This document examines strategies for preventing working families and disadvantaged youth from needing cash assistance and becoming dependent on welfare. The document begins with a brief discussion of the tenuous nature of the boundary between families who need public assistance and families who don't and factors contributing to welfare…

This book outlines challenges involved in ensuring that teacher training becomes the gateway to implementation of appropriate strategies for students to achieve and for managing the problems of authority, discipline, and aggressive behavior. The six chapters examine: (1) "Teaching in Schools or Classes Considered Difficult: A Contemporary…

This paper examines the latest elementary, middle school, and district level Maryland student achievement and teacher experience data to argue that schools today are segregated not only along student backgrounds, but also along teacher expertise. The very students who need school the most to break out of the intergenerational cycle of poverty and…

This is the third in a series of reports published by Universities UK and the Standing Conference of Principals (SCOP) charting the development of widening participation activity across the UK higher education sector. The study analyses 34 in-depth case studies (including a re-examination of the 23 previous case studies from the 1998 and 2002…

Since it began in 1965, Head Start has been the cornerstone of the nation's services for low-income children and their families. A substantial research base has been attached to Head Start, providing information about the program's overall accomplishments and directions about ways to improve services for young children. American Indian and Alaska…

Many disadvantaged students show incipient excellence underlying perceived errors in literacy performance. The paper examines research on helping teachers think more generatively about increasingly diverse student populations. Preservice teachers can be taught to handle multicultural classrooms by interpreting problematic student performance in…

Examines aspects of the structural and regulatory environment of schools to identify features associated with higher levels of engagement among at-risk eighth graders. Results from 6,488 at-risk students (about 33% were Hispanic American, 28% were African American, and 39% were white) support the importance of school characteristics in student…

Educators often ignore the political requirements of urban reform in their focus on the research and models that guide it. Conversely, political scientists frequently miss the differences among reforms in their focus on coalitions and resources. Integrating Clarence N. Stone's concept of "civic capacity" with an educator's view of reform…

This paper describes the programs at the University of Kansas (UK) School of Education to encourage diversity. The TRIO programs, which include a regular Upward Bound program, an Upward Bound Math and Science Center, an Educational Talent Search, and a McNair Scholars Program, report to the associate dean for teacher education and play a key role…

A study examined the vocational guidance needs of young people in Greece. Available literature on the following topics was reviewed: transitions of young people to economically active life; available vocational guidance services; transitions of youth from education to work; youths who abandon compulsory education; and young women with…

Work preparation should provide adequate qualifications for sustained labor market participation and lifelong learning that lead to economic self-sufficiency and positive engagement as family members and citizens. Five barriers to productive transitions confront disadvantaged urban youth: changing structure of employment opportunity; skills…

This report traces the history of the collection of programs for disadvantaged students known as the TRIO programs and federal student financial aid policies, and finds that national efforts to equalize college opportunities have been losing ground for the past 15 years. The report cites, for example, a study showing that in 1994 a student from a…

These conference proceedings contain abstracts of papers or complete papers that were submitted for presentation, along with descriptions of all workshops from a conference on reaching families and youths who have limited resources. The following are included: "Volunteerism and Limited Resource Audiences" (Safrit, Smith); "Cultural Do's and…

Critics of the Federal Title I and Chapter 1 compensatory education programs to increase the academic skills of disadvantaged children suggest that the return for the Federal investment has been small and that designers have not created programs that work. When the compensatory education programs were conceived, their promise was immense. During…

Prepared by the national professional association of education reporters, this publication contains five articles that emphasize stories about mothers' crucial roles in their children's literacy. Reporters in five different parts of the United States sought out and interviewed young mothers with school-age children. "An Overview: Mothers'…