Showing papers on "Disadvantaged published in 2001"

Neighborhood disadvantage, disorder, and health.

Abstract: We examine the question of whether living in a disadvantaged neighborhood damages health, over and above the impact of personal socioeconomic characteristics. We hypothesize that (1) health correlates negatively with neighborhood disadvantage adjusting for personal disadvantage, and that (2) neighborhood disorder mediates the association, (3) partly because disorder and the fear associated with it discourage walking and (4) partly because they directly impair health. Data are from the 1995 Community, Crime, and Health survey, a probability sample of 2,482 adults in Illinois, with linked information about the respondent's census tract. We find that residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods have worse health (worse self-reported health and physical functioning and more chronic conditions) than residents of more advantaged neighborhoods. The association is mediated entirely by perceived neighborhood disorder and the resulting fear. It is not mediated by limitation of outdoor physical activity. The daily stress associated with living in a neighborhood where danger, trouble, crime and incivility are common apparently damages health. We call for a bio-demography of stress that links chronic exposure to threatening conditions faced by disadvantaged individuals in disadvantaged neighborhoods with physiological responses that may impair health.

Early childhood education programs

Abstract: Head Start is a preschool program for disadvantaged children which aims to improve their skills so that they can begin schooling on an equal footing with their more advantaged peers. Begun in 1965 as part of President Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” Head Start now serves over 800,000 children in predominantly part-day programs, almost 50 percent of eligible three and four year-old poor children (Children’s Defense Fund, 2000). Over time, federal funding has increased from $96 million in 1965 to $4.7 billion in 1999. There have been dozens of studies of Head Start and closely related preschool and early school enrichment programs. Some studies involve small-scale model programs, others evaluate large-scale public programs which are generally of somewhat lower quality than the model programs. This paper discusses what is known about these early childhood education programs: what they try to do; the extent to which they work; what can be said about their optimal timing, targeting, and content; and the circumstances in which the benefits of providing these programs—ranging from gains to the children to the value of child care provided to the parents—are likely to outweigh the costs. This review of the evidence concludes that these programs have significant short- and medium-term benefits, and that the effects are often greater for more disadvantaged children. Some of the model programs have produced exciting results in terms of improving educational attainment and earnings and reducing welfare dependency and crime. The jury is still out on Head Start, but a simple cost-benefit analysis suggests that Head Start would pay for itself in terms of

Powerlessness and the amplification of threat: Neighborhood disadvantage, disorder, and mistrust

Abstract: A theory of trust is developed and tested. The theory posits that mistrust develops in neighborhoods where resources are scarce and threat is common, and among individuals with few resources and who feel powerless to avoid or manage the threat. Perceived neighborhood disorder, common in disadvantaged neighborhoods where disadvantaged individuals live, influences mistrust directly and indirectly by increasing residents'perceptions of powerlessness which in turn amplify disorder's effect on mistrust. The hypotheses are examined using the Community, Crime, and Health data, a 1995 survey of a representative sample of 2,482 Illinois residents with linked data on neighborhoods. Net of individual disadvantage, residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods have low levels of trust as a result of high levels of disorder in their neighborhoods: People who report living in neighborhoods with high levels of crime, vandalism, graffiti, danger, noise, and drugs are more mistrusting. The sense of powerlessness, which is common in such neighborhoods, amplifies the effect of neighborhood disorder on mistrust

Social Inequality and the Reduction of Ideological Dissonance on Behalf of the System: Evidence of Enhanced System Justification among the Disadvantaged

Abstract: According to system justification theory, people are motivated to preserve the belief that existing social arrangements are fair, legitimate, and justifiable (Jost & Banaji, 1994). The strongest form of this hypothesis, which draws on the logic of cognitive dissonance theory, holds that people who are most disadvantaged by the status quo would have the greatest psychological need to reduce ideological dissonance and would therefore be most likely to support, defend, and justify existing social systems, authorities, and outcomes. Variations on this hypothesis were tested in four U.S. national survey studies. We found that: (a) low income respondents and African Americans were more likely than others to support limitations on the rights of citizens and media representatives to criticize the government (b) low income Latinos were more likely to trust in U.S. government officials and to believe that "the government is run for the benefit of all" than were high income Latinos, (c) Southerners in the U.S. were more likely to endorse meritocratic belief systems than were Northerners and poor and Southern African Americans were more likely to subscribe to meritocratic ideologies than were African Americans who were more affluent and from the North, (d) low income respondents and African Americans were more likely than others to believe that economic inequality is legitimate and necessary, and (e) stronger endorsement of meritocratic ideology was associated with greater satisfaction with one's own economic situation. Taken together, these findings provide support for the dissonance-based argument that people who suffer the most from a given state of affairs are paradoxically the least likely to question, challenge, reject, or change it. Implications for theories of system justification, cognitive dissonance, and social change are also discussed.

