Teachers College Columbia University Research Articles

Suniya Luthar (1958-2023).

Co-founder Emerita of Authentic Connections, Founder of Authentic Connections Groups, and Professor Emerita at Columbia University's Teachers College, Suniya Luthar passed away on February 16, 2023. Suniya was born on December 9, 1958, in New Delhi, India, where she studied for BA (1978) and MA (1980) degrees and served as a lecturer on child development (1981-1984), all at Lady Irwin College. After decades of studying youth across the economic spectrum, Suniya concluded that ultimately children's ability to be resilient is most linked to their mother's well-being and that became the final focus of her empirical and community work. Suniya initiated several projects to support mothers. They include a relational group therapy for low-income mothers with histories of addiction and serious mental illness and the Authentic Connections Groups program, an evidence-based supportive community intervention that has been successfully used in hospitals, schools, and university settings. Suniya used to say that, even as a young child, she was sensitive to the psychological pain of others and decided at the age of 15 to help children in distress. She certainly accomplished that goal. As testaments to her vast scholarly contributions to the well-being of children and their families, Suniya received numerous awards and honors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Global South perspectives: a curriculum analysis of a global North comparative international education graduate program

The field of Comparative International Education trains new professionals every year who engage in work in diverse countries around the world, especially global South countries, influencing policy decisions. At the same time, the decolonization framework points out the epistemic dominance of the North, which faces the ‘other’ as an object of study rather than a subject capable of also producing knowledge. This study aims to use the framework of modernity/coloniality/decoloniality to understand the profile diversity of the authors used within the training of Comparative International Education (CIE) professionals in the Global North. It presents a bibliometric analysis of the syllabi of three offerings of the basic requirement course of the International Educational Development program at Teachers College Columbia University for the academic year of 2019-2020, evaluating the presence of Global South authors. Using basic descriptive statistics and social network analysis, this study investigates the geographic representation of the canons in the field by tracing the authorship of course readings. The findings demonstrate that research produced within the Global North is dominant in the basic training of CIE students, whereas Global South authors are present almost five times less than their Global North counterparts. While ways of addressing this disparity have already been set in motion, more can be done to further decolonial and ecology of knowledge frameworks in the future.

The United States Registry for Exercise Professionals

Paul M. Gallo, Ed.D., FACSM, ACSM-CEP, ACSM-EP, ACSM-GEI, is the director of Exercise Science and Wellness at Norwalk Community College, Norwalk, CT; adjunct faculty at Teachers College Columbia University, New York; and a past president of ACSM's New England Chapter. Dr. Gallo is the chair of ACSM's CCRB-Continuing Professional Education Subcommittee, associate editor-in-chief of ACSM's Health & Fitness Journal®, and associate editor for the Journal of Clinical Exercise Physiology. He strongly believes in the importance of translating science to evidence-based practice within the health fitness and exercise science fields. Disclosure: The author declares no conflict of interest and does not have any financial disclosures.

"A backdrop for psychotherapy": Carl R. Rogers, psychological testing, and the psycho-educational clinic at Columbia University's Teachers College (1924-1935).

Carl Rogers' work in clinical psychology and psychotherapy has been as influential as it is vast and varied. However, as a topic of historical inquiry Rogers' approach to clinical psychology is beset by historiographical lacunae. Especially vague have been Rogers' own reflections about his student years (1925-1928) at Columbia University's Teachers College. Rogers claimed that he received the "backdrop" for the development of his approach to psychotherapy at the College. However, most historical literature has overlooked Rogers' early years by focusing on his later work. This article aims to shed light on Rogers' initial academic education by delving into his backdrop idea. I explore Rogers' early years at Columbia by using his retroactive appraisals as a conduit for reconstructing his first formal institutional context-Columbia's highly active but short-lived psycho-educational clinic. By drawing on several archival sources and unpublished materials, I will argue that the College's intellectual and institutional climate fostered Rogers' appreciation of experiential and cognitive learning while stimulating his intellectual independence as a clinical psychologist. The clinic put him in contact with real children, trained him in psychological tests, offered concrete professional role models, and pointed him toward his lifelong concern with human individuality. This contextual reading of Rogers' education allows for a deeper, more informed understanding of both his academic origins and his immediate intellectual context amid American clinical psychology during the interwar years. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

