Wouldn't it be great if a school's administrators and teachers could sit down with parents and exchange ideas about what part each might play in supporting students' learning--especially in schools with at-risk students? Henderson, Carson, Avallone, and Whipple describe how they helped three elementary schools in Connecticut do just that, through…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence of anal intercourse and its associated risk behaviors in a sample of Midwestern, predominantly white rural adolescents. Most of the research on this activity has been local or regional studies, with urban East and West Coast racial and ethnic minority adolescents. Methods: A…

There is broad conceptual consensus that the effectiveness and efficiency of early childhood intervention (ECI) for vulnerable children is correlated with the active involvement and full participation of parents. This requires a general understanding of each family's needs and desires and specific strategies for determining what each family needs…

Three studies were designed to measure various indicators of the reliability and validity of the Preschool Behavior Screening System (PBSS) as a screening instrument for emotional and behavioral disorder risk status of children of preschool age. Study 1 and Study 2 served to establish evidence for content validity. Study 3 investigated one type of…

The development of the Chemistry Competence Test was prompted by the extensive curriculum changes in the South African school system after democracy was established in 1994. As chemists, we were concerned that there might be a lack of articulation between secondary and tertiary levels, since we anticipated that curriculum changes would have an…

Students' life circumstances need not marginalize them. The author's students--Margot and Steve--missed out on her full support because she assumed they had lots of support of their own, given their race and the socioeconomic status she assigned to them. She focused on their papers, not their lives. The complicated areas of students' lives don't…

This paper deals with the "problem" of student retention in higher education. But unlike most, this paper focuses not on the problem of retention "per se" but rather on how institutional leaders think about student retention, completion, and success--how the way they frame their concerns about retention can give rise to a different sort of…

Young people are likely to experience noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL), as the use of personal listening devices and other damaging factors (e.g., video games) increases. Little research has examined the role of school health personnel in the prevention and early identification of hearing impairment. A 32-item, valid and reliable survey was…

Parental involvement in education is a key focus of current policies and programs aimed at improving the academic outcomes of students at risk for academic underachievement. This study examines six forms of parental involvement in education to determine which forms of involvement have the strongest relationships with youths' academic outcomes.…

Successful completion of organic chemistry is a prerequisite for many graduate and professional programs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, yet the failure rate for this sequence of courses is notoriously high. To date, few studies have examined why some students succeed while others have difficulty in organic chemistry. This…

We investigated growth trajectories for classroom performance goal practices and for student behavioral engagement across grades 2 to 5 for 497 academically at-risk elementary students. This study is the first longitudinal investigation of performance goal practices in the early elementary years. On average, teacher use of performance goal…

This study examines naturally occurring mentors by the quality and presence of a mentor (no mentor, low quality, high quality), type of mentors (adult mentors vs. peer mentors), and mentor quality within mentor type. A sub-sample of adolescents from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent-Health is used. Results indicate the effect of…

This qualitative longitudinal study focuses on analyses of journals written by 31 sixth grade students who participated in the Chapel Buddy program. The Chapel Buddy program is a developmental mentoring program that pairs sixth graders with kindergarten students. Mentors responded to guided writing prompts three times during the course of the…

This study investigates the relationship between low teacher expectations and principal behavior. The researcher investigated why some teachers seem to acquiesce, or make deals and "give in," to student disengagement. After a two-year ethnographic study in an alternative school for at-risk Black students, the author found that White teachers are…

Computation instruction continues to be one of the most important aspects of the mathematics curricula. Students who fail to understand and master the foundational components of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are likely to experience mathematics difficulties in both their school and post-school lives. A balanced instructional…