Daisy F. Reed

Defying the Odds: Middle Schoolers in High Risk Circumstances Who Succeed.

One of the major concerns in education today is the problem of increasingly high numbers of students who are in danger of dropping out of school. They are potential dropouts because of a variety of factors stemming from their l w socioeconomic status, educational disadvantages, and history of under achievement. Many also believe that large numbers of poor minority children are more likely to encounter circumstances or engage in behaviors which put them at high risk for acade mic failure. However, as Reed and McCoy (1989) note, numer ous children of all cultures face such risks at one time or anoth er. Todays children and youth, as well as adults, are faced with myriad, complex social problems. Much has been written about the effects that problems such as unemployment, divorce, single-parent households, working mothers, poverty, substance abuse, sexual experimentation, violence, and preju dice and racism have on the lives of children. These problems can have an impact on the lives of children of low income, minority families, as well as the children of well-educated, mid dle-class majority families. Consequendy, children from all types of backgrounds can come to school with a high potential for academic failure.

Speaking from Experience: Anglo-American Teachers in African American Schools

T need to prepare more educators to teach in culturally diverse classrooms is a critical issue in education today. We can draw that conclusion based on two phenomena seen recently in American schools. One is the rapid increase in the number of children of color, especially African American and Hispanic American children, in public schools. Over the past few years, several studies have indicated that about 30 percent of the U.S. population will be racial-ethnic minorities by the year 2005, and the percentage is projected to be 50 percent by the year 2050. Currently about 30 percent of school-age children are minorities, and this number will increase to about 36 percent shortly after the year 2000. It is predicted that Hispanic American school children will increase from 12.5 percent to 22.6 percent, African Americans from 14.7 percent to 17.7 percent, and Asian Americans from 3 percent to 9 percent (Larger, More Diverse 1995). Florida, Mississippi, New Mexico, California, and Texas already have more than 30 percent children of color. In fact, in the state of Florida the number is 40 percent; in southeast Florida, up to 60 percent of students are from racial and ethnic minorities (Allen, Hutchinson, and Johnson 1995). The second phenomenon is that the number of teachers of color is declining. Haberman (1989) has predicted that by the year 2000 the number of minority teachers will have fallen to less than 5 percent African American and 1.9 percent Hispanic American. Fuller (1994) states that the population of public schools is changing, but that of colleges of education is not. The number of white, female, middle class preservice teachers is increasing, while the number of teachers from diverse populations is decreasing. Thus the teaching population is becoming more monocultural, while the student population is becoming more multicultural.

Preparing Students for the Future World of Work

What skills and abilities are most needed to make our young people employable? Heres what the owners of 148 small businesses who partici pated in one survey are looking for.