Performance of Low-Income African American Boys and Girls on the PPVT-4: A Comparison of Receptive Vocabulary

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (Spring) ◽  
pp. 20-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celeste Allison ◽  
Erica Robinson ◽  
Halley Hennington ◽  
Ramesh Bettagere
1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 433-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly K. Craig ◽  
Julie A. Washington ◽  
Connie Thompson-Porter

This investigation reports average length of communication units (C-nits) in words and in morphemes for 95 4- to 6 1/2-year-old African American boys and girls from lower-income homes in metropolitan Detroit. Mean C-units increased across the age span of this sample, and kindergartners produced significantly longer C-units than preschoolers. The syntactic complexity of the children's language samples correlated positively with increases in C-unit length, and regression analyses revealed that syntactic complexity was the best predictor of mean C-unit length. Children with longer average C-unit lengths produced greater frequencies of all types of syntactic complexity. Their language samples were distinguished from children with shorter mean C-unit lengths by clauses linked with coordinate and subordinate conjunctions. The findings indicate that average C-unit length will be useful as a quantitative index of linguistic growth in research designs focusing on young school-age African American children living in poverty.


Author(s):  
Lizbet Simmons

Public schools across the United States have turned to the criminal justice system as a gold standard of discipline. As public schools and offices of justice have become collaborators in punishment, rates of African American suspension and expulsion have soared, dropout rates have accelerated, and prison populations have exploded. Nowhere, perhaps, has the War on Crime been more influential in broadening racialized academic and socioeconomic disparity than in New Orleans, Louisiana, where in 2002 the criminal sheriff opened his own public school at the Orleans Parish Prison. “The Prison School,” as locals called it, enrolled low-income African American boys who had been removed from regular public schools because of nonviolent disciplinary offenses, such as tardiness and insubordination. By examining this school in the local and national context, this book shows how young black males are in the liminal state of losing educational affiliation while being caught in the net of correctional control. This book asks how schools and prisons became so intertwined. What does this mean for students, communities, and a democratic society? And how do we unravel the ties that bind the racialized realities of school failure and mass incarceration?


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie A. Washington ◽  
Lee Branum-Martin ◽  
Ryan Lee-James ◽  
Congying Sun

1994 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 181-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly K. Craig ◽  
Julie A. Washington

The present study examines complex syntax production by a sample of 45 preschool-age African-American boys and girls (chronological age [CA] 4:0 to 5:6, years:months) from urban, low-income homes. The results provide quantitative descriptions of amounts of complex syntax and suggest a potential positive relationship between amounts of complex syntax and amounts of nonstandard English form usage in the children's connected speech. Clinical applications are discussed.


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