An ‘ingenious system of practical contacts’: Historical origins and development of the Institute of Child Welfare Research at Columbia University's Teachers College (1922–36)

During the first two decades of the 20th century, the expansion of private foundations and philanthropic initiatives in the United States converged with a comprehensive, nationwide agenda of progressive education and post-war social reconstruction that situated childhood at its core. From 1924 to 1928, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial was the main foundation behind the aggressive, systematic funding of the child development movement in North America. A pioneering institution, the Institute of Child Welfare Research, established in 1924 at Columbia's Teachers College, was the first Rockefeller-funded programme of its kind at an American university. The Institute was influential in helping set up a nationwide network of child welfare institutes at other universities. Twelve years later, it would also be the first of those institutes to close. Nonetheless, the Institute's context, emergence, and development have been overlooked or misrepresented by previous scholarship, which calls for a new, critical historical analysis. By drawing on a number of archival sources and unpublished materials, this paper offers a critical reconstruction of the Institute's internal, often unstable history, emphasizing its origins, members, and administrative changes. I argue that the demise of the Institute should be understood in the context of both the revision of philanthropic policies in the late 1920s and the Institute's singular emphasis on teaching and training over research. The resulting narrative allows for a deeper, more informed understanding of both the Institute's origins and its eventual folding.

Educating emergent bilinguals: Policies, programs, and practices for English learners. Garcia, Ofelia and Kleifgen, Jo Anne (Eds.). Teachers College Columbia University Press.

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Contributors

Contributors

No-Man's-Land: The Battlefield Watercolors of Claggett Wilson

No-Man's-LandThe Battlefield Watercolors of Claggett Wilson Kristine Somerville Click for larger view View full resolution Symphony of Terror, Claggett Wilson, ca. 1919, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Alice H. Rossin [End Page 97] Like many aspiring artists, Claggett Wilson, born in Washington, DC, in 1887, rejected a conventional gentleman's education at Princeton to briefly study at the Art Students League of New York before sailing to Paris. He enrolled at the progressive Académie Julian, and from 1906 to 1910 showed his work at the Paris Salon, the art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. When he returned to the United States in 1913, Modernism had fully arrived. The International Exhibition of Modern Art, known simply as the Armory Show, featured 1,250 paintings, sculptures, and decorative works by over three hundred avant-garde European and American artists. Historically it became a Who's Who of Modern art: Pablo Picasso, Edward Hopper, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Cézanne, to name a few. Claggett Wilson's oil painting Moorish Girl, now lost, was exhibited among the works of these now better-known artists. Modernist artists sought to create symbols representing the dehumanizing effect of industrialization and the impact of cities on contemporary life. As a means of signifying their doubts about time-honored values and institutions, they rejected the traditional use of perspective, color, and composition. Critics reviled the new work as an "insane" affront to artistic sensibilities. Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, with its overlapping images meant to express motion, was singled out for derision; a critic in the New York Times famously referred to it as "an explosion in a shingle factory." As an instructor at Columbia University Teachers College, Wilson was certainly interested in helping his students search for a unique, surprising kind of beauty as encouraged by the new art of the day. In 1917, when the United States entered the First World War, mobilizing more than 300,000 soldiers, thirty-one-year-old Wilson put aside his paintbrushes and left his teaching job to enlist as a combat marine. He believed that to be a fully realized artist, he needed to experience the world in all its complexity, including truly bad things. His desires, though honorable, were naive. After training as a second lieutenant, he found himself on the frontlines in France, where he experienced two of the bloodiest battles of the war: the Battle of Château-Thierry and the Battle of Belleau Wood. In the month-long Battle of Belleau Wood in June 1918, US marines struggled to block one of the German approaches to Paris, but they did so artlessly, advancing shoulder to shoulder, which had rarely been done since the slaughter of the British at the Somme in 1916. Wilson was wounded by poison gas and was left for three days lying in the muddy [End Page 98] no-man's-land between the American and German trenches before being recovered for medical treatment. Click for larger view View full resolution Front Line Stuff, Claggett Wilson, ca. 1919, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Alice H. Rossin World War I was called the "chemists' war" for its large-scale use of poison gas. The gases soaked into woolen uniforms, causing skin burns and blisters, and hung in noxious clouds over the trenches, resulting in near blindness, vomiting, and long-term respiratory problems; Wilson experienced respiratory difficulties for the rest of his life. After recovering at a hospital in Dijon, he returned to the front to witness Germany's surrender. Following the armistice, Belgian, British, French, and American forces stayed behind to maintain control of the occupied territories. While many of his buddies went home, Wilson was sent to the small town of Koblenz, Germany, for the Army of Occupation [End Page 99] of the Rhineland. To deal with the haunting memories of life in the trenches, a place filled with the stench of urine, rotting flesh and excrement, rats the size of cats, and men suffering from poison gas and shell shock, Wilson knew he needed to paint; it was the only thing that would bring him solace. He acquired a set...

