The experience of a research group in studying Neighborhood Youth Corps (NYC) programs provides the framework for a discussion of the methodological difficulties of conducting research on disadvantaged groups. However, the report does not deal with the programs and operations of NYC itself. Four problem areas are described: (1) criterion, program,…

British and U.S. preschool intervention projects are now reporting dramatic long-term follow-up findings that appear to vindicate the claim that preschool can serve as an "innoculation against failure," especially with disadvantaged children. However, important questions remain about the generalizability of these effects in other…

Arguing that summaries of 562 studies from 1985 through 1994 reveal that almost no attention is paid to the cognitive effects of Head Start programs, this report criticizes Head Start as being steadily and more generously funded without evidence that it helps children's scholastic achievements. The report criticizes available studies as practicing…

Current policy discourses on "equity" in VET tend to gloss over the nature of the socioeconomic disadvantage that underlies questions of the participation and achievement of the so-called "target equity groups." While indexes of socioeconomic disadvantage are widely applied in education, their application to VET participation…