The Even Start program was authorized by Congress in 1988 to provide early childhood, adult, and parenting education to participating families in a family literacy initiative. This document provides an executive summary of the National Evaluation of Even Start, which assessed services, participants and effectiveness. The summary highlights topics…

This report describes Blalock FIRST, a 3-year collaborative research project designed to improve literacy skills of low-income, African American families living in a severely depressed urban housing project. Project implementation, and antecedents to the implementation, are described. Objectives of the project were to: (1) increase achievement in…

The curricular recommendations of the current educational-reform movement are discussed and their likely effects on at-risk youth are considered. Current reform efforts tend to focus on three major curricular changes: (1) increase the number of academic courses required to graduate from high school; (2) increase the time for education; and (3) end…

This book analyzes how welfare reform can improve the lives of children, based on a study of successful programs that provide services to needy children and their families. The study looked at programs that operated in conjunction with the welfare department before the enactment of the Family Support Act and that operated successfully. Chapter 1…

The lives and places in society of urban youth at risk of dropping out of the Los Angeles (California) Unified School District schools are explored through interviews of adolescents whom the author met when doing field work in Los Angeles County. Data come from interviews conducted in the course of the 1991 Drug Use Forecasting Study (DUF) and the…

Goal Five of the National Education Goals states that by the year 2000, every American will be literate and will possess the knowledge and skills to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. This report examines the challenges and progress of minorities compared to Whites in reaching Goal 5, focusing…

By focusing on the settings and environments in which high-risk young people are living, this book fixes responsibility on society as a whole. High-risk settings do not just happen, but are the result of public policies and national choices. The Panel on High-Risk Youth of the National Research Council attempts to clarify forces tearing apart…

The equity of a national examination system using authentic assessments is discussed from technological and historical perspectives. Testing is, in fact, a technology embedded in sociotechnical systems such as education, government, and business. The historical perspective is important because it provides lessons for present policy. The first…

This document includes materials from and about Skilled!, a national demonstration project that was implemented in 10 areas of England in partnership with local authority youth services and further education colleges to provide educational opportunities for disaffected and underachieving young people aged 16 and over. The first half of the…

This paper studies pretest-to-posttest, posttest-to-sustained effect, and pretest-to-sustained effect changes for 3,775 students in grades 2 through 8 who participated in Chapter 1 reading/mathematics programs in Columbus (Ohio) Public Schools during the 1989-90 school year. Data for 16 analysis groups were collected in spring of 1989, 1990, and…

This second interim report presents evaluation results from Project Youth Experiencing Success (YES) and documents a decrease in the Virginia statewide event-dropout rate in grades 7 through 12 from 4.8 percent during the 1988-89 school year to 3.3 percent during the 1991-92 year. Event-dropout rates measure the proportion of students who drop out…

This manual is designed to support community organizations, concerned educators, and parents as they work to improve local public schools on behalf of immigrant students. Each chapter focuses on central elements of quality schooling from the perspective of the young immigrant. Within each chapter, an analysis of current conditions prevalent in…

This evaluation of the alternative and partnership schools of the Milwaukee (Wisconsin) public schools (MPS) was commissioned in 1992 and continued in 1993 to provide a qualitative description of the MPS alternative and partnership school network and to give the school system an assessment of each of the programs to determine its viability.…

A project assessed current counseling activities, services, and programs in grades 7 and 8 that address vocational interest and aptitude assessment for handicapped and disadvantaged students. Staff developed a description of vocational assessment instruments available to public schools and a guide for interpreting and using vocational assessment…

This six-part evaluative report describes and assesses three projects, funded by the Office of the Chancellor of the California Community Colleges, designed to facilitate the transition of low-income, minority, and handicapped students from two- to four-year colleges. Part One provides information on the legislative mandate and goals for the…