This brochure displays the following data for seven counties in southeastern Wisconsin for the 2004-2005 school year: (1) Total operations expenditures; (2) Property tax revenue; (3) Total enrollment; (4) One-year change in enrollment; (5) Minority enrollment; (6) Free or reduced lunch; (7) Habitual truancy; (8) 3rd Grade Wisconsin Reading and…

In April 2002, Jeffrey Fouts (2002) presented a longitudinal study of student performance in Washington using Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) results from 1998 to 2001. Although constrained by the lack of individual student identification numbers at that time, he concluded that success on the WASL in the 4th grade was a strong…

Two studies investigated 10th-grade students' health attitudes and practices related to cardiovascular risk. A survey determined students' perceptions of their families' health practices and needs and students' confidence in their ability to modify parents' behavior. The Heart Health Test Telecast (April 1980) was used to stimulate parent-child…

An interview with three top students and an English teacher at a troubled urban high school in Portland (Oregon) yields interesting insights: The best teachers blend strictness with understanding. Learning is more lasting when multiple avenues for absorbing material are provided. A principal's strong leadership is critical to a cohesive school…

This study demonstrates that the validity and usefulness of mathematics achievement tests can be improved by defining psychologically meaningful subscores that yield differential relations with student, teacher, and school variables. The eighth- and tenth-grade mathematics tests from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) were…

Inquired 69 students' beliefs about registering for high school chemistry. The information was used to develop a questionnaire and persuasive messages. Among 598 target students, chemistry enrollment was higher than expected for those receiving in-class student-only materials and lower than expected for those receiving student/parent take-home…

Study investigated the effectiveness of four instructional strategies on secondary students' argumentative writing, noting how different essay qualities influenced holistic scoring. Researchers found no significant differences in instructional strategy effectiveness or use of holistic scoring. Students' prior knowledge affected their ability to…

Whether family processes that predict positive and negative developmental outcomes are the same in intact families and remarried families was studied through surveys administered to 758 10th graders from families with stepfathers. In this sample, family dissolution and reconstitution does not affect parenting styles with regard to permissiveness…

Differences in use of selective attention by 64 more successful and 48 less successful readers in the tenth grade were studied. More successful readers are more aware of how and when to use the selective attention strategy and use more conceptual attention while reading than do less successful readers. (SLD)

Uses data from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) to reveal a detrimental contextual effect on 10th-grade mathematics and reading achievement associated with attending a school with a high concentration of children from single-parent homes. Maintains this effect is evident even when individual demographic characteristics and family…

Describes a qualitative action research study that investigated the effectiveness of an assignment for tenth graders that required primary research methods and an essay. Topics include authentic research; constructivist theory of learning; performance-based assessment; student journals; peer editing; teacher-librarian collaboration; and student…

Used data from the Portuguese HBSC (Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children) survey, which was conducted by one of the authors who is the national representative of the European Study HBSC, a World Health Organisation collaborative study (Currie, Hurrelmann, Setterbulte, Smith, & Todd, 2000; Matos, Simoes, Carvalhosa, Reis & Canha 2000),…

US majority (European-American) and minority (African-American, Latin-American, Asian-American) children were interviewed regarding race-based and non-race based reasons for exclusion in interracial peer contexts (N = 685), evenly divided by gender at 9, 12, and 15 years of age (4th, 7th, and 10th grades) attending 13 US public schools. All…

Background: The Hawaii Department of Education (HDOE) launched its Hawaii State Assessment (HSA) in spring, 2002, within the context of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) Act of 2001 and its mandates to close the "achievement gaps" between subgroups of students. Thus, it is important to investigate the extent to which student…

This study explored teachers' behavior as related to effective teaching practices in 8th, 9th, and 10th grade English classrooms in Jordan. The study also examined some variables that could predict teachers' implementation of effective teaching practices and aimed at finding an estimate of the percentage of students in 8th, 9th, and 10th grades…