This study examines the issues surrounding middle school students' transitions to high school and the degree to which freshman orientation models can help them. The attendance, discipline, report card grades, and end-of-course exams of 60 students who participated in a freshman orientation were compared to those of 150 students who were invited to…

Charles Miller, former chairman of the University of Texas System's Board of Regents, chaired the recent Commission on the Future of Higher Education created by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings. Here he is interviewed regarding the panel's widely discussed report, "A Test of Leadership," by Pat Callan, president of the National…

Over the past two decades numerous studies have been done on the reading behavior of students from a content perspective as well as a program perspective (Deshler, 2001). However, very little research has been done on the retention of knowledge gained during reading interventions put in place to rectify situations in which students have not met…

The public educates children because of our common interest in ensuring that children become responsible and productive adults and to provide an opportunity to every child to achieve their potential. Unfortunately, several national studies show that we aren't doing a good job educating foster children. Foster children have lower test scores, lower…

In Texas, which has minimal child care standards, extensive alternative care arrangements were associated with pervasive negative effects in third graders. Children with the alternative care background received more negative ratings from parents and teachers, poorer grades, lower standardized test scores, and more negative sociometric nominations…

This paper extends a series of studies examining school district report cards, which began with investigations of Tennessee's report card data. Since 1988, the Texas State Board of Education has produced a report card on each school district to report district-level data. Texas district report card items were organized into student outcome…