Search Results

The previous chapter addressed the selection of evidence-based practices and the implementation of strategies to address attendance/truancy at the Tier 1 school-wide level. This chapter addresses interventions at the Tier 2 targeted group and Tier 3 intensive individual levels. Although Tier 1 interventions could address general disillusionment with school, specific precipitating events will most likely need to be addressed by Tier 2 targeted group or Tier 3 intensive individual-interventions.

Many economists believe that education is key to economic development. The first section of this essay highlights what is known about the role of education in three interrelated areas: income generation, health status, and fertility. It discusses reasons why measuring the impact of education is difficult, and presents the best current estimates for the effects of education in these important areas. In bringing education to people in the developing world, an understanding of which school inputs are most effective and at what levels of education is paramount. The second half of the essay discusses why little is known about which inputs are most effective, and contrasts different approaches to assessing the impact of school inputs. The essay concludes with a discussion of programs that promise to be more successful in helping governments and policy makers decide how best to invest in human capital.

This chapter examines a truancy reduction initiative in the Berkeley County School District (BCSD), located near coastal South Carolina (SC). It discusses the process of community collaboration, program design and evaluation, and the use of school social workers as team members for program intervention. Additionally, it provides sample forms and examples that offer a model for a truancy reduction program.

This chapter considers the elements of the philosophy underlying Head Start's conception and design. Efforts to help poor children's early learning can be traced back at least to the 17th century and Comenius's “school of the mother's knee”. In the early 19th century when the industrial revolution got underway, British social reformers established infant schools for disadvantaged young children in factory towns and large cities. Experimental interventions in America, and the planning of the Head Start program are discussed.

In Washington, studies are contracted to research companies, many of which are quite professional and follow the procedures described above. The findings, however, are rarely peer-reviewed before they are submitted to the contracting agency. Once they are released, they are often treated as Truth by both policymakers and reporters, the majority of whom do not really understand the scientific method. After that, it is exceedingly difficult to correct mistakes in the research or conclusions, or to change public perceptions. This is exactly what happened with the findings of the Westinghouse study, which seemingly indicated that Head Start had no long-term effects. Although the many scholarly criticisms of the study and the author's relentless complaints about it to both the Nixon Administration and Congress eventually led to a decrease in the credence given to the findings, conventional thought had embraced the view that the benefits of Head Start soon fade away. This chapter describes efforts to defend against the damaging effects of the Westinghouse study.

This chapter discusses the following topics: health promotion, components of health promotion interventions, the planning process for health promotion, the stages of developing and implementing health promotion programmes, and the selection of education and communication methods. Health promotion practitioners differ in the goals they prioritize, some emphasizing empowerment, others behaviour change. Many people may feel most comfortable carrying out health education activities but can nearly always begin to take some actions on the other components which, if unattended, will diminish the impact of health education activities. There is a growing body of evidence on how to implement effective health promotion interventions, and access to this evidence is getting easier. By ensuring that we disseminate the results of our own interventions we can contribute to developing practice.

This chapter describes services designed to change the behaviour of drug users, with the aim of benefiting them and those people around them. The goals of such services are diverse, and may include initiating or maintaining abstinence from drugs, reducing the amount or frequency of drug use, or changing behaviours other than drug use (e.g. criminal activity, needle sharing). The chapter focuses on the outcomes of various types of health and social services.

Violence is the second leading cause of death for those aged 18 to 24. For Black youth aged 15 to 24, it has been the leading cause of death since 1978. Connections is an intervention program that integrates adaptive cultural resources from both the dominant American Anglo culture and the African culture. This chapter reviews the Connections program underway in Englewood, one of the poorest communities in Chicago, and its approaches to stemming the violence that pervades the lives of residents.

Following directions and listening to teachers have been defined as “academic enablers” and are fundamental to the development of social competence and effective learning. One study suggest that between 2% and 16% of youth in the United States can be characterized as having oppositional defiant disorder combined with conduct disorder, while another argues that over half of U.S. adolescents who fail to complete their high school experience have a diagnosable psychiatric disorder. Not surprisingly, the presence of young children in school settings who display challenging behavior patterns that severely stress the management skills of teachers is at an all-time high and is of significant concern to teachers. Children who fail to negotiate the demands of teachers (the ones who control instructional settings), often do not get off to a good start in school and set in motion a downward spiral that can severely impair their school success. Not following classroom rules is defined as non-compliance within the classroom setting. Noncompliance can include overt (e.g. refusal to follow rules, direct challenges to the teacher's authority) or covert (e.g. passively ignoring rules or requests) student responses. This chapter discusses intervention programs or strategies for which the primary outcome is to improve compliance in the classroom.

This chapter reviews the accomplishments of the Head Start program. At the top of the list of Head Start's contributions is the fact that it was the trailblazer for our nation's huge investment in pre-school education. Besides inspiring so many states to mount pre-school programs for poor children, Head Start has had an impact on other nations. Head Start has also had a huge influence, on the author and on the field of child development, which goes beyond the generation of a large scientific literature on early intervention.

