According to sociological rational choice theory, students' class-specific educational decisions at key transition points significantly contribute to educational and social inequalities. Yet, while theory missed to clearly accentuate all relevant actors' influences on students' decisions, research generally failed to adequately empirically account…

The debate about high school reform is increasingly focused on the role of career-technical education (CTE) in helping to prepare "all" students for success in "both" postsecondary education and the workforce. The stand-alone vocational courses into which high school students with lower academic achievement were often channeled…

Among high school students, males' educational and career aspirations were strongly influenced by their academic ability and achievement, while females' aspirations were influenced mainly by parental attitudes and their socioeconomic background. (Author/MJL)

Describes a cooperative program between the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and urban Marshall High School with the goals of influencing tenth graders to choose more challenging academic programs, and improving parent participation. Campus tours, career planning meetings, and a parent program were used, and university advisers were available to…

Current literature on status attainment and student college choice is reviewed, and a structural model of predisposition to attend college is presented. Data from 2,497 ninth graders attending 21 high schools in Indiana and their parents, analyzed using LISREL, support the model's usefulness in determining students' college choice. (SLD)

Investigates the structure of attitudes to school subjects and the causal relationship among attitudes, levels of aspiration, and achievement focusing on 280 California high school students. Reveals that attitudes to school indirectly influenced achievement, while aspiration significantly affected achievement and mediated between attitudes and…

Risk and protective factor indices were developed to examine vulnerability to drug use among Latino high school students. Survey data was collected from 516 Latino 9th and 10th grade youth in the Los Angeles (California) area. Frequency and quantity of use data were collected for a range of drugs including inhalants, cocaine, and other hard drugs.…

This paper describes a model of the influence of personal and environmental factors on students' valuing of two deep-processing strategies for studying expository texts. In the model, task orientation (a form of intrinsic motivation in which learning and understanding are the major goals) interacts with perceptions of the teacher's goals to…

Develops an attitude formation model for the occupational and educational goals of disadvantaged African-American students, and tests it for 175 African-American male and female twelfth graders in an urban school district in New Jersey. Discusses variance in student attitudes, sex differences, and the marginalization of African-American urban…

Determines which factors within the family and school environments influence adolescents' educational aspirations, examining differences among ethnic groups and between males and females using a sample of 2,896 high school seniors from the High School and Beyond Survey of 1985. Findings confirm the significant influence of both environments. (SLD)

This paper presents a model of college choice that suggests that students' choice of college can be related to perceived "capital conversion" benefits. The model was tested on an evenly distributed sample (n=22,109) of students; one group attending elite colleges (with average freshman Scholastic Assessment Test scores of 1200 or higher)…

This vocational guidance model is designed to help new rural counselors, itinerant counselors, or teacher/advisors provide rural Alaskan high school seniors with a series of career and vocational experiences designed to facilitate the transition from high school to a job or to postsecondary training. The model is organized in four phases. In the…

This report attempts to answer criticisms that have been leveled against existing research on effective schooling. The research reported has three important features: (1) it is based on a major national survey--High School and Beyond (HSB)--with longitudinal information on each respondent; (2) measures are not restricted to verbal and quantitative…

There are great parallels between the School-to-Work Opportunities Act and the legislation which produced transition services for individuals with disabilities. The rationale is clearly the same: a real recognition and concern exists about the difficult transition that faces all high school graduates as they prepare to live on their own, assume…

This study examined the extent to which the relative influence on college investment decisions of economic, academic, structural, social, and cultural capital varied by racial/ethnic group. Data from the third (1994) follow-up to the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 were used. The adjusted weighted sample included 11,933 individuals…