Karl Alexander

Educational sociologists have paid relatively little attention to children in middle childhood (ages 6 to 12), whereas developmental psychologists have emphasized factors internal to the child much more than the social contexts in explaining children's development. Children, Schools, and Inequality redresses that imbalance. It examines elementary school outcomes (e.g., test scores, grades, retention rates) in light of the socioeconomic variation in schools and neighbourhoods, the organizational patterns across elementary schools, and the ways in which family structure intersects with children's school performance. Adding data from the Baltimore Beginning School Study to information culled from the fields of sociology, child development, and education, this book suggests why the gap between the school achievement of poor children and those who are better off has been so difficult to close. Doris Enwistle, Karl Alexander, and Linda Olson show why the first-grade transition,how children negotiate entry into full-time schooling,is a crucial period. They also show that events over that time have repercussions that echo throughout children's entire school careers. Currently the only study of this life transition to cover a comprehensive sample and to suggest straightforward remedies for urban schools, Children, Schools, and Inequality can inform educators, practitioners, and policymakers, as well as researchers in the sociology of education and child development.

In 1979 Karl Alexander burst upon the literary world with a brash, exciting novel with a unique concept: H. G. Wells, the famous, bestselling author of such sensations as The Time Machine and War of the Worlds had actually invented a time machine.When H.G. Wells showed his friends his fantastic time machine he never suspected that his college friend, Leslie John Stevenson, was in truth the Jack the Ripper.But, when Scotland Yard detectives show up at Wells's house looking for Stevenson, he steals the machine and flees to the future--1979 San Francisco. Knowing that he was responsible for the infamous murderer's escape, Wells pursues the Ripper into the future.Once in San Francisco, Wells realizes that he must now save a city, and a particular lovely young woman, from a new reign of terror at the hands of the feared Terror of Whitechapel.