One hundred and thirty final year high school students were administered scales tapping optimism/pessimism, self-esteem, external career barriers, career decision-making self-efficacy, career focus and career indecision. It was hypothesised, first, that cognitive style optimism/pessimism) would predict both internal (self-esteem) and external…

Rogers' diffusion of innovation model was used to examine the adoption and contribution of a web-based course management system at a college campus. This study surveyed 196 students. It was found that Rogers' model successfully explained the adoption of the innovation. The adoption of the innovation also led to increased interaction between…

A recent expansion of the San Francisco Bay Area's heavy rail system represents an exogenous change in the accessibility of inner-city minority communities to a concentrated suburban employment center. We evaluate this natural experiment by conducting a two-wave longitudinal survey of firms, with the first wave of interviews conducted immediately…

Early adolescents may lack the cognitive and metacognitive skills necessary for effective inquiry learning. In particular, they are likely to have a nonnormative mental model of multivariable causality in which effects of individual variables are neither additive nor consistent. Described here is a software-based intervention designed to…

This paper extends a series of studies examining school district report cards, which began with investigations of Tennessee's report card data. Since 1988, the Texas State Board of Education has produced a report card on each school district to report district-level data. Texas district report card items were organized into student outcome…

More than 60 studies on prison education were reviewed to determine the following: relationship between prison education and offender behavior; effects of prison population control strategies on prison education programs; and effects of academic and vocational program participation on inmate misconduct and reincarceration. Among the main findings…

The failure of students to repay federally insured loans has led to an increased emphasis on default prevention and threatens institutions with high default rates with exclusion from federal student aid programs. Prior studies of default prevention using theoretical constructs based on economics, sociology, and psychology have yielded mixed…

Admission to the California State University system is based on an eligibility index (EI) that considers high school grade point average (GPA) and Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) or American College Test (ACT) scores. Whether the SAT adds to the accuracy of prediction of college success or is redundant, and whether it is biased against specific…

This paper explores the practical implications of the distributional perspective on dropping out of school--a perspective that says that the concentration of student exodus from certain schools may reflect the impact of contextual or organizational factors as opposed to those that operate simply at the individual level. Based on data from the…

Reasons why some students complete further education (FE) and others drop-out were examined in a study involving a sample of 9,000 students and staff from 31 inner city, urban, and rural FE colleges throughout the United Kingdom. Data were collected from the following sources: interviews with FE college managers, staff, and students; review of…

This study assessed the utility of using both the American College Testing (ACT) Program composite score and high school grade point average (GPA) as predictors of students' success in college, as measured by the GPA at the end of the students' first semester in college. Data were obtained from 420 first-time entering freshmen at a medium-sized…

The relationship between type of reading instruction (whole language or basal) and reading comprehension as measured by the California Achievement Test (CAT) was investigated. Nineteen third- and fourth-grade teachers from school 5 districts in North Carolina took part in the project with 215 students in the basal group and 200 students in the…

The variables that are related to teachers' use of computers were studied using 2 groups: 170 practicing elementary school teachers and 167 undergraduate education majors (preservice teachers). Computer use was classified into nonuse, utilization, and integration using the Levels of Use Scale developed by the author and others. Expectancy was…

Researchers analyzed information from student records and student organizations to determine the academic success, dropout, and graduation rates of Alaska Natives at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks (UAF) throughout the late 1970's. Perhaps due to political, social, and policy changes, Native student success peaked in the early 1970's and…

This study investigated the relationship between employment status among high school juniors and the following: (1) grade point average (GPA); (2) scores on Brown and Holtzman's Survey of Study Habits and Attitudes (SSHA--W. F. Brown and W. H. Holtzman, 1967); (3) the level of participation in extracurricular activities; (4) plans for…