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BackgroundOver the past decade or so, the idea of joining early childhood education (ECE) and schooling has gained currency in the educational reform arena. Numerous education reform proposals and plans include ECE as a component. Scores of school districts around the country have added preschool classrooms to at least some of their elementary schools. National organizations representing governors, chief state school officers, school boards, and principals have all called for public school systems to include and integrate ECE into plans for school improvement.Purpose/ObjectiveOne specific framework for bringing ECE and schooling closer together is “prek-3rd.” The broad goal of prek-3rd is to encapsulate formal learning experiences in the 3–8 years age period and create a distinct, coherent whole out of them. In this article, I use prek-3rd as a vehicle for exploring the implications of more closely linking ECE and schooling, focusing especially on philosophical and practical issues raised by this objective. I will examine the reasoning of proponents and raise questions about their assumptions.Research DesignAnalytic essay.Conclusions/RecommendationsThe example of prek-3rd suggests that there are many positive aspects to the idea of bringing ECE and early schooling closer together. These include an extended time frame for holding on to a developmental orientation; a complex view of the child, and sensitivity to individual differences; the longitudinal perspective on learning and mastery; the balance in attention to teaching and learning; and the broadened time frame for considering the transition to school. Yet, at least in the American context, it is not such a good idea to bring ECE and schooling closer together. Initiatives like prek-3rd will provide one more opening for downward pressures on early childhood providers. The schools (as a whole) have a history of failing to respect the integrity of other institutions that join them in efforts to better meet children's needs. Thus far, all that has been accomplished by tying ECE more closely to schools making ECE less early-childhood-like. The needs of schools are just too powerful and end up overwhelming the identity of institutional partners. Ultimately, the risk in binding ECE and schooling more closely together derives from a set of related cultural problems. The first can best be described as losing the present to the future—the very problem with school readiness as the central goal of ECE. The second problem is a misunderstanding of the processes at the heart of child development. Children are not raw human capital to be carefully developed through schooling to meet the demands of a globalized labor force. Americans urgently have to rethink how they wish to account for children, the virtues that are important to nurture, and the role of adult institutions in the process. There is a clear risk in extending the line that already connects schooling to global competitiveness down into early childhood, asking ECE to address not only the achievement gap but the global achievement gap as well. If the school for young children has to be preparatory and provide continuity with the elementary school, then we as educators are already prisoners of a model that ends up as a funnel … It's [the funnel's] purpose to narrow down what is big into what is small. — Loris Malaguzzi, interview with Carolyn Pope Edwards (cited in Drummond, 2007, p. 211).

This article highlights the limitations of our current educational system in terms of vocational learning and highlights the role that vocational learning can play in supporting youth development and improving youth outcomes. It discusses the role that nonschool settings can play in supporting vocational learning and suggests strategies to improve our in-school and out-of-school systems to build a more coherent whole that promotes youth development across various settings.

Groups of newly-eclosed workers of two carpenter ant species (Camponotus floridanus and C. tortuganus) were reared in the presence of conspecific cocoons, cocoons of the other species, or were kept without cocoons. Groups of older workers (> 20 days), previously exposed to conspecific brood in their natal nest, were familiarized with either conspecific or heterospecific cocoons. After 14 days of exposure, groups were subjected to short-term (5 min) and long-term (10 day) preference tests. Young and older workers retrieved and retained many cocoons of both species, familiar and unfamiliar. However, a pattern of non-exclusive discrimination emerged: (1) Young workers exposed to conspecific cocoons picked up and retrieved conspecifics before unfamiliar heterospecifics, and retained conspecifics longer. (2) Young workers generally required experience with conspecifics to develop this preference, as those exposed to only heterospecifics and those deprived of cocoons were impartial in short-term tests. However, in long-term tests (5–10 days), naive young workers significantly preferred unfamiliar conspecifics. (3) Older workers preferred conspecific cocoons, whether familiar or unfamiliar, in short-term tests, but their tolerance for heterospecifics in the longer term (5 days) could be increased by recent familiarization. In no case did young or older ants significantly prefer familiar heterospecifics to conspecifics. These results confirm a role for early learning in brood recognition by carpenter ants, but suggest that it is less important than in Formica species studied by previous authors.

