Schools typically place a high value on the dominant middle-class approach to becoming literate: they expect all children to arrive at school familiar with books and able to discuss stories. However, community use of printed materials varies, resulting in a large number of nonmainstream children deemed at risk for school failure at an early age.…

A personalized parenting program was implemented to address poor academic performance and low self-esteem of high school students. Student records, the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory, the Behavior Evaluation Scale, and teacher surveys were employed to identify and measure academic and/or self-perception growth. Parents participated in an 8-week…

In 1985, Virginia state law was amended to change the birth date for automatic eligibility for kindergarten from December 31 to September 30. The law allowed school districts to admit young children with birthdays from October 1 through December 31, provided the children were tested for kindergarten readiness. Testing for admission to school for…

Students who drop out of high school before graduating are of concern to families, educators, and policymakers. To obtain information on the scope of the dropout problem, three sources of national data were reviewed: (1) the Bureau of the Census' Current Population Survey; (2) the Center for Statistics' Common Core of Data; and (3) the Center for…

This report is a summary of dropout rates for the 1980-81, 1981-82, and 1982-83 school years. From 1980 to 1983, dropout rates at individual schools ranged from 4.1 percent to 15.5 percent at regular high schools, 15.6 percent to 40.7 percent at continuation schools, and 12.1 percent to 50.3 percent in independent study programs at continuation…

John Tyler Community College (JTCC) in Virginia founded the Extended Learning Institute (ELI) in 1982 as a program to develop and administer instruction via alternative delivery systems. Print-based, independent study courses have been the primary alternative system used, though telecourses were offered from fall 1983 through winter 1985 and again…

This programmatic series of three studies compares, in British and Hungarian secondary schools, two contrasting conceptualizations of motivation and successively relates them to approaches to learning and studying and then to indices of self-concept and attributions of success and failure. The first conceptualization was developed in Hungary and…

Many big cities have instituted systematic retention to replace social promotion policies. This study examined the extent to which retaining low achieving students in their current grade for an additional year has a built-in effect on the average reading scores for the grade in which they were retained and the grade they would have been promoted…

This evaluation report contains descriptive information about the population of students retained during the 1985-86 school year under a new policy in San Diego City (California) Schools. The courses failed by at-risk secondary school students were analyzed in terms of course content and student outcomes. Intervention strategies attempted with…

This study assessed the educational status of 284 students displaced by the closure of the Intermountain Inter-Tribal School (IIS), a majority of whose students had been referred because they were difficult to serve. Educational status was gauged by the holding power of the schools to which the students were sent, dropout and expulsion rates, and…

Several current educational practices have narrowed the kindergarten and primary grade curriculum, constricted equal educational opportunity, and curtailed the exercise of professional responsibility of early childhood educators. In response to these trends, the National Association of Early Childhood Specialists in State Departments of Education…

A 5-year longitudinal study of 15,000 community college students was conducted to examine student behaviors and outcomes. The importance of longitudinal studies in the analysis of student outcomes data and as a baseline for future student tracking systems is discussed. The computer methodologies by which the data were collected and analyzed are…

This book on the topic of flunking and grade retention comprises the following articles: (1) "Introduction and Overview" (Lorrie A. Shepard and Mary Lee Smith); (2) "Grade Level Retention Effects: A Meta-Analysis of Research Studies" (C. Thomas Holmes); (3) "Repeating and Dropping Out of School" (James B. Grissom and Lorrie A. Shepard); (4) "A…

This updated manual is intended to provide users with complete descriptions of the databases available for database searches, as well as full details of procedures for submitting search requests to the New York State Library. Two major changes in services scheduled to begin on January 1, 1985, are noted in a brief introduction. Sections cover…

The study attempted to chart the differences in self-concept between academically gifted and non-gifted competent seventh-graders, and also to investigate the attributional patterns associated with self-concept across four domains of activity--social and academic achievement oriented success and failure. The study attempted to measure changes in…