Current approaches to educating at-risk students are the result of several shifts in thinking over the last 35 years, and a new way of defining at-risk students is needed to permit changes in school policy and practice to meet these students' needs. Cultural deprivation was originally considered the single cause of at-risk status. Subsequently,…

This commentary on Enrique Gracia's (2003) article, "Social Isolation from Communities and Child Maltreatment: A Cross-Cultural Perspective," discusses the relationship of neighborhood context to child maltreatment. The difficulty of sorting out individual and contextual factors is emphasized, along with the problem of clearly defining the unit of…

This literature review summarizes and analyzes the current literature on variables predicting high school dropping out and the relationship between those variables and language minority youth (defined as those who are national origin minorities by birth and who speak, in varying degrees, languages other than English). After the introduction, which…

Research on academic achievement and high risk students over the past 30 years indicates that the home, the school, or the community can be the source of insufficient educational experiences that contribute to educational disadvantage. About 30 percent of the present school population is estimated to be at risk of failure, and demographic…

The nature of the relationships among contemporary family variables and school achievement is examined in this collection of articles. Divided into two parts, the collection examines related processes and issues. In the first part, the chapters and authors are: (1) "The Family-School Relationships Model" (Bruce A. Ryan and Gerald R.…