The process of change in elementary and secondary schools has been the topic of several major studies conducted during the past 15 years. To date, however, information about the change process in different school settings has not been considered comparatively. This document examines and compares the process of change and the role of the change…

As part of a larger sociolinguistic study investigating the attitudes of Puerto Ricans on the island toward their own vernacular speech, the present research focused on the subjective reactions of 104 public high school teachers and students to spoken speech styles. The subjects' task was to: listen to a prerecorded tape, rate the voices on the…

This study concerns school dropouts in the Boston Public School system. It is divided into three sections which deal with: (1) a review of research studies on the causes of school dropout; (2) statistical analysis of the Boston situation by race and ethnic origin, gender, grade, and location; and (3) a review of prevention/intervention programs,…

This paper examines the results of two sociolinguistic studies of the Arabic spoken by men and women in Jordan and Syria in terms of sex differentiation in Arabic. The study reported in this paper proposes that the terms "prestigious" and "standard" should not be used interchangeably; accordingly, it reinterprets the previous…

The status of Mexican Americans in higher education is addressed, along with the role played by testing and assessment, and educational prospects for Mexican American children. The importance of community colleges in the education of Mexican Americans is noted. Reasons for declining college enrollments for Hispanics are identified: high college…

This document, the first of three reports to be produced as part of the National Assessment of Chapter 1 programs, summarizes a wide range of information about those whom the programs are intended to benefit. The report provides an analytic and demographic framework from which to view the actual operations of local Chapter 1 programs. The first…

Teacher and administrator responses to the Connecticut School Interview, conducted as part of the Spencerport (New York) More Effective Schools/Teaching Project, indicate that there are a number of correlates which can be considered areas of strength, and that steady improvement has occurred in installing correlates in each building and in…

In 1985, mean after-tax household income increased faster than inflation for the fourth consecutive year. Mean household income after taxes was $22,650 in 1985, up by 0.9 percent over the 1984 figure. Mean household income before taxes ($29,070) increased by 1.3 percent after adjusting for inflation. The mean after-tax incomes of both White…

The "Southwest" dialect, previously isolated in San Antonio, Texas, has been isolated south of that area. Data were drawn from the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States (LAGS) and interviews with ten lower-middle/upper-lower class informants. Seven communities were represented by seven female and three male English speakers (four…

This report combines the techniques of multistate life table analysis with the human capital theory of wages to derive new estimates of the impact of children on hours of market work and earnings for American women aged 15 to 55 years old. The impact of fertility on female labor force behavior is analyzed, and opportunity expenditures (the money…

This study identifies the attitudes of college students toward a variety of persons, each of whom deviated from the normal in one specific way--either in terms of social status, physical condition, or political point of view. A questionnaire was devised, employing the Bogardus Social Distance Scale. Respondents included 184 undergraduates and 51…

Data from two studies of 30 year olds were compared on the importance ascribed to and satisfaction derived from 15 life components. The relative frequency with which Carter's (1983) research population of graduate students indicated that life components were important or were sources of satisfaction were compared through critical ratios with…

Alienation has been a key concept and major area of empirical studies in sociology and psychology; however, most alienation studies have not dealt with the elderly. In an attempt to explore the effects of the aging process and the major events of later life on the aging person's vulnerability to alienation, older residents (50 years or more) in a…

An analysis of the 1981 high school graduating class in Mississippi suggests that greater earnings for students and increased state revenues from income and sales taxes would result if the dropout rate could be reduced to the national average of 10 percent. Subtracting from the total first-grade enrollment (1969-70) both the number of 1981 private…

This study examined the influence of appearance on leadership processes by examining the effect of attractiveness on the actual performance of a leadership task. College students (N=62) performed a simulation task in which they played the role of a candidate for student government president. All the students were videotaped, giving a prepared…