In this article, the author draws on a study of an after-school initiative serving inner-city high school students to describe and reflect on ways in which apprenticeship-like experiences support work on a variety of developmental tasks. The author describes key dimensions of the apprenticeship experience, discusses challenges faced by instructors, and reflects on possible effects on participants. Findings suggest that, in addition to strengthening disciplinespecific knowledge and skills and, more selectively, skills needed for carrying out complex tasks, apprenticeship-like learning experiences have interesting self-effects. These experiences lead at least some apprentices to take more responsibility for themselves, to learn to attend more deeply, to learn about themselves, to learn that it is OK to do new things, and to learn that expressing one's thoughts, emotions, or doubts honestly will not have negative consequences. At the same time, apprentices'growth is tentative. Shifting habits, predispositions, and dominant feelings (about oneself and others) is difficult work.

The current social context for adolescence in American culture begs for new ideas and arrangements. Schools are increasingly narrow, sterile, and, for some adolescents, unpleasant and alienating developmental settings. Unconnected to the larger world and sometimes to their own students, schools seem bled of whatever meaning they once had in adolescents’ lives. Children who begin their school careers feeling good about themselves as learners become steadily more self-doubtful (Entwistle and Alexander 1998). This contributes to a loss of motivation to do well, a decline in effort, and a weakening commitment to school as an institution. Urban youth who lose their way in middle school attribute it in part to the impersonal quality of their schools; no one seems to care if they are there or not, doing well or not (Gregory 1995). The lack of

Over the past decade politicians and policy makers, the media, child development professionals, and parents have focused increasing attention on the after-school hours of children aged 6 to 14, coming to view this daily time period as one of unusual “risk and opportunity” (Hofferth 1995). Attention to the after-school hours has led in turn to renewed interest in a longstanding child development institution, after-school programs, particularly those serving low- and moderate-income children. This article examines the historical development of after-school programs serving low-income children, including objectives and practices in each era, formative influences, implementation challenges, and role in children's lives. In a final section. the author discusses the current pressures facing the after-school field and suggests an appropriate set of purposes and expectations for the coming years.

Most adolescent parents now receive good prenatal and neonatal medical care, some receive limited amounts of parenting instruction, and increasing numbers can participate in school completion programs. But few programs address the social isolation and broad developmental disruptions that often accompany adolescent parenthood. This article describes the implementation and short-term effects of one program that does strive to meet adolescents' long-term, broad support needs. The Parent-to-Parent program is a home-based program designed to enhance the ability of adolescent parents to meet their young children's and their own developmental needs. Through long-term home visiting by specially trained local volunteers, parent group meetings, and work with local human service institutions, the program strives to (1) enhance the quality of parent-child interaction; (2) enhance the parents' ability to locate and acquire services that will help them meet basic needs; (3) enhance parent and child involvement in community life; and (4) help the parents become more aware of their own options for the future, and more capable of implementing the plans they make.

In this paper the author focuses on the structure of, and trends in, our nation's medical care system, as they relate to preventive maternal and child health needs. Continuing barriers to appropriate utilization of medical care, effects of recent federal actions, and possible directions for future change are discussed.

This article presents the findings of a year-long, qualitative study of a network of neighborhood youth programs in a low-income, Latino neighborhood in Chicago. It discusses the characteristics of youth served by the programs, the programs' daily functioning, how youth workers construct and carry out their roles, the nature of youth-worker-youth relationships, and implementation issues. The authors also reflect on the strengths and limitations of the programs, and their role in the lives of youth served.

This article draws on the findings from the evaluation of a three-city after-school imitative, as well as the general literature, to examine the field of after-school programs, focusing on those programs serving low-income children. A brief history of these programs is presented exploring the rationales for them in the circumstances of low-income children; a current profile of this field of services is provided; the major tensions in and challenges facing the field are discussed; and recommendations for facing those challenges are offered. The article argues for the expectations of after-school programs for low-income children to be kept modest, commensurate with both their modest means (i.e., limited resources and largely nonprofessional workforce) and distinct role in children’s lives.

