Merit pay plans for administrators do not work in school systems in which the governing board is elected from among lay people. In 1979, the Brewster (New York) Central School District developed an administrator merit pay plan. The goal of the plan was to implement changes and programs which would reflect the needs of the community as interpreted…

The Student Motivation for Musical Activities in Elementary School project was conducted between 1982 and 1983 with 3 main purposes: to study problems of motivation in the classroom, to examine factors significant to student motivation for general music program activities, and to obtain empirical foundations for the development of teaching…

A study examined cognitive and behavioral consequences of continuous success or failure in a competitive situation involving 40 undergraduate males. Three performance variables were selected for examination: expectancies for success, amount of self-motivated practice, and performance quality. Subjects were informed that they would be competing…

This handbook contains advice for the teacher in diagnosing dyslexia and developing an individualized program for overcoming severe reading problems. Observable characteristics of dyslexia are listed as an aid to the teacher's diagnosis, but it is emphasized that cooperation between the teacher and a reading specialist is of great importance in…

The construct of locus of control formulated by Rotter (1966) is being increasingly emphasized in personality functioning, since it appears to be related to several classes of behavior. It is also being considered as an important construct in cross-cultural research. Cross-cultural comparisons are particularly important, not just because they may…

This resource handbook was developed to provide constituent school district personnel with a variety of strategies for improving student attendance and for reducing the dropout rate. A significant number of studies completed during the last 5 years have identified attendance as the critical issue confronting school administrators. Further, recent…

To furnish constituent school district personnel with a number of alternative educational programs for reducing the dropout rate, this resource handbook was published by the Oakland Schools (Michigan) Department of Pupil Personnel Services. Provided within this second handbook discussing various strategies for improving student attendance and for…

Although several theoretical positions deal with the concept of childhood depression, accurate measurement of depression can only occur if valid and reliable measures are available. Current efforts emphasize direct questioning of the child and quantification of parents' observations. One scale used to study childhood depression, the Personality…

A study investigated the existence of language disorders among 290 "high risk" middle school students (grades five through nine) in five selected Florida school districts. "High risk" students were defined as those students experiencing academic difficulties in whom language deficits would be suspected. Students from the…

The premature closing of the Intermountain Intertribal School (IIS), a majority of whose students were referred because they were particularly difficult to serve and required special attention, represents a significant risk factor for the academic development of the students concerned. Of the 331 freshmen, sophomores, and juniors enrolled,…

A model depicting dropping out of high school as a process is presented. Against a longitudinal mapping of student experiences, questions about standards or exit tests are addressed. Existing research on dropouts provided the empirical basis for the model. The central features of the model are the academic and social systems of the school.…

A concerted effort to pool resources and coordinate work by federal, state, and local educational agencies will be necessary to overcome the fragmentation that is occurring due to the current climate of changing demographics, increasing illiteracy, and the social effects of minorities in our schools. California has shown major changes in the…

According to a recent model of alcohol use (Hull, 1981), individuals moderate their sensitivity to the implications of success and failure by drinking following personal failure to reduce self-consciousness and not drinking following success to remain self-conscious. To test the hypothesis that adolescent alcohol consumption would be a joint…

In order to identify the relationship among social support networks, depression, life events, and student progress in medical school, 96 students completed a questionnaire. The results indicated good social support, a high number of recent life events, slight depression and a continuum of not quite passing to doing extremely well in medical…

A study assessed the effectiveness of various ways of identifying at-risk middle school students for participation in a dropout prevention program. It was considered important to explore factors related to identifying students who were most in need of the program. During the first semester of the project, teacher recommendations, attendance, age,…