The Detroit Public Schools (DPS) have been battered by substantial outside forces over the last decade. The school system was taken over by the state; its elected school board was dissolved and replaced by an appointed body; its many operating systems were privatized; its citizenry were encouraged to flee to charter schools; and its resources have…

Background/Context: Despite recent gains from a number of students in U.S. schools, African American males continue to underachieve on most academic indices. Despite various interventions that have attempted to transform the perennial disenfranchisement, their school failure has persisted. Conversely, their failure in schools frequently results in…

This report contends that limited vocabulary knowledge is the principal cause of reading dysfunction for a large percentage of students whose progress in learning to read appears normal during the first two or three years of reading instruction, but who begin to fall behind starting somewhere between grades 3 and 7. The report addresses the…

In addition to personal and social consequences, school failure among Member States of the European Community is a major economic liability. Member States have used a variety of measures to counter school failure. It is generally agreed that socioeconomic, cultural, and personal factors all contribute to school failure. Indicators of school…

Good school attendance has been directly linked to academic achievement, greater participation in school programs, and graduation from high school. Reports investigating poor elementary school attendance habits describe the emergence of later problems in middle and high school years. Schools and Families: Allies for Attendance, a 2-year project,…

Factors determining vocational success and failure for mentally retarded persons are reviewed and implications for teacher education addressed. The history of vocational programs for this population is traced, and problems noted in research regarding vocational fitness (including lack of standardized projective vocational tools). Among factors…

Factors to consider when studying attrition are: (1) the academic reasons students drop out or are suspended; (2) the institutional definitions of attrition; and (3) the procedures used to monitor the successes or failures of students. A recent University of Texas study of literacy developed at the community college included a mini-study of…

Academic performance in three fields of study, engineering, physical sciences and languages, has been analysed by comparing the characteristics of successful students with those of the less successful and those who failed to graduate. (Editor)

Discussing the processes that happen in competitive training groups that experience failure and/or success, the article points out, for the benefit of trainers, that success is as much a management problem as is failure. (MW)

C-LERN (California Local Education Reform Network) is the application of failure avoidance technology in California schools with a high concentration of at-risk students. Aimed at total school improvement, C-LERN was piloted in various Sacramento area schools before being launched as a joint venture of the State Department of Education and Sage…

For the 1982-83 school year, the Austin (Texas) Public Schools adopted a high school attendance policy allowing a maximum of 10 absences per semester for course credit to be earned. Under this policy, Austin's high school attendance rose to an all-time high of 93.5 percent in 1983-84. In 1984-85, education reform mandated by the Texas Legislature…

Although self-employment is of interest to many salaried workers who wish to change careers or continue working past the usual retirement age, little is known about the experiences of those who have actually made such a change. Of the 2,326 salaried men who were between the ages of 45 and 59 when interviewed in 1966 as part of the National…

For students in most high schools, graduation is predicated on the successful completion of a specified number of courses or credits. In most cases when these students fail they are not retained in grade but become credit deficient. This report is concerned with a longitudinal study of loss of credit among high school students in the St. Paul…

In some research involving Asian Americans generalizability is questionable because the group under study is composed of persons from many cultural traditions. This study looked at 2,511 4th to 11th grade American students of Asian descent all of whom were members of one of the following Asian groups: (1) Chinese; (2) Filipino; (3) Japanese; (4)…

The Austin Independent School District (AISD) is now in its third year of study on the effects of a new retention policy adopted in 1981-82. Reviewing the results of the first two years led to the conclusion that traditional methods of studying retention might not be the most appropriate. These evaluations have primarily focused on the impact of…