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We leverage data on 1,857 families in 140 rural cocoa-growing communities of Côte d'Ivoire to report on child work activities and schooling decisions. We distinguish between unpaid domestic labor and unpaid agricultural child labor activities reported by children in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that more than 80% of children participate in at least one household work activity and more than 50% in at least one agricultural work activity, with differences between boys and girls. Older boys performed more unpaid agricultural work activities, and girls performed more domestic work activities. Thirty-five percent of children were engaged in unpaid agricultural child labor, a rate similar to a national estimate of child labor in cocoa-growing communities of Côte d'Ivoire in 2018/19. Agricultural child labor and schooling are predicted by a child's age and gender, household factors such as parental age, family size, multidimensional poverty, and community factors, especially community-level child labor rates. Social protection and education programs targeting older boys could improve their schooling outcomes and reduce agricultural child labor. Likewise, addressing acute poverty with multifaceted programs reducing consumption-based poverty, poor parental education, and improving community infrastructures could reduce child labor.

A very small number of young people enter youth custody between age 16 and 18 (about 4 in 1000 males), yet the consequences are severe. They spend an average of 7 months in youth custody and such incarceration has been related to negative outcomes in the longer term even if they can establish themselves in the labour market. In this paper, we evaluate whether there is a relationship between GCSE qualifications in English and maths and the probability of youth custody using administrative data in England. We are hindered in this because the majority of young people who end up in youth custody are not entered or fail their GCSEs in these subjects. Although regression results are consistent with educational achievement being a factor in why people end up in youth custody, they strongly suggest that both non-entry/low achievement and youth custody are correlated with severe vulnerabilities which are partially picked up by the explanatory variables available in administrative data (in particular indicators for special needs, disadvantage and being from some ethnic minority groups). Another interesting insight is that for many, problems only emerge (or at least become evident) in early or middle adolescence. [This paper forms part of a larger project funded by the Nuffield Foundation "Youth custody: Educational influences and labour market consequences."]

Four-day school weeks have proliferated across the United States in recent years, reaching over 650 public school districts in 24 states as of 2019, but little is known about the effects of the four-day school week on high school students. This study uses district-level panel data from Oklahoma and a difference-in-differences research design to provide the first estimates of the causal effect of the four-day school week on high school students' ACT scores, attendance, and disciplinary incidents during school. Results indicate that four-day school weeks decrease per-pupil bullying incidents by approximately 31% and per-pupil fighting incidents by approximately 27%, but have no detectable effect on other incident types, ACT scores, or attendance.

Using value-added models, we find that high schools impact students' self-reported socio-emotional development (SED) by enhancing social well-being and promoting hard work. Conditional on schools' test score impacts, schools that improve SED, reduce school-based arrests, and increase high-school completion, college-going, and college persistence. Schools that improve social well-being have larger effects on attendance and behavioral infractions in high school, while those that promote hard work have larger effects on GPA. Results suggest that adolescence can be a formative period for socio-emotional growth, high-school impacts on SED can be captured using self-report surveys, and SED can be fostered by schools to improve longer-run outcomes. These findings are robust to tests for plausible forms of selection.

Exposure to stressful life experiences during childhood, such as food insecurity, can have negative consequences for attainment later in life. The developmental timing of stressful events and how they influence outcomes over the life course is a critical area of research. Indeed, a more comprehensive understanding of the latter life consequences of childhood food insecurity could guide policy-makers in designing more effective social policies to reduce the severity of the poor life outcomes. This project uses data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to estimate the young adult impacts (as late as age 25) of food insecurity experienced in discrete childhood stages -- middle childhood (ages 5-10), early adolescence (ages 11-14), and middle adolescence (ages 15-18). It aims to identify which childhood stage-specific effects of food insecurity are most important to five young adult outcomes in two main areas -- risky sexual behaviors and criminal justice involvement. Results provide consistent evidence that the mean food security scores in middle childhood are associated with the criminal justice involvement outcome. The results are less consistent with the sexual risk taking outcomes. Middle childhood food insecurity is associated with the number of sexual partners in young adulthood, while early adolescent food insecurity is associated with the number of children in young adulthood. Results indicate that male respondents appear to be more sensitive to food insecurity than females.

