SparkAction's Shane Gooding gives us her take-aways from a 2010 Society for International Development workshop on high-tech ways to engage hard-to-reach teens.

In 2009, the Los Angeles Unified School District launched a new model for parent involvement that specifically addresses the needs of "parents of color with kids who struggle in urban schools." It's designed by and for parents to improve learning and connection to schools. Get the story.

Students' struggles with college mental health services are leading to some important changes, as WireTap's Annie Robinson reports.

Children with incarcerated parents are particularly vulnerable because not only are they faced with the trauma of loss, but also the myriad economic and social challenges that parental incarceration can bring. The goals of Annie E Casey Foundation's work in this field are to support and promote effective responses to these challenges.

Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we consider how parental education relates to four outcomes in the children's generation: education, lifetime earnings, health, and wealth. By focusing on parents' and children's ranks, we characterize relative mobility in terms of distributions of outcomes and can see patterns that even a relatively disaggregated analysis, like a quintile-based transition matrix, can obscure. Our results show relatively high intergenerational mobility except at extremes, where very low-ranked parents are much more likely to have very low-ranked children and very high-ranked parents are much more likely to have very high-ranked children.

The Kaiser Family Fund survey of state Medicaid directors finds that most states are facing the prospect of mid-fiscal year 2009 program cutbacks in this program that serves vulnerable families.

Here are some useful, age-appropriate “cheat sheets” to help parents and caregivers get the most out of their time with their children, boosting reading skills and enjoyment.

In 2007, 1.7 million children under age 18 had a parent in prison—an 82 percent increase 1991, disproportionately affecting children of color. Children of incarcerated parents are more likely to drop out of school, engage in delinquency, and subsequently be incarcerated themselves. This Sentencing Project brief evaluates Department of Justice data and offers policy recommendations to support parent/child relationships and minimize the harm to children.

February 4, 2009 is National Girls and Women in Sports Day. On his blog, "The Dad Man" Joe Kelly has tips on what fathers can do with daughters tips on what fathers can do with daughters.

Project Play is an initiative to inspire families and neighborhoods to play traditional backyard games like "Follow the Leader," "Treasure Hunt," or "Kick the Can"-games that demand imagination and foster creativity. Through a series of lively hardcover children's books featuring a group of active neighborhood kids, Project Play provides guidance to parents and children for getting back to basics and enjoying the joy and freedom of playtime. In addition, Project Play encourages parents to make play a priority-for as founder and author Marlene Byrne believes-it is as equally important to be creative and imaginative as it is to be smart.