This article takes up the proposal, originally postulated by George Miller in the US (Miller, 1969) and later taken up by Harry Kay in the UK (Kay, 1972), that psychologists should work through non-psychologists to help alleviate social problems. Specifically it evaluates a reading intervention programme devised by educational psychologists and…

This applied dissertation was designed to evaluate a Reading Recovery program at an alternative school in Florida. The Reading Recovery program was used as an intervention for improving students' reading skills and performances on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) that is given each year to students in Grades 7 and 8. The…

Many of the first-wave reform initiatives of the 1980s have been successfully implemented on a widespread basis and are having an important influence on the schooling process. The reform movement was expected to fail because of strong financial, political, and organizational arguments. Reform initiatives were said to be insufficiently funded,…

Low self-esteem and depressed individuals tend to have an attributional style of externalizing success and internalizing failure. To evaluate a program developed to help reverse this pattern of responses to be more similar to high self-esteem and nondepressed individuals, subjects were first tested for self-esteem, depression, and attributional…

This report describes an early intervention program designed to prevent first grade failure. It includes an explanation of the program's objectives, activities, evaluation, and findings; short summaries of the program's background, content, cost effectiveness analysis, and evaluation procedures; and the conclusions and recommendations of a…

Professor Donald C. Orlich of Washington State University charges that, with few exceptions, the hundreds of research and development projects funded by the federal government since 1953 have brought no significant improvement in instruction. He is especially critical of the Experimental Schools Program. (Author/SJL)

The "Ziegarnik effect," a learner's tendency to recall uncompleted tasks longer than completed ones and to remember failures more easily than successes, is applied to improving programs for the subgroup of students with emotional/behavioral disorders who show little benefit from special education interventions, and to teacher…

This article reviews teaching strategies expected to be effective in alternative education programs for students at risk for school failure, dropout, and delinquency. The need for alternative education programs for students in both special and general education is discussed, along with recommended alternative education strategies and program…

This article addresses the sustainability of comprehensive school reform (CSR) models in the face of turbulent district and state contexts. It draws on qualitative data gathered in a longitudinal case study of six CSR models implemented in 13 schools in one urban district. Why do reforms sustain in some schools and not in others? How do changing…

Long-term suspended (LTS) students are barred from the school system for lengthy periods, leaving them at risk of academic failure and vulnerable from lack of services. A program in a North Carolina public school system provided counselors to work with each LTS student. Outcome data were analyzed to determine the effectiveness of counseling…

In this case study, we use a consensus model as a framework for examining the professional development component of a standards-based reform effort initiated by a school district in the United States. We describe the district's actions, analyze the extent of adherence to the model, and identify reasons for what occurred. Although administrators…

Little is known about the payoffs to apprenticeship training in the German speaking countries for the participants. OLS estimates suggest that the returns are similar to those of other types of schooling. However, there is a lot of heterogeneity in the types of apprenticeships offered, and institutional descriptions suggest that there might be an…

Although over 15 years have passed since Witt (1990) noted that no empirical evidence exists to support the contention that a collaborative approach to consultation leads to more positive outcomes than a hierarchical or expert driven approach, this issue generally remains unaddressed (Schulte & Osborne, 2003). While the literature documenting…

In this study, the authors determine special educators' judgments of the use, intensity, and effectiveness of communication and behavior management strategies. In an earlier study, F. H. Wood (1991) examined general educators' cost-benefit considerations in managing behavior of students with emotional or behavioral disorders. As an extension of…

The theoretical constructs underlying legislative approaches to at-risk student statutes are examined in this paper, with attention given to the ways in which educational institutions make certain factors significant to student success. Legislative approaches closely follow the epidemiology model, which attempts to identify, predict, and immunize…