In this report we present results from our study of the effect of SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] and WIC [Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children] participation during childhood on food insecurity risk in young adulthood. We also examined the effect of parental nutritional knowledge and childhood food involvement on food insecurity in young adulthood. We used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Original Childhood Development Supplement. Our balanced panel (n=1,305) was comprised of individuals who were 0-12 years old in 1997, had data on SNAP and income from their year of birth through 2015, food insecurity data in 2015/2017, and had moved out of their parents' home and started their own household prior to 2015. We estimated logistic models using sample, cluster and strata weights to generate nationally representative results. We find a small, but non-statistically significant effect of SNAP and WIC participation during childhood on odds of being food insecure during young adulthood. When examining change in food security from 1999-2015, we find that participation in SNAP during ages 0-5 years (OR 2.36, 95% CI: 0.99, 5.61), and during ages 12-18 years (OR 2.68, 95% CI: 1.09, 6.57) is associated with a higher odds of being more secure in 2015 than in 1999 compared to low income children who were eligible for, but did not participate in SNAP. Participation in both SNAP and WIC during ages 0-5 predicts higher odds (OR: 4.47, 95% CI: 2.04, 9.78) of being more secure in young adulthood than in childhood compared to low income children who were eligible for, but did not participate in SNAP or WIC. Finally, we saw a statistically significant protective effect of high parental nutritional knowledge (in 1999) and child time spent preparing food (during ages 5-12) on food insecurity risk in 2015-2017. SNAP and WIC, as well as parental nutritional knowledge and childhood food involvement appear to have some protective effect on food insecurity in young adulthood. Future research should further investigate the effects of nutrition education, nutrition assistance program participation, and involvement in food preparation on food insecurity over the short- and long-term.

The aim of the OECD Career Readiness project is to identify patterns of teenage attitudes and activities that are associated with better transitions into employment by analysing multiple national longitudinal datasets. This paper looks for further evidence of the link between teenage activities, experiences and career-related thinking and adult career outcomes by analysing 10 new datasets from eight countries. Overall, the results of this paper find further evidence that secondary school students who explore, experience and think about their futures in work frequently encounter lower levels of unemployment, receive higher wages and are happier in their careers as adults. The findings of this paper are analysed together with the evidence from the two previous working papers of the Career Readiness project, concluding that there is international evidence to support 11 out of the 14 potential indicators that were explored as indicators of career readiness.

This working paper will share the experience of Ashta No Kai (ANK), a grassroots nonprofit the author founded in 1998 in 10 villages in Shirur County, Maharashtra state, India, to promote the empowerment and education of women and girls in rural areas. The paper will, at first, examine the state of education in India including the Indian government's policies and programs that are attempting to address the gender gap in girls' education. Next, the barriers that girls in rural areas face to access their right to an education will be discussed followed by an introduction of various holistic, need-based, and low-cost educational interventions that ANK has initiated to address some of these impediments. Findings will then be reported from quantitative and qualitative surveys conducted, as well as case studies to gauge the impact of these interventions. Finally, the paper will propose evidence-based recommendations of integrated and sustainable strategies and approaches as guidance to policy practitioners to help promote educational outcomes and enhanced agency for adolescent girls to better navigate their world.

This paper presents findings on the implementation and impacts of Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) in Oakland, California, where the school district conducted the nation's first randomized controlled trial of LLI in secondary grades. LLI is a short-term, intensive intervention designed to help teachers provide small-group instruction to struggling readers. Many school districts across the country have used LLI, which research evidence has shown to rapidly improve outcomes for students in early elementary grades. During the trial, secondary schools in Oakland faced various challenges implementing LLI, leading students to experience different levels of LLI duration, intensity, and fidelity. LLI had no impact on students' reading comprehension and a negative impact on their mastery of English language arts/literacy standards. Students who were pulled out of other classes to receive LLI were particularly negatively affected, possibly as a result of missing grade-level content. This study's findings highlight challenges in implementing effective literacy interventions for struggling adolescent readers.

