School uniforms are commonplace in the United Kingdom and seem to help promote students' respect for the teachers, the school, and themselves. Parents like the uniforms because they see it as a less expensive alternative. Teachers say they appreciate school uniforms because they help students focus on school and not each other's clothes. However,…

Describes the adventures of a South Carolina teacher who moonlighted for 10 years as a home teacher for pregnant, injured, and other housebound students. Desite the intrinsic rewards involved, she eventually resigned due to low pay and burnout. Specific students and their problems are described. (MLH)

Given the breadth and complexity of the current school improvement movement, the upgrading of physical structures may be the only specific reform area demanding a straight-forward approach. The widespread physical disrepair and overcrowding characterizing today's innercity schools provide students with no viable alternative to urban squalor and…

Summarizes a large-scale, systematic study that described and analyzed instructional practices in about 140 classrooms located in 15 poverty-area elementary schools. Teaching for meaning, or instruction promoting comprehension and conceptual understanding, was compared to more conventional methods. Students exposed to meaning-oriented instruction…

Teachers and administrators are not adequately prepared to address the range of children's social and psychological needs but must rely on parental and community assistance. Instead of merely referring students to social services and health departments, schools must become multiple-service brokers and forge broad community alliances to protect and…

The appraisal of community action is the focus of this report on the establishment of 14 community centers in Kentucky. (MF)

The surest way to improve schooling for 12 million children in poverty is to get them better teachers. The problem is selection, not training. "Star" urban teachers persistently engage their students, protect and enhance student learning opportunities, easily apply generalizations, succeed despite students' life conditions, genuinely respect…

Half of all 16,023 U.S. school districts are both small and rural. In a decade of nationwide reform, these "forgotten" school districts must fight for survival rather than substantive reform. Teachers in rural Indiana cannot rely on principals for instructional leadership nor on each other for professional enrichment. Includes four…

Based on a two-year study of four elementary schools in a poor, crime-ridden section of Chicago, this article finds the public school an island of relative safety in an ocean of danger. Community-wide approaches are needed to stop lawlessness and fear in innercity schools. Includes seven references. (MLH)

In poor, urban schools, so much time is spent controlling and disciplining children to obey authority (or to learn the hidden curriculum), that scant time is left for "real" teaching and learning. This article shows how school culture (conditions, norms, relationships, and structures) can be changed to educate all children adequately. Includes 10…

Describes the Senior Project, a program at California State University, Fresno, designed to help children at risk of school failure. The project stresses one-on-one mentoring of at-risk, limited-English-speaking children by Liberal Studies/teacher preparation majors. Plans for most sessions feature reading and writing activities, simple science…

The educational reform movement has proven largely irrelevant to urban minority students' needs. Dropout prevention programs have bestowed meaningless diplomas, while side-stepping the root causes of failure and underachievement. Urban high schools are large and impersonal and have a sour, dispirited atmosphere that discourages learning. Clearly,…

While studying 16 middle schools engaged in "Turning Points" reforms, authors confronted a contradictory American culture that embraces democratic ends for schools, but resists democratic means to achieve them. Three demographically different schools struggled and compromised to incorporate civic virtue, thematic learning, social…