The search for reliable information on the well-being of America's young is vital to designing programs to improve their lives. Yet social scientists are concerned that many measurements of children's physical and emotional health are inadequate, misleading, or outdated, leaving policymakers ill-informed. Indicators of Children's Well-Being is an ambitious inquiry into current efforts to monitor children from the prenatal period through adolescence. Working with the most up-to-date statistical sources, experts from multiple disciplines assess how data on physical development, education, economic security, family and neighborhood conditions, and social behavior are collected and analyzed, what findings they reveal, and what improvements are needed to create a more comprehensive and policy-relevant system of measurement.

Today's climate of welfare reform has opened new possibilities for program innovation and experimentation, but it has also intensified the need for a clearly defined and wide-ranging empirical framework to pinpoint where help is needed and what interventions will succeed. Indicators of Children's Well-Being emphasizes the importance of accurate studies that address real problems. Essays on children's material well-being show why income data must be supplemented with assessments of housing, medical care, household expenditure, food consumption, and education. Other contributors urge refinements to existing survey instruments such as the Census and the Current Population Survey. The usefulness of records from human service agencies, child welfare records, and juvenile court statistics is also evaluated.

ROBERT M. HAUSER is Vilas Research Professor of Sociology and affiliate at the Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

BRETT V. BROWN is research associate at Child Trends, Inc., Washington, D.C.

WILLIAM R. PROSSER is senior policy analyst who is retired from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, D.C.

CONTRIBUTORS: J. Lawrence Aber, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Thomas J. Corbett, Claudia J. Coulton, Greg J. Duncan, David J. Eggebeen, Arthur B. Elster, Frank F. Furstenberg Jr., Robert M. Goerge, Dennis P. Hogan, Mary Elizabeth Hughes, Aurora Jackson, Stephanie M. Jones, Thomas J. Kane, Bruce P. Kennedy, Daniel Koretz, Paula Lantz, John M. Love, Susan E. Mayer, Timothy J. McGourthy, Marc L. Miringoff, Marque-Luisa Miringoff, Kristin A. Moore, Allyn M. Mortimer, Leslie Moscow, Jane Mosley, Melissa Partin, Deborah A. Phillips, Deborah Prothrow-Stith, Gary D. Sandefur, James Sears, Judith R. Smith, Matthew Stagner, Barbara Starfield, Ruby Takanishi, Barbara L. Wolfe.

An Institute for Research on Poverty Affiliated Book on Poverty and Public Policy

Shows why social statistics are important and how they are put to use in the interest of the public. Written by a sociologist who serves as Director of the Population Research Center at the University of Chicago, the book illustrates the many applications social statistics have for governmental agencies at the federal, state, and local levels; for the business community; for labor unions; for educators and researchers; and for the general public. The author provides a description of the major bodies of social statistical information, including population; births, deaths, and health; marriage, divorce, and the family; education; the labor force; crime; consumption and the consumer; recreation; governments; and public opinion polls.

PHILIP M. HAUSER is Lucy Flower Professor of Urban Sociology and director of the Population Research Center at the University of Chicago.

This timely book is concerned with interactions between ordinary people and large public bureaucracies—interactions that typically are characterized by mutual frustration and antagonism. In fact, as Joel Handler points out, the procedural guidelines intended to ensure fairness and due process fail to take account of an initial imbalance of power and tend to create adversarial rather than cooperative relationships.

When the special education needs of a handicapped child must be determined, parents and school administrators often face an especially painful confrontation. The Conditions of Discretion focuses on one successful approach to educational decision making (developed by the school district of Madison, Wisconsin) in order to illustrate how such interactions can be restructured and enhanced. Madison’s creative plan regards parents as part of the solution, not the problem, and uses “lay advocates” to turn conflict into an opportunity for communication. Arrangements such as these, in Handler’s analysis, exemplify the theoretical conditions under which discretionary decisions can be made fairly and with the informed participation of all concerned.

The Conditions of Discretion offers not only a detailed case study, sympathetically described, but also persuasive assessments of major themes in contemporary legal and social policy—informed consent, bureaucratic change, social movement activity, the relationship of the individual to the state. From these strands, Handler weaves a significant new theory of cooperative decision making that integrates the public and the private, recognizes the importance of values, and preserves autonomy within community.

