This report summarizes perceptions of Latino teachers concerning their professional preparation, their working environment, and school/community characteristics that affect the achievement and attainment of Latino students. A mailing of 1,252 survey questionnaires to members of the Association of Mexican American Educators was conducted. Of the…

This analysis is the third in the Center's series on child poverty in America. The first part of this study is a historical view of trends in child poverty by race and Hispanic origin for children in families below the age of 18 years. The second part presents projections of child poverty rates and levels for the three largest racial groups to the…

Puerto Rican children and adolescents appear more at risk for below average school achievement and for mental health problems and service referrals than other Hispanic youngsters. This study examined the cognitive style and the emotional and behavioral patterns associated with the personal adjustment of 80 Puerto Rican adolescents from…

This feasibility study examined the need and the appropriateness of developing a videotape targeted to parents of young children with disabilities. The study involved a review of the literature, interviews with experts and practitioners, a focus group discussion to elicit the opinions and suggestions of parents of children with disabilities,…

This study identified maternal and family environmental characteristics predictive of school readiness in Black, Hispanic, and Caucasian children, and evaluated how these predictors operate in equivalent or dissimilar ways in the three ethnic groups. Subjects were approximately 600 6- and 7-year-old children of women participating in the National…

The dropout problem in the nation, in the Council of the Great City Schools (GCS) school districts, and in the central cities is reviewed. Annual, single-year, four-year, and status dropout rates are examined. During the decade from 1982 to 1992, the gap in dropout rate between Whites and other ethnic groups has narrowed. The majority of the GCS…

The school-year and annual dropout counts for high schools in the Austin (Texas) Independent School District are summarized for the past 7 years, 1983-84 through 1989-90, and for grades 7 and 8 for the past 6 years. Also reported are the current status of entering ninth graders of 1983-84 through 1989-90, and of the entering seventh graders of…

The Student Affirmative Action Program at California State University, Long Beach was designed to serve the needs of Latino students, an underrepresented population in higher education, and to help eliminate identified institutional barriers to their participation. Barriers include inadequate orientation and information, poor planning and academic…

For an ethnographic study of the personal and educational needs of Hispanic and Anglo adolescent mothers and the services affecting their decision to remain in school, researchers interviewed eight teenage mothers--four in a special high school teen parents' program and four who had dropped out of the program. Two young women in each group were…

This report examines the significance of the ethnic composition of Dade County (Florida) high schools for the academic achievement and dropout rate of its students. The following statistical data were analyzed using multivariate analysis for all 76,830 students enrolled in grades 9-12 in 1989: (1) age; (2) sex; (3) grade; (4) ethnicity; (5)…

The influences of structural economic factors, social ecology, and culture in producing young absent fathers in the inner city and in defining relationships with their children are examined. Ethnographic data on three low income urban neighborhoods in Brooklyn (New York) are reported and compared with respect to the careers of young males,…

New York State's prisons today are a brooding omnipresence hanging over poor African American and Latino communities in the large urban centers of the state. On any given day, nearly 1 in 4 (over 23%) of young African American men is under control of the criminal justice system, which is 2 times more than all full-time Black male college enrollees…

A study investigated the attitudes of bilingual (BL) and monolingual (ML) students at an urban high school with a large bilingual education program. The attitudes investigated included: (1) BL attitudes toward Americans; (2) how BLs think they are perceived by Americans; (3) ML attitudes toward BLs; (4) changes in BLs' attitudes toward Americans…

In this research, 103 Hispanic junior high school students were instructed using the Kumon Mathematical Method. Instruction took place 1 hour per day, 5 days a week in a public school setting. Instruction extended over an eight month period. Student subjects were pretested and posttested on the Mathematics batteries of the California Achievement…

Contributions of participants in a three-day invitational symposium for representatives of the 21 California high schools which were most successful in sending Black and Hispanic students to the University of California and the California State University are compiled in this document. The publication addresses two major goals of the California…