The purpose of the present study is to test the validity of scores on the Homework Purpose Scale (HPS) for middle school students. The participants were 1,181 eighth graders in the southeastern United States, including (a) 699 students in urban school districts and (b) 482 students in rural school districts. First, confirmatory factor analysis was…

The purpose of this study was to test the validity of scores on the Homework Management Scale (HMS) using 699 rural and 482 urban eighth graders. The study revealed that the HMS comprised 5 separate yet related factors: arranging the environment, managing time, handling distraction, monitoring motivation, and controlling emotion. Given an adequate…

How schools can reach out to students and families from diverse cultural backgrounds was studied by examining the experiences of four families with students enrolled in a middle school in New York City. Also studied were families' perceptions of the school's efforts to reach out. The school's student body was 47% Latino and 34% African American,…

The aim of this study was to examine whether student achievement and school location may influence a range of homework management strategies. The participants were 633 rural and urban students in Grade 8. These homework management strategies include: (a) setting an appropriate work environment, (b) managing time, (c) handling distraction, (d)…

This monograph documents four families' reactions to the experiences their children encounter at their urban middle school, showing how the families' interpretations are shaped by their perceptions of the roles played by the school, the parents, and the children, and how these perceptions are further mediated by their racial consciousness, class,…

Although the mixed heritage population of the U.S. continues to grow, few (if any) attempts have been made to examine educational needs specific to this group of children, especially from the family's perspective. This article uses ethnographic data to examine the experiences of one mixed heritage family--with an African American father and a…

A growing number of schools have implemented inclusion programs for students with disabilities. Yet, there is hardly any acknowledgment of the presence of minorities in the inclusion implementation literature. This article uses ethnographic data to examine the experiences of one Black family in an urban middle school inclusion program. The study…