ABSTRACT
Successfully educating poor and minority children has become an increasingly urgent concern facing American education today. Currently, many low-income, minority children achieve at suboptimal levels, as measured by traditional indices (e.g., standardized test scores, GPAs, college entrance and completion) (Irvine, 1990). Further, these children consistently fare poorly in the completion of higher level reasoning and complex problem-solving tasks (Mullis et al., 1990). The social and economic isolation, student and teacher alienation, and dilapidated school facilities that are so pervasive in our inner cities (Waxman, 1992), leave little doubt as to why these students are also especially likely to drop out of high school prior to the attainment of a diploma (Irvine, 1990). Thus educators now search for programs that will provide children of color attending our public schools in our inner cities with the skills necessary to become intellectually competent citizens in an economically competitive workforce. As our country faces the reality of global economic competition coupled with escalating urban decay, these young people represent a constituency whose fate will help shape the future of this country.
