Preventing Student Disengagement and Keeping Students on the Graduation Path in Urban Middle-Grades Schools: Early Identification and Effective Interventions

This article considers the practical, conceptual, and empirical foundations of an early identification and intervention system for middle-grades schools to combat student disengagement and increase graduation rates in our nation's cities. Many students in urban schools become disengaged at the start of the middle grades, which greatly reduces the odds that they will eventually graduate. We use longitudinal analyses—following almost 13,000 students from 1996 until 2004—to demonstrate how four predictive indicators reflecting poor attendance, misbehavior, and course failures in sixth grade can be used to identify 60% of the students who will not graduate from high school. Fortunately, by combining effective whole-school reforms with attendance, behavioral, and extra-help interventions, graduation rates can be substantially increased.     

On a Threshold? A Critical Look at Quality Assessment

The ever faster changes in economy have made quality control an important tool for production and services. There is no problem understanding the wish of industries to implement quality management in education as well. How should schools react then? Is it not so that there is a difference in the notion of quality between industrial and educational needs? The quality of educational processes cannot be measured in time units or expressed in space. Time and space are not unimportant to learning, though. Still, the quality of teaching and learning used to depend mainly on the teacher's competence, dedication and the curricula used. Implementing quality management in education may not just mean giving up a time-honoured attitude. It could also be revolutionary. Why? In a later part, a case study and some reflections on bad teachers are discussed.     

Training in Marriage and Family Counseling and Therapy: Current Status and Challenges

This article is an overview of select components most often found within family training programs. Challenges facing training programs (constructivism, feminist critique, recognizing diversity, and assimilating research into training) are discussed.     

Structure,Agency and School Effectiveness: Researching a 'failing' school

Qualitative data of a 'failing' junior school are used to highlight the ways in which a particular Local Education Authority (LEA) responded to 'serious weaknesses' outlined by a team of Office for Standards in Education inspectors and how staff mediated such LEA intervention. Such mediation will be theorised via the employment of analytical dualism, whereby structure and agency are held to be irreducible emergent strata of social reality. The purpose of this paper is not to complement and buttress the ideological nature of school effectiveness research, but to provide a micro insight into current mediation of macro-level policy.     

A Survey of Comprehensive Examination Practices Among Doctoral Programs in Counseling

Doctoral programs in counseling were surveyed concerning their comprehensive examination practices. Most programs require examinations, but practices vary widely regarding degree of structure and procedures.