Peggy A. Sissel is Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Applied Studies in Education at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. The recipient of numerous honors for her scholarship, she is presently a fellow with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation's Cyril O Houle Scholars in Adult and Continuing Education Program.

• Series Editor’s Introduction -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: The Public and Private Worlds of Head Start -- Chapter 1 In the War Zone: Head Start’s Facilities and Funding -- Chapter 2 Head Start’s Philosophy and Framework: -- An Overview of Ideology, Politics, and Promises -- Chapter 3 A House Divided: The Micropolitics of Head Start Staff -- Chapter 4 Some Parents Are Better Than Others: The Politics of Class, Race, and Gender in Head Start -- Chapter 5 Mixed Messages: Information as Political Resource in Parent Programming -- Chapter 6 Defining “Appropriate Behavior”: Power -- and Control Issues in Parent and Staff Relations -- Chapter 7 Coming Together and Coming Apart: -- Accommodation, Resistance, and the Reproduction of Power -- Chapter 8 Metaphors of Separation and Community: Implications of Micropolitics in Programs -- Bibliography -- Author Index -- Subject Index.