All facets of society--educators, citizens, students, legislators, and judges--are concerned about and interested in solving the problem of disruptive behavior in schools. The literature on the causes and effects of, and possible solutions to, the problem of disruptive behavior in the classroom focuses on the teacher, classroom climate,…

This paper reviews the problems of antisocial student behavior in schools, tries to identify causes, and examines programs and procedures for remediating and preventing such behavior. This review focuses particularly on senior and junior high schools and all forms of antisocial, aggressive, disruptive behaviors that interfere with school…

This monograph is written to help school administrators and policy makers, in addressing the question of safe schools, separate analytically what is "school" and what is "society" in order to better understand the real span of the school's control. The central question is: what are the characteristics of safe and effective…

A questionnaire describing 87 environmental characteristics of schools is administered to entering freshmen at a predominantly black university to study the relationships of racial composition to various dimensions of school environment and social climate. Both racial and nonracial aspects of school environments are examined. Correlation of the…

A 3-year program was implemented in eight middle schools in the Charleston County School District (South Carolina) in fall 1986 to cope with high rates of student misconduct. The program sought to improve the clarity of school rules and the consistency of rule enforcement, classroom organization and management, frequency of communication to the…

Eight secondary schools participated in this study of the relationships among school policies, principal leadership style, teacher behavior, and student behavior. Data were gathered through student and teacher observations, student and teacher questionnaires, student absence records, observations of the physical environment, and interviews with…

California's Proposition 8, known as "The Victims' Bill of Rights," contains a safe-schools provision that states: "All students and staff of primary, elementary, junior high and senior high schools have the inalienable right to attend campuses which are safe, secure and peaceful." Through extended reference to federal and…

The social climate of the early secondary school may be partially responsible for deteriorating parent-child communication and increasing misbehavior among early adolescents. Six hypotheses derived from this assertation were tested by surveying 501 parents and 661 students. The students, in grades 5 through 8, were enrolled in 10 schools that move…

Discipline and misbehavior in American high schools are the focus of this analysis of data from the first wave (1980) of a longitudinal study of over 30,000 sophomores and over 28,000 seniors. A summary of the findings shows that differences between urban and other schools are usually statistically insignificant when other school and student…

Utilizing a consensus decision-making strategy, teachers and an administrator from Parkway Central Middle School (PCMS) (Missouri) selected a two-part mission: (1) to establish an atmosphere where students demonstrate respect for themselves, their peers, and all adults; and (2) to evaluate, revise, develop, and implement a new discipline plan that…

The impact of school racial context (percentage of Anglo students in school and degree of Anglo peer group integration) and student background characteristics (sex, race, educational attainment of father of school racial context differed for Blacks intentions was addressed. A random subsample of Anglo (1,367), Black (1,172), and Hispanic (430)…

This study probes more deeply on defining the "reform agenda" and answering the question, "How do coaches balance pushing the reform agenda and meeting the immediate needs of school staff?" This study first teases apart what coaches mean by "reform agenda" and "immediate needs." The term "reform…