This study assesses the effects of three aspects of school organization--student enrollment, student-teacher ratio, and the number of different students taught--on the property and personal victimization experiences of students. It hypothesizes that smaller schools, schools with lower ratios of students to adults, and schools in which the number…

Evidence regarding the effectiveness of after-school programs (ASPs) for reducing problem behaviors is mixed. Unstructured ASPs may increase antisocial behavior by increasing "deviancy training" opportunities, when peers reinforce deviant attitudes and behaviors. This research analyses approximately 3000 five-minute intervals from 398 observations…

Leisure activities that occur outside of the school hours may facilitate positive youth development.The experiences of youth in three categories of activities (basketball and football, other sports, and nonsports) are examined in this study. Based on prior research, it is hypothesized that students participating in basketball and football will…

Project PATHE (Positive Action Through Holistic Education) was a 3-year delinquency prevention program implemented in seven schools by the Charleston County, Maryland public school system between 1980 and 1983. An evaluation of the PATHE program was conducted which compared PATHE schools to two non-PATHE schools. Year-to-year differences in the…

In response to growing public concern over declining educational quality and discipline problems in today's schools, this paper reviews research on the causes of school disruption and student misbehavior, identifies promising ameliorative strategies, and examines specific research-practitioner collaborations that have successfully reduced school…

Results from the evaluation of a large-scale educational intervention designed to prevent school disruption suggest that altering the school organization is a more effective approach to delinquency prevention than treating individuals. Data for this comparison came from the evaluation of a school-based delinquency prevention program, Project…

The Effective Schools Project is a test of a general method for improving organizational effectiveness. The method--Program Development Evaluation (PDE)--calls for researcher-practitioner collaboration in the design, implementation, and evaluation of programs to increase school effectiveness. Two Baltimore City junior high schools are working with…

Theory is a useful guide for program design and implementation. This paper uses a large-scale school-based delinquency prevention project to illustrate the use of theory in program design and the need for line staff to have a clear understanding of the program's theoretical underpinnings. Evaluation results for the program show that the program…

This paper uses a national survey of secondary schools to examine the relation between size and orderliness in secondary schools and to test alternative theories linking school disorder to school size. Manning theory and social control theory, taken together, predict that larger schools will experience more disruption because a smaller proportion…

During the last decade there has been a heightened interest in teenage work experience as a partial solution to the problem of an increasingly visible delinquent youth culture. To examine the effect of teenage employment on drug use and other more serious delinquent behavior, students in grades 6-12, from a randomly selected national population,…

This paper focuses on the methodology of cross group comparisons of regression coefficients commonly used to identify group differences in status attainment. Using the study of race differences in educational attainment as an example, the paper reviews a number of relevant published studies and demonstrates that evidence for such differences is…

Persistence in educational pursuits is strongly related to the prestige level and income level of an occupation. Personality correlates of persistence in education were examined in the context of a causal model of attainment in an eight-year longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of 2213 young men. Results imply that anxiety and…

An organizational development program was evaluated, which was implemented to reduce disorder in a Baltimore, Maryland, school. The Program Development Evaluation method was used. Increasing consistency of response to student discipline infractions, increasing rewards for appropriate behavior, and imposing peer and teacher support improved school…

Data from a national study of delinquency prevention programs were used to examine the effect of teenage employment on delinquent behavior in preadolescents and adolescents. Models examined suggest working decreases school attendance and dependence on parents for some subgroups, but these effects are not translated into increases in delinquency.…

A national study of 2,000 secondary school students found that the work experiences available to teenagers have little or no effect on their tendency to delinquency, their academic learning, or their psychological well-being. Earlier studies suggest that coordinating work with education more systematically could provide social benefits. (PGD)