even more important to helping each student realize his or her…

This paper reports on the "Fair Go Project", research into student engagement among primary school students living in poor communities in South-Western Sydney, Australia. Taking as a starting point recent work into classroom pedagogies ("Productive Pedagogies") and drawing on Bernstein's concept of classrooms as message…

The authors map the route undertaken by the Project Management Office of the Gansu Basic Education Project (GBEP) in Gansu Province, China, in instituting measures to ensure good learning opportunities for children with special educational needs within the four poor counties benefiting from this DFID supported project. The main purpose of GBEP has…

Education has become a central issue in West Papua. During the Suharto regime, the Indonesian government paid little attention to educational investment in the province which led to poor educational infrastructure and a shortage of teachers. As a result, the quality of human resources in the province is poor. Since 2001, the adoption of the…

Auto insurance rates can vary dramatically, with much higher premiums in poor and minority areas than elsewhere, even after accounting for individual characteristics, driving history, and coverage. This paper uses a unique data set to examine the relative influence of place-based socioeconomic characteristics (or redlining) and place-based risk…

In 1994, the newly elected Government in Malawi abolished primary school fees. Using household survey data from 1990/91 and 1997/98, this paper assesses the impact this major policy change, combined with increased Government spending on education, has had on access to schooling by the poor. This paper shows that enrolment rates have increased…

This article presents a reply to "Edison Is the Symptom, NCLB Is the Disease" by Peter Campbell--a critique that portrayed the school as an exploitative environment, a veritable plantation subjugating poor minority children through mind-numbing, compliance-inducing drills. The author refutes the specific charges leveled against…

Although research has clearly established that low family income has negative impacts on children's cognitive skills and social-emotional competence, less often is a family's experience of material hardship considered. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 (N=21,255), this study examined dual components of…

This longitudinal study of 105 economically disadvantaged children examined the relation between reading problems and internalizing behavior in 3rd- and 5th-grade assessments (8- to 12-year olds). The variable-centered results showed that reading problems predicted change in internalizing behavior in the context of child and family predictors. The…

Background: Previous investigations have shown that low academic achievers are more likely to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, and use marijuana and other illicit drugs. This study investigated the relationship between academic performance and substance use among public high school students in Mississippi. Methods: The sampling frame for the 2003…

A panel of 16 school administrators from 8 states developed this draft application for discounted school telecommunications services as part of efforts to advise the Federal Communications Commission on rural implications of the implementation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The application is split into a seven-page cover application to be…