Attentive Reading with Constrained Summarization-Written (ARCS-W), a treatment to improve written and spoken discourse in people with mild aphasia.

Attentive Reading with Constrained Summarization-Written (ARCS-W), a treatment to improve written and spoken discourse in people with mild aphasia.

Jak to robią w Nowym Jorku? Polonisty obrazki z podróży do Ameryki

Artykuł jest relacją z pobytu studyjnego w Columbia University Teachers College w Nowym Jorku. Uczelnia ta jest jedną z najbardziej prestiżowych w USA placówek kształcących nauczycieli. Nowy Jork natomiast to ważny ośrodek współczesnej amerykańskiej myśli dydaktycznej, także w dziedzinie nauczania w języku ojczystym. Autor omawia specyfikę studiów nauczycielskich w TC, podkreślając zwłaszcza rolę obszernego komponentu treści filozoficznych i ogólnopedagogicznych oraz dwusemestralnego, mocno angażującego studentów stażu nauczycielskiego. Informacji o merytorycznej zawartości przedmiotów i kursów, prowadzących do uzyskania uprawnień nauczyciela języka angielskiego, towarzyszy refleksja na temat modelu dydaktyki akademickiej realizowanego w TC, w tym zwłaszcza na temat wykorzystania multimediów w procesie kształcenia. Równoległym wątkiem rozważań są relacje z lekcji przedmiotów humanistycznych, głównie ELA (English Language Arts, odpowiednik języka polskiego), odznaczających się przede wszystkim wykorzystaniem różnych technik wywoływania zjawiska autentycznego uczenia się młodych ludzi.

One Giant Leap: A Review of Unflattening

Nick Sousanis’ <em>Unflattening</em> is a thesis-as-comic developed from the author’s doctoral dissertation for Teachers College Columbia University. Sousanis argues that images are not subordinate to words, but equal partners in the articulation of thought, and that sequential art is a vital scholarly alternative to either visual or verbal communication alone.

Introduction to the Special Issue on Historic Design Cases

Craig D. Howard is an Assistant Professor of Instructional Technology at Texas A&M University—Texarkana. He holds a PhD from Indiana University Bloomington in Instructional Systems Technology, and an MA in TESOL from Teachers College Columbia University. Prior to coming to Texas, Craig has taught at universities in Atlanta, New York City, and Tokyo, Japan as well as in K-12 schools for the New York City Board of Education and for the New York State Department of Social Services. Craig has designed learning for Microsoft and Cambridge University Press, and researches innovative designs for learning professional discourses.

Culture in the Classroom

, which is composed of the deans of the education schools/colleges at the following universities: Harvard University, Michigan State University, Northwestern University, Stanford University, Teachers College Columbia University, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Wisconsin.

Transforming Community College Education at The City University of New York

The City University of New York (CUNY) developed and implemented two evidence-based, educational initiatives at its community colleges. Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), on six campuses, helped 55 percent of students who enter with one or two developmental needs earn an associate degree within three years. This compares with 20 percent for non-ASAP students who needed remediation. An external random assignment study by MDRC found that ASAP increased credits earned, completion of developmental coursework, and first-to-second semester retention. An independent study out of Columbia University Teachers College estimated that despite higher initial expenses, ASAP’s higher graduation rate costs the university $6,500 less per three-year graduate. The second innovation, CUNY’s New Community College (NCC), opened with 300 students in Fall 2012. It offers A.A. and A.S. degrees for transfer to baccalaureate programs, plus occupational A.A.S. degrees. Using a curriculum organized around problem-solving for New York City’s future, it integrates developmental and credit coursework, field experiences, and classroom learning in a structured and supportive environment. Other components include full-time study in the first year, limited majors, and a multidisciplinary faculty-staff instructional team. Early results include a 92 percent first-to-second-semester retention rate for Spring 2013.

