Studied programmatic features associated with successful after-school programming at the Manchester Youth Development Center, an urban center with 25 years of experience. Identifies six salient elements in program success that might be used in holistic prevention and intervention planning. (SLD)

Studied factors contributing to the academic achievement of nine high-achieving urban female students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Findings demonstrate the importance of a community of achievement created by these students within their school and the importance of parental expectations. (SLD)

Describes a student affairs database developed especially for urban institutions of higher education. Such a database enables urban institutions to refer to comparison groups with similar characteristics. Specific examples of data use by chief student affairs officers and others are provided. (SLD)

This ethnographic study of 50 male African-American gang members constructs a portrait of the culture in which these young men lived and points out factors that helped 11 of them begin to escape gang life, in contrast to the other 39 who lacked these supporting factors of families, teachers, and peers. (SLD)

Reports on the achievement of the first Waldorf public elementary school in Milwaukee (Wisconsin). Early experience indicates that Waldorf pedagogy, with its emphasis on the natural rhythms of everyday life, is an effective model for predominantly African American children in an inner city. (SLD)

Uses narratives of five female students of color in an urban high school to describe how students simultaneously participate in, and resist, school. Suggests organizing schools to maximize contact between school personnel and students and notes the importance of listening to students when formulating educational policy and practice. (SLD)

Studied 21 students labeled "at risk" by their schools who participated in an after-school compensatory program. These students partially accepted, and ultimately rejected, the status-attainment ideology promulgated within the program. Suggests ways in which adults could better represent the interests of these students. (SLD)

A qualitative case study explored the perceptions of 37 urban secondary school students and 12 teachers about their school and community. Teachers and students worked in a landscape characterized as one of "urban abstraction," a term that helps explain the complex and contradictory fabric of current urban life. (SLD)

Describes the Hilltop Emergent Literacy Project (HELP) in Toledo (Ohio), an afterschool educational program for poor, mostly African American, students in kindergarten through grade 3, and evaluates its effects on 12 kindergartners in comparison with a control group of 12 kindergartners. Program effectiveness is supported. (SLD)