Young adults face enormous economic, social and psychological challenges when they transition into adulthood. This transition can be especially overwhelming and daunting for young adults with disabilities. Among the challenges young adults with disabilities are faced with are greater risk of low food security and barriers to healthcare. This study examines how the transition to adulthood may affect food security, health, and access to healthcare for youth with disabilities, and estimates the effects that SNAP has on this group in those turbulent years. The study used five years of data (2011-2015) from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). We combined the public and restricted NHIS data with the state SNAP policy variables. The sample included low-income individuals ages 13-25 (and their families) to reflect the life stage from pre-transition, to transition, and then to post-transition. Analyses were conducted at the Census Research Data Center in Columbia, MO. A difference-in-difference (DID) approach in linear models was applied to compare individuals with and without disabilities regarding changes in food security status and their health-related outcomes in the transition to adulthood. State SNAP policy variables were used as exogenous instruments to estimate the effects of SNAP participation on food security and health/healthcare use for youth and young adults with disabilities in the models of instrumental variables. Below is a summary of the main findings in which youth are referred to as individuals under 18, and young adults are referred to as individuals ages 18 to 25. (1) Compared to those without disabilities, individuals with disabilities have a greater risk of low food security in both childhood and young adulthood; (2) Transition into adulthood results in greater food security for individuals without disabilities but an increased risk of low food security for individuals with disabilities. The increased risk for young adults with disabilities may well put them at very low food security, the most severe category on the food security scale; (3) Food security status is associated with health and access to healthcare for all the four groups, youth and young adults, with or without disabilities. However, the associations between low food security and health-related outcomes do not seem to vary by disability status for young adults, indicating the additional risk of low food security that young adults with disabilities experience does not correlate with their health-related outcomes; (4) Contrary to our expectation, SNAP participation does not seem to have statistically significant effects on food security and health-related outcomes for individuals with disabilities. These impacts, although insignificant, show expected directions (i.e., improving food security and health) that are different from those often found in the OLS estimation that does not address the selection bias; and (5) SNAP participation is a statistically significant predictor of youth's food security status measured by the food security raw score only, but not the other three food security measures. SNAP participation appears to have greater impacts for youth than for young adults. In other words, the protective effects of SNAP decrease for young adults perhaps because they encounter greater barriers accessing SNAP than when they were young. The study's limitations are closely examined with a focus on the constraints that we had in the DID analysis and the IV analysis. We also suggested directions for future research. Since food security likely has a profound impact on the long-term development, economic independence, and self-sufficiency, we discussed a few policy strategies that may help individuals with disabilities in their transition to adulthood. These include special outreach services to improve SNAP accessibility, an embedded alert system that serves to bring awareness of a SNAP participant's upcoming transition to adulthood, incorporation of nutrition assistance in transition planning for youth, and better coordination of multiple public programs.

This paper provides a structured overview of the existing parenting literature with the aim of developing an evidence-based and culture-sensitive framework of parenting and its influence on child development. The paper outlines how changes in the 21st century have altered family life and summarises evidence from 29 meta-studies and 81 quantitative studies for the developmental impact of different parenting styles and dimensions. Overall, results suggest that warm parenting that provides children with age-appropriate autonomy and structure is key for a healthy and prosperous development of children and adolescents across various domains. The parenting approach adopted by parents but also its effect varies and the paper points to various contextual (e.g. culture, socio-economic factors, support within the community and family) and individual (e.g. gender, personality and health condition of children and parents) factors explaining these variations. The paper discusses how a systematic consideration of such factors not only sharpens the scientific understanding of parenting and its impact but also helps improving family policies and support.

Health and education are reciprocally related, and research indicates that unhealthy students are poorly positioned to learn. Providing services that prevent health problems or help students cope with existing health concerns is one way that schools intervene in the relationship between student background and educational outcomes. Providing health services on campus is theorized to promote educational goals by increasing access to services, improving health, and enhancing opportunities to learn. However, existing empirical tests of this relationship are rare and have important limitations. This paper uses data from Add Health, which identifies numerous services provided by schools across the U.S. Multilevel models test how availability of preventive or physical health services relates to adolescents' academic performance as well as implications for racial and socioeconomic educational inequality. Analyses consistently demonstrate that school provision of preventive/physical health services is positively related to youths' educational outcomes--including a higher GPA, lower odds of failing courses, and higher odds of graduating from high school--but also little evidence of differing associations across student subgroups. Additional results mitigate concerns that these relationships are biased by selection and offer evidence that increased opportunities to learn are one mechanism for the positive role of health services.