What has served in the literature as the paradigm of highest risk family life—chronic financial and material hardship, vulnerable and overwhelmed parents, overburdened social support networks, and an unsupportive community context—is rapidly becoming the norm for young families in urban poverty. When present together, these risk factors create a variety of special challenges to those who would provide formal help and support around parenting and other dimensions of family life. In this article I examine the challenges of work with multiply vulnerable young families; discuss helping principles responsive to them; and suggest how these principles can be supported in frontline practice.

This essay reviews two documents—a book and a newspaper series—that discuss inner-city children's growing exposure to and involvement with violence. The essay focuses particularly on inner-city youths' struggle to find a workable way of coping with the stresses and assaults (both physical and psychological) they experience and on the effects on identity development.

Prenatal care outreach is receiving growing attention as one component of multi-faceted strategies necessary to reduce infant mortality and low birth weight. This paper examines challenges in evaluating community-based prenatal care outreach programs, describes two studies that have successfully addressed such challenges, and offers recommendations to community agency administrators and program staff regarding reasonable approaches to integrating evaluation into program activities.

In this article I examine constraints to the provision of responsive and coherent services to poor families. These constraints include Americans' ambivalence about how to interpret and respond to family poverty and an inappropriate reliance on services to address deeply rooted societal problems.

This essay examines the premises and arguments of Lisbeth Schorr's Within Our Reach, in particular Schorr's thesis that the knowledge and means now exist, in the form of a set of proven social intervention strategies, to improve outcomes for our highest-risk children. The author argues that good quality services do have a role to play in ameliorating the effects of poverty but that there are dangers to overpromising what services can accomplish, especially in the absence of other supports for children and families.

Parent support and education programs are receiving renewed attention as a vehicle for strengthening parenting and addressing other support needs in low-income families. In this paper the author reviews the theoretical rationale, situational context and empirical basis for these programs.

The relationship between poverty and child rearing has been a persistent source of social concern in the United States. Drawing on available literature, this paper seeks to establish a conceptual approach to the interaction of these two complex variables. Appropriate interventions and strategies for their implementation are considered.

Children's out-of-school time, long a low-level source of public concern, has recently emerged as a major social issue. This, in turn, has heightened interest in the heterogeneous field of after-school programs. This article provides a profile of after-school programs for low-income children, focusing on supply and demand, program emphases, and program sponsors and support organizations. It also discusses the major challenges facing the field in the areas of facilities, staffing, and financing. Details and examples are drawn from the ongoing evaluation of a specific after-school program initiative called MOST (Making the Most of Out-of-School Time), which seeks to strengthen after-school programs in Boston, Chicago, and Seattle. Looking ahead, the article highlights the pros and cons of options for increasing coverage to reach more low-income children, strengthening programs, expanding funding, and articulating an appropriate role for after-school programs to fill in the lives of low-income children.

When I was first asked to sewe as guest editor for this special issue I sat down with the articles, to see where the common threads might lie. Upon first reading they seemed a diverse group parent support programs, undergraduate training for future child care workers and teachers of vulnerable childten, a parent swey on school age child care issues, an interpersonal skills-training program for at-risk mothers. As I kept reading I began to see not so much common threads as a common message, indeed a profoundly important one. These articles signal a shift in the burden of caregiving-of nurturing, protecting, socializing, and caring for others--in American society. Traditional sources of care and nurturance are no longer available or able to perform these functions. New sources am being envisioned, trained, and deployed, or in some cases involuntarily drafted, to address our society’s camgiving ntcds. Such shifts have occurted in the past. Some would argue that they occur continuously. But there is an ominous quality to the current state of caregiving in our society, a sense that the fabric has been so weakened that it may disintegrate even as we am trying to renew it. What makes 1990 any different from 1890 or 1930 or 1960? It is different because it seems more difficult than in any past period of our history to identify sources of support, guidance and protection for children and adults alike. It is different because American society has reached a degree of fragmentation, even polarization, that will be extraordinarily difficult to reverse. It is different because for the first time a segment of our societal community feels, and in fact is, completely detached from mainstream expectations, norms and opportunities.

