In the 1982-1983 school year, the Public Education Association, an educational advocacy organization in New York City, undertook an action research project on young adolescents' stress in school. The project was located in one inner-city intermediate school for 4 years and is now following graduates of that school in the city's high schools. As part of this project, 90 students completed a project instrument to measure school stress in the fall of the eighth grade. Fifty-three of these students had completed an earlier version of the instrument in the sixth grade and 72 had completed it in the seventh grade. Results revealed that stress variables were more crucial to the boys' grades than to the girls' grades for this sample of black inner-city youth. Girls appraised stressor events as more upsetting than did boys, and this was associated with girls' higher grades. Other results suggest that locus of control, stressor appraisal, and stressor frequency may all be derivative of students' being more or less able in mathematics. A reduction in level of stress perceived by students between the sixth and seventh grades may be attributed to the students' acclimatization to junior high school and/or to the project intervention. (Sixteen data tables are included.) (NB)