This study identified patterns among small schools in rural communities across a seven-state area. Perceptions of high school seniors, counselors, and graduates were gathered about their rural schools in districts with grade 7 to 12 enrollments of less than 500. Factual information about programs and local schools was obtained from school…

To improve the quality of teaching in New York State's schools, state and local policy-makers must consider a number of issues that affect teaching quality. These issues are outlined in this booklet, which also provides a number of policy recommendations. The basic concepts reviewed are (1) the assumptions that underlie the collaborative endeavor…

The New York State hearings (held on May 10-11, 1984, in New York City) reported on in this document focused on three areas of public education considered key to inequity: the denial of equal access to school resources, the denial of equal quality in the learning process, and the denial of open futures in the link between school and work. The…

Responses to an extensive survey by 910 (62 percent) of the head administrators at the 1,464 Catholic high schools in the United States provide the information presented in this report. The survey, containing 1,063 pieces of information in 14 sections, was designed to create a view of the resources, programs, facilities, personnel, and policies of…

The historical background, principles, and practices of two major theories concerning student behavior are described. Theory A is religiously based and can be traced back to the biblical "Garden of Eden." It views human nature as fundamentally evil, the school as a means of both controlling and overcoming the child's innate propensities to…

The Teaching-Learning Interaction Study tested the separate and interactive effects of teacher and student entry characteristics on their subsequent classroom behavior, and the effect of that behavior on students' regressed gain, over a school year, in achievement, attitudes toward school, self-esteem, and coping skills. Fifty-three tri-ethnic…

This study examined instructional leadership in eight diverse secondary schools in four urban, suburban, and small-city school districts in one western state. The aim was to gain access to a set of schools that provided both variety in instructional leadership and diversity in school size, organization, grade level, faculty and student…

A research study of the implementation of "good ideas" in 14 schools came to the conclusion that differences in school organization and climate cause differences in the success of school improvement. Specific aspects of organization and climate in these schools, called factors of school context, are the following: resources, incentives,…

Students from different ethnic backgrounds respond differently to a mutually experienced school environment. In this study, 804 students in five multiethnic urban middle schools in New York State were surveyed using the Elementary and Secondary Environment Index, a companion to the Organizational Climate Index. Each school's population was broken…

An overview is provided of the discussion at the conference, as well as edited versions of the keynote address and nine commissioned papers prepared as background for the working sessions: "Achieving Quality and Equality" (Donald M. Stewart); "Financial Aid and Ethnic Minorities" (Jacob O. Stampen and Robert H. Fenske); "Minority Education…

The perceptions of undergraduate, graduate, and professional students at the University of California-Davis regarding campus strengths and weaknesses are presented. Data collected with a survey mailed to a stratified random sample of 1,565 students are used. Eight sections look at the following: (1) academic major programs (course content in the…

The Haitian Retention Program (HRP) is designed to help illiterate and unskilled Haitian immigrants to Palm Beach County (Florida) learn the English language through regular class attendance. Although many Haitians are enthusiastic about enrolling in adult English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes, they are not accustomed to attending…

This study's objectives are to describe South Africa's apartheid education policy in Namibia, to identify imbalances in educational opportunities and the impact of apartheid education on the African population, and to provide information for future educational policy formulation. Based on historical and present data--both official and…

Following a brief preface, chapter 1 of this study discusses the federal government's expanding role over the last half century, including changing federal and state responsibilities in education. While chapter 2 describes the study's conceptual framework, its methodology, the criteria used for selecting eight states for analysis, and the major…

The nine articles are divided into three general topics: language, cognition, and social development. Eduardo Hernandez-Chavez discusses strategies in early second language acquisition and their implications for bilingual instruction. Eugene E. Garcia, Lento Maez, and Gustavo Gonzales examine the incidence of language switching in Spanish/English…