The authors examined the differential effects of prior academic achievement, psychosocial, behavioral, demographic, and school context factors on early high school grade point average (GPA) using a prospective study of 4,660 middle-school students from 24 schools. The findings suggest that (a) prior grades and standardized achievement are the strongest predictors of high school GPA and (b) psychosocial and behavioral factors (e.g., motivation, self-regulation, and social control) add incremental validity to the prediction of GPA. When comparing the relative importance of each set of predictors (the dominance analysis technique), the variance accounted for by psychosocial and behavioral factors is comparable to that accounted for by prior grades. These findings highlight the importance of effective risk assessment based on multiple measures (i.e., academic, psychosocial, and behavioral) for the purpose of identifying risk, referring students to intervention, and improving academic success. Keywords: académie performance, psyehosocial and behavioral factorsHigh academic failure and dropout rates remain signiflcant issues in the United States, with estimates of over 25% of public school students failing to earn a diploma (Education Week, 2009;Stillwell, 2009). In some states and communities, these rates exceed 50% of all entering ninth-grade students. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation includes systematic monitoring of student academic progress through standardized achievement testing, but this does not ensure the proper identification and intervention of at-risk students. We now know that measuring critical psyehosocial factors (PSFs; e.g., motivation, social control, selfregulation) as well as behavioral factors can increase schools' abilities to identify and intervene with students at risk of academic failure and dropout (Zins, Bloodworth, Weissberg, & Walberg, 2004). After reviewing studies of student dropout conducted over the past 25 years, Rumberger and Lim (2008) identified several factors that differentiate students who graduate from those who drop out of high school. Their list includes leaming behaviors. attitudes, demographics, and characteristics of family and school. Similarly, the Baltimore Education Research Consortium (Mac Iver, 2010) found that poor grades and course failure are strong predictors of high school dropout. These findings, among others, point to the importance of understanding psyehosocial and behavioral data when assessing risk.Several single-sample studies have examined the direct and indirect effects of PSFs and behavioral factors on academic success, highlighting a range of constructs, including self-efficacy, motivation, locus of control, attitude toward leaming, attention and persistence, as well as strategy and flexibility (Grigorenko et al., 2009;Yen, Konoid, & McDermott, 2004). As Grigorenko and others (2009) highlight, self-regulated leaming provides incremental validity after controlling for standardized achievement and grade point average (GPA). These findings are ...

Although China (People's Republic of China [PRC]), Hong Kong and Taiwan have many similarities in language, culture, values, Confucian traditions, family systems and other social-environmental variables, school psychological services in the three regions are distinctly different in both history and practice. Few studies in the psychology literature have addressed these differences or compared the psychological services provided to school-aged children in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. This article describes the developmental history, practitioner training facilities and scope of school psychological services in these regions. Highlighted are the causal pathways linking culture, social economy, professional perspectives and political ideas to the practice of school psychology. A cross-regional comparison is made with respect to social-economic characteristics, developmental models and educational/psychological systems indigenous to each region.

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