The accepted wisdom is that private schools serve the privileged. Everyone else, especially the poor, requires public school. The poor, so this logic goes, needs government assistance if they are to get a good education, which helps explain why, in the United States, many school choice enthusiasts believe that the only way the poor can get the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the risk of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts and school dropout among youth with poor reading in comparison to youth with typical reading (n = 188) recruited from public schools at the age of 15. In a prospective naturalistic study, youth and parents participated in repeated research assessments to…

Six weeks of field research on 14 poor youth who sell services or products on the opulent Paulista Avenue in Sao Paulo, Brazil, explored their work, play, aspirations and childhood outcomes. Comparing the 12 younger children to the two older youth workers who supervised them and to the few Brazilian longitudinal accounts of street youth, the…

This article draws from research conducted with poor and working-class youth in California attending schools that suffer from structural disrepair, high rates of unqualified teachers, high teacher turnover rates, and inadequate books and instructional materials. Arguing that such schools accomplish more than simple reproduction of class and…

Significant resources have been directed at understanding and alleviating the achievement gap in education. Most programs focused on this aim rely on a top-down approach, including funding for infrastructure improvement, curriculum development, class size, and teacher salaries. This article presents findings from a randomized field trial that…

Like all politics, adult and continuing education is local. Future directions for the field and its national associations should benefit local programs and the adult learners they serve. This column explores features of collaboration that could strengthen educational opportunities for economically disadvantaged adults. The foregoing ideas about…

This article profiles Elizabeth Gurney Fry, an English prison reformer, social reformer and philanthropist. Born on May 21, 1780, into a wealthy and prominent Quaker family in Norwich, England, Elizabeth Gurney was the third of twelve children born to John and Catherine Gurney. As Elizabeth was growing and struggling with the meaning of her life,…

This paper explores the issue of how a country for which the prioritization of public spending towards poverty reduction is a key policy concern can monitor the distributional effects of public spending. Employing standard benefit-incidence analysis, this paper empirically examines how public education spending is currently distributed in Yemen.…

Gerontological studies on financial satisfaction have been limited by the dearth of longitudinal research and the lack of research that includes the concept of poverty. In order to bridge these gaps, this longitudinal study examines and compares the intracohort and intercohort effects on financial satisfaction trends by poverty status among…

Increasingly national statistical agencies are being called upon to provide high quality data on a regular basis, to be used by governments for evidence-based policy development. Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) give impetus to this, and bring a prerequisite for comprehensive "poverty diagnosis." Often the data that are required…

After violence in poor immigrant neighborhoods shook the country last year, France responded by focusing more resources on schools facing the most pressing disadvantages. This article discusses on a project dubbed as "ambition reussite" or ambition success, which refocuses the extra resources granted to needy schools under France's…

Since 1990, the privately organized Teach For America has deployed more than 10,000 graduates to disadvantaged schools plagued by teacher shortages. The recruits take part in five-week summer institutes that include four weeks of student teaching. Because states have begun stepping up their requirements for Teach For America participants, most…

The study presented in this article focuses on strategic planning in developing countries, drawing on the author's experiences in a dozen developing countries in Asia and Africa and focus groups in three of those countries: Afghanistan, Madagascar, and South Africa. It looks at the special challenges faced by planners in developing countries and…

Researchers over the past two decades have increasingly recognized the importance of neighborhood contexts for youth development. For example, living in a disadvantaged neighborhood has been associated with a wide range of negative outcomes throughout the early years of the life course. However, neighborhoods likely have very different effects,…

It is difficult to know whether widening access to schools which provide a more academically oriented general education makes a difference to average educational achievement. We make use of reforms affecting admission to the "high ability" track in Northern Ireland, but not England. The comparison of educational outcomes between Northern…