When students feel connected to their school, they experience positive health and academic outcomes. In contrast, school disengagement is a predictor of dropout, delinquency, and substance use. School garden programming has the potential to help children achieve academic outcomes and feel connected to their school. Unfortunately, most school…

Associations between youths' relationship profiles and mentoring outcomes were explored in the context of a national, randomized study of 1,139 youths (54% female) in geographically diverse Big Brothers Big Sisters school-based mentoring programs. The sample included youths in Grades 4-9 from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, the majority of…

Examined characteristics of successful and unsuccessful job corps participants in Arizona. Discriminant function analysis correctly classified 86 percent of the participants into a successful or unsuccesful group. Items that pulled the highest discriminant coefficients were age, highest attained grade, ethnicity, number of siblings, and frequency…

We examined the impact of family emotional climate and sibling relationship quality on behavioral problems and adaptation in preschool-aged children. Participants were 63 mothers with a preschool-aged child enrolled in a Southern Arizona Head Start Program. Siblings were identified as children closest in age to target child. Mothers of…

The evaluation literature on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) youth programs is largely absent of quantitative studies, likely in part due to the challenge of using experimental or quasi-experimental evaluation designs. This paper proposes the creative use of a national data set to overcome the problem of estimating a…

Describes the Arizona education tax credit law as a voucher plan in disguise, and argues that the concept of justice underlying the law is an element largely missing from the school choice debate. Calls on educators and policymakers to concentrate on efforts to help needy students rather than to channel tax dollars toward self-interested ends.…

The author's students were an unhappy, skeptical group of middle school students. Many of them had emotional issues. Many had drug addiction and prostitution in their broken and poverty-ridden families. Her school, which is a small charter school in a remote Arizona town, was a place of last resort for these students, who probably would not…

More than three million children in the United States participate in some type of after school program (National Study, 1993) offering wide-ranging benefits to children, their families and the community (Pederson, et al, 1998). After school programs of many descriptions provide responsible adult supervision for youth, constructive activities and…