The Wolf Report (2011) made clear that the proliferation of low-level vocational qualifications was in need of reform. It was thought that too many of these qualifications lacked substance, had little value in the jobs market and provided a weak platform for further development. Amongst the report's recommendations, which were largely accepted and subsequently acted upon by the Government, was the need for progression pathways that more explicitly linked education and training opportunities at successively higher levels. This was embraced by Government as part of a wider strategy to get more young people into skilled occupations, to meet the current and anticipated rise in skills shortages in key sectors of the economy (HMT/BIS, 2015). In its policies on the 14 to 19 age group, the Government continues to push for the majority of school and college leavers to enter either higher education or an apprenticeship (Cameron, 2015) and progression pathways clearly have a role to play in supporting this. Beyond these waypoints, there are long standing pathways in higher education and into the professions. However, although the Government recognises that it needs to raise skills levels, the majority of apprenticeships continue to be undertaken at levels 2 and 3 (Delebarre, 2016). It might therefore be inferred that progression routes are the answer to further upskilling once individuals cross the threshold into employment. However, this paper seeks to consider more closely the extent to which this is both realistic and appropriate within the far more complex and dynamic context of workforce development within organisations.

The purpose of this paper was to conduct a scan of the current state of the evidence regarding what works in helping disconnected young people, defined as the population of young people ages 16 to 24 who are not connected to work or school. The following four main research questions were investigated: (1) What local, state, and federal policies have an impact on disconnected young people? What policies are helping improve services for this population? What policies are barriers to creating effective programs?; (2) What programs have been shown to be effective in serving disconnected young people? What evaluations in process have the potential to contribute to the evidence base?; (3) What is known about the effectiveness of system-level approaches, also called "collective impact approaches?"; and (4) Where are there gaps in services or knowledge? What programs or practices should be targeted for further research or expansion? MDRC conducted a literature review of relevant policies and programs. The literature reviewed included writing on impact, quasi-experimental, and implementation studies. MDRC also conducted reviews of numerous websites to learn about current policy trends and evaluations in process. To supplement what was learned from written materials, MDRC interviewed a number of practitioners in the field, including representatives from foundations, coalitions, and research organizations. The main findings included: (1) Policies affecting disconnected young people span a range of systems, including public schools; adult basic and secondary education; and the juvenile justice, foster care, and mental health systems. As a result services, funding, and research are often uncoordinated and fragmented, though collective impact or system-level approaches are attempting to combat these challenges; (2) Though program impacts may be modest or short-lived, successful programs share some common features. These include: opportunities for paid work and the use of financial incentives; strong links among education, training, and the job market; the use of youth development approaches; comprehensive support services; and support after programs end; (3) Programs share some common implementation challenges, including: outreach and enrollment practices that may limit the populations they serve; difficulties keeping young people engaged in a program long enough to benefit from it; staff turnover; and difficulties addressing young people's barriers to participation, particularly their lack of transportation and child care; (4) The field's understanding of what works in serving disconnected young people could advance significantly in the coming years, as more than a dozen evaluations of programs are currently under way, including evaluations of collective impact approaches; and (5) There are gaps in the existing services available: There are not enough programs for young people who are not motivated to reconnect to education or the job market on their own, nor for young people who have low basic skills, especially those who have aged out of the public school system. The areas where there are gaps in services also tend to be areas where there is little evidence regarding what works. Selected Evaluations of Programs for Disconnected Young People is appended.

The OECD's new Study on Social and Emotional Skills aims to provide policy makers, educators, families and communities with a comprehensive set of tools to foster students' social and emotional learning. The Study's assessment framework -- presented in this paper -- is a result of an extensive literature review of previous research, existing frameworks and assessment approaches in the area of social and emotional skills. The framework, developed by a team of experts in various domains, incorporates evidence from psychology, education, organisational sciences, sociology, economy, and public policy. This framework describes the objectives, characteristics and expected outcomes of the Study. It presents the conceptual model of social and emotional skills assessed in the Study, their development, malleability and predictive value. The framework also discusses how factors in students' family, school and peer environment influence their social and emotional skills' development along with the contextual questionnaires designed to gather this information. The framework also presents the Study's design, assessment approach, instrument development process, sampling procedures and data collection methods.

This paper studies the effect of parental job loss on children's school performance during the Great Recession in Spain, using an original panel dataset for students observed since the beginning of the crisis in a school in the province of Barcelona. By using fixed effects, this paper is more likely to deal with the problem of selection into troubled firms which is prevalent in the literature. Fixed effect estimates show that students experience a negative and significant decrease on average grades of about 13% of a standard deviation after father's job loss. The impact of paternal job loss is not homogeneous across students, but it is largely concentrated among children whose fathers suffer long unemployment spells after job loss and students in already disadvantaged families in terms of the father's education level. These results suggest that paternal job loss is a mechanism through which further inequalities might develop during and after a deep economic crisis. The following are appended: (1) The impact of parental job loss on grades. A simple theoretical framework; and (2) More details on the data.