On the path to college: three critical tasks facing america's disadvantaged

Abstract: A middle high school student's likelihood of continuing on to college or university rests on the completion of at least three critical tasks: (a) acquiring at least minimal college qualification, (b) actually graduating from high school, and (c) applying to a 4-year college or university. Eighty-one percent of those 1988 eighth graders who completed these three tasks enrolled in college by 1994. The path to college among socioeconomically disadvantaged middle high school students can best be characterized as hazardous. By 1994, just 1 out of 10 of the original class of 1988 poor eighth graders was attending a 4-year institution. Comparative analyses of lowest and highest SES students reveal substantial differences between these two groups, favoring upper-SES individuals at each of the three tasks on the path to college. These substantial SES-gaps are reduced, if not eliminated, once a number of influential school-based and family background variables are taken into account.

URBAN POVERTY AFTER THE TRULY DISADVANTAGED : The Rediscovery of the Family, the Neighborhood, and Culture

Abstract: ▪ Abstract In what follows we critically assess a selection of the works on urban poverty that followed the publication of WJ Wilson's The Truly Disadvantaged (1987), with a particular focus on the family, the neighborhood, and culture. We frame our discussion by assessing the broad explanations of the increased concentration of poverty in urban neighborhoods characteristic of the 1970s and 1980s. Then, in the section on the family, we address the rising out-of-wedlock and disproportionately high teenage birthrates of poor urban women. Next, we critique the literature on neighborhood effects. Finally, in the discussion of culture, we examine critically the new efforts at complementing structural explanations with cultural accounts. We conclude by calling for more comparative, cross-regional, and historical studies, broader conceptions of urban poverty, and a greater focus on Latinos and other ethnic groups.

Effects of Mothers' Parental Efficacy Beliefs and Promotive Parenting Strategies on Inner-City Youth

Abstract: This study investigates the effects of parental efficacy on promotive parenting strategies, children's self-efficacy, and children's academic success in adverse environments. Data were obtained from a 1991 survey of 376 mothers, both White and Black, and their young adolescents in inner-city Philadelphia. Analyses show that beliefs in parental efficacy predict the promotive strategies of Black mothers but not those of White mothers, a difference that reflects the higher risk environments of Black families. They tend to live in more socially isolated and dangerous neighborhoods than White families. Overall, mothers' parental efficacy is a stronger predictor of children's self-efficacy and academic success in disadvantaged family and environmental contexts, such as Black single-parent households and Black families with a weak marriage, than in White families or Black families with a strong marriage. Surprisingly, mothers' efficacy beliefs but not their promotive strategies are associated with the self-effic...

Socioeconomic Disadvantage and Adolescent Women's Sexual and Reproductive Behavior: The Case of Five Developed Countries

Abstract: Context Differences among developed countries in teenagers' patterns of sexual and reproductive behavior may partly reflect differences in the extent of disadvantage. However, to date, this potential contribution has received little attention. Methods Researchers in Canada, France, Great Britain, Sweden and the United States used the most current survey and other data to study adolescent sexual and reproductive behavior. Comparisons were made within and across countries to assess the relationships between these behaviors and factors that may indicate disadvantage. Results Adolescent childbearing is more likely among women with low levels of income and education than among their better-off peers. Levels of childbearing are also strongly related to race, ethnicity and immigrant status, but these differences vary across countries. Early sexual activity has little association with income, but young women who have little education are more likely to initiate intercourse during adolescence than those who are better educated. Contraceptive use at first intercourse differs substantially according to socioeconomic status in some countries but not in others. Within countries, current contraceptive use does not differ greatly according to economic status, but at each economic level, use is higher in Great Britain than in the United States. Regardless of their socioeconomic status, U.S. women are the most likely to give birth as adolescents. In addition, larger proportions of adolescents are disadvantaged in the United States than in other developed countries. Conclusions Comparatively widespread disadvantage in the United States helps explain why U.S. teenagers have higher birthrates andpregnancy rates than those in other developed countries. Improving U.S. teenagers' sexual and reproductive behavior requires strategies to reduce the numbers of young people growing up in disadvantaged conditions and to help those who are disadvantaged overcome the obstacles they face.

