This 1994 report presents findings on Madison Metropolitan School District's dual system of education for White and African American students. Among the study's findings are the following: (1) African American dropouts outnumbered African American graduates; (2) students from low-income families scored higher on standard tests than African…

Changes in the face of school-age America have profound implications for educational policy. As of 1990, 1 of 6 children lived in poverty, and a growing number were from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. In addition, more than one in six of the nation's third graders changed schools frequently. This mobility is just one aspect of changing…

This paper examines discourse among fifth-grade students in a science classroom. The authors assess students' participation in small-group activities by focusing on their roles during conversation. The issue of gender equity is raised as an important question to be addressed by teachers, students and researchers in the context of science…

Teachers are evaluated daily by their students. By examining students' criteria for teacher evaluation, teachers are able to broaden their existing base of understanding and develop a greater perception of the complex dynamics of the classroom. This study was conducted to evaluate students' comments regarding "good" teachers to determine whether…

Different kinds of discussion methods have been developed to help students achieve different kinds of instructional objectives. The following discussion methods are analyzed from the perspective of the role demands that they make of students and teachers: (1) cooperative learning discussions; (2) the subject mastery discussion method; and (3)…

Since schools are community institutions that have the most extensive and sustained contact with children, they have potential to serve as community centers for providing comprehensive and integrated social services. Schools are initiating programs that deal with children's needs beyond the academic realm, schools are calling on agencies and…

This study hypothesizes that a sense of personal and teaching efficacy can be explained, in part, by a historical pattern of student achievement performance and workplace context. To measure perceptions of efficacy, power, and school climate, a questionnaire was completed by approximately 1,500 elementary school teachers in the spring terms of…

This module, written for middle school students in grades 5-8, is oriented toward informing students about environmental issues in relation to their own health and well-being. It is deliberately focused on a few issues that will interest young adolescents, and is not intended to be comprehensive. The six lessons stress individual action and…

The Multicultural Reading and Thinking (McRAT) Program of the Arkansas public schools is described, and results of a study of its effectiveness are reported. The McRAT Program is a process that empowers teachers to refocus instruction and restructure standard curricula for higher order thinking. The multicultural emphasis provides a meaningful…

The purpose of this faculty orientation is to introduce the Drug Abuse Resistance Prorgram (DARE) to teachers who will have the program offered to their students. The DARE program is designed to give young people the facts about drugs and alcohol, and was developed in 1983 by health education specialists in conjunction with the Los Angeles Police…

A program called Strong Families: Competent Kids was developed in response to the growing number of latchkey kids. The goals of the program are to help parents determine when their children are ready for self-care and to provide children with skills to manage self-care safely and confidently. It does not advocate that children should be left in…

This practicum involved 63 children of 3-5 years who were enrolled in a day care center in a city public school. The practicum addressed the children's inability to verbalize personal needs effectively. Ineffective communication skills created problems in the children's achievement and progress level, and resulted in incidents of aggressive acting…

Previous research has examined whether manipulation of one environmental element, such as sound, significantly affected group norms for achievement. This investigation examined the relation of preferred and actual acoustic environment on reading performance. Subjects were 32 male and 32 female sixth-graders from a suburban school in New York State…

This paper evaluates a program for educators, youth workers, and parents in four Atlanta (Georgia) Public Schools designed to teach African American children the positive aspects of their cultural heritage and to increase their self-esteem and desire to learn. Although the Self-Esteem Through Culture Leads to Academic Excellence (SETCLAE) program…

Previous studies of the development of correlational reasoning have focused on the interpretation of relatively simple data sets contained in 2 X 2 tables. In contrast, this study examined age trends in subjects' responses to problems involving more than two continuous variables. The research is part of a multi-year project to conceptualize…