Our purpose here is to discuss education policy issues in the context of empirical evidence. We note that many commonly held beliefs about Australian education such as, the relative performance and participation levels of Australian students; the importance of socioeconomic background on educational outcomes both relative to other countries and…

Objective: To assess the sexual health knowledge of secondary school pupils in order to ascertain whether the current government public health and education policies are having any impact on pupils' sexual health. Design: Results obtained from a questionnaire as part of a two-phase intervention study. Setting: Nineteen mixed-sex, state secondary…

Child sex abuse increasingly is recognised as a societal problem that can no longer be ignored. In this paper definitions, prevalence, trends, assessment, and available diagnostic procedures are described and critically evaluated. It is argued that the lack of reliable diagnostic procedures remains one of the main difficulties in dealing…

Are magnet schools in a position to meet diversity ideals? As districts are declared unitary and released from court ordered desegregation, many are framing their commitments to fairness and equity in terms of diversity--i.e., comparable rates of participation and comparable educational outcomes in all segments the student population. In this…

Although it is generally accepted that the proportion of children diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorders (PDDs) has increased in the past two decades, there is no consensus on the prevalence of these conditions. The accompanying large rise in demand for services, together with uncertainty regarding the extent to which the observed…

Understanding and preventing high school failure is a national priority. Structural strain and general deviance theories attempt to explain late high school failure. The authors tested the hypotheses that general (vs. specific) deviance and academic competence mediate the relationships between structural strain factors (gender, ethnicity, and…

Over the course of the fifteen years since 1991, Latvia has been undergoing rapid political changes from a party controlled state to a market economy. These changes have affected the system of education. The issue of quality and equity of educational outcomes is gaining increasing importance as schools are expected to adjust to the new economic…

Since 1996, our research team has conducted 15 focus groups with 169 middle-school youth in small communities as formative research for campaigns against alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and violence. Some key findings of a synthesis of focus-group results are that girls and boys perceive different risks to alcohol and tobacco use; peer relationships are…

Although the issue of challenging behaviour receives a great deal of attention in educational literature, the exact nature of this behaviour is open to debate. Challenging behaviour can be defined objectively by listing or describing behaviours that are considered disruptive and undesirable. On the other hand, challenging behaviour can be seen as…

For many decades now the sphere of education in Russia has been considered to be among the most well off among other spheres of activity, from the standpoint of gender equality. One component of radical economic reforms in Russia in the 1990s was the transformation of education financing. During the reform years the number of students in higher…

This study examined the ability of future certainty--an individual's perception of future stability, operationalized as the likelihood of certain life outcomes--to explain variance in delinquency and school adjustment, while controlling for economic, neighborhood, and family factors, among a cross-sectional sample of 1422 male and 1562 female…

Objective: To investigate the prevalence and correlates of bullying and victimization behaviors in boys and girls at South Korean primary schools. Method: In a cross-sectional survey, 1,344 fourth-grade primary school children completed a questionnaire on self-reported bullying and victimization behaviors, depression, anxiety, body image, coping…

GRE verbal and quantitative scores and undergraduate grade point average were evaluated as predictors of multiple measures of long-term graduate school success. The measures of success were cumulative graduate grade point average and faculty ratings on three student characteristics: mastery of the discipline, professional productivity, and…

More than a dozen statistical models have been developed for the purpose of cognitive diagnosis. These models are supposed to extract a much finer level of information from item responses than traditional unidimensional item response models. In this paper, a general diagnostic model (GDM) was used to analyze a set of simulated sparse data and real…

To ascertain the current status of Holocaust knowledge and attitudes of prospective teachers and to inform the development of a web-based educational resource for teachers of the Holocaust, an exploratory analysis was conducted at a public university in Florida. Data were obtained from prospective teachers (N = 464) who completed a knowledge test,…