Childhood poverty, early motherhood and adult social exclusion

Abstract: Childhood poverty and early parenthood are both high on the current political agenda. The key new issue that this research addresses is the relative importance of childhood poverty and of early motherhood as correlates of outcomes later in life. How far are the 'effects' of early motherhood on later outcomes due to childhood precursors, especially experience of childhood poverty? Subsidiary questions relate to the magnitude of these associations, the particular levels of childhood poverty that prove most critical, and whether, as often assumed, only teenage mothers are subsequently disadvantaged, or are those who have their first birth in their early twenties similarly disadvantaged? The source of data for this study is the National Child Development Study. We examine outcomes at age 33 for several domains of adult social exclusion: welfare, socio-economic, physical health, emotional well-being and demographic behaviour. We control for a wide range of childhood factors: poverty; social class of origin and of father; mother's and father's school leaving age; family structure; housing tenure; mother's and father's interest in education; personality attributes; performance on educational tests; and contact with the police by age 16. There are clear associations for the adult outcomes with age at first birth, even after controlling for childhood poverty and the other childhood background factors. Moreover, we demonstrate that the widest gulf in adult outcomes occurs for those who enter motherhood early (before age 23), though further reinforced by teenage motherhood for most adult outcomes. We also show that any experience of childhood poverty is clearly associated with adverse outcomes in adulthood, with reinforcement for higher levels of childhood poverty for a few outcomes.

A Strategic Approach to Multistakeholder Negotiations

Abstract: Environment and development practitioners increasingly are interested in identifying methods, institutional arrangements and policy environments that promote negotiations among natural resource stakeholders leading to collective action and, it is hoped, sustainable resource management. Yet the implications of negotiations for disadvantaged groups of people are seldom critically examined. We draw attention to such implications by examining different theoretical foundations for multistakeholder negotiations and linking these to practical problems for disadvantaged groups. We argue that negotiations based on an unhealthy combination of communicative rationality and liberal pluralism, which underplays or seeks to neutralize differences among stakeholders, poses considerable risks for disadvantaged groups. We suggest that negotiations influenced by radical pluralist and feminist poststructuralist thought, which emphasize strategic behaviour and selective alliance-building, promise better outcomes for disadvantaged groups in most cases, particularly on the scale and in the historical contexts in which negotiations over forest management usually take place.

The role of public social control in urban neighborhoods: a multilevel analysis of victimization risk*

Abstract: This study introduces public social control into multilevel victimization research by investigating its impact on household and personal victimization risk for residents across 60 urban neighborhoods. Public social control refers to the ability of neighborhoods to secure external resources necessary for the reduction of crime and victimization. I find that living in neighborhoods with high levels of public social control reduces an individual's likelihood of victimization, especially in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Given the important role that residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods can play in securing public social control, this contingent finding suggests that disadvantaged neighborhoods can be politically viable contexts.

Critical Literacy Finds a "Place": Writing and Social Action in a Low-Income Australian Grade 2/3 Classroom

Abstract: In a study of socioeconomically disadvantaged children's acquisition of school literacies, a university research team investigated how a group of teachers negotiated critical literacies and explored notions of social power with elementary children in a suburban school located in an area of high poverty. Here we focus on a grade 2/3 classroom where the teacher and children became involved in a local urban renewal project and on how in the process the children wrote about place and power. Using the students' concerns about their neighborhood, the teacher engaged her class in a critical literacy project that not only involved a complex set of literate practices but also taught the children about power and the possibilities for local civic action. In particular, we discuss examples of children's drawing and writing about their neighborhoods and their lives. We explore how children's writing and drawing might be key elements in developing "critical literacies" in elementary school settings. We consider how such classroom writing can be a mediator of emotions, intellectual and academic learning, social practice, and political activism.

Using matching estimators to evaluate alternative youth employment programs: Evidence from France, 1986–1988

Abstract: In this paper we apply the statistical framework recently proposed by (Imbens 1999) and (Lechner 1999) to identify the causal effects of multiple treatments under the conditional independence assumption. We show that under this assumption, matching with respect to the ratio of the scores allows to estimate nonparametrically the average conditional treatment effect for any pair of treatments. Consequently it is possible to estimate this effect by implementing non-parametric matching estimators, which were recently studied by Heckman, Ichimura, Smith and Todd (1998) and (Heckman, Ichimura and Todd (1998)). The application concerns the youth employment programs which were set up in France during the eighties to improve the labour market prospects of the most disadvantaged and unskilled young workers. The empirical analysis makes use of nonexperimental longitudinal micro data collected by INSEE (Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques, Paris) from 1986 to 1988.

