Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk: Report #12

The Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk (CRESPAR) was established in 1994 and continued until 2004. It was a collaboration between Johns Hopkins University and Howard University. CRESPAR’s mission was to conduct research, development, evaluation, and dissemination of replicable strategies designed to transform schooling for students who were placed at risk due to inadequate institutional responses to such factors as poverty, ethnic minority status, and non-English-speaking home background.There is a growing tension between excellence and equity in public education. This report brings together both qualitative and quantitative data to document the efforts of a large urban high school to improve the schooling experience of its students. The qualitative portion of this analysis comes from interviews with educators, administrators, and parents. The quantitative portion presents the results of a survey of 744 students in the ninth grade English/history core detrackingexperiment during the 1994–1995 and 1995–1996 academic years. The data suggest that the level of implementation of the core, from a student perspective, affects achievement, engagement, and enjoyment in the core.Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U. S. Department of Education (R-117-D40005