Does homework work? Homework is the cause of more friction between school and home than any other aspect of education and becomes the prime battlefield when schools, families, and communities view one another as adversaries. This comprehensive third edition tackles all the tough questions: What's the right amount of homework? What role should…

Explores the potential of the public school system for influencing individual student development and achieving social amelioration. It is suggested that capacity of the school to affect social conditions must be determined before the school can be relieved of responsibility for achieving publicly determined ends. (Author/SDH)

Examines the impetus to use school desegregation as a means of achieving social change, the nature of effective Black schools, and the role of the Black community in supporting the achievement of Black students. (IRT)

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of participation in adult basic education on changes in selected non-cognitive attributes: anomia, self-concept, and internal-external control of environment. Two subsidiary problems were to examine the differences in levels of anomia, self-concept, and internal-external control of…

Suggests that stability level of an individual and the community in which he operates is directly related to a child's sense of control and consequently his achievement in school. Findings indicate that for whites, community stability is positively and significantly related to sense of control, with the inverse for blacks. (Author/AM)

Presented in this paper is a framework to examine environmental influences on learning. The framework identifies factors from several environments--the home, the community, and the larger sociocultural context--and links them with school policy and operations. Methodological considerations important to further investigation of these environmental…

This report presents data concerned with: (1) the feasibility of a home-based instructional program for disadvantaged 4 and 5 year old children in Israel, administered by non-professional aides, and (2) the effectiveness of such a program as reflected in (a) the academic and intellectual gains of children involved, and (b) the spill-over effects…

This study used community contextual variables to investigate adolescent academic achievement, examining school districts and individual schools with 8th grade students. The first analyses were conducted for school year 1997-98. The school district model was replicated for 1996-97. Data came from the Department of Health and Human Services, Bureau…

Low income, urban African American students (N=22) identified as academically promising were asked about their perceptions of the transition to ninth grade. Results highlight the salience of mothers, the challenges of the ninth grade curriculum, and adjustment to a bigger, more complex school environment. (Author/MKA)

Identifies social and psychological influences, including pressure for academic success, as the primary motivations for theft and mutilation of books at large urban universities. Quality of library service, peer pressure, and other circumstantial reasons seem to be insignificant. The report includes the questionnaire, tables of data, and six…

Children's outcomes are strongly correlated with those of their neighbours. The extent to which this is causal is the subject of an extensive literature. An identification problem exists because people with similar characteristics are observed to live in close proximity. Another major difficulty is that neighbourhoods measured in available data…

This study examined 1993-94 Maine Educational Assessment data to determine factors related to fourth-grade students' health knowledge scores. Results indicated that students' overall ability, community factors, and teachers' perceptions about program quality related strongly to health achievement. Any (versus no) health education affected health…

The articles of this special edition on education and development in adolescence share some common themes, raise points for debate, and offer new research ideas. Common themes emphasize the following: (1) diversity among adolescents; (2) simultaneity of multiple forms of development; and (3) multiple environmental influences on adolescents. (SLD)

Educational policies are discussed which are directed at affecting the incentives of a school superintendent or other executive officers of an operating school system, staff members in the administrative office, principals or other executive officers in a school, teachers, pupils, and their parents. A number of proposals for the modification of…