Describes a program for eighth graders at West Hempstead (New York) Middle School that prepares students for social pressures of high school by building leadership qualities. Includes an overview of the program and a description of program sessions. (NB)

Effectiveness of a three-phase program to provide inner-city high school freshmen with skills to enhance self-perception and exercise greater control over their lives (particularly sexual behavior) was tested. Pretesting and posttesting indicated a significant decrease in frequency of sexual activity and increase in contraception use by program…

Assesses differences between the self-perceptions of gifted high school freshmen (n=62) and nongifted peers (n=162) regarding intimacy with family and peers, social support, family responsibilities, self-esteem, depression, and risk-taking behavior. Results show that gifted students may be socially precocious when compared with their nongifted…

In order to evaluate the information literacy skills of students using their high school media center, these authors developed an information literacy rubric to measure the understanding and competency of freshmen students' library skills. Using a format of surveys and instructional units, the study involved four main steps: (1) a "pre-test"…

Students entering high school as freshmen bring with them a variety of issues, problems and strengths. Often, students are uncertain about their academic abilities, their social-selves, and their chances of success in a new environment. Even freshmen with positive educational experiences and a strong sense of self-need support and guidance during…

An ethnographic study assessed the family constellations of ninth graders in an urban public school through cluster analysis. Survey data were collected from a random sample of 120 high school freshmen and were used to compute 4 variables for each student: (1) presence of the mother in the home; (2) presence of the father in the home; (3) presence…

This report describes procedures to develop and implement a program to reduce ninth grade failure rates at a high school of 1,200 students in the center of a western city of 100,000. It is noted that grading data collected at the middle school and the high school levels have indicated that the number of failing grades increased substantially as…

It was hypothesized that antisocial behavior and deviant peer involvement assessed prior to puberty, at grade four, would predict initiation of sexual intercourse by grade nine. The hypotheses were tested on a sample of 201 boys who were at risk for delinquency. The subjects participated in an extensive multiple method/agent assessment for both…

Findings of a 1989 research study on LOGO-based instruction for teaching abstract concepts of geometry are reported in an effort to encourage mathematics teachers to use the LOGO language in computer-assisted instruction. Thirty-three ninth graders (19 males and 14 females) (6 white students and 27 black students) were involved in the controlled…

Reducing absences is the most readily available strategy that high schools have for reducing the number of dropouts. A sample of approximately 2,000 students who entered three Oregon urban high schools in the Fall of 1983 or 1984 was studied in order to establish criteria for identifying students who were at-risk of not graduating. The group was…

Examined ninth graders' self-reports of peer social activity in two separate years. Data from four administrations each year suggest that peer social activity is correlated with social self-esteem, enhanced social self-efficacy, and teacher's ratings of social engagement. Social isolation appeared to be an independent dimension related to lowered…

Suggested a model of decision making as a potential tool for assisting people in the process of career planning and tested the model on university students (N=40) and ninth-grade students (N=44). Concluded that the model had high predictive power regarding the actual choices made. (LLL)

The viability of the Partial Credit Model (PCM) of G. N. Masters (1982) for scaling and banking individual essay prompts from a statewide writing assessment program was investigated. Preliminary analyses indicated the feasibility of using the PCM, the general polychotomous form of the Rasch model, with essay data from the Maryland Writing Test…

Eighth-grade students in New Jersey take the Early Warning Test (EWT), which involves reading, writing, and mathematics. Students with EWT scores below the state level of competency take a remedial mathematics course that provides students with computer-assisted instruction (2 days per week) as well as regular classroom instruction (3 days per…

Summarizes study to help a local high school locate problem areas among entering high school freshmen and improve environment and curriculum. Survey data from 314 students indicate females share school experiences with their families, but Hispanic males do not. Females have afterschool chores, but males have few chores. Females select positive,…