This paper focuses on why metropolitan areas vary in their capacity to translate generally high employment rates into economic opportunity for the disadvantaged. Data come from the Urban Institute's Urban Underclass Database, which includes poverty and employment data for 1980 and 1990 for the 100 largest metropolitan areas down to the Census…

Describes how Puerto Rico's teenage tutor, Jorge Aneudy Villalba, leads a children's learning crusade through an urban desert of poverty and despair, determined to prove the kids from the projects can make their own future. (Author/EV)

Discussed here is Christopher Jenck's book, Inequality. Topics addressed are massive funding, quality of life, small social effects, and diverse standards. [Available from Publications Branch, Education Department of Victoria, 234 Queensberry Street, Carlton 3053, Victoria, Australia]. (AM)

Describes how in one of Miami's toughest neighborhoods, a survivor of those streets came back to help others because "kids' lives are at stake." Explores Principal Gallon's efforts to offer education as an option beyond poverty and prison. (EV)

Suggests the effects of poverty may be more debilitating on rural youth than on urban youth due to differences in background, i.e., lower educational level of parents, lower family income, cultural isolation, fewer social services, and marriage at an earlier age. Discusses health problems, housing inadequacies, and fatherless families. (AH)

Suggests that the terms and methods used for research on cultural disadvantage rest upon shaky foundations and lead to the false conclusion that schools can do little or nothing to outweigh the disadvantages of a poor, culturally deprived home environment. [Available from Publications Branch, Education Department of Victoria, 234 Queensberry…

The educational deficiencies of disadvantaged secondary students can be realistically overcome through a comprehensive program. First, the educational package must include an individualized educational plan that focuses on resolving each student's specific difficulties. Second, the package must include a mastery-based instructional program. The…

Asks three questions relating level of academic achievement and level of relative deprivation experienced by various groups of adolescents in Latvia to self-concept. Finds that while differences associated with differential achievement exist across a wide range of self-evaluation measures, the measures of deprivation did not show an equivalent…

Draws on ethnographic research to examine the effect of unsuitable housing for the long-term capacity of children to break out of poverty. Presents case studies of three young children (4 to 9 years old) to clarify the connections between housing, parental behavior and the children's sense of identity, trust, autonomy, competence and general…

Examines the participation of Blacks, Anglos, and Mexican Americans in adult basic education programs in Texas in terms of two opposing views which attribute poverty to the debilitating cultural characteristics of the poor or to the powerless position of the poor in an exploitative social structure. (Author/MK)

This study examined the impact of child maltreatment and age on 76 school children living in poverty. Both maltreated and nonmaltreated children exhibited maladaptive motivational orientation toward academic work, suggesting that threats to scholastic functioning reside more within the ecology of poverty than in maltreatment. Age differences were…

"ENGLISH AND THE DISADVANTAGED," EDITED BY EDWARD FAGAN (TE 000 504) IS THE PRODUCT OF A 1965 NDEA SUMMER INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY IN ENGLISH FOR DISADVANTAGED YOUTH. THE BOOK REPRESENTS AN EXCELLENT EXAMPLE OF WHAT CAN HAPPEN WHEN TEACHERS ARE ALLOWED TO WORK WITH A VARIETY OF UNIVERSITY SPECIALISTS TO DEVELOP NEW ATTITUDES, PLANS,…

This study compared the pre-college experiences reported by University freshmen receiving financial aid and those of students not identified as being on one of the financial aid programs. Information was collected through a pre-college experience inventory completed by freshmen. The average student not on financial aid had traveled more, was more…

Does persistent adversity over time have effects on children's behavior beyond the effects of intermittent or concurrent adversity? This study examined the relations between school behavior in 5th grade (mean age = 11 years 0 months) and indexes representing persistent poverty and contextual risk. The indexes described 2-year intervals of family…

The author initially identifies what is meant by Appalachia, its geography its resources, and its cultural, educational and economic disadvantagement. The priorities of the Appalachian Regional Commission established in 1965, are listed: (1) interstate highway corridors; (2) the furtherance of career exploration and orientation programs in upper…