"A masterful blend of social criticism, social sciences, and humane, constructive thought about the future of the welfare state." —Duncan Kennedy, Harvard Law School

JOEL F. HANDLER is professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles.

From Welfare to Work appears at a critical moment, when all fifty states are wrestling with tough budgetary and program choices as they implement the new federal welfare reforms. This book is a definitive analysis of the landmark social research that has directly informed those choices: the rigorous evaluation of programs designed to help welfare recipients become employed and self-sufficient. It discusses forty-five past and current studies, focusing on the series of seminal evaluations conducted by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation over the last fifteen years.

Which of these welfare-to-work programs have worked? For whom and at what cost? In answering these key questions, the authors clearly delineate the trade-offs facing policymakers as they strive to achieve the multiple goals of alleviating poverty, helping the most disadvantaged, curtailing dependence, and effecting welfare savings. The authors present compelling evidence that the generally low-cost, primarily job search-oriented programs of the late 1980s achieved sustained earnings gains and welfare savings. However, getting people out of poverty and helping those who are most disadvantaged may require some intensive, higher-cost services such as education and training. The authors explore a range of studies now in progress that will address these and other urgent issues. They also point to encouraging results from programs that were operating in San Diego and Baltimore, which suggest the potential value of a mixed strategy: combining job search and other low-cost activities for a broad portion of the caseload with more specialized services for smaller groups.

Offering both an authoritative synthesis of work already done and recommendations for future innovation, From Welfare to Work will be the standard resource and required reading for practitioners and students in the social policy, social welfare, and academic communities.

JUDITH M. GUERON is president of the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC).

EDWARD S. PAULY is senior research associate and coordinator of education research for MDRC.

"Grubb's powerful vision of a workforce development system connected by vertical ladders for upward mobility adds an important new dimension to our continued efforts at system reform. The unfortunate reality is that neither our first-chance education system nor our second-chance job training system have succeeded in creating clear pathways out of poverty for many of our citizens. Grubb's message deserves a serious hearing by policy makers and practitioners alike." —Evelyn Ganzglass, National Governors' Association

Over the past three decades, job training programs have proliferated in response to mounting problems of unemployment, poverty, and expanding welfare rolls. These programs and the institutions that administer them have grown to a number and complexity that make it increasingly difficult for policymakers to interpret their effectiveness. Learning to Work offers a comprehensive assessment of efforts to move individuals into the workforce, and explains why their success has been limited.

Learning to Work offers a complete history of job training in the United States, beginning with the Department of Labor's manpower development programs in the1960s and detailing the expansion of services through the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act in the 1970s and the Job Training Partnership Act in the 1980s.Other programs have sprung from the welfare system or were designed to meet the needs of various state and corporate development initiatives. The result is a complex mosaic of welfare-to-work, second-chance training, and experimental programs, all with their own goals, methodology, institutional administration, and funding.

Learning to Work examines the findings of the most recent and sophisticated job training evaluations and what they reveal for each type of program. Which agendas prove most effective? Do their effects last over time? How well do programs benefit various populations, from welfare recipients to youths to displaced employees in need of retraining? The results are not encouraging. Many programs increase employment and reduce welfare dependence, but by meager increments, and the results are often temporary. On average most programs boosted earnings by only $200 to $500 per year, and even these small effects tended to decay after four or five years. Overall, job training programs moved very few individuals permanently off welfare, and provided no entry into a middle-class occupation or income.

Learning to Work provides possible explanations for these poor results, citing the limited scope of individual programs, their lack of linkages to other programs or job-related opportunities, the absence of academic content or solid instructional methods, and their vulnerability to local political interference. Author Norton Grubb traces the root of these problems to the inherent separation of job training programs from the more successful educational system. He proposes consolidating the two domains into a clearly defined hierarchy of programs that combine school- and work-based instruction and employ proven methods of student-centered, project-based teaching. By linking programs tailored to every level of need and replacing short-term job training with long-term education, a system could be created to enable individuals to achieve increasing levels of economic success.

The problems that job training programs address are too serious to ignore. Learning to Work tells us what's wrong with job training today, and offers a practical vision for reform.