This chapter focuses on the early years of the Head Start program. As Head Start moved from the drawing board to the set-up phase, it very quickly brought out the best in Americans. Head Start's huge popularity was ignited by President and Lady Bird Johnson. Alleviating poverty was close to the president's emotional core, since he had lived among the poor as a boy, and his own family later fell on hard times so he had to work his way through college. The First Lady had a special place in her heart for children and adopted Head Start with the zeal of a missionary. Neither the planning committee nor decision makers anticipated the immense popularity of Head Start. No one came close to predicting that 560,000 children would be enrolled in the first summer.

This chapter discusses the status of the Head Start program under the Clinton administration. President Clinton was just as strong a supporter of Head Start at the end of his administration as he was at the beginning. The president stood his ground on Head Start until the very end. His last budget agreement with Congress included an increase of $1 billion for Head Start (bringing funding up to $6.2 billion). As praiseworthy as this was, this amount would still fall far short of Clinton's promise that the program would have the funds to serve every eligible child. Regardless of whether his goals were too lofty or Congress not co-operative enough, the Head Start community continues to look back on the Clinton years as the golden age of Head Start.

This chapter reviews the performance of the Head Start program. It argues that based on the criteria of eradicating poverty or eliminating the achievement gap, Head Start is clearly a failure. Judged by changes in the risk profiles and attainments of the children and families it has served, maybe not. Like all programs that receive taxpayers' hard-earned money, Head Start must be held accountable. A lack of clarity over exactly what it should be held accountable for has allowed the controversy over whether the program works or not to rage without answer, even after all these years.

This chapter focuses on the planning of the Head Start program. To the planners, the purpose of Head Start was optimal child development, resulting in improved school readiness. The Community Action people viewed better performance by a Head Start child not as an end in itself but as a means to a much larger end. It was an opportunity to hire parents and locals to improve their financial situation. More important, Head Start would confront and change the system so that all poor children and adults would experience a better quality of life.

Alcohol policies are primarily the concern of local, regional, and national governments, which often view the provision of treatment as part of a comprehensive approach to alcohol-related problems. In addition to its value in the reduction of human suffering, treatment can be considered as a form of prevention. When it occurs soon after the onset of alcohol problems, it is called secondary prevention; when it is initiated to control the damage associated with chronic drinking, it is called tertiary prevention. As one of the first societal responses to alcohol problems, treatment interventions have not been critically examined as policy options, despite the resources they consume and the scientific evidence that is available concerning their effectiveness and costs. This chapter examines the scientific basis of alcohol treatment policies in terms of research on the effectiveness and costs of a wide range of treatment interventions.

This chapter discusses the status of the Head Start program under George W. Bush's administration. The Bush administration's stewardship of Head Start and several other children's programs including child care and health halted and even erased some of the progress it had taken many years to achieve. The 2007 Head Start Act corrected some of the problems created by the administration and held the intent to fix others and move the program forward again. At time of writing, President Obama has just begun his term and has proposed large new investments in Head Start, which he defends as investments in America's future.

This chapter discusses the uncertainties faced by the Head Start program under the Nixon administration and the author's effort to improve Head Start. At the Office of Child Development (OCD), the changes he was making to Head Start were referred to as the improvement and innovation agenda. The need to improve Head Start was obvious, but why innovation? The impetus for his decision to experiment came from many sources. When Head Start began, it had the excitement and fervor that comes with a brand new endeavor; but complacency set in after it had been operating for a few years.

The preceding chapters have provided detailed reviews of the relevant science base for a comprehensive consideration of how alcohol policy can better serve the public good. This concluding chapter now tries to make explicit the connection between the research and the practical needs of the policymaker who wants to implement evidence-based responses to the problems within society caused or exacerbated by alcohol. The intention is to make science useful at the real-world front lines of policy. The difference between good and bad alcohol policy is not an abstraction, but very often a matter of life and death. Research has the capacity to indicate which strategies are likely to succeed in public health intentions, and which are likely to be less effective or even useless, diversionary, or a waste of resources. The evidence supporting the various strategies and interventions reviewed in earlier parts of the book is summarized.

This chapter focuses on the criteria that should be considered when judging the success of efforts in working on parenting with men who batter. Topics discussed include what a parenting program should accomplish, ingredients of a successful evaluation, recruiting men who batter to participate in the evaluation, safely involving survivors and their children in the evaluation, and addressing confidentiality issues.

This chapter sets the stage for the chapters to follow by describing how research is conducted to evaluate the effects of specific alcohol policies, and to assess the impact of prevention strategies (e.g., alcohol education in schools) and other interventions (e.g., screening and brief counselling for high-risk drinkers) that precede formal alcohol policies. In some cases policies persist despite evidence that the strategy is flawed, and the outcome with regard to reducing alcohol-related problems is thus inconsequential. To understand why policies succeed or fail to accomplish their aims, the field of alcohol policy analysis has begun to consider the mechanisms that relate policies to outcomes, as demonstrated by the research discussed in this chapter.