Setting high expectations, promoting academic excellence, encouraging students to set their sights on postsecondary education--administrators and teachers are quite familiar with these ideas and their use within the school setting. Although each of these ideas is important to what secondary education is and should be, it is somehow hard to imagine…

This report describes a survey of homeless families from shelters in Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Carolinas. The typical family included a 32-year-old single woman with two young children who was more likely to be African American, had a high school education, and had a 50-50 chance of being employed. Most children attended preschool, most were…