Dropout Reduction through Education, Achievement, and Motivation (Project DREAM) was designed to serve the needs of Latino immigrants who had scored at or below the 40th percentile on the Language Assessment Battery. The design-incorporating plans for group and individual guidance sessions to help students improve their interpersonal skills. It…

This study examined receptive and expressive language as a precursor of maladaptive behavior in African-American, inner-city children. It compared the adaptive and maladaptive behavior scores of 202 children--most from single-parent and low-income families--from District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) at age 12 to their scores on similar…

The Research for Better Schools Urban Education Project is working with teachers in Baltimore (Maryland) and Washington (District of Columbia) to reduce the alienation of many urban students by exploring how to align what students bring to school with classroom learning. This effort is centered around the concept of learner experience, an…

Robert W. Coleman Elementary School in Baltimore (Maryland) is a school that is exemplary by virtue of its efforts to build on the strengths of students and the community. Although it is not yet a model of curriculum or instruction, it operates in an ethical and theoretical framework with much to say to the urban educator. The school, which serves…

The Research for Better Schools Urban Education Project is working with educators in Baltimore (Maryland) and Washington (District of Columbia) to explore how to align what students bring to school with classroom learning. This effort is centered around the concept of learner experience, an outgrowth of the project's Urban Learner Framework (ULF),…

Students' experiences of daily classroom activities and the larger school context were studied at the Robert W. Coleman Elementary School, Baltimore (Maryland). Coleman is an inner-city school serving about 500 African American children in prekindergarten through grade 5. The school is organized into three campuses--primary, "Coleman"…

The growing diversity of our society requires transformation of ideological perspectives and changes in social, cultural, and institutional relations in order to legitimize diversity as a societal strength. Dominant ideologies and classroom practices have functioned to serve only one segment of American society. Attention must be directed toward…

This monograph explores strategies and programs that use both traditional and emerging resources for educating at-risk students. In general, schools have responded to student diversity with various systems of sorting and selecting students into more homogeneous learning groups. Ability grouping and tracking exemplify this approach. Retention, or…

At the margins of American education are students with unusual needs who challenge teachers to the limits of their commitments, insights, and skills. This paper considers the marginalized students in inner-city schools and suggests ways to improve education for them and for all students. There are disproportionate numbers of racial and ethnic…

In the world of social science and educational research, Asian Americans are frequently represented as one group and summarized with one number, like an arithmetic average. However, Asian Americans think of themselves as quite different from one another, as indeed they are. In the 1990 U.S. Census, information is available for 11 different groups…

This report, which is the eighth in a series, presents data for 1995 on high school dropout and retention rates, and examines high school completion and graduation rates. In addition to extending time series data from earlier reports, this report focuses on three specific subpopulations that are at particular risk of dropping out of school: (1)…

Throughout the Chicago Public Schools systematic differences exist between the performance of children of different racial and ethnic groups. In most schools where students of more than one group are found, Asians and Whites test at higher levels than Blacks and Hispanics. When income level and school type are controlled, small differences are…

A research project has been conducted to examine the transition from school to work, to explore how this transition does or does not work for inner-city high school and other at-risk students, and to propose school policy and program changes to increase the likelihood of a successful transition. Data were derived from the High School and Beyond…

A study was done of two Minnesota State "second chance" program options designed to help at-risk students to complete high school. The options are: (1) private urban alternative programs, administered by non-sectarian, community-based organizations principally serving teenagers from Minneapolis and St. Paul (Minnesota); and (2) the Area…

This report describes how a longitudinal study was conducted, which examined 1,235 at-risk sixth-grade students (95 percent Black and 5 percent Hispanic) in the Chicago (Illinois) Public Schools and their schools and families. The longitudinal study traced the children's patterns of school adjustment since their enrollment in government-funded…