The purpose of this report is to provide an initial set of indicators for the success of African American students in the Albuquerque, New Mexico, Public Schools (APS). The major data gathering activity was a survey of parents and students completed by 244 students and 251 parents. Parents and students presented a relatively positive picture of…

James Bryant Conant issued his famous report, "The American High School Today," in 1959, giving voice to a clear and influential reaffirmation of the comprehensive secondary school. Conant's vision in this, and in another work, "Slums and Suburbs" (1961) makes an interesting point of departure for consideration of the forces…

Describes studies involving students sponsored by A Better Chance, Inc. (ABC), a nonprofit search and referral service that identifies and places talented minority inner-city children. Results indicate that standardized tests do not necessarily predict ABC student success, and that ABC students can be productively directed toward mathematics and…

Education and employment outcomes are examined for African-American youth in Chicago (Illinois) whose families moved from mostly African-American urban housing projects to mostly white suburbs or mostly African-American urban areas. The suburban youth's achievement was at least as good as and sometimes better than that of their urban counterparts.…

Examines the gender-specific strategies that 30 African-American high school students developed to remain academically successful and traces their success to participation in an educational reform program, family culture, and the culture of the communities in which they lived. (SLD)

This report provided the U.S. District Court hearing the Liddell case about school desegregation in St. Louis (Missouri) in 1996 with a review of research on promising programs, reform designs, and school components that have been found to support or enhance achievement among historically disadvantaged students. Specific steps are proposed to…

Trends in the growth of the immigrant student population over the last 10 years are traced, and issues and challenges that such students present for the member cities of the Great City Schools are highlighted. About 9.5 million immigrants, representing almost 60% of the nation's entire immigrant population, entered the United States in the 1980s,…

Despite the critical failure of many urban schools to educate poor children and children of color, there are examples of schools and teachers who help students meet challenging academic standards in a supportive, culturally responsive, and empowering context. This paper represents one such success story of a teacher's efforts to nurture his…

The study reported concentrated on school leavers in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) who returned (dropbacks) to Job Corps Programs over an 8-year period. Interviews with 100 dropbacks explored who left school, why they left school, what caused them to come back, and the kinds of interventions that might succeed with other students. Part 1 provides a…

An ethnographic study assessed the family constellations of ninth graders in an urban public school through cluster analysis. Survey data were collected from a random sample of 120 high school freshmen and were used to compute 4 variables for each student: (1) presence of the mother in the home; (2) presence of the father in the home; (3) presence…

This paper focuses on the experiences of Salvadoran refugees who fled their country in the 1980s and came to the United States seeking political asylum during the Salvadoran civil war. The increased number of Salvadoran students in the school districts of Northern Virginia (the Greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan area), where more than 200,000…

Essays in this volume address the neglect of Asian Pacific Americans in the United States, of their struggles for liberation, hopes, troubles, and personal identities. This collection reviews Asian Pacific American history and explores attitudes about the welfare of Asian Pacific American families. The first section provides general background…

This report presents longitudinal data on enrollment and performance patterns in Atlanta (Georgia) Public Schools (APS) from 1970-71 to 1990-91 for early childhood development programs and an analysis of selected performance indicators for kindergarten and first grade students in 1989-90 and 1990-91. An introduction describes the history and…

Several core areas of urban educational distress are summarized in this paper. These form the basis for the development of the central theme which is concerned with defining society's failure to produce educated young adults and develop their cognitive learning potential. This failure is discussed in terms of a range of socioeconomic attributes. A…

The major issue investigated in this paper is whether or not any change appears over a five-year peiod in the differences in performances between minority and non-minority students in that district. Since the relative performance advantage of non-minority students is frequently ascribed to their better backgrounds, socio-economic factors are held…