An evaluation was done of New York City Board of Education's Project, Guidance Oriented Acquisition of Learning Skills (Project GOALS) for 1989-90. The project, in the first year of a 3-year funding cycle, provided 340 students of limited English proficiency (LEP) from various ethnic backgrounds (including Asian, Hispanic, Eastern European, and…

This instructor's guide consists of four modules teacher educators can use in preparing prospective teachers to teach basic vocational education students. The modules cover the following topics: (1) characteristics of basic vocational education students or students at risk for dropping out of high school; (2) program requirements of the basic…

This monograph reviews the literature on intervention for potential dropouts at the secondary school level in order to determine factors responsible for students being at risk and to provide information on a variety of projects and programs that are effectively alleviating the number of such students who fail to complete their education. The…

The Elementary At-Risk Program was an intensive counseling, guidance, community outreach, and family case-management support system for a selected group of acutely at-risk students (approximately 60 students at one level and 180 students at another) in eight Houston (Texas) Independent School District (ISD) elementary schools. Social worker…

This practitioner's guide is designed to provide an overview of a schoolwide study skills program that accommodates individual student learning styles of at-risk students who may be potential dropouts at the secondary education level. The schoolwide skills model described here is appropriate for all grade levels especially secondary levels as it…

This paper presents an analysis of a California state mandated effort to reduce dropout rates. In particular, the analysis looks at which program components and strategies are successful in increasing school holding power and what organizational and administrative factors are linked to the decision to actually implement the program as designed.…

This paper addresses the notion that persons at risk of failure to achieve an adequate education are in that position partly because of their social circumstances, i.e., their ethnicity, culture, language, or economic status. It discusses the impact of culture on what one does and how one does it, addresses the manner in which culture frames as…

Since schools are community institutions that have the most extensive and sustained contact with children, they have potential to serve as community centers for providing comprehensive and integrated social services. Schools are initiating programs that deal with children's needs beyond the academic realm, schools are calling on agencies and…

A 3-year project analyzed the Arkansas postsecondary vocational-technical education system to determine how effectively delivery was meeting the objective of providing vocational training. Two postsecondary vocational-technical schools in Northeast Arkansas were selected as pilot schools to test the innovative strategies that evolved from the…

This paper describes a Child Care/Parenting Project established to meet the needs of teen parents and parents-to-be in 19 area schools served by the West Campus Technical Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The presence of a licensed child care facility on the vocational high school campus helped to expand and improve the vocational education…

School reform efforts today have a personal focus that emphasizes attending to the problems faced by individual at-risk students. After outlining the impact of student dropouts, this document uses information from a review of 150 at-risk student programs described in related professional literature to describe six basic weaknesses in current…

Louisiana Tech University conducted a program to reduce drop-out probabilities for at-risk special needs adolescents as part of the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA). Eighty-six students between the ages of 14 and 16 were chosen as "at-risk" based on economic disadvantage, lower academic performance, behavioral and adjustment problems,…

A project developed and implemented a model retention program to attempt to reduce by 20 percent the dropout rate at Crowley's Ridge Vocational Technical School (Arkansas). The major emphasis was on placing students in a vocational program that would maximize their chances for success. During the program: (1) all students were included in all…

The Dayton (Ohio) Public Schools have developed a comprehensive dropout prevention program to meet the needs of at-risk middle school students. The general needs of the middle school student were addressed through a restructuring of the middle schools that limited the schools to grades 7 and 8 and organized them into "cluster teams" to…

This publication presents the evaluation of the Secondary Special Education Initiative, a 5-year partnership between the New Jersey State Department of Education and nine school districts. The initiative was established in 1983 to enhance the development of high-school programs and services for educationally handicapped pupils. The initiative had…