This loose-leaf compendium includes three types of brief research summaries: "topical synthesis,""close-ups," and "snapshots." The single topical synthesis is entitled "School-Community Collaboration to Improve the Quality of Life for Urban Youth and Their Families" (Kathleen Cotton). Close-ups consist of…

Martin Sanchez Jankowski conducted a 10-year study of gangs of varying ethnicity in three major cities, with a focus on New York City and Los Angeles (California). The center of his research has been in low-income areas, where gangs have been an institution for more than 150 years. Jankowski acquired experience by living with gangs from a variety…

Independent neighborhood schools are meeting the academic, social, and cultural needs of African American, Hispanic American, Latino American, Native American and Asian American children when viewed from a broad spectrum of criteria for individual and institutional success. Hundreds of these institutions provide full-time academic programs,…

In response to state legislation specifying criteria by which schools should identify elementary school and secondary school students at risk of dropping out, schools in the Austin (Texas) Independent School District reported students who were at risk in 1990-91. The operational definitions for the state criteria for grades 7-12 include age,…

High attrition from programs for at-risk youth suggest that planners are not assessing interventions from the consumers' perspective. Some disadvantaged youth join and complete programs (persisters), while others from the same communities either fail to join or drop out (leavers). Participants in two in-school remedial programs and two…

A study examined the cognitive development of at-risk students (those who have experienced difficulty or failure in their careers as learners), focusing on such groups as potential drop-outs, minority children, and disabled students (dsylexic or non-English speaking), as well as teaching thinking to this same student population. Although research…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 17 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the communicative competence of teenage boys in a northern United States urban warren; (2) the effects of second language learning upon reading achievement in…

The central theme of the 10-day National Leadership Conference (NLC), sponsored by the American Youth Foundation at Camp Miniwanca (Michigan), is to train high school students in leadership for service; its goal is to sharpen service-learning leadership skills of young people and teachers and to encourage their application to transform and serve…

Demographic, biological, psychosocial and environmental data on 400 black and white families of lower middle and lower socioeconomic backgrounds were collected and synthesized to determine the factors influencing the development and acculturation of children born in urban Baltimore. A research team of pediatricians, epidemiologists, psychologists,…

The investigators hypothesized that home environment variables--as measured by the Home Environment Review, administered upon entrance to kindergarten--account for the variance in children's reading achievement at the end of kindergarten, first, and second grade. One hundred fifty-three children representing a longitudinal, traced sample from two…

The study investigated the interaction of personal and environmental factors influencing seventh graders' selection of career exploration courses for increased exploration in the eighth grade. A stratified random sample (496 students) was drawn from the Pittsburgh Public School's Occupational, Vocational, and Technical Exploratory Program.…

The report describes the development of the Youth Training in the Private Sector Model for conducting on-the-job training for high school age youth. It is based on a two-year study of the Vocational Exploration in the Private Sector (VEPS) Program in New York City, which placed potential dropouts in work/training positions in the private sector…

The development of political thinking during adolescence was studied by interviewing 463 suburban and urban schoolchildren of average intelligence in grades 6, 8, 10, and 12. Each subject was interviewed individually by means of a Piaget-type questionnaire. Analysis of the questionnaire responses revealed a very distinctive developmental pattern.…

To determine if tryout samples typically used for item selection contribute to test bias against minority groups, item analyses were made of the California Achievement Tests using seven sub-groups of the standardization sample: Northern White Suburban, Northern Black Urban, Southern White Suburban, Southern Black Rural, Southern White Rural,…

Study investigated changes in urban Alberta high school student plans/aspirations between 1969 (12,951)/1982 (2,285 students). Analyzing boys and girls separately indicated more 1981 girls planned postsecondary education. More 1981 students planned postsecondary education, but schools placed fewer students in college preparation programs in 1981…