Adolescents in the urban public school system experience childhood trauma that sometimes makes it difficult to focus on learning. Even more so, sometimes trauma experienced by youth manifests in disruptive behaviors in the school setting. Traditionally, urban public schools have focused on teaching and learning academics, generally neglecting the…

Students from urban high schools are usually faced with adverse environmental factors in their pursuit of academic success. These factors make learning more challenging and may confound the measurement of academic performance itself. This study explores how one such factor, ambient noise, affects the measurement of mathematics achievement.…

This research study examines the learning experiences of 11th- and 12th-grade Black girls participating in a precollegiate program committed to increasing the number of Teachers of Color entering the profession by viewing a teaching career as an act of social justice committed to educational equity. The pipeline functions as an education reform…

Despite their long history and importance in the American curriculum, music programs must constantly justify their place in the twenty-first century. Urban areas that are economically depressed sometimes may not be able to offer music instruction due to the emphasis on raising test scores as well as unfavorable economic conditions that may limit…

The study examines two issues of the relationship between social capital and educational performance: the different effects of bridging and bonding social capital on urban educational performance and the contextual effects of social capital. The main argument states that bonding and bridging social capital are differently related to educational…

The need for African American male teachers is clear; however their pathway to teaching is in disrepair. This article shares research findings and a description of a pre-collegiate course designed to encourage high school students of color, including African American males, to explore teaching. More specifically, drawing from survey and interview…

The third unit of grade 12 of the FICSS series (Focus on Inner City Social Studies -- see SO 008 271) examines the role of business, industry, and labor and how they interact with the government and the military. The unit deals with the concepts of power theory, corporation, corporate power, unions, union power, and mass society. Power theory…

One of the major concerns of educators today is the determination of the factors that play a role in the career choices of women. This document summarizes a Saskatchewan thesis study that explored female grade 12 high school students' perceptions of the factors that influenced their traditional or nontraditional science career aspirations. Of…

Five students from a Boston high school and 35 from Lincoln-Sudbury took part in an alternate semester consisting of 5 units: Outward Bound, environmental issues, urban, rural, and river/building. Students had to be juniors or seniors, have parental permission, and meet graduation requirements. The alternate semester began with Outward Bound, a…

In the third year of Lincoln-Sudbury's Alternate Semester program, 22 students participated, with 2 teachers sharing responsibilities in a new program format: a fall planning unit; a 10-day stay in Grafton, Vermont; a 15-week period spent alone or in small groups, working and living in urban and/or rural settings for modules of time dictated by…

The public profiling of schools as "effective schools", based on Grade 12 results, has resulted in a jingoistic race by many public schools to get their names on the "public notice board" of effectiveness recognition. Besides creating a skewed perception of school effectiveness, this public profiling of schools as effective…

Results from the third national writing assessment of 17-year-old students conducted in 1979 by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are presented in this volume. Chapter one provides highlights of the results of the test assessment which indicate neither a major decline nor improvement in writing performance of 17-year-old…

This study examined the extent to which students with disabilities or special needs participate in Postsecondary Enrollment Options (PSEO), a Minnesota program which allows 11th and 12th grade students to complete high school credits at a 4-year or 2-year college or a postsecondary vocational training institution. Directors of the PSEO programs at…

Project Discovery is a community-based educational intervention program for low income and minority students. It operates outside the traditional public education system. The following projects comprise the program: (1) Project Discovery for ninth to eleventh graders, which is a College Option Orientation program; and (2) Discovery Groups for…