This paper examines poverty's impact on student physical health, socioemotional health, and the brain. Further, although children spend only 20 percent of their time in school, this paper examines the school's role in student development, as well as proposes effective policies and programs that go beyond the classroom.

Data from a stratified random sample of full-year 1967-1968 and summer 1968 Head Start programs were re-analyzed to compare centers operated by local educational agencies (LEA) and community action agencies (CAA). The analyses indicated that CAA-operated programs were more likely to report parent participation in decision making and as paid staff,…