Putting Poor People to Work: How the Work-First Idea Eroded College Access for the Poor

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book would not have been possible without the assistance and support of many people and organizations. We would first like to thank Atlantic Philanthropies , the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation for their generous support of our work. A legion of extremely talented graduate students assisted us on various aspects of the project (many of whom are no longer students). We would like especially to thank Susan Eachus and Emanique Joe for conducting excellent field work in a number of our states; and Ann Boulis, Emanique Joe, Sarah Winslow, Scott Brooks, Suzanne Sublette, May Wang, Angelina Castagno, You Geon Lee, and James Benson for critical support in a number of other aspects of the research and writing process. In addition, Andrea Forton, Alex Breland, Catherine Lewitt, Elena Poiata, Melody Meyer and Suzanne Smith, all of them University of Pennsylvania undergraduate students, provided excellent transcription services. We were also fortunate to benefit from the feedback and support of many professional colleagues and friends, who listened, reviewed, and provided critical perspective during the life of the project. Among them were Kevin Dougherty, Brandon Roberts, Davis Jenkins, Tom Bailey, Julian Alssid, Marya Sosulski, Lisa Matus-Grossman, Regina Deil-Amen, James Rosenbaum , Erin McNamara Horvat, James Earl Davis, Joan Shapiro, and Erika Kates. We are especially thankful to Mark Greenberg and Julie Strawn from the Center for Law and Social Policy, who provided data and counsel as we chose our states. And family members—in particular John Noakes, Liam Goldrick and Geraldine and Isaac Youcha—supplied much-needed perspective , along with incisive editing. We received important feedback from presenting earlier versions of our work in a variety of settings. We thank Gary Orfield and Cathy Horn for the opportunity to present our research at a meeting of the Harvard Civil Rights Project; and the Sociology Department of the University of Pennsylvania, the College of Education at Temple University, and the University of Wisconsin Department of Educational Policy Studies for providing us with forums to discuss initial research findings. Because so much of our work depended upon gaining access to a wide variety of venues across multiple states, we are thankful for the generosity of many individuals in state and local government who fitted us into their busy schedules; and to the faculty, students, and administrators at the community colleges that we visited as well. We are particularly indebted to those who helped us to obtain state-level quantitative data, including David Prince in the State of Washington; Jenni Lee Robins, Bill Hudgins, Sidonie Squier, Duane Whitfield; Jenny Wittner of Women Employed in Chicago; Whitney Smith and Rose Karasti at the Chicago Jobs Council; Steve Becker, Kim Fuiten, Bill Branham, Ken Durst, and Barb Payne in the Illinois Department of Human Services; Karen Carroll and William Box in Pennsylvania; Elaine Frawley, Claire Ghiloni, and Ed Sanders-Bey in Massachusetts; Jeannette Cabral in Rhode Island; and David Stevens and Sang Truong, of the Jacob France Institute, for access to data in a number of states. Finally, we are grateful as well for the feedback and guidance of Suzanne Nichols at the Russell Sage Foundation. Her encouragement and flexibility was much appreciated. We are also particularly indebted to our anonymous reviewers, whose extraordinarily thorough and constructive comments greatly increased the quality of this manuscript. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS x ...