with incentives to bring these providers above ground. He makes an important connection between the capacity of government regulators to collect information about performance and the largely unrealized potential of resource and referral agencies to disseminate this information to consumers. If Gormley's analysis disappoints, it is in the modesty of his final recommendations for reform. He contrasts four alternative reform models: a "mediating structures" model that capitalizes on community-based institutions to increase the diversity of child-care options, an "informed consumer" model that would better equip parents to serve as consumer monitors of a competitive private child-care market, a "regulatory bargaining model" that calls for an expansion and retooling of public regulators to encourage private providers toward quality improvements, and a "safety net" model that calls for substantial government investments in and oversight of child-care and parental leave provisions. Gormley's insightful discussion of these models illuminates many of the institutional, substantive, and political issues that animate the current childcare debate. His analysis also throws the limitations of each approach into stark relief. Most notably, only the "safety net" model explicitly addresses problems of cost by assuming a major federal role in financing child care and legislating privately funded parental leaves. Unfortunately, Gormley is probably accurate in his observation that the political barriers to this approach may be directly proportional to its comprehensiveness. Gormley rightly suggests that we consider the four reform models not as mutually exclusive but as complementary approaches that allocate responsibility across sectors and levels of government. But in imagining an integrated approach, some pieces of policy reform seem more critical than others. Past experience and Gormley's own analysis suggest, for example, that an "informed consumer" model will not bring about substantial quality improvements in the absence of adequate public regulation. The private solutions envisioned in the "mediating structures" model are also likely to fall short in the absence of substantial public investments to create child-care capacity and financial relief for consumers.

Introduction l The Fair Start Story--An Overview The Programms 2. Appalachian Communities Help Their Own: the Maternal infant Health Outreach Worker Project 3. Outreach to Migrant Farmworker Families: The Fair Start Project 4. Giving the Children of Austin, Texas a Fair Start: The Parent Support Programme 5. A Rural Clinic Reaches Out: The Rural Alabwna Pregnancy and Infant Health Project 6. A Bridge to the New World: The Haitian Perinatal Intervention Project 7. Sharing the Transition: The Adolescent Parents Project 8. A Medical Center Serves Its Neighbourhood: The Child Survival Programme 9. Issues of Program Design and Irnplementation IO.Program Operations: Time Allocation and Cost Analysis II.Realistic Expectations: Review of Evaluation Findings The Child Survival/ Fair Start initiative in Context References Index.

This article examines the challenges of providing home visiting and related supportive services within the framework created by American interpretations of and responses to poverty. In the first half of the article, the author argues that home visiting and related services have been shaped and constrained by the tendency to use services as a substitute for adequate income and economic opportunity, by ambivalent attitudes toward poor people, and by a preoccupation with the effects of poverty on child rearing, among other factors. In the second half of the article, the author discusses some principles of practice that might help support good services under the difficult conditions in which most early childhood programs for poor families must work. He argues that infant mental health theory and practice hold particular promise as a basic organizing structure for these services.

This paper addresses the problem of child survival and development and the challenge of reducing infant mortality in developing countries. It discusses the biomedical causes and the concomitant social determinants of high infant mortality rates. Four intervention strategies and technologies recommended by UNICEF are described. They are referred to as GOBI: growth monitoring, oral rehydration therapy, breast feeding, and immunization. The connection of the GOBI approach with education, attitudes, leadership, social organization, social values, and costs, is pointed out. The impact of GOBI as a strategy directed toward rapid, full-scale population penetration on other programmes concerned with long-term health conditions, is considered. Questions of the moral, demographic, and economic implications of GOBI are raised. The importance of its immediate and future benefits is stressed.