One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter considers the perspective that violence and vandalism in schools are a structural rather than a personal problem. Various facets of the schooling process are discussed with an emphasis on past and present meaning of forms of social control and how these may be…

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter reviews the various approaches used in the study of school vandalism and attempts to define what is needed now. The main contribution of early research on vandalism is to point out an intellectual dead end. Conventional demographic approaches to the problem, by…

Attrition at Empire State College (ECS) is calculated in terms of three types of counts: temporal, activity, and degree progress. The strategy for assessing attrition using these three quantitative techniques is discussed as are qualitative phone interviews. The attrition rate in terms of a temporal count was 28 percent. Phone interviews with 93…

A project was developed involving a state organization of teachers and teams of teachers in local school systems to demonstrate how selected teaching practices could be disseminated to interested teachers. The state organization provided the organizing link among the different school systems and established criteria. The members of the area teams…

The purpose of nine regional meetings between New York State Education Department personnel, educators and students from selected secondary school districts was to obtain information about unrest and the changing expectations of high school students. The following conclusions were made: (1) rising expectations of students are part of the "times,"…

Information is presented in this report on whether or not students attending disrupted or nondisrupted schools and black or white students within those schools differ and whether or not these differences contribute to general disruption and conflict. Significant relationships were found between students attending disrupted or nondisrupted schools…

The learning contract, a written agreement between a student and a sponsor (teacher, counselor, "facilitator"), describes what the student wants to learn and states the basis on which credit is to be earned. Use of the latter concept to utilize community resources evidences the realization that learning takes place not only in schools but wherever…

This paper draws upon interviews with several eminent behavioral scientists who are well acquainted with the American educational scene in order to: 1) glean the latest, freshest ideas from behavioral science; and, 2) to focus the paper sharply upon alienation as seen in its relationship to the schools. First, the origins of the concept of…

The extent to which black and white adolescents justify the use of political violence to gain desired ends, and the extent to which they express behavioral intentions to engage in such violence to achieve political objectives are examined and compared. (Author/AM)

Interviews with 75 suburban Chicago seniors from the top 15 percent of their classes confirmed the authors' hypothesis that the suburban affluent high school experience is viewed as a deadly boring process which must be endured. (Author/SJL)

School-level socioeconomic status (SES), racial composition, and climate were each highly related to mean school achievement; only a small proportion of the between-school variance in achievement was explained by SES and racial composition after the effect of school climate was removed. Student sense of academic futility had the highest…

Schools create delinquents because of their success, not their failure. Under the present economic system, schools must prepare youths, especially of the lower classes, for alienated work and lives. Society and economy must change first, since they demand alienated labor, before schools can prepare people for liberated lives. (Author)

Adolescent risk-taking behavior needs to be understood in the context of contemporary youth culture and normal development. To facilitate passage through adolescence, parents should sustain a climate of control and commitment balanced by respect for the adolescent's increased capacity for self-regulation. (Author)

The first stage for school improvement is to find constructive ways to better serve students who are not realizing their full capabilities. Potentially marginal students pass through various levels (testing limits, coasting, retreating and rebelling), and deliberate and constructive intervention can be implemented at each level. (GC)

In this study the efficacy of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory 2 (MMPI-2) was examined with a Colombian college student population. It was projected that the participants would have elevated scales related to psychological distress, marginality, and poor morale, given the current socio-political climate in Columbia. Participants…