A sample of 1,803 minority students from low-income homes was classified into 3 groups on the basis of grades, test scores, and persistence from grade 8 through Grade 12; the classifications were academically successfully school completers ("resilient" students), school completers with poorer academic performance (nonresilient completers), and noncompleters (dropouts). Groups were compared in terms of psychological characteristics and measures of "school engagement." Large, significant differences were found among groups on engagement behaviors, even after background and psychological characteristics were controlled statistically. The findings support the hypothesis that student engagement is an important component of academic resilience. Furthermore, they provide information for designing interventions to improve the educational prognoses of students at risk.

Schizophrenia-related psychoses in adulthood are distinguished in subjects at risk for schizophrenia by childhood deficits in verbal memory, gross motor skills, and attention. The findings suggest that deficits in these variables are relatively specific to schizophrenia risk and may be indicators of the genetic liability to schizophrenia.

This study evaluated the hypothesis that gender and behavior, as perceived by teachers, affect judgments of the academic skills of their students. A path model was proposed to describe the relationships among tested academic skill, gender, behavior grades, and teachers' academic judgments. The model was evaluated separately in each of 3 grades (kindergarten-2nd) in 2 locations, with scholastic grades and structured ratings in specific academic skill areas as the dependent variables. Results showed that, after tested academic skill and gender were controlled for, teachers' perceptions of students' behavior constituted a significant component of their scholastic judgments. This effect was more pronounced for the judgments of boys because, in Grades 1 and 2, their conduct was perceived as less adequate than was girls' behavior.

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This study examined the relationship of multiple‐choice and free‐response items contained on the College Board's Advanced Placement Computer Science (APCS) examination. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the fit of a two‐factor model where each item format marked its own factor. Results showed a single‐factor solution to provide the most parsimonious fit in each of two random‐half samples. This finding might be accounted for by several mechanisms, including overlap in the specific processes assessed by the multiple‐choice and free‐response items and the limited opportunity for skill differentiation afforded by the year‐long APCS course.

A College Board‐sponsored survey of a nationally representative sample of 1995–96 SAT takers yielded a data base for more than 4, 000 examinees, about 500 of whom had attended formal coaching programs outside their schools. Several alternative analytical methods were used to estimate the effects of coaching on SAT I: Reasoning Test scores. The various analyses produced slightly different estimates. All of the estimates, however, suggested that the effects of coaching are far less than is claimed by major commercial test preparation companies. The revised SAT does not appear to be any more coachable than its predecessor.

Using the most comprehensive data set on school dropouts that we have to date, the High School and Beyond study, Ruth Ekstrom, Margaret Goertz, Judith Pollack, and Donald Rock provide an analysis of the salient characteristics of the dropout population.

In the New York High-Risk Project (NYHRP) we followed subjects at risk for schizophrenic or affective disorders and low-risk controls from childhood to adulthood, with the goal of identifying early predictors of later schizophrenia-related psychopathology. In this article, we focus on two potential predictors: the Physical Anhedonia Scale administered in adolescence and the Attention Deviance Index obtained in childhood. Subjects of this report are 161 members of the NYHRP's first sample (sample A), who had scores on both attention and anhedonia and had followup clinical assessments in adulthood. We used a path analysis model and several separate regression analyses to examine the relationships of the parent diagnostic groups, attentional dysfunction, and anhedonia to each other and to each of three psychopathological outcomes: schizophrenia and schizophrenia-related psychoses, major affective disorder, and social isolation in nonpsychotic subjects. Subject groups did not differ in anhedonia scores but did differ in childhood attentional dysfunction, psychosis, and social isolation, all of which are more common in subjects at risk for schizophrenia. In these subjects at risk for schizophrenia, but not in the other two groups of subjects, childhood attentional dysfunction is related to anhedonia, social isolation, and possibly nonparanoid psychosis. Anhedonia is associated with social isolation and with psychosis in females. Several other gender effects are also noted.