Holding a summer job is a rite of passage in American adolescence, a first rung towards adulthood and self-sufficiency. However, over the past decade, youth employment during the summer has decreased significantly. Summer youth employment has the potential to benefit high school students' educational outcomes and employment trajectories, especially for low-income youth. Despite the potential importance of youth employment during summer, evidence of the impact of summer jobs on youth outcomes is limited to only a few studies. Our research examines summer youth employment, beginning with academic outcomes, by studying New York City's Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP). SYEP provides jobs to youth ages 14-24, and due to high demand for summer jobs, allocates slots through a random lottery system, allowing for causal estimates of program impact. Our study uses student-level data from the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development (the SYEP administrating agency) and New York City Department of Education, encompassing approximately 300,000 student SYEP applicants for the 2005-2009 program years. This paper examines the impact of SYEP on a wider range of academic performance outcomes, including test taking, passing rates and scores. It also attends to variation in these outcomes. Our findings suggest that SYEP has positive impacts on some student academic outcomes, and that these effects are heterogeneous. Future analyses will focus on examining program, student and school characteristics that might explain these variations. The following tables are appended: (1) Lottery randomization results; (2) Attrition in year following application to SYEP, Grade 8-11 and alternative program, 2005-08; and (3) Impact of selection on attrition, by grade.

We investigate if there is a causal link between education and health knowledge using data from the 1984/85 and 1991/92 waves of the UK Health and Lifestyle Survey (HALS). Uniquely, the survey asks respondents what they think are the main causes of ten common health conditions, and we compare these answers to those given by medical professionals to form an index of health knowledge. For causal identification we use increases in the UK minimum school leaving age in 1947 (from 14 to 15)and 1972 (from 15 to 16) to provide exogenous variation in education. These reforms predominantly induced adolescents who would have left school to stay for one additionally mandated year. OLS estimates suggest that education significantly increases health knowledge, with a one-year increase in schooling increasing the health knowledge index by 15% of a standard deviation. In contrast, estimates from instrumental-variable models show that increased schooling due to the education reforms did not significantly affect health knowledge. This main result is robust to numerous specification tests and alternative formulations of the health knowledge index. Further research is required to determine whether there is also no causal link between higher levels of education--such as post-school qualifications--and health knowledge. An appendix entitled, "Sensitivity of results to alternative definitions of health knowledge index," is included. [This paper was produced as part of the Centre's Education Programme. The Centre for Economic Performance is financed by the Economic and Social Research Council.]

This paper presents the first analysis of the life course outcomes through late midlife (around age 55) for the participants of the iconic Perry Preschool Project, an experimental high-quality preschool program for disadvantaged African-American children in the 1960s. We discuss the design of the experiment, compromises in and adjustments to the randomization protocol, and the extent of knowledge about departures from the initial random assignment. We account for these factors in developing conservative small-sample hypothesis tests that use approximate worst-case (least favorable) randomization null distributions. We examine how our new methods compare with standard inferential methods, which ignore essential features of the experimental setup. Widely used procedures produce misleading inferences about treatment effects. Our design-specific inferential approach can be applied to analyze a variety of compromised social and economic experiments, including those using re-randomization designs. Despite the conservative nature of our statistical tests, we find long-term treatment effects on crime, employment, health, cognitive and non-cognitive skills, and other outcomes of the Perry participants. Treatment effects are especially strong for males. Improvements in childhood home environments and parental attachment appear to be an important source of the long-term benefits of the program. [This research was supported in part by the American Bar Foundation.]