The Visual Production of Citizenship: Children's Literature of the Works Progress Administration, 1937-1942

The Visual Production of Citizenship:Children's Literature of the Works Progress Administration, 1937-1942 Victoria Grieve (bio) In 1937, second graders in some "problem" New York City elementary schools read Christopher Lazare's The Crows and the Doves, a story illustrated by artist and printmaker Henry Glintenkamp. Lazare's story is an allegory of American race and class relations in which the animosity between black crows and white doves prevents cooperation to solve shared problems: "Look at those doves. Look at them," argued Mrs. Crow. "Some birds have all the luck. They have nothing to worry about, they'll never starve. Someone is always feeding them. Someone is always taking care of them. And why? Because they're white, and soft, and stupid. Think of us. We fly all the time. We work and fight for what we eat. And because we do, other birds think we're ugly. It isn't fair." "No, it isn't fair," Mr. Crow agreed. (2) Glintenkamp's illustrations—stark black-and-white woodcuts—enhance the atmosphere of discord described by the narrative. This story is remarkable not only because it was written in 1937 for seven-year-old students, but also because it was produced by employees of the federal government under the auspices of the New York City Works Progress Administration (WPA) in partnership with the NYC Board of Education. This extraordinary New Deal partnership created a series of more than two hundred remedial readers for New York City elementary classrooms between 1937 and 1942.1 The New Reading Materials Project (NRMP) resulted from an unprecedented intersection of intellectual, political, and cultural trends in the early 1930s. Interest in reading and literacy had been on the rise since World War I, leading to increased research in remedial reading diagnosis and correction. By 1924, literacy had become so urgent a priority that the National Society for [End Page 26] the Study of Education devoted its entire twenty-fourth yearbook to the topic. In the late 1920s, the New York Board of Education began to revise the state curricula to adopt some principles of progressive educational theory widely promoted by Columbia University's Teachers College. A "child-centered" curriculum stressed meeting the needs and interests of individual children rather than inculcating a body of knowledge (NYC Supt. of Sch. Rpts. 190). The city's program fits into a broader educational trend away from rote memorization and toward an emphasis on teaching the whole child, following individual paths to knowledge, and encouraging flexibility in the classroom. In the early 1930s, the board published its report, which stated, among other things, that "there were more functional illiterates in New York City than in any one State of the Union except Texas." Experts suggested a remedy: provide children with books that they found interesting and entertaining (Zeitlin 138-39). Established in 1934, the city-funded literacy program was linked not only to a national focus on illiteracy, but also to the large number of second-generation immigrant children in the city who struggled with standard English texts (Campbell). Beginning in 1936, the program was funded in part by the Women's and Professional Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). L. R. Alderman, the National Director of Education for the WPA, pointed out that "retardation of school children was greatest where parents were illiterate" ("4-Year Drive" 12). Efforts to combat illiteracy peaked in the 1930s as part of New Deal initiatives to democratize education across class and racial lines (Fass 124-27). The child-centered NRMP was part of these broader state and national efforts (Zeitlin 136, 164-65, 168). The NRMP was the brainchild of Arthur I. Gates, an educational psychologist at Teachers College who had been among the leaders in reading research since the mid-1920s. His research suggested that children would be more likely to read if supplied with a wide variety of interesting materials (Havighurst). As unemployment among city schoolteachers rose steadily in 1930, Gates proposed to Assistant Superintendent of Schools George Chatfield that the WPA hire unemployed teachers, writers, and illustrators to prepare new reading materials for both the adult literacy programs and the remedial projects. In a New York...

