Whither opportunity? Duncan, Greg J; Murnane, Richard J
Russell Sage Foundation,
2011, 20110901, 2011-09-00, 20110101
eBook, Book
As the incomes of affluent and poor families have diverged over the past three decades, so too has the educational performance of their children. But how exactly do the forces of rising inequality ...affect the educational attainment and life chances of low-income children? In Whither Opportunity? a distinguished team of economists, sociologists, and experts in social and education policy examines the corrosive effects of unequal family resources, disadvantaged neighborhoods, insecure labor markets, and worsening school conditions on K-12 education. This groundbreaking book illuminates the ways rising inequality is undermining one of the most important goals of public education—the ability of schools to provide children with an equal chance at academic and economic success. The most ambitious study of educational inequality to date, Whither Opportunity? analyzes how social and economic conditions surrounding schools affect school performance and children’s educational achievement. The book shows that from earliest childhood, parental investments in children’s learning affect reading, math, and other attainments later in life. Contributor Meredith Phillip finds that between birth and age six, wealthier children will have spent as many as 1,300 more hours than poor children on child enrichment activities such as music lessons, travel, and summer camp. Greg Duncan, George Farkas, and Katherine Magnuson demonstrate that a child from a poor family is two to four times as likely as a child from an affluent family to have classmates with low skills and behavior problems – attributes which have a negative effect on the learning of their fellow students. As a result of such disparities, contributor Sean Reardon finds that the gap between rich and poor children’s math and reading achievement scores is now much larger than it was fifty years ago. And such income-based gaps persist across the school years, as Martha Bailey and Sue Dynarski document in their chapter on the growing income-based gap in college completion. Whither Opportunity? also reveals the profound impact of environmental factors on children’s educational progress and schools’ functioning. Elizabeth Ananat, Anna Gassman-Pines, and Christina Gibson-Davis show that local job losses such as those caused by plant closings can lower the test scores of students with low socioeconomic status, even students whose parents have not lost their jobs. They find that community-wide stress is most likely the culprit. Analyzing the math achievement of elementary school children, Stephen Raudenbush, Marshall Jean, and Emily Art find that students learn less if they attend schools with high student turnover during the school year – a common occurrence in poor schools. And David Kirk and Robert Sampson show that teacher commitment, parental involvement, and student achievement in schools in high-crime neighborhoods all tend to be low. For generations of Americans, public education provided the springboard to upward mobility. This pioneering volume casts a stark light on the ways rising inequality may now be compromising schools’ functioning, and with it the promise of equal opportunity in America.
Children of a new world Fass, Paula S
2007, 20061201, 2006, 2006-12-01, 20070101
eBook, Book
Paula S. Fass, a pathbreaker in children's history and the history of education, turns her attention inChildren of a New Worldto the impact of globalization on children's lives, both in the United ...States and on the world stage. Globalization, privatization, the rise of the "work-centered" family, and the triumph of the unregulated marketplace, she argues, are revolutionizing the lives of children today.
Fass begins by considering the role of the school as a fundamental component of social formation, particularly in a nation of immigrants like the United States. She goes on to examine children as both creators of culture and objects of cultural concern in America, evident in the strange contemporary fear of and fascination with child abduction, child murder, and parental kidnapping. Finally, Fass moves beyond the limits of American society and brings historical issues into the present and toward the future, exploring how American historical experience can serve as a guide to contemporary globalization as well as how globalization is altering the experience of American children and redefining childhood.
Clear and scholarly, serious but witty,Children of a New Worldprovides a foundation for future historical investigations while adding to our current understanding of the nature of modern childhood, the role of education for national identity, the crisis of family life, and the influence of American concepts of childhood on the world's definitions of children's rights. As a new generation comes of age in a global world, it is a vital contribution to the study of childhood and globalization.
Preventing childhood obesity Koplan, Jeffrey; Liverman, Catharyn T; Kraak, Vivica I
2005, 20050113, 2005-01-31, 2005-01-15, 20050101
eBook, Book
Odprti dostop
Children's health has made tremendous strides over the past century. In general, life expectancy has increased by more than thirty years since 1900 and much of this improvement is due to the ...reduction of infant and early childhood mortality. Given this trajectory toward a healthier childhood, we begin the 21st-century with a shocking development?an epidemic of obesity in children and youth. The increased number of obese children throughout the U.S. during the past 25 years has led policymakers to rank it as one of the most critical public health threats of the 21st-century.
Preventing Childhood Obesity provides a broad-based examination of the nature, extent, and consequences of obesity in U.S. children and youth, including the social, environmental, medical, and dietary factors responsible for its increased prevalence. The book also offers a prevention-oriented action plan that identifies the most promising array of short-term and longer-term interventions, as well as recommendations for the roles and responsibilities of numerous stakeholders in various sectors of society to reduce its future occurrence. Preventing Childhood Obesity explores the underlying causes of this serious health problem and the actions needed to initiate, support, and sustain the societal and lifestyle changes that can reverse the trend among our children and youth.