This report focuses on pathways to postsecondary education (PSE), including high school completion, for pregnant and parenting teens. Although birth rates among teens have declined in the United States over the last 20 years, one in seven adolescent females (14.4 percent) is expected to give birth before age 20 with females of color (24 percent of Hispanics and 21 percent of African Americans) more than twice as likely to have a child when compared with white females (10 percent) (OAH 2014). For too many of these adolescents, parenthood marks the end of their high school careers and aspirations for attending college. This is unfortunate because completing high school and earning a postsecondary degree or credential are critical for the economic well-being of both teen parents and their children. Very little is known about pathways to PSE for pregnant and parenting teens. Although some studies have focused on programs to prevent subsequent pregnancies among teen parents (Klerman 2004), research is lacking on effective approaches for preparing these students for college. This report represents a first step towards filling that gap. Drawing on a literature and program review, analysis of a small online survey conducted with Health Teen Network (HTN), and consultations with experts in the field, "Pathways to Postsecondary Education," examines barriers and promising approaches to support educational success for pregnant and parenting teens. Among the findings are: (1) More than two out of three young single mothers aged 18 to 24 are poor, and almost half of their children are poor; (2) Only about half of teen mothers receive a high school diploma by the age of 22, compared with about nine in ten women who do not have a child during their teen years; and (3) A survey supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation found that a third of the young women surveyed reported that becoming a parent played a major role in their decision to leave school. This report features eight programs that provide a range of academic and other supports and services to support pathways to PSE, including high school completion, among pregnant and parenting teens: (1) Florence Crittenton High School (FCHS) in Denver, Colorado; (2) Cal-SAFE in California; (3) New Heights in Washington, DC; (4) The Care Center in Holyoke, Massachusetts; (5) Keys to Degrees at Endicott College in Massachusetts; (6) Student Parent HELP Center (SPHC) at the University of Minnesota; (7) Generation Hope, a program started by a former teen mother in Washington, DC; and (8) The Jeremiah Program, a residential program in the twin cities of Minnesota. A list of experts consulted is appended. [This report is a product of IWPR's Student Parent Success Initiative.]

We study the links between family configuration and formation on the one hand and adult literacy skills on the other by analysing data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), a survey of 250,000 people aged 16 to 65 conducted by the OECD in 33 countries and economies. Literacy proficiency has an effect on many aspects of the formation and development of families, such as age of parents at birth of first child, or age of partners at cohabitation, even when educational attainment and age are taken into account. Moreover, having children and living with a partner have consequences for adults' job opportunities and participation in the labour market, which can be particularly negative for the women with the highest literacy proficiency.

Numeracy and literacy skills have become increasingly important in modern labour markets. The large gender differences that several studies have identified have therefore sparked considerable attention among researchers and policy makers. Little is known about the moment in which such gaps emerge, how they evolve and if their evolution differs across countries. We use data from large-scale international assessments to follow representative samples of birth-cohorts over time, and analyse how gender gaps in numeracy and literacy evolve from age 10 to age 27. Our results suggest that, across the countries examined, males' advantage in numeracy is smallest at age 10 and largest at age 27. The growth in magnitude of the gender gap is particularly pronounced between the age of 15 and 27. Such evolution stands in sharp contrast with the evolution of the gender gap in literacy, which is small at age 10, large and in favour of females at age 15, and negligible by age 27.

The Monitoring the Future (MTF) project reports annually on levels and trends in self-reported substance use by secondary school students (e.g., Johnston, O'Malley, Bachman, & Schulenberg, 2009). The reports include subgroup comparisons, and these have revealed substantial differences among race/ethnicity groups, as well as some differences linked to parental education (as the available indicator of socioeconomic level). These comparisons are complicated by the substantial differences in racial/ethnic composition across levels of parental education. The present paper disentangles the confounding of race/ethnicity with parental education by examining the three largest race/ethnicity groups separately, showing and comparing how parental education is related to three common forms of substance use/abuse among adolescents. The authors show important interaction effects: The negative relationship between parental education and substance use is more pronounced among White adolescents than among those who are African American or Hispanic. They also unmask relationships between parental education and substance use that are clearer for White adolescents than for the total sample. Furthermore, the appendix to this occasional paper compares product-moment correlations and linear regression results for five-year intervals (1999-2003 vs. 2004-2008), and shows that very few regression coefficients differ significantly. This appendix is titled, "Use of Various Drugs by Grade among All Male Respondents, 1999-2008." (Contains 1 table and 10 figures.)

The education field must go beyond calling attention to an adolescent literacy crisis and the need for additional resources--a critical need--to treating adolescent literacy as the foundation for more ambitious efforts to improve middle and high schools in their entirety (Heller & Greenleaf, 2007; Jacob, 2008). Instruction around adolescent literacy, or content-area literacy, is fundamental to building the kind of secondary schools that are necessary to support the nation's social and economic health. The challenge is to connect the teaching of literacy to the rest of the secondary education improvement agenda. This article is about a literature search that focused on studies on secondary content-area literacy that were published within the last 10 years. However, when reference lists were reviewed, staff found that some older research provided key information on the topic. Therefore, these seminal publications were included in the resources used to develop this paper.

