This study examined a new screening tool (Get Ready to Read) for assessing early reading skills in 73 three-year-old and 79 four-year-old children from low-income families and relating performance to more extensive assessments of phonological sensitivity and language skills (vocabulary and print knowledge) that have been found to be related to the…

A compelling body of research shows that when students are part of smaller and more intimate learning communities, they are more successful. The latest research demonstrates that small schools, particularly schools of choice, have a measurably positive impact on inner-city students, especially those from minority and low-income families. The…

The Community Achievement Project in the Schools (CAPS) is a public-private partnership between the Untied Way of New York City and the New York City Board of Education. As part of a dropout prevention initiative, CAPS is designed to integrate the services of community-based organizations and schools. The Teachers College of Columbia University…

Mentoring has a mystique that only good can come from it, that at the worst, mentoring programs will not accomplish all that they could, but the youth served will at least be better for the experience. Both impact and process evaluations are needed to answer questions about the real benefits and any potential adverse effects of mentoring. The…

Mentoring is now a very popular, but loosely defined, feature of many programs for youth. The heart of mentoring is the relationship between the youth and the mentor, but little is actually known about this relationship. Mentoring should not be limited to at-risk youth, since many average students or underachievers from stable backgrounds may…

The school district of the City of Saginaw operates a supplemental educational delivery Chapter 1 system in reading and mathematics, the Elementary Compensatory Education (CE) program and the Secondary CE program. The elementary CE, a push-in program operating in the regular classroom and a pull-out program (periodically taking students out of…

Robert W. Coleman Elementary School in Baltimore (Maryland) is a school that is exemplary by virtue of its efforts to build on the strengths of students and the community. Although it is not yet a model of curriculum or instruction, it operates in an ethical and theoretical framework with much to say to the urban educator. The school, which serves…

This monograph explores strategies and programs that use both traditional and emerging resources for educating at-risk students. In general, schools have responded to student diversity with various systems of sorting and selecting students into more homogeneous learning groups. Ability grouping and tracking exemplify this approach. Retention, or…

At the margins of American education are students with unusual needs who challenge teachers to the limits of their commitments, insights, and skills. This paper considers the marginalized students in inner-city schools and suggests ways to improve education for them and for all students. There are disproportionate numbers of racial and ethnic…

In the world of social science and educational research, Asian Americans are frequently represented as one group and summarized with one number, like an arithmetic average. However, Asian Americans think of themselves as quite different from one another, as indeed they are. In the 1990 U.S. Census, information is available for 11 different groups…

In February 1988 the Board of Education of the San Diego City Schools (California) adopted a core curriculum for all district schools. The implementation of this policy was studied in 1990 and 1992, and again in this followup study. Part I of this report provides an analysis of student enrollment and achievement data from 24 selected sites and…

Throughout the Chicago Public Schools systematic differences exist between the performance of children of different racial and ethnic groups. In most schools where students of more than one group are found, Asians and Whites test at higher levels than Blacks and Hispanics. When income level and school type are controlled, small differences are…

The Talent Development approach to helping greater numbers of students succeed in middle school is based on a belief that all students can learn challenging material if the right types of support are given. This report presents the essential components of the Talent Development framework and describes their initial implementation in Evans Junior…

This report describes how a longitudinal study was conducted, which examined 1,235 at-risk sixth-grade students (95 percent Black and 5 percent Hispanic) in the Chicago (Illinois) Public Schools and their schools and families. The longitudinal study traced the children's patterns of school adjustment since their enrollment in government-funded…

This document is the first of a series of annual evaluation reports of educational programs throughout Nevada that are supported by funds from Chapter 2 of the Hawkins-Stafford Elementary and Secondary School Improvement Amendments of 1988. Information was collected using four summary forms completed by district and school officials. The…