Results of this study which attempted to determine the main forces which strengthen or weaken college aspirations of students from disadvantaged backgrounds showed that the parents, guidance counselor and teacher were the strongest personal influences. Circumstances more than people tend to lessen the aspirations of the teenagers studied, who were…

Brief citations to the Educational Testing Service study "Disadvantaged Children and their First School Experience", the Marx and Winne study of self-concept and achievement and psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint's comments. (Author/AM)

During the last decade, great strides have been made in the enrollment of black youth in colleges and universities. Despite these gains, at least two concerns remain. First, enrollment rates of black and white youth are not yet equal. Second, the retention rate among blacks who enroll is lower than that of white students. A longitudinal study of…

Considers the hypothesis that Black women are inappropriately displacing Black men in professional roles and reviews research on the significance of gender in Black students' professional aspirations. Reports on a study which found that Black females continue to aspire to less prestigious professions than do their male counterparts. (KH)

This report uses motivation theory, social and cognitive development theory, and a construct, Definition of Reality (DOR), to explain why the black students of the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) do less well on the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills as they progress from elementary school into high school. The report is divided into 8…

The study was designed to test the following three rival hypotheses concerning the discrepancy between high Negro aspiration and low Negro achievement: (1) Negroes may have lower academic aptitude; (2) Negroes may be less motivated; and, (3) Negro aspirations may not be genuine, but simply a way of winning the approval of the researcher. The…

The relationships among identity, school engagement, and goal attainment for African American adolescents in urban public high schools were studied with 63 ninth graders. In bi-weekly workshops, information was obtained about student dreams and goals, self-concepts, and knowledge of what they needed to do to attain their goals. To explore…

This report presents a national profile of black college freshmen in 1989-90 and shows how these students have changed based on the past 19 surveys (1971-1989), using data on 16,000-20,000 black freshmen from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program. The study focuses on a wide variety of characteristics of black college freshmen: family…

Interviews were conducted with 39 junior high school students, whose low attendance records virtually deemed them dropouts, and with 26 parents to determine their perceptions of their school--specifically the building, teachers, course content, methods of instructions, and the school as a whole. Results of these interviews showed that the school…

Current state and federally funded educational programs seem to focus on four major themes: remediation, curriculum innovations, correcting racial imbalance, and compensatory education. Compensatory education refers to education programs which are designed to make up for deficiencies in a child's home environment. The ghetto child will never have…

This guide for students, teachers, and parents addresses the needs of black students in interracial schools by offering strategies and advice for coping and success. Issues discussed include: (1) conditions for blacks as a group; (2) self definition; (3) friends and associates; (4) family relationships; (5) the legal system; (6) mental and…

This study was designed to test school effects on verbal and math achievement, learning interests, self-concept, fate control, and post-high school plans of black high school students. Fifty eight matched pairs of black high school students from seven parochial and six public high schools in a large midwestern city were collectively and…

This report examines motivational variables and support structures that influenced the success of African American females who graduated with honors from a rural Georgia high school. Case studies focus on the nature of the honor graduates' friendships and the role that friendship may have played in motivating these students to become honor…

Intellective measures such as aptitude test scores and previous school grades have long been used to predict a student's future academic potential. The information is relatively easy to obtain and has shown high correlations with college grades. Among minority students, however, there is evidence that they often defy what one would predict on the…

This report discusses the results of a survey of the characteristics and the social and academic experiences of black undergraduates at eight predominantly white and regionally diverse State college campuses. The majority of the students sampled were freshmen. Major findings are that: (1) black undergraduates did not report markedly unpleasant or…