International Service That Really Serves

International Service That Really Serves

Academic Pathways to University Leadership: Presidents’ Descriptions of Their Doctoral Education

Introduction Although individuals come to the presidency from a variety of environments, over 40% of college and university presidents have earned a doctoral degree in either education or higher education (American Council of Education [ACE], 2007). Graduate school is seen as a powerful force that not only structures the mind, but also helps to shape the facts one legitimizes and how one interprets ideas (Brown, 2008). Dressel and Mayhew (1974) conducted the seminal research on the degree to which graduate programs prepared administrators for positions in higher education. They concluded there was no empirical evidence to support the notion that higher education programs prepared these administrators any better than programs in other disciplines. Purpose and Research Question The purpose of this study was to examine university presidents' perceptions of their academic doctoral preparation program as it related to their preparation for the university presidency. Although graduate student expectations and preparation for executive leadership in higher education have been studied as separate research topics, there is a lack of research that has addressed these topics collectively (Baliles, 2006; Stuver, 2006). This study extends and enhances the existing research by investigating the question: are the perceptions of college and university presidents of the adequacy of their doctoral training in preparing for their role at the university level? Higher Education and the University Presidency The role of the president is both substantive and symbolic. These individuals speak and represent multiple constituencies associated with the university. As the individual who speaks on behalf of the institution to the Board of Trustees, the university president is also in charge of assuring that trustees are involved in the planning processes, assume ownership of the plan, and receive regular feedback on its progress (Luxton, 2005). University presidents come from a variety of academic backgrounds. It is important to note that there is no degree that places a person on a linear track to the presidency. What is generally recognized is that graduate education plays a vital role in developing academic leaders. Graduate degrees signal to potential employers that the candidate understands the values of academia. Selingo (2003) writes, Frankly, academic credentials are important in this business (p. A40). Lester Goodchild (2002) defined higher education as a field of study that included sophisticated knowledge about and research on colleges, universities, and related postsecondary institutions, as well as the professional skills used by those persons who work in them (p. 303). He describes the purpose of higher education programs as to educate and train professionals for administrative, faculty, student life, and policy analyst positions in the country's approximately 4,000 postsecondary (p. 303). The field of higher education has developed over the last 100 years. Barnett (2007) describes the major reasons that the field developed as (1) the emergence of institutional history and the development of institutional research, (2) the counseling, testing, and guidance movements, (3) the emergence of national, regional, and local commissions, and (4) the presence of an emerging group of individuals who considered themselves student and scholars of higher education. The confluence of these factors along with the strong interest of G. Stanley Hall in the late 1800s prepared the way for higher education to emerge as a field of study. Hall, the president of Clark University at the time, developed the first course in higher education studies in 1893. Later, he created a 16-course specialization that became a part of the Ph.D. program in education at Clark University (Barnett, 2007). This continual focus on higher education as a means of preparing leaders for positions in administering institutions of higher learning inspired other larger institutions such as Ohio State University, Columbia University's Teachers College, the University of Chicago, the University of Pittsburg, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Michigan to develop graduate programs in the field of higher education during the early 1900s (Wright, 2004). …

Iv Honoring the Past—Anticipating the Future

Abstract and keywords. All manuscripts must include an abstract with keywords. Abstracts describing the essence of the manuscript should not exceed 150 words. Authors should select keywords from the menu on the manuscript submission system so that readers can search for the article after it is published. All inquiries and materials should be submitted to Ms. Krystle Hecker at P.O. Box 210, Teachers College Columbia University, 525 W. 120 thSt., New York, NY 10027 or at JMETC@tc.columbia.edu Copyrights and Permissions Those who wish to reuse material copyrighted by the JMETC must secure written permission from the editors to reproduce a journal article in full or in texts of more than 500 words. The JMETC normally will grant permission contingent on permission of the author and inclusion of the JMETC copyright notice on the first page of reproduced material. Access services may use unedited abstracts without the permission of the JMETC or the author. Address requests for reprint permissions to: Ms. Krystle Hecker, P.O. Box 210, Teachers College Columbia University, 525 W. 120

