Urban community leaders describe their perceptions of critical issues in education and offer recommendations for the creation of a college-going culture (CGC). This qualitative study employed a maximum entropy analysis. Results demonstrate critical issues with increasing educational attainment including complexity of the urban school system,…

Urban colleges and universities not only have a responsibility to engage in activities designed to improve the educational attainment of local urban youth, but also have extensive financial, human, intellectual, and organizational resources that may be directed productively toward this purpose. This article describes the multipronged approach that…

One of the most striking features of crime in America is its disproportionate concentration in disadvantaged, racially segregated communities. In this paper we estimate the effects of court-ordered school desegregation on crime by exploiting plausibly random variation in the timing of when these orders go into effect across the set of large urban…

Deals with facets of school segregation in Amsterdam, a city in which two-thirds of youth have a non-native background. The role of residential segregation in the segregation of elementary schools and the importance of educational background in the segregation of secondary schools are discussed. There are implications for schooling in the United…

Lorraine Monroe, founder of the Frederick Douglass Academy, a public school that promises inner-city students an education comparable to that of an elite suburban school, tells her own story of overcoming obstacles to become a respected educator. Monroe grew up in Harlem in a broken home after the departure of an abusive father. Following her…

Findings from a study of the status of Hispanic Americans in South Minneapolis (Minnesota) are presented. Data are from interviews with 34 individuals identified as knowledgeable about the conditions of Latinos in Minneapolis, 4 focus group meetings with an additional 46 community residents, and information from published sources about the size…

The consequences and correlates of growing up poor as well as the mechanisms through which poverty influences children are explored. This book is organized with a primary focus on research findings and a secondary concern with policy implications. The chapters are: (1) "Poor Families, Poor Outcomes: The Well-Being of Children and Youth" (Jeanne…

This study describes New York City's population of 16-to-24-year-olds using data from the 1990 Census' Public Use Microdata Sample. Selected characteristics pertaining to the education and employment of these young adults are examined, and information is given about the school and work status of youth in the city according to various demographic…

This paper focuses on the experiences of Salvadoran refugees who fled their country in the 1980s and came to the United States seeking political asylum during the Salvadoran civil war. The increased number of Salvadoran students in the school districts of Northern Virginia (the Greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan area), where more than 200,000…

This report examines student mobility among California Latino adolescents. Latinos are now the largest ethnic group in the California schools; if student mobility is indeed a problem for both students and schools, it is important to understand the consequences of changing schools for Latino adolescents. Longitudinal data were studied for two…

The dropout problem in the nation, in the Council of the Great City Schools (GCS) school districts, and in the central cities is reviewed. Annual, single-year, four-year, and status dropout rates are examined. During the decade from 1982 to 1992, the gap in dropout rate between Whites and other ethnic groups has narrowed. The majority of the GCS…

An ethnographic study examined the attitudes of Chinese American families toward success in school and learning. The first cohort of 5 families stayed in the study for 3 years, while the second cohort of 5 families stayed for 2 years. All the first cohort children and two from the second cohort were from the same Boston (Massachusetts) school. The…

This paper reports on three projects in California that have attempted to stem the tide of Latino dropouts and increase the college-going rates of the Latino population. Each of these three programs has tested a set of strategies aimed at increasing the educational attainment of Latino students, who now make up the largest single ethnic group in…

Data are presented from structured interviews conducted with 340 youths from the Monroe-Pratt neighborhood of Baltimore (Maryland). Interviews reveal lifestyle and community environmental factors that increase the risks of youth experiencing failure in educational and occupational attainment. Suggestions are made for improving the educational…

This report compares the educational performance of Asian and Hmong students with that of other students in six urban school districts across Wisconsin. These six districts were chosen because Hmong students are the largest minority group in each of the districts. Data from standardized tests given in grades 3, 4, 8, and 10 in these districts…