This study investigates the influence of aspects of home and preschool environments upon literacy and numeracy achievement at school entry and at the end of the 3rd year of school. Individuals with unexpected performance pathways (by forming demographically adjusted groups: overachieving, average, and underachieving) were identified in order to explore the effects of the home learning environment and preschool variables on child development. Multilevel models applied to hierarchical data allow the groups that differ with regard to expected performance to be created at the child and preschool center levels. These multilevel analyses indicate powerful effects for the home learning environment and important effects of specific preschool centers at school entry. Although reduced, such effects remain several years later.Many research studies document the relationship of socioeconomic status (SES) to cognitive development and academic achievement (e.g.,

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The social integration of Canada’s new religious minorities is determined more by their racial minority status than by their religious affiliation or degree of religiosity, according to results from Statistics Canada’s 2002 Ethnic Diversity Survey. Interview questions tap life satisfaction, affective ties to Canada, and participation in the wider community. Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Hindus are slower to integrate socially, mainly because they are mostly racial minorities. Degree of religiosity affects social integration in the same ways as ethnic community attachments in general, positively for some dimensions, negatively for others, and similarly for different religious groups. Patterns are similar in Quebec and the rest of Canada; results carry implications for the debate over “reasonable accommodation” of religious minorities in Quebec, and parallel debates in other provinces and countries.

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