High attrition from programs for at-risk youth suggest that planners are not assessing interventions from the consumers' perspective. Some disadvantaged youth join and complete programs (persisters), while others from the same communities either fail to join or drop out (leavers). Participants in two in-school remedial programs and two…

A study examined the cognitive development of at-risk students (those who have experienced difficulty or failure in their careers as learners), focusing on such groups as potential drop-outs, minority children, and disabled students (dsylexic or non-English speaking), as well as teaching thinking to this same student population. Although research…

This report presents the collective results of studies funded under the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention congressional directive. The studies confirm that young African-American males are disproportionately involved as offenders and victims of violence, that firearms play a large role in juvenile violence, and that gang…

Explores the role of parent involvement and bilingual education in improving the educational experience of language minority students, particularly in urban settings. Asks whether parent involvement is a feasible solution, and looks at the chance that bilingual education will decrease dropouts and empower students. (JB)

The Gang Membership Inventory (GMI) was developed for use with urban high-risk youth and administered as part of a larger survey. The GMI consists of 15 true/false items asking about the respondent's involvement in gang activities in the year just past. Activities range from peripheral involvement to more serious involvement in gangs (e.g., being…

This report describes and analyzes the current employment and educational pursuits of Southeast Asian (SEA) youth in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, community. The report provides information on the following: (1) demography, residential patterns, and composition of the Philadelphia SEA Refugee Community; (2) role of ethnic identity among the SEA…

Problems that beset urban education in general are analyzed, and solutions are discussed and evaluated by a policy working group of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges. The most acute problem in American education involves the unmet needs of disadvantaged students, who are heavily concentrated in urban school…

The experiences of the first middle school to pilot the ideas and concepts of the Accelerated Schools Project are described. The school is an inner-city public school with a population of at-risk students presently scoring below district and state achievement averages. The 689 students are 53 percent Hispanic, 23 percent Portuguese, 17 percent…

Project Survival was a special innovative project conducted by the Atlanta (Georgia) Public Schools in the summer of 1991. By combining instruction in basic skills, opportunities to learn and practice conflict resolution strategies, and work experience, Project Survival addressed some of the major problems associated with high dropout and…

The personal stories of young women who have either dropped out of school or are at risk of dropping out, reveal a complex set of perceptions, interpretations, and contradictions regarding the roles of race, gender, and class in their behavior and attitudes. A one-year research project was conducted in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) with 75 females,…

The second annual Staying-in-School-Partnership Program (SSPP) conference, "Successful Schooling for the At-Risk Student: Ideas for Practitioners," brought representatives from the ten SSPP programs together with representatives from New York State and New York City Attendance Improvement/Dropout Prevention (AIDP) programs, the New York…

Tested school-based intervention in the developmental domains of skills/knowledge, attitudes, orientations, and exploration/commitment for urban minority youth. Quantitative results indicated positive gains on multiple indices; qualitative assessment illustrated positive effects of intervention and the possible obstacles to intervention efficacy.…

This document is an executive summary of a report asserting that the under-education of a body of students, known as "at-risk" youth, presents a crisis in American public education that has been overlooked by the educational reform movement of the 1980s. These youth are referred to as "at-risk" because they leave school…

This handbook focuses on five long-standing correlates for effective schools postulated by the late Ron Edmonds. Edmonds searched long and hard for those variables that were present in successful inner-city schools populated primarily by African American children. His work demonstrated that it is possible to educate so-called hard-to-reach…

Environmental Readiness Learning (ERL) is the affective curriculum component developed by the Bedford Stuyvesant Street Academy (New York) to improve the behavior, academic achievement, and self-esteem of urban high school students with histories of prior school failure. The program design reflects the school's philosophy that educational success…