W. NORTON GRUBB is professor of education at the University of California, Berkeley.

Can money buy high-quality education? Studies find only a weak relationship between public school funding and educational outcomes. In The Money Myth, W. Norton Grubb proposes a powerful paradigm shift in the way we think about why some schools thrive and others fail. The greatest inequalities in America’s schools lie in factors other than fiscal support. Fundamental differences in resources other than money—for example, in leadership, instruction, and tracking policies—explain the deepening divide in the success of our nation’s schoolchildren.

The Money Myth establishes several principles for a bold new approach to education reform. Drawing on a national longitudinal dataset collected over twelve years, Grubb makes a crucial distinction between “simple” resources and those “compound,” “complex,” and “abstract” resources that cannot be readily bought. Money can buy simple resources—such as higher teacher salaries and smaller class sizes—but these resources are actually some of the weakest predictors of educational outcomes. On the other hand, complex resources pertaining to school practices are astonishingly strong predictors of success. Grubb finds that tracking policies have the most profound and consistent impact on student outcomes over time. Schools often relegate low-performing students—particularly minorities—to vocational, remedial, and special education tracks. So even in well-funded schools, resources may never reach the students who need them most. Grubb also finds that innovation in the classroom has a critical impact on student success. Here, too, America’s schools are stratified. Teachers in underperforming schools tend to devote significant amounts of time to administration and discipline, while instructors in highly ranked schools dedicate the bulk of their time to “engaged learning,” using varied pedagogical approaches.

Effective schools distribute leadership among many instructors and administrators, and they foster a sense of both trust and accountability. These schools have a clear mission and coherent agenda for reaching goals. Underperforming schools, by contrast, implement a variety of fragmented reforms and practices without developing a unified plan. This phenomenon is perhaps most powerfully visible in the negative repercussions of No Child Left Behind. In a frantic attempt to meet federal standards and raise test scores quickly, more and more schools are turning to scripted “off the shelf” curricula. These practices discourage student engagement, suppress teacher creativity, and hold little promise of improving learning beyond the most basic skills.

Grubb shows that infusions of money alone won’t eradicate inequality in America’s schools. We need to address the vast differences in the way school communities operate. By looking beyond school finance, The Money Myth gets to the core reasons why education in America is so unequal and provides clear recommendations for addressing this chronic national problem.

W. NORTON GRUBB is David Pierpont Gardner Professor in Higher Education and faculty coordinator of the Principal Leadership Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.

Discusses the uses and abuses of intelligence testing in our educational systems. Dr. Goslin examines teachers' opinions and practices with regard to tests and finds considerable discrepancies between attitude and behavior. He points to the need for formulation of school policies that clearly specify what role teachers are to play in the measurement process. Dr. Goslin makes several policy recommendations, stressing the idea that the measuring process must take into account many aspects of a child's background and characteristics, and must guard against premature labeling or over-categorization.

DAVID A. GOSLIN was staff sociologist at the Russell Sage Foundation and author of The School in Contemporary Society and The Search for Ability: Standardized Testing in Social Perspective.

Survey research was for a long time thought of primarily as a sociological tool. It is relatively recently that this research method has been adopted by other social sciences and related professional disciplines. The amount and quality of its use, however, vary considerably from field to field. This volume describes the elementary logic of survey design and analysis and provides, for each discipline, an evaluation of how survey research has been used and conceivably may be used to deal with the central problems of each field.

CHARLES Y. GLOCK is director of the Survey Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

Since the end of legal segregation in schools, most research on educational inequality has focused on economic and other structural obstacles to the academic achievement of disadvantaged groups. But in Contesting Stereotypes and Creating Identities, a distinguished group of psychologists and social scientists argue that stereotypes about the academic potential of some minority groups remain a significant barrier to their achievement. This groundbreaking volume examines how low institutional and cultural expectations of minorities hinder their academic success, how these stereotypes are perpetuated, and the ways that minority students attempt to empower themselves by redefining their identities.

