Pre-K Fades Out in High Poverty Schools

Early Ed Watch, covering the fan-favorites of emerging early childhood research, examines new findings on the “fade-out” effect of early education programs. Studies show that many of the positive academic impacts of a high-quality pre-kindergarten experience fade out over the course of elementary school. Aleksandra Holod and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn investigate why.
Take it away EEW:
The study [...]

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Workforce Programs Work, pt. 2

As some of you may know, Tulsa Initiative has spent much of the past year exploring the feasibility of offering high-quality employment and training services to CAP families. These types of programs can get pretty expensive prety quickly, and thus there’s been a longstanding debate on the cost-effectiveness of “jobs” programs (see this article by our [...]

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Positive Focus Boosts Grades

A new study in the journal Science found that a confidence-building exercise in the seventh grade lifted the grade point averages of low-performing black students through the end of eighth grade. The New York Times reports: 
The researchers, led by Geoffrey L. Cohen, a social psychologist at the University of Colorado, had seventh graders in suburban [...]

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Let Your Inner Wonk Vote

Early Childhood Watch, an indispensable font of early education research, policy, and commentary, just got back from the conference of the Society for Research in Child Development, and they want to know what you want to know.
Read their blog entry for a list of 10 areas of emerging research and vote on the two that you [...]

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Student Research Opportunity

Graduate and upper-level undergraduate students are needed for a survey research project to be completed by Tulsa Initiative this spring. Click here (or the tab at the top) for more details.

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Poverty = Stroke?

The USA Today reports on a new study to be published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. The study found that poverty impairs brain function in 9- and 10-year-olds nearly as much as a stroke:
A new study finds that certain brain functions of some low-income 9- and 10-year-olds pale in comparison with those of wealthy [...]

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Reading List

I’m way behind on my reading and was about to make a list of things I want to get around to, then thought Hey, I can share it with the world!
Currently reading / need to finish:
“Rediscovering Social Innovation” in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (pdf)

“Social Citizens: Beta” from the Case Foundation (pdf)
“A Model of Social [...]

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Key Indicators of Economic Mobility: Social Capital

So I’m not going to have time for a post on the whole report (pdf) today, but I’ve gotten through the first section and thought I would share some thoughts. The report, from Economic Mobility Project, is authored by researchers at the Heritage Foundation, which tends to emphasize the social and family impacts on economic [...]

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Explaining to Do

I hope to have time today to comment on a new report out from the Economic Mobility Project (a consortium organized by Pew of thinkers from Brookings, the Urban Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute – strange bedfellows indeed!). The report is titled “Pathways to Economic Mobility: Key Indicators” and here’s a [...]

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The Initiative’s Resident Reader

Welcome to the second installment of welcome week. We’ll be here introducing the Tulsa Initiative team throughout the week and sharing our goals for this blog. My piece is about my research role for TI, so let’s dive in.
When I tell friends and old classmates that I’m a researcher at a local anti-poverty agency, I [...]

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