This article examines the impact of economic circumstances on emotional well-being among young adults without a high school diploma in a predominantly Latina/o, urban community. Drawing on the notion of subjective well-being and interview data, the study finds that gendered expectations and parenting significantly affected how the absence of a…

We use the framework of institutional pluralism to provide new insights into a controversial process of market-based reform-school closures. School closure is a shock that highlights the dynamics and definitions of failure and surfaces values and meanings that might otherwise be hidden from consideration. Using qualitative data from a closing…

The Gates Foundation has given more than US$100 million to establish approximately 160 early college high schools (ECHSs) across the nation. The ECHS goal, to send traditionally low-performing students to college early and graduate them with 2 years of college credit, has been widely recognized for its constructive potential. However, not all EHCS…

The results of student perception of success and failure on exams and in courses indicated that most ethnic students viewed their own efforts (not their ethnic background) as the primary cause of their success or failure. (Author/AM)

Argues that the principal cause of failure has been due to a lack of sufficient power to overcome the opposition of groups who depended upon and actively defended the historically centralized and professionally dominated system. (Author/AM)

Finds that although the classroom behavior of second- grade pupils is, in most ways, statistically independent of their families' income, teachers of low income family pupils criticize more often, are more directive, and seem more concerned with control. Argues that these teachers prepare their students for failure. (Author/GC)

Compared aptitude, vocational, and personality measures of high school dropouts with those of a normative population. Also studied the relative contribution of selected variables to achievement. Suggests that achievement motivation, social class, and the institutional impact of the school must be examined to identify reasons for academic failure.…

Explores the findings from a two-year participant observation study of educational reform in an inner-city setting. The author deconstructs a major sociological/educational assumption instantiated in the reforms and attempts to delineate an alternative theoretical framework for understanding educational reform failure in inner-city situations. (GR)

Examines why a literature-based multicultural curriculum failed to engage students from a predominately white, working-class middle school in the South in discussing racism. Results from an ethnographic study indicate that this failure was primarily the result of dominant mainstream beliefs embedded in the institution of schooling and in the…