This brief document analyzes the goals and indicators provided by states as part of the second round of state Biennial Performance Reports (BPRs) covering the academic years 1999-2000 and 2000-2001 as required by the 1997 amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Review of state (or other federal jurisdiction) BPRs examined:…

A mediational model was tested where religiosity predicted sexual behaviors of 386 Catholic Latino adolescents aged 12 to 16 based on parental-adolescent communication about sex. Religiosity predicted greater intentions to delay intercourse after controlling for differences in age and gender. This effect was not mediated by extent of…

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is committed to reducing the burden of mental illness through research on mind, brain, and behavior. This report presents the latest information on what is known about depression. The symptoms and types of depression are considered. Research on the treatments of depression is described, including the…

This document discusses how community colleges often under-utilize collected student data. For example, community colleges use student pre-college assessment data to place students in specific courses. The paper suggests that student data can also be used to predict academic success (a grade of A, B, or C) in community college courses. Some of the…

One of the best predictors of aggression among schoolchildren is their social environment and relationships with peer and teachers. This study investigated the association between classroom climate and level of classroom aggression. The study population comprised over 9,000 fifth and sixth graders in 97 schools and 360 classrooms in Israel. It was…

The primary aim of this study was to describe the movement of adolescents and young adults into and out of drug use and to predict heavy drug use. The data source is the Department of Labor's National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which began in 1979 with a sample of 12,686 adolescents aged 14-21. After 17 rounds and 19 years, the response rate in…

Researchers who employ contextual models of parenting contend that it is not spanking per se, but rather the context in which spanking occurs and the meanings children ascribe to spanking, that predict child outcomes. This study proposed two plausible meanings that children may ascribe to spanking--a legitimate expression of parental authority or…

A large-scale longitudinal assessment was conducted of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) child care center accreditation process. The assessment focused on the extent to which centers seeking NAEYC accreditation improve in quality, the level of quality and staff stability achieved, and support needed. Classroom…

Why some children become biased and the conditions behind such biases are explored in this paper. The focus is on developmental patterns associated with race and gender attitudes during the preschool period and the factors that predict bias. The study examined children who were six months old and followed them and their families (N=210) until the…

This study evaluated the development of generic skills by students in the Arts Faculty at York University (Ontario, Canada) by comparing entering students and graduating students on a self-report measure. The specific skills evaluated included analytical, communication, personal, organizational, comparative, job procuring, basic numeracy, and…

This study examined salary discrimination by race and sex for faculty of higher education institutions. Data were obtained from the 1993 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF-93), a cross-sectional survey of 817 public and private higher education institutions and 25,780 faculty. The findings indicated that while the salary gap between…

Risk factors for early adolescents' (700 between the ages of 10 to 13) delinquency were compared between groups of children high and low in childhood adversities. The samples represented young people from the two former Germanies (200 from former East and 500 from West Germany) who were interviewed in person. Additional information was gathered…

This study sought to determine which, if any, of the possible predictor variables based on relationships with college performance available at freshman entry would prove useful in selecting students for admission. A study of the relationships between four college performance variables and eight admission variables was conducted using seven…

Depression in adolescence typically has a debilitating toll in terms of academic and social functioning, and it predicts a variety of negative outcomes later. Previous research points out that once on a depressed trajectory in development, an individual becomes more likely to stay on this course because of the tendency to both alienate and…

A study was designed to help teachers discover which tools best predict future success in reading proficiency. It sought to find out whether commonly used reading assessments and/or measures of oral reading fluency could predict reading proficiency as measured by a standardized criterion-referenced achievement test of reading. In the first…