The Health Academy and the Media Academy, two innovative high school intervention programs for at-risk youth in Oakland (California), are examined. A collaborative effort of the school district, business, and community, the academies are school-within-a-school programs that engage about 120 at-risk students each in specific academic curricula for…

A practicum addressed the problem of low self-esteem of at-risk students by developing and implementing a 12-week dropout prevention program for 19 eighth-grade students in urban, middle class school. The program used five basic strategies for raising self-esteem: affective skills training (using role playing, mapping, and brainstorming to help…

The project described in this paper attempted to provide vocationally tracked high school students with the literacy skills needed to compete successfully in today's high-technology work force. This attempt was carried out by: (1) assisting students in establishing their vocational objectives in order to focus on specific literacy requirements;…

Project HAND-UP (Helping Adolescents Needing Direction-Unlimited Partnership) was a 2-year program to enhance dropout prevention services to at-risk youth by establishing a closer linkage between Job Training Partnership (JTPA)-Ohio and the Ohio Department of Education's Occupational Work Adjustment (OWA) programs. The project's major activities…

Despite the legal mandate for fulltime school participation between the ages of 6 and 18 and the mandate for high school completion, many youths do not fulfill these expectations and are viewed as dropouts. To investigate the characteristics of seventh and eighth grade students who leave school and the reasons why they do so, school personnel in…

This guide is intended to provide teachers and administrators, especially in West Virginia, with information about high school dropouts, their characteristics, and ways to retain potential dropouts in high school. A pretest and answer key precede the text of the report. The first section presents an overview of the dropout problem and its…

An annotated bibliography of 105 publications (1961-1982) on the retention of black college students is presented. Topics include: retention programs for low income and minority undergraduates; the interrelatedness of curriculum and cultural/economic reproduction; predicting academic performance in college; dropout prevention and reasons…

Issues pertaining to the retention of black students, particularly those attending predominantly white colleges and universities, are reviewed, based on a survey of the literature. Three categories of concerns were found in the literature: ways of conceiving black student retention; factors affecting retention; and strategies and remedies to…

Hearings on the difficulties experienced by Hispanic (Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Cuban American) students in entering postsecondary education and ways to assist this population are presented. According to testimony, several legislative programs designed to serve economically disadvantaged students have failed to reach Hispanic students,…

This report is based on the findings of the Los Angeles County Latino Assessment Study (LACLAS), which consulted with Latinos to determine the priorities, programs, and strategies for meeting the needs of their community in Los Angeles County (California). The study's main objective was to obtain information to assist governmental and…

In Connecticut, the state with the highest per capita income in the country, 110,000 children, or 14.5 percent of the population, live in poverty; 39,000 of these poor children are 5 years of age or younger. Further, 38.5 percent of Black children and 62.3 percent of Hispanic children in Connecticut live in poverty. Poverty and membership in a…

This paper argues that programs for at-risk youth tend to overemphasize student adjustment and the mastery of institutional customs at the expense of instilling learning dispositions that might lead to the postsecondary educational training now required to find adequate adult employment. Programs often focus on drawing students into a more…

This report evaluates the effectiveness of the Attendance Improvement Dropout Prevention (AIDP) program during the 1987-88 school year, which provided services to New York City (New York) middle school students at risk of becoming truant or dropping out of school. Chapter 1, "Introduction," contains the following sections: (1)…

Arguing that educational disadvantage, underachievement, and dropping out are problems that originate with schools as well as students, this document describes the Work and Learning Center in Madison, Wisconsin, that was designed to meet the needs of high school dropouts. The first section gives disadvantaged students' perspectives on the school…

This document comprises an evaluation of the first-year implementation of the Junior High School Student Assistance Program (JHSSAP), a dropout prevention program of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). JHSSAP is comprised of the following components: (1) Extended Counseling (EC), providing 8 hours per week of auxiliary counseling at…