Introduces a theme issue on charter schools, describing Project Connect, which from 1997-99 worked with 10 public charter schools to facilitate efforts to reach out to other public school educators, and discussing schools' experiences as they tried to bridge an abyss that grew when relationships between charter schools and mainstream education…

Interviewed teachers from 17 California charter schools to examine their attitudes toward charter school reform. Results indicated that their professional lives were profoundly influenced by both local and larger contexts for teaching. Locally, they liked teaching at small schools with like-minded professionals. However, their relationships to…

Asserts that fostering an informed concern about the natural environment and instilling an environmental ethic is a collective enterprise in which families can and should share. Presents information on the SmogWatch program, a short course designed for adults and youngsters to investigate together the phenomenon of ground-level ozone, a key…

Examines responses to the Youth Dating Violence Survey of 37 adolescents enrolled in an alternative high school program. Many reported psychological victimization in a dating relationship and over half reported perpetrating psychological abuse in a dating relationship. Many participants had also been victims of physical violence while some had…

This article describes an Escambia County, Florida, program that serves male, middle school, juvenile delinquents or adjudicated youth with disabilities. It describes the program's development, components, successes, and failures. It notes program eligibility, intake and orientation processes, social skills intervention, academic program, and the…

Describes the experiences of a teacher who teaches in the Cook County, Illinois, Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, explaining how her many roles include that of teacher, social worker, and surrogate mother to the children. She also frequently deals with issues of race, since 65 percent of the students are African American. (SM)

Chinese Central Radio and Television University system includes provincial and municipal branches that have expanded access to higher education. Despite lower entry qualifications, students must meet the same standards as traditional universities. Lower fees and flexibility attract many students. (SK)

Compared the problems and coping strategies of 231 adolescents (mean age, 15 years) from rural mid-south alternative and non-alternative schools. Results indicated that, overall, alternative school students tend to respond to given problems by using more negative coping strategies than do non-alternative school students. (SLD)

Studied the reasons Canadian parents choose to home school their children through interviews with 23 home-schooling families and compared findings with those from previous studies in the United States. Findings suggest that Canadian home schoolers have very different reasons from those of their U.S. counterparts. (SLD)

A survey of 118 undergraduate business students at a major southwestern university found that most consider non-traditional education as a viable option to traditional education. However, respondents also identified disadvantages of non-traditional programs, such as cost, external validity of degrees, and impersonalized learning environment.…

Presents stories and poems from a bilingual writing class in Chicago's Latino Youth Alternative High School that describe students' experiences with schooling and life. (SK)

An alternative learning program was designed to develop self-esteem and social skills in at-risk youth (n=32). Significant increases in self-regulation and learning could be attributed to small class sizes and individualized instruction. (SK)

Describes a nonprofit K-6 school for children whose families are homeless or struggling with serious personal and financial situations. The location is secret, because most of the students come from single-parent families experiencing domestic violence. Children are given a stable environment, intensive academic and emotional support, help moving…

Non-traditional instrumentation was obtained for Georgia Southern undergraduates to attain fundamental environmental education through unique laboratory experiences. In this context, the method for including a direct mercury analyzer into both major and non-major environmental laboratories is reported.

Using Burkean theory, I claim that Malcolm X brilliantly exposed the rhetoric and epistemology of whiteness as he rejected the African American jeremiad--a dominant form of African American oratory for more than 150 years. Whiteness theory served as the basis for Malcolm X's alternative literacy, which raises important questions that literacy…