This document summarizes a review of research, evaluation, resources, and stakeholder knowledge related to the topic of interventions for struggling adolescent readers. Databases used for conducting this review included Google Scholar and ERIC. Literature from peer-reviewed, scholarly journals was reviewed, along with national reading and literacy organizations' websites and white papers from state departments of education and national education organizations. The search primarily was limited to studies and sources published from 2000-2020. Search terms used include but are not limited to: "struggling adolescent readers", "struggling" AND "intervention" AND "adolescent readers", "struggling" AND "adolescent" AND "intervention" AND "policy", etc.

We conducted a survey covering 20% of villages with 200-1000 population in rural Guinea-Bissau. We interviewed household heads, care-givers of children, and their teachers and schools. We analysed results from 9,947 children, aged 7-17, tested for literacy and numeracy competency. Only 27% of children were able to add two single digits, and just 19% were able to read and comprehend a simple word. Our unannounced school checks found 72% of enrolled children in grades 1-4 attending their schools, but the schools were poorly equipped. Teachers were present at 86% of schools visited. Despite surveying 351 schools, we found no examples of successful schools where children reached reasonable levels of literacy and numeracy for age. Our evidence suggests that interventions that raise school quality in these villages, rather than those which target enrolment, may be most important to generate very sharp improvements in children's educational outcomes. [Additional financial support for this research was provided by Effective Intervention, a UK charity.]

The Education-Drug Use Connection focused primarily on a nationwide sample of adolescents, first surveyed when they were nearing the end of 8th grade in the years 1991, 1992, and 1993, and followed biennially for eight years thereafter. (Full details on samples and methods are provided in Bachman et al., 2008, and are not repeated here.) The analyses in that book were based on the total samples of males and females, analyzed separately because of important gender differences in educational experiences, delinquency, and substance use. Most of the analyses included a race/ethnicity dimension (distinguishing between Whites, African Americans, Hispanics, and a remaining category that combined all others); it was a background dimension and statistically controlled any additive effects of race/ethnicity on the relationships between educational factors and various dimensions of substance use. Important subgroup differences were evident in the analyses, and were often noted--albeit briefly. Statistically controlling additive effects does not, however, fully guard against spuriously attributing racial/ethnic differences to other effects. As a further check against that risk, we repeated key analyses with only the White respondents included, and satisfied ourselves that racial/ethnic differences did not produce erroneous results in our findings for the total samples of males and females. We did not, however, attempt to explore interactions involving race/ethnicity. That remaining task, examining whether the same patterns of relationships found for the total samples are evident in each of the subgroups, is the main focus of the present paper. (Contains 1 footnote, 8 figures, and 12 tables.) [For "Monitoring the Future Occasional Paper Paper 65," see ED508288.]

A study of adolescents living in red and blue counties during the 2006 midterm elections shows a striking pattern of Democratic youth thriving in political expression and debate when exposed to Republican ideological climates. Democratic adolescents were more likely to talk with parents and friends about politics, disagree openly, test opinions, and listen to opponents if they lived in Republican counties compared with Democratic youth living in liberal or balanced counties. Compared to Republican youth residing in the same communities, Democratic youth in Republican counties were also more likely to engage in political discussion, to pay attention to news media, and to express confidence in their ability to comprehend campaign issues. The frequency of disagreeing in conversations predicted support for liberal activism. Disagreeing was a particularly strong predictor of supporting liberal activism for youth living in red counties. These findings support the theory--proposed by McDevitt and colleagues in other studies--that young people sometimes express political identities through conflict and disagreement, not because they come to share the views of parents, teachers, or majorities in their communities. The same pattern was not found for Republican youth in Democratic counties during the 2006 elections; they were not more politically expressive when exposed to hostile ideological climates. However, Republican identity (like Democratic identity) correlated with knowledge of the political parties. The results suggest that Democratic identity is frequently expressed in deliberative and conflict-seeking activities, while Republican identity is often grounded in knowledge. Overall, the study suggests the value of peer-centered, critical discussion as a strategy for youth political mobilization. A list of state races where party control changed in 2006 is appended. (Contains 4 figures, 9 tables and 8 notes.) [This paper is derived from research made possible with support from CIRCLE and the University of Colorado's Innovative Seed Grant Program.]