In a context where more than 1,000,000 American adolescents are processed by juvenile courts annually and approximately 160,000 are sent to residential placements, this paper examines "what works" and "what doesn't work" in reducing the criminal behavior of juvenile offenders and presents examples of government initiatives that have successfully…

Scholars, practice professionals, and policymakers should welcome the new era of evidence-based programming and policies, but these constituencies need to be realistic about the complexities, uncertainties, and limitations that lie beneath what could easily become a simplistic process. This paper discusses some of the requirements for the…

No Child Left Behind (NCLB), with its emphasis on standards-based accountability, has put educators under considerable pressure to improve student academic outcomes. Much of the funding for after-school programs comes from education budgets and is administered by state and local education agencies. Consequently, after-school programs are often…

We review what is known about Head Start's impacts on children and argue that the program is likely to generate benefits to participants and society as a whole that are larger than program costs. Our conclusions differ from those in some previous reviews because we use a more appropriate standard to judge program effectiveness (benefit-cost…

This paper argues that young Hispanic (or Latina/o) children (ages 3 to 8 years) should be of particular interest to policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in education. Young Hispanic children constitute an urgent demographic imperative. Young Hispanic children are not only the largest racial/ethnic group in the U.S., but also the youngest…

More than 10 million children from birth through age six in the US live in low-income families. Although large investments in early childhood intervention programs are evident, is the field fully exploiting its potential to address the diverse needs of children and families? One means of addressing this question is to focus on the efficacy of…

Over the past 30 years, the rate of childhood obesity has more than doubled for preschool children aged 2 to 5 years and adolescents aged 12 to 19 years, and it has more than tripled for children 6 to 11 years of age (Institute of Medicine, 2005). At present, approximately 9 million children over 6 years are considered obese (Institute of…

Portions of this paper were presented at a research briefing, sponsored by the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means. Results are presented from evaluations of several early intervention programs, all of which provided high quality, center-based early childhood education and…

The "No Child Left Behind Act" of 2001 crystallized the concern for accountability in education. National testing was mandated as a way to improve the "broken" educational system. Publicly funded early education programs were not spared from such testing. While the positive effects of high-quality early education on children's…