This review of literature is a synthesis of research surrounding the production of superior choral performance. Findings described in this review suggest director characteristics, rehearsal techniques, singer behaviors, and auxiliary supports that are important to, or common in, the creation of meritorious performance. Effects of instructional…

For decades, higher education professionals and researchers have used the term reverse transfer to describe a specific group of students. A current review of community college literature and higher education policy reflects a contextual change of the term, and today reverse transfer has grown to include students who transfer from a two-year…

We compared the performance of Hispanic students from California, Texas, and Arizona on the two Advanced Placement (AP) English exams (i.e., English Language and Composition and English Literature and Composition) using archival data from the College Board from 1997 through 2012. Pearson chi-square tests yielded statistically significant…

For decades scholars have agreed that the United States is becoming a more racially and ethnically diverse society. It is projected that the U.S. will become a majority-minority nation for the first time in 2043. By 2060, people of color will consist of 57% of the total population. Given this trend, it is hardly surprising that this social…

This study examined the impact of independent practice of multiple-criteria text that targeted high-frequency words, decodability, and meaningfulness. Second-grade students, including at-risk students, were randomly assigned within classroom to a treatment group that read multiple-criteria text ("n" = 34), or contrast group that read…

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to describe the perceptions of African American students pertaining to their engagement in Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition course and Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition examination. A purposive sampling design was employed to select 12 participants from one urban…

This study sought to compare the performance of students in the College Board Advanced Placement Program® (AP®) compared to non-AP students on a number of college outcome measures. Ten individual AP Exams were examined in this study of students in four entering classes (1998-2001) at the University of Texas at Austin. The four main groups of…

High stakes testing in the state of Texas creates greater achievement gaps between Latina/os and White students. With the state adopting strict guidelines for graduation, Latina/os find it difficult to stay in school and proceed to higher educational institutions. Latina/os choose to drop out of schools with curriculums which do not embrace their…

Performance was examined for five cohorts of 1998-2002 Texas public high school graduates through their first year and 1998-2001 cohorts through their fourth year of Texas public higher education. Student performance on college outcomes included (a) first- and fourth-year grade point averages (GPAs), (b) first- and fourth-year credit hours earned,…

Attempts to explain poor academic performance of Mexican American bilingual students have relied primarily on two causative models: home and school. Both models were evaluated with data from a matched sample of public school bilingual Mexican American children from grades 1-8, in a medium sized South-Central Texas community. The control group…

The past 22 years of research on the underutilization of mental health services by Mexican Americans are critically analyzed from conceptual and technical perspectives. While basic assertions of previous investigators that underutilization exists are correct, research concepts and methods used have been inadequate in relation to the issue's…

To further investigate the relationship between divergent thinking and bilingualism, 23 Anglos and 108 Mexican Americans from a semi-rural West Texas community and 24 Mexican Americans from San Antonio, enrolled in the fourth grade, of low socioeconomic status, and with an average age of 10 years 6 months, were divided into 5 experimental groups,…

The study assessed the stability or change in the residential orientations of rural Mexican American youth living near the Texas-Mexico border, examined changes in the local social and economic environment, and made some predictions as to their effects on the students' dispositions. In the springs of 1967 and 1973, questionnaires were administered…

A comparative analysis of the findings of three studies involving widely varying ethnic groupings of rural youth was conducted in order to evolve a speculative frame of propositions about religion as a variable attribute of the life situation of rural youth, and to speculate about the possible significance of patterned variability in religious…

Drug abuse and the differences in drug use patterns and related behavior between rural blacks and whites were examined. Questionnaires were administered to 993 (369 black and 624 white) rural adolescents in grades 7-12 in randomly selected schools in Texas. The instrument totaled 15 pages containing 65 items which yielded 178 quantifiable…