This collection attempts to broaden understanding of how to magnify circumstances known to enhance development and education in order to advance opportunities for all children, especially children and youth of the inner cities. Focuses are on raising consciousness about opportunities available to foster resilience and on synthesizing the knowledge…

Recommendations and an action plan for improving Wisconsin public schools' focus on teaching and learning, rather than on changes such as vouchers and privatization. Positive strategies designed to promote achievement are favored over punitive strategies or remedial actions. The action plan includes financial help to implement the recommendations.…

The Urban Education Project developed by Research for Better Schools, Inc., has focused on meeting the needs of urban students in a changing and demanding society by creating the Urban Education Framework, which presents a new vision of the urban learner as culturally diverse, capable, motivated, and resilient. This vision suggests that urban…

This descriptive study examines the operation of youth mentoring programs in New York City. In particular, the study maps the experiences of developing and operating youth mentoring programs as articulated by the organizers or directors of 21 such programs; reviews and analyzes the research and descriptions of mentoring programs nationally to…

This report describes the disproportionate incarceration of minority youth in the state of New Jersey. It opens with an introduction followed by a section, "Problem Statement," which describes the plight of New Jersey's Black and Hispanic children, research in this area, recent historical trends, state and community programs, and the…

No ceremony or rite exists to usher the African American male youth into proper manhood. Such ceremonies, referred to as rites of passage, mark commonly agreed-upon standards, activities, tasks, and trials that each youth must master to achieve the community-sanctioned title "man." The clear articulation and subsequent implementation of…

There is a growing body of evidence that specialization in violent crimes is rare and that it is hard to identify distinguishing characteristics of violent offenders. The purpose of this study, conducted in a Pacific Northwest city, was to determine whether violent behavior is, in fact, a manifestation of high rates of antisocial behavior in…

This longitudinal study evaluated the effects of a preschool project designed to serve children between 3 and 5 years of age in a disadvantaged inner-city area in Dublin, Ireland. The preschool, established in 1969, emphasized the development of children's cognitive skills and established structures to increase parents' involvement in their…

Using linked individual and census tract data from the 1980 U.S. Census, it is found that when a teenage boy drops out of school depends not only on his family background and the increase in earnings associated with graduating, but also on the characteristics of the neighborhood in which he lives. Both the good and bad dimensions of neighborhood…

Thirteen papers explore the African American experience of poverty and ghetto formation; forces shaping contemporary urban poverty; and mobility and family strategies among groups differentiated by ethnicity, race, and labor market position. The introduction, "The Urban 'Underclass' as a Metaphor of Social Transformation" (M. B. Katz),…

This book explores the U.S. gang problem, based on the author's 35 years of experience as a high school and junior high school teacher, principal, and community organizer in Oakland and Los Angeles (California). Chapters discuss the subculture of gang worlds, reasons why youth are attracted to gangs, how educators can reach out to students, the…

This Research in Brief describes the scientific methodologies used to perform a review of crime prevention programs and then discusses what research has shown to work, what it has shown not to work, and what approaches seem promising for crime prevention. The first step was to identify and review reports evaluating the effectiveness of crime…

Profiles of the 1995-96 implementation of the Stewart B. McKinney Act's Education for Homeless Children and Youth (EHCY) Programs in 37 states are presented in this document. In these 37 states, at least 173,082 homeless children and youth were served through programs funded by the McKinney Act, and at least 465 local education agencies received…

This paper discusses finding a balance for the use of tracking in school that benefits both high and low achieving students. Tracking can arguably be traced to the pervasive mythology of biological determinism and the advent of IQ testing. As time passed, schools increased the use of testing to separate students into different ability levels, but…

The Ninth Grade Restructuring Program of the Detroit (Michigan) public schools was designed to restructure the ninth grade in ways that improve academic performance, develop positive attitudes toward learning, improve the school environment, reduce the dropout rate, and increase the graduation rate of students. Features of the program were…