High Stakes brings the voices of students and teachers to national debates over school accountability and educational reform. Recounting the experiences of two classrooms during one academic year, the book offers a critical exploration of excessive state-mandated monitoring, high-stakes testing pressures, and inequities in public school funding…

Articles in this volume focus on the following: specialized research; methodological challenges; establishment of a categorization system for sociometric analysis and its application in the multicultural classroom; a case study of factors to prevent school failure in children at risk; the KeyMatch-R scale (study of a curriculum-related diagnostic…

Prerequisite courses are essential tools in many university curricula, but some educators have suggested that they may be detrimental if applied too stringently to exclude students from courses. A measure of the value of prerequisites is whether or not they promote student success. The strongest way to test the value of prerequisites is to compare…

Educators and policymakers find themselves confronted with how to address the issue of children "pre-disposed to failure." This paper contends that teachers and politicians are linked in a chain of responsibility that forces them to construct a common discourse through which they may share their views, and with which they may…

This guide presents the Department of Education's strategy for ending social promotion in public schools. It opens with a description of social promotion and the pervasiveness and the consequences of this practice. The volume outlines the high standards that all students should be held to and emphasizes the importance of creating reliable measures…

This packet of material contains a collection of strategies designed to prevent school failure and antisocial behavior. The collection includes: (1) "Why Are We Surprised?", which discusses the poor learning outcomes and troubling behaviors of some students with disabilities; (2) "Paying Now or Later," which addresses the cost…

Because children who enter school with a previously undetected learning handicap often become caught in a cycle of school failure, the Brookline Early Education Project (BEEP) provides comprehensive diagnostic and educational services for 225 families with preschool children. (CS)

The Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Questionnaire (IAR) was given to 183 children, ages 9 to 14, from three kibutz movements in Israel, in order to explore the meaning of locus of control among children raised within a specified framework. (ST)

Study analyzed the results of a college rule regulating the maximum number of units students were allowed to carry and its effect on academic performance. (Author/RK)

This article is a partial summary of a doctoral dissertation completed under the direction of Professor Lloyd M. Dunn at George Peabody College for Teachers. (RD)

Discusses faculty and student contributions to student academic failure, suggesting changes in the chemistry curriculum to accommodate increased numbers of non-traditional students. Also suggests creating compensatory programs, leaving content and teaching system intact for traditional students. Factors in developing such programs are considered.…

Given a consistent interaction of student locus of attribution and mode of teacher response, the study sought to determine whether attribution levels could be changed for 69 elementary grade learning disabled students and poor readers. The results indicate that difficulty is encountered in trying to change students' attributions, (Author/SEW)

Reviews the attribution literature on sex differences in academic achievement, especially in mathematics. Suggests that: (1) there are small sex differences in the importance attached to effort and ability as causes of mathematics success and failure; and (2) attributions are not as significant as other possible causes in mediating course…