Each year, tens of thousands of children are conceived with donated sperm or eggs, aka donated gametes. By some estimates, there are over 1 million donor-conceived people in the United States and, of ...course, many more the world over. Some know they are donor-conceived. Some don’t. Some know the identity of their donors. Others never will. Conceiving People: Identity, Genetics and Gamete Donation argues that people who plan to create a child with donated gametes should choose a donor whose identity will be made available to the resulting child. This is not because having genetic knowledge is fundamentally important. Rather, it is because donor-conceived people are likely to develop a significant interest in having genetic knowledge and parents must help satisfy their children’s significant interests. In other words: because a donor-conceived person is likely to care about having genetic knowledge, their parents should care too. Questions about what the donor-conceived should know about their genetic progenitors are hugely significant for literally millions of people, including donor-conceived people, their parents, and donors. But the practice of gamete donation also provides a vivid occasion for thinking about questions that matter to everyone. What value, if any, is there in knowing who your genetic progenitors are? To what extent are our identities bound up with knowing where we come from? What obligations do parents have to their children? And what makes someone a parent—the person responsible for lovingly raising a child—in the first place?
The past two decades have witnessed an increase in programs targeting children and youth impacted by traumatic events, with a heightened focus on ensuring that all such programs and relevant service ...systems are trauma informed. While such efforts are laudable, trauma-informed care (TIC) is defined in a number of ways, limiting evaluation of these initiatives, specifically as they relate to the potential for improved outcomes or reduced costs often used to advocate for TIC. Widespread interest in TIC, despite an apparent dearth of empirical research, served as the impetus for this special section. Our goal was to identify the most rigorous empirical studies available. These six papers were selected based on their inclusion of a definition of TIC, focus on at least one component of TIC in a child-serving system, and availability of empirical data demonstrating the effectiveness of their efforts. In addition to introducing these papers, we share preliminary data from a brief, anonymous survey of child-serving professionals across various systems and roles to obtain feedback about definitional and conceptual issues related to TIC. While this special section provides a representation of available empirical work, significant gaps between research and practice of TIC remain, with important implications for future work.
Children living in poverty are more likely to have mental health problems, and their conditions are more likely to be severe. Of the approximately 1.3 million children who were recipients of ...Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability benefits in 2013, about 50% were disabled primarily due to a mental disorder. An increase in the number of children who are recipients of SSI benefits due to mental disorders has been observed through several decades of the program beginning in 1985 and continuing through 2010. Nevertheless, less than 1% of children in the United States are recipients of SSI disability benefits for a mental disorder.
At the request of the Social Security Administration, Mental Disorders and Disability Among Low-Income Children compares national trends in the number of children with mental disorders with the trends in the number of children receiving benefits from the SSI program, and describes the possible factors that may contribute to any differences between the two groups. This report provides an overview of the current status of the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders, and the levels of impairment in the U.S. population under age 18. The report focuses on 6 mental disorders, chosen due to their prevalence and the severity of disability attributed to those disorders within the SSI disability program: attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder/conduct disorder, autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disability, learning disabilities, and mood disorders. While this report is not a comprehensive discussion of these disorders, Mental Disorders and Disability Among Low-Income Children provides the best currently available information regarding demographics, diagnosis, treatment, and expectations for the disorder time course - both the natural course and under treatment.
It has been reported that strong discomfort associated with clusters of circles and holes (trypophobia), including lotus pod seeds, manifests in individuals as young as 4 or 5 years old. This study ...investigated how the size and number of circles within clusters affected discomfort levels in adults and in children aged 4–9 years. In Experiment 1, we confirmed that the remote experimental procedure could evoke discomfort when participants were presented with cluster images. The findings reveal that children as young as 4 or 5 years old consistently experienced discomfort when rating trypophobic images, even printed images rated in real time during video calls. In Experiment 2, we explored the impact of cluster size, considering both the size and number of circles, in a remote experiment. The results indicate that discomfort tended to increase with cluster size in both children and adults, with the effect becoming more pronounced with age.
Kinship foster care involves placing children who cannot live at home in foster care with other members of their family or close network. This book sheds light on different aspects of kinship care ...development and practice. Using a 20-year longitudinal research study from Norway, this book shows the historical development of kinship care in Norway, research on kinship care, and how family life and relations are negotiated and lived in the span between private and public sphere. It includes the perspectives of the children, their parents and their relatives who have functioned as foster parents. Recognising that kinship care is complex, and needs to be understood and studied from different perspectives, the book describes, analyses and discusses a number of subjects: kinship care in a child welfare historical context, families who are part of kinship care and their perspectives, the formal frameworks around kinship care, and research approaches which have dominated research into kinship care. This book will be of interest to all scholars, students and professionals working in social work and child welfare more broadly, both in the Nordic countries and in a wider international context.
