Young children in poor communities are spending more hours in non-parental care due to policy reforms and expansion of early childhood programs. Studies show positive effects of high-quality center-based care on children's cognitive growth. Yet we know little about the effects of center care...

Previous research has demonstrated that attending center care is associated with cognitive benefits for young children. However, little is known about the ideal age for children to enter such care or the "right" amount of time, both weekly and yearly, for children to attend center programs....

<DIV>We love the local. From the cherries we buy, to the grocer who sells them, to the school where our child unpacks them for lunch, we express resurgent faith in decentralizing the institutions and businesses that arrange our daily lives. But the fact is that huge, bureaucratic organizations often...</div>

Social programs, including interventions helping disadvantaged youth, offer implicit models regarding what behavioral changes will cause various social and economic outcomes. Responding, in part, to the work of evaluators, federal and state youth policies advance different intervention models....

Evaluators could more clearly contrast the bureaucratic structures typifying many inter ventions against the indigenous social rules that pattern local action by staffs or clients. Methodological critiques have thoroughly contested strict experimental designs that ignore political complexities...

We love the local. From the cherries we buy, to the grocer who sells them, to the school where our child unpacks them for lunch, we express resurging faith in decentralizing the institutions and businesses that arrange our daily lives. But the fact is that huge, bureaucratic organizations often...

Past research from Third World countries shows that school related factors have stronger effects on student achievement than do family background factors. However this paper finds that prior work suffered from conceptual and methodological flaws, and it suggests that once these shortcomings are...