Abstracts in English of DPhil and PhD Theses on Mauritania

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 36, 3-4, 2011 © The Maghreb Review 2011 This publication is printed on longlife paper ABSTRACTS IN ENGLISH OF DPHIL AND PHD THESES ON MAURITANIA COMPILED AND EDITED BY MOHAMED BEN-MADANI NOTE These abstracts of theses in English, covering all fields of research on Mauritania, are published here for the benefit of interested scholars and students. The first list of this bibliographical work was published in The Maghreb Review, Vol. 24, 1-2, 1999. These abstracts of theses are now included here. Similar abstracts on other Maghrebi countries have already been published: Algeria (Vol. 27, 2-4, 2002, pp. 114-395, Libya, Vol. 23, 1-4, 1998, pp. 102-267, Morocco, Vol. 26, 2-4, 2001, pp. 146-474, and Tunisia, Vol. 24, 3-4, 1999, pp. 128-268). A fully up-to-date version of all these contributions, with an introduction, will be published in book form in 2012. No previous bibliographical work has covered all this material. A few of these theses have subsequently been published in book form. The abstracts are arranged in alphabetical order. There are two theses which I have been unable to see: Ba, Amadou Racine, The use of national languages in the school system of Mauritania, Educat.D, Columbia University Teachers College, 1978. Stewart, C.C., The role of Shaikh Sidiyya and the Qadiriyya in southern Mauritania: an historical interpretation, DPhil, University of Oxford, 1971. This thesis was published by Oxford University Press, under the title Islam and social order in Mauritania. A case study from the nineteenth century, 1973. 330 MOHAMED BEN-MADANI Abd-el-Moniem, H.A.A., A new recording of Mauritanian rock art, PhD, London, University College, 2005 A new recording of Mauritanian rock art is an attempt to utilize new methods and techniques for recording rock art in northwest Africa. This research aims to show the recorded work not as isolated figures but as groups of interrelated figures. According to the published and unpublished inventories of the Mauritanian rock art sites, the two studied sites, which have only engravings, have not been recorded before. They are situated in the Adrar plateau in the north-central part of the Mauritanian Sahara. In addition to the methods and techniques of recording rock art (e.g. tracing, rubbing and photography), the methodology used in this work includes a number of new aspects that seem to have been ignored or omitted in most previous work on the subject. This new recording aims to provide new clues that enable the researcher to carry out two basic interpretative analyses and gain a better understanding of the recorded engravings as an example of the rock art of Mauritania. Adiop, Abdul Aziz Maalik, Aspects of Pulaar non-linear phonology, PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1998 The language under study in this thesis is Pulaar, a dialect of Fula. Fula belongs to the West Atlantic language group of the Niger-Congo family (Greenberg 1960). It is spoken by an estimated 15 million to 17 million people from the Atlantic to the Sudan and into parts of Ethiopia (Crystal 1987 for figures, and Paradis 1986, 1993; Labouret 1952, Arnott 1970, etc ... for description/analysis of various dialects). Fula is referred to as (Haal) Pulaar (Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, Mali, The Gambia), Fulfulde (Niger, Nigeria, Sudan), Toucouleur/Tukulor (Senegal), Fulacunda, Peulh, etc. The dialect studied in this thesis is spoken in (southern) Mauritania, more specifically in the Kayhaydi area. The purpose of the thesis is to study aspects of Pulaar phonology from a non-linear perspective. The thesis is divided into six chapters organized as follows. We begin with an introductory chapter in which we present certain crucial facts and general notions about Pulaar. We give the vowel as well as consonant inventory of the language and a general review of the morphology and syntax of Pulaar. Because many processes discussed in this dissertation make reference in one way or another to the syllable, Chapter 2 discusses the Pulaar syllable, using the moraic framework. In this chapter we present arguments in favour of syllable-internal structure in moraic phonology. Chapter 3 describes and analyses vowel deletion and vowel spreading with a view to...

A Matter of Computer Time

University, Stanford University, Teachers College Columbia University, University of California Berkeley, University of California Los Angeles, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Wisconsin. Computers are ubiquitous in school. But most children develop real computer profi ciency somewhere else. Becoming proficient on the computer is like becoming proficient in reading; children need much more time than schools can offer. Many children use comput ers after school at home, and, given sufficient time, they will become proficient enough to succeed in this digitally driven world. Things are different for children from high poverty areas. Finding sufficient computer time is just one more challenge these children face in keeping up with more advantaged peers. Many low-income children do not have home computers or Internet access (NCES 2003). They rely on a of public places, such as libraries, after-school programs, or commu nity organizations. However, this safety net is not strong enough to help these students at tain the skills they need to compete with their middle-income peers. And if it breaks com pletely, low-income children will only fall far ther behind.