Questionnaires concerning secondary teachers' involvement in decision-making and their perceived levels of job satisfaction were completed by 266 teachers from 23 Wisconsin middle and junior high schools. Urban, suburban, and rural schools enrolling from 350 to 1,150 students were represented. The teachers' responses to a four-point Likert scale…

The 1990s will likely be a watershed period for middle level education, as the real challenges surrounding making "second level" changes replace the euphoria that accompanied early growth of the middle school movement. Yet, zealousness still characterizes reform efforts at the middle level. This study, the most comprehensive ever…

Uses a hierarchical linear model to test the effect of birthdate on science ability in British schoolchildren, ages 11, 13, and 15. Reports that summer-born children scored lower than autumn-born children on science survey tests. Urges teachers to consider these artificial performance differences when grouping pupils according to ability for…

The Emory Word Analysis Skill Inventory (EWASI) was developed to diagnose individual word analysis skill abnormalities exhibited by students enrolled in private tutoring in the Emory University (Georgia) Reading Center. In the EWASI, 13 subscales contain three broad categories--consonants, vowels, and word structure. The goal, however, is to…

Since middle schools vary in their degree of implementation of middle school practices, this research was designed to compare the job satisfaction of middle school teachers with the degree of implementation of these practices. Six teachers from each of Colorado's 50 schools with the name "middle school" were randomly selected to serve as…

A study was conducted to determine if students from low socioeconomic environments have lower academic achievement compared to the academic achievement of students from higher socioeconomic environments. The sample consisted of 66 6th-grade science students at Travis Middle School, Temple, Texas. The students were divided into a low-income group…

This study investigates whether students experiencing difficulty adapting to parental loss also feel they have little or no control over life events; whether an inability to adapt to the stress of parental loss surfaces as a school adjustment problem; and whether these relationships are stronger for students losing a parent through death than…

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…