This paper estimates the effect of the childhood environment on a large array of social and economic outcomes lasting almost 60 years, for both the affected cohorts and for their children. To do this, we exploit a natural experiment provided by the 1949 Magic Carpet operation, where over 50,000 Yemenite immigrants were airlifted to Israel. The…

Philippe Bourgois, who has spent his career studying some of America's roughest neighborhoods and subcultures, got an unusually harsh welcome to his new hometown: Last May, during a trip to North Philly to make contact with some drug dealers, he got caught up in a police raid. The arrest was Bourgois's first, though hardly his first brush with…

These "Stories From the Field" describe five Wallace-funded programs working to expand learning and enrichment for disadvantaged children, so they can benefit from the types of opportunities their wealthier counterparts have access to, from homework help to swimming classes. The report details each program's approach, successes and…

Low-attaining schools have been targeted by government for closure and transformation into academies. This article argues that opposition to academies is necessary but not sufficient. It is vital to do more than simply defend the status quo. In the city of Leicester an alternative vision for high-quality education, local authority led and grounded…

Play is a great equalizer. It is a universal, natural human pursuit. It need not--and should not--be based on or require expensive toys. Instead, children need an atmosphere in which exploration and play are valued and encouraged, a print-rich environment in which books--these can be borrowed from a library--encourage verbal skills; materials…

The transformations in Russian society that took place in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century led to a rapid rise in social and economic differentiation. According to official data, the income gap between the 10 percent most-well-off and the 10 percent least-well-off families (the capital coefficient) rose to 14.8 times in…

If people really want to make a difference in the lives of those living with war or poverty, globally, the single most important thing that they can do is to support education. This support is not limited to initiatives that promote education at the primary and secondary levels in developing countries, but is also directed at Canadian students of…

This article features Ruth Wright Hayre, Philadelphia's first black high school teacher and principal whose work at William Penn High School for Girls became a model for counseling and motivation programs at other majority-black high schools in Philadelphia, expanding educational and career opportunities for thousands of "able" students.…

The year 2006 marked the 30th anniversary of the publication of Michael Rutter and Nicola Madge's Cycles of Disadvantage (1976). As such, it provides an opportunity to take stock of debates over an alleged cycle of deprivation, both in the 1970s, and more recently. This article seeks to use historical methods in order to outline some areas in…

Twenty-five years ago, the still-resonant report "A Nation at Risk" urged schools to add more time--an hour to the usual six hour day and 20-40 days to the typical 180-day ear--to ward off a "rising tide of mediocrity" in American education. Today, city, school, state, and national leaders are engaged in a renewed effort to do…

The current era of neoliberal capitalism has witnessed the domination of public education by business interests which openly promote the spirit of competition among schools, educators and students through a policy of high stakes accountability for immediately measurable educational outcomes. In the USA, this policy proposes to make teacher…

Thanet suffers from severe deprivation, mainly driven by socio-economic factors. Efforts to remediate this through economic regeneration plans have largely been unsuccessful, while a combination of selective and denominational education creates and maintains a gradient of disadvantage that mainly impacts upon already-deprived young people. Some of…

This article deals with the current situation of the Australian education system--particularly the public schools in disadvantaged areas. Research undertaken in the last decade show that while Australia has developed intensively in economic terms in the last ten years, inequality has spread nonetheless. Furthermore, there are legal barriers for…

In this monograph, the authors have brought the findings of the English and Romanian Adoptee (ERA) study up to age 15 years and, in so doing, have focused especially on the question of whether there are deprivation-specific psychological patterns (DSPs) that differ meaningfully from other forms of psychopathology. For this purpose, their main…

The Fresno-Long Beach Learning Partnership is a collaboration that aims to improve student outcomes, accelerate achievement for all students, and close achievement gaps by capitalizing on shared systemic capacity-building across two high-need districts. The Partnership is a joint effort of the third- and fourth-largest districts in California to…