Does Neighborhood Matter? Family, Neighborhood, and School Influences on Eighth-Grade Mathematics Achievement

Abstract: This paper explores ways by which neighborhoods and schools may influence the mathematics achievement of eighth grade students. We use data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS: 88) and combine it with U.S. Census data at the level of students' residential zip codes. These data allow us to analyze simultaneously all aspects of students' lives: their families, neighborhoods, and schools. Our findings suggest that “bringing neighborhood in” makes sense for this line of research. Disadvantages at the neighborhood and school level may place students at risk, by influencing students and their achievement in mathematics directly and indirectly. We find that both disadvantaged neighborhoods and disadvantaged schools are directly associated with lower levels of mathematics achievement, even after controlling for individual level background variables. Disadvantaged neighborhoods are also indirectly associated with students' mathematics achievement, by weakening parents' ability to help c...

Can Community Policing Help The Truly Disadvantaged

Abstract: Community policing advocates argue that reforms designed to break down barriers between police and citizens can produce favorable outcomes. The authors test a series of related hypotheses in a multivariate context by using four independent data sources— community surveys, patrol officer interviews, Census Bureau, and police crime records— to estimate hierarchical linear models. The results show that citizens who perceive police partnerships favorably report fewer problems related to incivilities and also express higher levels of safety. Findings from models including cross-level interaction terms indicate that the positive outcomes associated with police partnerships are not restricted to citizens residing in affluent neighborhoods. In our ecological analysis, we find that police-community collaboration is associated with higher aggregate quality of life assessments and that community policing as a form of public social control mediates the adverse effects of concentrated disadvantage. The findings support social-psychological and ecological theories on which community policing practices are partially based.

Youth unemployment and employment policy: a global perspective

Abstract: This study discusses in depth the youth unemployment "problem" and examines the various policy responses to it, including education and training, and active labour market policy. It emphasizes the need for adequate labour market information, policy monitoring and programme evaluation to help provide more and better-quality jobs for young people - while also offering specific recommendations and guidelines for this age group in industrialized, transition and developing countries, While analysing the characteristics, causes and consequences of youth unemployment, the study explores the nature of the youth labour market and how it differs from the labour market for other workers. It looks at minimum wages, as well as the pivotal role of education and training systems. It also identifies vital ILO instruments concerned with young people and examines the broader international policy challenges faced by many countries around the world. In particular, it discusses the failure of many countries to integrate young people into good, quality employment. Active labour market policies, both successful and unsuccessful, are evaluated, and the book looks closely at policies promoting wage employment, self-employment and programmes aimed at disadvantaged young people. The book reveals how youth unemployment is first and foremost a consequence of poor macroeconomic performance and suggests ways in which countries can formulate coordinated youth employment policies according to the state of their economies. In contrast to prevalent approaches in the literature, it emphasizes the need to go beyond a purely supply-side response. The study includes strategies for involving governments, as well as employers' and workers' organizations, in tackling youth unemployment and providing alternatives.

The Visibility of Illicit Drugs: Implications for Community-based Drug Control Strategies.

Abstract: Objectives. This study examined differences between the visibility of drugs and drug use in more than 2100 neighborhoods, challenging an assumption about drug use in poor, minority, and urban communities. Methods. A telephone survey assessed substance use and attitudes across 41 communities in an evaluation of a national community-based demand reduction program. Three waves of data were collected from more than 42 000 respondents. Results. Measures of neighborhood disadvantage, population density, and proportion of minority residents explained more than 57% of the variance between census tracts in visibility of drug sales but less than 10% of tract-to-tract variance in drug use. Visible drug sales were 6.3 times more likely to be reported in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods than in the least disadvantaged, while illicit drug use was only 1.3 times more likely. Conclusions. The most disadvantaged neighborhoods have the most visible drug problems, but drug use is nearly equally distributed across all co...