The contributors to Contesting Stereotypes and Creating Identities explore issues of ethnic identity and educational inequality from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives, drawing on historical analyses, social-psychological experiments, interviews, and observation. Meagan Patterson and Rebecca Bigler show that when teachers label or segregate students according to social categories (even in subtle ways), students are more likely to rank and stereotype one another, so educators must pay attention to the implicit or unintentional ways that they emphasize group differences. Many of the contributors contest John Ogbu’s theory that African Americans have developed an “oppositional culture” that devalues academic effort as a form of “acting white.” Daphna Oyserman and Daniel Brickman, in their study of black and Latino youth, find evidence that strong identification with their ethnic group is actually associated with higher academic motivation among minority youth. Yet, as Julie Garcia and Jennifer Crocker find in a study of African-American female college students, the desire to disprove negative stereotypes about race and gender can lead to anxiety, low self-esteem, and excessive, self-defeating levels of effort, which impede learning and academic success. The authors call for educational institutions to diffuse these threats to minority students’ identities by emphasizing that intelligence is a malleable rather than a fixed trait.

Contesting Stereotypes and Creating Identities reveals the many hidden ways that educational opportunities are denied to some social groups. At the same time, this probing and wide-ranging anthology provides a fresh perspective on the creative ways that these groups challenge stereotypes and attempt to participate fully in the educational system.

ANDREW J. FULIGNI is professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, and co-director of Family Research Consortium IV. This volume was produced by the Russell Sage Foundation Working Group on Social Identity and Institutional Engagement.

CONTRIBUTORS: Joshua Aronson, Meredith Bachman, Rebecca S. Bigler, Daniel Brickman, Jennifer Crocker, William E. Cross, Jr., Carol S. Dweck, Sonia DeLuca Fernandez, Andrew J. Fuligni, Anne Galletta, Julie A. Garcia, Brian Girard, Catherine Good, Jason S. Lawrence, April Leininger, Ramaswami Mahalingam, Magdalena Martinez, Elizabeth Birr Moje, Carla O'Connor, Daphna Oyserman, Meagan M. Patterson, Marjorie Rhodes, Gwendelyn J. Rivera, and Diane N. Ruble.

The 1996 welfare reform bill marked the beginning of a new era in public assistance. Although the new law has reduced welfare rolls, falling caseloads do not necessarily mean a better standard of living for families. In For Better and For Worse, editors Greg J. Duncan and P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale and a roster of distinguished experts examine the evidence and evaluate whether welfare reform has met one of its chief goals-improving the well-being of the nation's poor children.

For Better and For Worse opens with a lively political history of the welfare reform legislation, which demonstrates how conservative politicians capitalize on public concern over such social problems as single parenthood to win support for the radical reforms. Part I reviews how individual states redesigned, implemented, and are managing their welfare systems. These chapters show that most states appear to view maternal employment, rather that income enhancement and marriage, as key to improving child well-being. Part II focuses on national and multistate evaluations of the changes in welfare to examine how families and children are actually faring under the new system. These chapters suggest that work-focused reforms have not hurt children, and that reforms that provide financial support for working families can actually enhance children's development. Part III presents a variety of perspectives on policy options for the future. Remarkable here is the common ground for both liberals and conservatives on the need to support work and at the same time strengthen safety-net programs such as Food Stamps.

Although welfare reform-along with the Earned Income Tax Credit and the booming economy of the nineties-has helped bring mothers into the labor force and some children out of poverty, the nation still faces daunting challenges in helping single parents become permanent members of the workforce. For Better and For Worse gathers the most recent data on the effects of welfare reform in one timely volume focused on improving the life chances of poor children.

GREG J. DUNCAN is professor of economics in the School of Education and Social Policy and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.

P. LINDSAY CHASE-LANSDALE is professor of developmental psychology in the School of Education and Social Policy and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.

CONTRIBUTORS: P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, Greg J. Duncan, David M. Casey, Danielle A. Crosby, Sandra K. Danziger, Kristina Daugirdas, Rachel E. Dunifon, Kathryn Edin, Paula England, Nancy Folbre, Thomas L. Gais, Ron Haskins, Ann E. Horvath-Rose, Aletha C. Huston, Cathy M. Johnson, Ariel Kalil, Andrew S. London, Joan Maya Mazelis, Rashmita S. Mistry, Kristin Anderson Moore, H. Elizabeth Peters, Wendell Primus, Marika N. Ripke, Jennifer L. Romich, Ellen K. Scott, Jack Tweedie, Morgan B. Ward Doran, Alan Weil, Thomas S. Weisner, and W. Jean Young.