Newport News is a city of 193,000 people, located between Williamsburg and Norfolk in Southeastern Virginia. Newport News Public Schools (NNPS) educates approximately 30,500 children, grades Pre-K to 12, of whom 55.7% are Black, 29% are White, 9.9% are Hispanic, 2.9% are Asian, and 2.5% are other races. Newport News Public Schools' (NNPS') Special…

Across the nation, school policymakers are grappling with what to do about the increasing numbers of students who do not advance beyond ninth grade. National estimates put the student attrition rate before tenth grade at between 11 and 33 percent, and only about 70 percent of ninth graders make it to graduation. This policy brief focuses on one…

Each year, about 57 ninth graders cooperate with the managers of Mason Neck Wildlife Refuge, an eastern deciduous forest near the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in northern Virginia. Pursuing integrated studies in English, biology and technology, the students have inventoried a pond's biota, collected deer browse data, and…

Peak II is a successful school-within-a-school alternative learning experience for underachieving ninth-graders attending Longs Peak Junior High School in Longmont, Colorado. The voluntary program involves team teaching, an academic focus, group and individual counseling, guest speakers, field trips, group social activities, and afterschool…

Processing of the three major groups of modern glasses is described. Low-melting-point glasses and the roles of their ingredients are discussed. Other processes (calcining, melting, fining the batch, annealing, testing for stress, colorants) are explained. Finally, a secondary-level pilot program for glass technology is suggested. (CT)

Describes and evaluates a health science career education program in which eighth- and ninth-grade minority students fulfill their science requirement by attending lecture and laboratory sessions at a Manhattan medical center and working individually with a professional. (DC)

Presented in outline form, this paper describes a special program for gifted and talented students at a Massachusetts junior high school. Some of the topics discussed include goals of the program, design, implementation, evaluation, use of teachers as mentors, and identification of gifted students. (Author/LD)

A description of the project, its development process, evaluation results, and exportability are included in this overview of WORK-ED (World of Related Knowledge and Educational Development), a program to provide ninth grade students both basic skills in communication and exposure to twelve career clusters. Introductory sections describe the…

We present the design principles for a new kind of computer system that helps students learn algebra. The fundamental idea is to have a system based on the microworld paradigm that allows students to make their own calculations, as they do with paper and pencil, without being obliged to use commands, and to verify the correctness of these…

A project designed to develop a prevocational program for grade 9 students in a comprehensive area vocational school is described in this final report. The major goals of the project were to enable students to make wise career choices and to develop better work habits and attitudes. Other goals were to identify the possible need for 10th grade…

Two ninth-grade curriculum development projects were carried out over a three-year period (1975-78) in West Virginia at Point Pleasant Junior High School and at Wahama Junior/Senior High School. Known as Project Open, these projects resulted in the development and classroom testing of two new technology-based courses called "Career…

The Youth Opportunities Unlimited (YOU) program was created to prevent at-risk students from low-income families from dropping out of high school. Students aged 14 or 15 years old entering 9th or 10th grade went to a college campus for 60 days during the summer to attend English and mathematics classes, work 20 hours per week, and receive…