Living with uncertainty : gender, livelihoods and pro-poor growth in rural sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract: This paper provides a gender perspective on recent arguments about the link between economic growth and poverty reduction in rural sub-Saharan Africa. Recent research from the African context, which adopts a 'bargaining' approach in place of the earlier 'unified' approach to the study of household economics, has suggested that gender relations within the household are a major factor constraining women's productivity in African agriculture and leading to various types of allocational inefficiency. The paper suggests that many of these studies overlook the fact that households are arenas of joint, as well as competing, interests, and may overstate the extent to which gender conflict underlies observed low productivity. A livelihoods approach, which takes account of the key objectives which characterise households in poor, agrarian environments, and the multiplicity of ways in which they seek to attain these objectives, provides a richer and more nuanced account of nature of poverty in the region. Using such an approach, the paper discusses the role of households and families in an environment characterised by pervasive uncertainty and notes the various ways in which women are disadvantaged, relative to men, in the pursuit of security of livelihoods. These include both intra-household inequalities, but also inequalities generated by biases in the wider institutional arena. The paper concludes by noting some of the ways in which addressing these gendered constraints might contribute to the long-term effectiveness of pro-poor growth strategies as well as to the goal of greater gender equity.

Transport, the Environment and Social Exclusion

Abstract: View shopping cart Transport, the environment and social exclusion Karen Lucas, Tim Grosvenor and Roona Simpson In the last 20 years there has been a dramatic growth in both vehicle numbers and the distances driven in all industrialised societies, and car-ownership is now the norm for most households. Ever-rising car-ownership has led to concern about the harmful effects of transport on the natural environment and quality of life. Nevertheless, this study suggests that policies which aim to mitigate the environmental impacts of traffic may sometimes come into conflict with the social inclusion of low-income and other disadvantaged groups and communities. This study analyses current evidence on the opinions and perspectives, behaviour and expenditure patterns of low-income and other disadvantaged groups on transport and travel. In addition, it reports on qualitative case study research in five different locations in the UK. It explores to what extent the availability and affordability of local services influences people’s decisions about travel, the distances people are prepared to travel to reach services, and the impact of reliability and availability of current transport provision. The particular transport needs of some low-income groups (for example women shift-workers) and some areas (rural or isolated homes) are also explored. The researchers conclude that discouraging car use will not be effective unless adequate public transport measures are put into place first.

'But You Aren't White:' Racial Perceptions and Service-Learning

Abstract: Much of the writing on service-learning has documented how service-learning affects students' perceptions of "the other." Service-learning, it is argued, makes students more "ethically committed" and interested in democracy (Cooper & Julier, 1997), provides students with an opportunity to explore multiculturalism (Rhoads, 1998), and engages students in the work of the "public intellectual" (Cushman, 1999). These are all important and thoughtful goals for service-learning, but much of the writing focuses on the abstract and the ideal, what happens in our service-learning classes on our best teaching days with the students who "get it." In arguing for service-learning, we often gloss over the difficulties that students have performing service in places where they are uncomfortable, where poverty is not pretty or idealized. The service-learning student can feel disconnected, angry, frustrated, and recognize, for the first time, that service-learning is not an experience that immediately makes one "feel good." The faculty member teaching service-learning can also feel angry and frustrated, and if she is committed to multicultural education, recognize, for the first time, that finding ways to talk about race and class is in some ways more difficult when students are confronted with lived race and class differences than when facing race and class differences as represented in textbooks and readings. This article explores one aspect of what can make my students uncomfortable--race. While talking about race is always uncomfortable, particularly for white people, it is absolutely crucial that race be addressed in service-learning courses, and especially in service-learning courses where mostly white students perform service among mostly people of color. Well-intentioned white people, both students and faculty, must learn racial awareness, and middle class people of all races must think about how class affects the service situation. It is absolutely important to talk about the intersections of race, class, and service in order to prevent service-learning from replicating the power imbalances and economic injustices that create the need for service-learning in the first place. In what follows I unpack how race and class affected some of my service-learning students, and discuss how teaching about race, particularly whiteness within the course, made it easier for students to talk with one another about race and class and to problematize their own agendas for social justice. In the fall of 2000, through a small grant, our Writing Center began reaching out to the community through intensive work with a local, Catholic middle school, Our Mother of Sorrows (OMS). This work continued the long history with OMS that our Faith/Justice Institute began. (1) In my class, rather than tutoring in the university Writing Center, each tutor worked on a weekly basis with a fifth or a sixth grader at OMS on his or her writing. The tutoring class had 14 students: 4 students of color (3 African American women and 1 Filipino American man) and 10 white women. Each week, the tutors took field notes on their experiences at OMS, and during the second half of the semester, I went out with the students to tutor and observe the tutoring. OMS is located in an inner city, urban community, a five-minute drive from our university. The OMS brochure provided for prospective parents states that it "provide[s] hope and quality education for hundreds of disadvantaged youth in our ... community." 75% of the students who attend OMS are at or below the poverty level. What the OMS brochure does not say is that virtually all of the students who attend are African American. The local Jesuit University where I teach has a long commitment to social justice work and the Jesuit ideals of "men and women for others." The University students, in contrast with the students who attend OMS, are 92% white and 2.4% are African American. The average income of families who send their children to my university is $73,000 per year. …

