Good school attendance has been directly linked to academic achievement, greater participation in school programs, and graduation from high school. Reports investigating poor elementary school attendance habits describe the emergence of later problems in middle and high school years. Schools and Families: Allies for Attendance, a 2-year project,…

Factors determining vocational success and failure for mentally retarded persons are reviewed and implications for teacher education addressed. The history of vocational programs for this population is traced, and problems noted in research regarding vocational fitness (including lack of standardized projective vocational tools). Among factors…

Factors to consider when studying attrition are: (1) the academic reasons students drop out or are suspended; (2) the institutional definitions of attrition; and (3) the procedures used to monitor the successes or failures of students. A recent University of Texas study of literacy developed at the community college included a mini-study of…

Academic performance in three fields of study, engineering, physical sciences and languages, has been analysed by comparing the characteristics of successful students with those of the less successful and those who failed to graduate. (Editor)

Discussing the processes that happen in competitive training groups that experience failure and/or success, the article points out, for the benefit of trainers, that success is as much a management problem as is failure. (MW)

C-LERN (California Local Education Reform Network) is the application of failure avoidance technology in California schools with a high concentration of at-risk students. Aimed at total school improvement, C-LERN was piloted in various Sacramento area schools before being launched as a joint venture of the State Department of Education and Sage…

For the 1982-83 school year, the Austin (Texas) Public Schools adopted a high school attendance policy allowing a maximum of 10 absences per semester for course credit to be earned. Under this policy, Austin's high school attendance rose to an all-time high of 93.5 percent in 1983-84. In 1984-85, education reform mandated by the Texas Legislature…

Although self-employment is of interest to many salaried workers who wish to change careers or continue working past the usual retirement age, little is known about the experiences of those who have actually made such a change. Of the 2,326 salaried men who were between the ages of 45 and 59 when interviewed in 1966 as part of the National…

For students in most high schools, graduation is predicated on the successful completion of a specified number of courses or credits. In most cases when these students fail they are not retained in grade but become credit deficient. This report is concerned with a longitudinal study of loss of credit among high school students in the St. Paul…

In some research involving Asian Americans generalizability is questionable because the group under study is composed of persons from many cultural traditions. This study looked at 2,511 4th to 11th grade American students of Asian descent all of whom were members of one of the following Asian groups: (1) Chinese; (2) Filipino; (3) Japanese; (4)…

The Austin Independent School District (AISD) is now in its third year of study on the effects of a new retention policy adopted in 1981-82. Reviewing the results of the first two years led to the conclusion that traditional methods of studying retention might not be the most appropriate. These evaluations have primarily focused on the impact of…

This factsheet considers dropping out of school from the dropout's point of view: reasons for dropping out, life after leaving school, and the dropouts' own evaluation of their decision to leave school. It identifies a dislike of school, low academic achievement, and a desire to work as key reasons for dropping out. Thirteen resource documents are…

Argues for a redefinition of the term "disadvantaged student" because, as currently used by educational institutions, the negative image it projects results in failure to develop curriculum and procedures which effectively educate children in this category. (SF)

This study tests hypotheses about achievement orientation, particularly vicarious achievement. Undergraduate students (N=437) completed multiple-choice questionnaires, indicating likely responses of one person to the success of another. The sex of succeeder and observer, closeness of relationship, and setting (medical school or graduate school of…

In order to determine whether there was a significant correlation between a student's academic standing in a course and the time when the student withdrew from the course, grades received by students in 14 high withdrawal-rate courses taught by five community college instructors were reviewed. For the purposes of the study, withdrawal was defined…