BACKGROUND Overweight prevalence among Guatemalan girls is higher in public than in private schools. Little is known about adolescent girls' perceptions of the right ways to achieve a healthy weight. This study examines public and private school adolescent girls' perceptions of a "healthy weight," and barriers and facilitators to achieving it. METHODS We conducted 4 focus groups in public and...

BACKGROUND This article describes policies, practices, and facilities that form the physical activity climate in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota metro area middle and high schools and examines how the physical activity climate varies by school characteristics, including public/private, school location and grade level. METHODS Surveys examining school physical activity practices, policies and ...

BACKGROUND Obesity has become a public health problem worldwide. Our objective was to calculate the prevalence of overweight and obesity. METHODS It is a cross sectional study of adolescents in private Lebanese schools, aged 10-18 years. Gender, birth date and measures of weight and height were recorded. RESULTS In 12,299 adolescents, we found high prevalence of obesity (7.5%) and at risk o...

For the past three decades, plaintiffs in hundreds of state and federal court lawsuits have challenged state laws that fund public schools with the local property tax. As socioeconomic segregation remains at extremely high levels across the country, reliance on a tax that is based on the wealth of the property within a school district’s territory produces huge inequality in revenues. As the res...

INTRODUCTION The high prevalence of hypertension in high school students in Sorocaba, São Paulo, Brazil, has already been described. In this study, within a new sample of high school students from public and private schools, we evaluated if socioeconomic and lifestyle influence on blood pressure values. METHODS This is an epidemiological study, which is part of the activities of a community-b...

For over three decades, government subsidies have been a major source of funds for private schools in Australia and private schools now enrol over one third of all students. Analysing administrative and participation data, we find that Australian private schools have used government subsidies to increase the quality of their services (ie. to reduce student: teacher ratios) rather than to reduce...

Several recent studies provided evidence that white students' choice between private and public schools is influenced by the racial composition of the local student population. None of these studies, however, examined whether Latinos are also fleeing to private schools in response to black schoolchildren. I explore the "Latino-flight" hypothesis using data from the National Educational Longitud...

Introduction In 2002, the state of Pennsylvania, frustrated by years of low achievement and a decade of budget crises in the School District of Philadelphia, took charge of the city’s 200,000-pupil system. Th e state replaced Philadelphia’s ninemember school board with an appointed School Reform Commission (SRC) composed of three members appointed by the governor and two appointed by the city’s...

Children with moderate learning disabilities often fail to qualify for special education programs in public schools, but are ill-suited for placement in private schools concerned with the severely disabled. Parents of such children may place their hopes in the promises of private teachers or clinics. Yet the quality of services provided in the private sector varies widely. This paper describes ...