Pluralism and the less powerful: accommodating multiple interests in local forest management

Abstract: Forest decision-making is becoming more pluralistic. As the numbers of groups involved in forest decisions have increased, concern about how to accommodate multiple interests has similarly burgeoned. This article presents pluralism as a foundation for understanding how less powerful group's interests can be accommodated. It examines approaches to how interests are defined, communicated and coordinated to review the scope of possibilities for improving pluralism. Experience with these methods suggests that accommodation that genuinely reflects the interests of disadvantaged groups is most likely to occur where state and civil society governance institutions provide opportunities for 1) mutual learning among interest groups, 2) iterative cycles of bounded conflict and cooperation 3) public, transparent decision-making 4) checks and balances in decision-making among groups and 5) the provision of capacity building or political alliances for disadvantaged interest groups. High transaction costs, persistent injustices and impossibility of neutral facilitation pose contradictions to the possibilities of achieving accommodation and need to be recognized and negotiated.

Schooling and violence in South Africa: Creating a safer school

Abstract: The legacy of the brutality of apartheid in South Africa is a violent social context characterized by high levels of unemployment, extremes of wealth and poverty, continuing racism, the easy availability of guns and patriarchal values and behaviours. Violent crime is widespread in South Africa and schools in disadvantaged areas suffer from serious problems of gang-related crime. This article discusses a pilot project with a cluster of three schools in Durban which investigated whether intervention and training coupled with mutual support between cooperating schools, and between schools and the police, can reduce incidents of crime and violence. The idea behind the project was to see whether a small-scale, simple and inexpensive intervention could help to improve security in a relatively short time span. The article describes the nature of the project, evaluates its outcomes and discusses emergent issues for South African education. The overall conclusion stemming from the project is that South African sch...

Students' Use of Time Outside of School: A Case for After School Programs for Urban Middle School Youth

Abstract: Students in 4 inner-city middle schools serving mostly (90.9%) economically disadvantaged, minority youth were asked how they spend their time after school and on weekends. Analysis of responses from 1583 students revealed that the vast majority did not participate in after-school programs (77.2%) or lessons of any kind (86.5%). Students reported extensive time spent watching television or hanging out with friends. Weekends presented a similar pattern of unstructured social activity with even more television viewing and considerably less homework. Four-way ANOVAs of 13 composite time measures for a week revealed no significant school differences, only 2 significant grade differences, but several interesting and highly significant differences by sex and by race. Implications for designing after school programs are discussed in light of the students' highly unproductive use of time outside of school.

Women, Work, and Learning.

Abstract: Women are disadvantaged when it comes to opportunity and learning. Adult educators can take steps to begin changing women's secondary status in the workplace.

Why Public Schools Lose Teachers

Abstract: Many school districts experience difficulties attracting and retaining teachers, and the impending retirement of a substantial fraction of public school teachers raises the specter of severe shortages in some public schools Schools in urban areas serving economically disadvantaged and minority students appear particularly vulnerable This paper investigates those factors that affect the probabilities that teachers switch schools or exit the public schools entirely The results indicate that teacher mobility is much more strongly related to characteristics of the students, particularly race and achievement, than to salary, although salary exerts a modest impact once compensating differentials are taken into account

Seeing the Invisible: Children and young people affected by disability

Abstract: This paper presents a brief review of literature relating to children in families with a disabled member, including the 'young carers' and disability studies literature, and relevant works from the social psychology and sociology of childhood. Key themes identified in the literature are then illustrated by findings from two exploratory research studies that sought to explore the experiences and service needs of children in families with a disabled member, within two Scottish areas. The authors suggest that, although young people affected by disability in the family, including young carers, face significant problems, particularly in socially disadvantaged areas, there are other issues that need to be addressed. Alternative conceptual frameworks are proposed, which challenge the dominance of the young carers research paradigm.

Youth Development in Community Settings: Challenges to Our Field and Our Approach

Abstract: Youth policy in the United States historically has been characterized by a fragmented set of programs with no center. No single entity addresses youth issues holistically at the national level. The recent outbreak of youth homicides has brought renewed attention to juvenile crime; national reports on increased drug use have led to political finger pointing and new commissions; and ongoing debates about public education in economically disadvantaged communities have generated what most think are simplistic funding and management fixes.