Editors' Introduction
Sam Stringfield and John Hollifield

A large proportion of the children in our schools are not as successful as they need to be if they are to take their rightful places as effective and productive citizens in our society. We call them students placed at risk, careful to make the distinction that the fault lies not within them but within the system and factors that place them at risk—poverty, cultural and language differences, race differences, family and community differences, and schools that do not yet consistently make a difference on these children’s learning.

We believe that schools can consistently make positive contributions to the education of these children. We believe the desire is there and that effective practices and programs exist and are being developed that will provide schools with the ability to exercise that desire. We want to be a part of this, to help it happen. Our purpose—the purpose of the Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk (JESPAR)—is twofold: to provide the best research-based information possible to educators involved with improving the education of students placed at risk and to promote the use of that information through effective communications among researchers, policymakers, and practitioners.

Toward our first purpose, JESPAR will offer articles geared to academic researchers, policy analysts, and especially to practitioners rewarding practical, research-based progress in the field of education for students placed at risk. The journal will offer refereed research articles on promising programs, descriptions of promising programs in the field, case studies of "schools that work," and research literature reviews. We will stress programs and practices that are practical, are in place, and have been shown through rigorous research to be working. JESPAR will focus on programs and practices from which other schools can learn.

Toward our second purpose, JESPAR will offer book and report reviews, and regular communications from the federal, state, and local perspectives. Books and reports for review will be selected for their potential as sources for the improvement of the education of students placed at risk, and our reviewers will inform you of this potential. We will present quarterly communications from the Federal Title I coordinator and state Title I coordinators that deal with the thorny policy and practice issues faced by educators of students placed at risk—interpretation of regulations, program implementation, and assessment.

Between us—Sam Stringfield and John Hollifield—we have walked the long roads of research and practice for many years, sometimes on one side and then on the other. On some happy occasions, we found ourselves walking along sections where the two roads merged. We hope that JESPAR can explore these merged routes and find many others.

Sam Stringfield’s tenure as a teacher and as a Chapter 1 Technical Assistance Center coordinator provided real-life experience in the complexities involved in helping schools identify their students’ needs and implement effective practices and programs. Later, his direction of a large Chapter 1 evaluation of urban and rural "Special Strategies" studies provided research experiences in identifying and evaluating Chapter 1 and Title I programs and practices. His current work at the center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk has two similar thrusts—to examine how federal, state and local policies and actions can support the effective use by schools of effective programs and practices for students placed at risk and to examine how effective programs and practices can be scaled up to the point where they are adapted for use in schools across the nation.

John Hollifield’s work with dissemination of research findings and products at Johns Hopkins research centers and his years of work with teachers involved in cooperative learning staff development provided similar perspective on the complexities of school change. His 10-plus years as a contributing editor to the R&D Preview, writing about the various programs and practices and research produced by the regional laboratories, research centers, and other groups, provided a broad knowledge of research and development efforts across the country to produce effective programs and practices and provided occasional reassurance that effective programs and practices exist and can be effectively used in schools.

JESPAR is blessed with two superb associate editors. Dr.Faustine Jones-Wilson is an Emeritus professor of Education at Howard university. Among other accomplishments, Dr. Jones-Wilson served for a distinguished period as editor of one of the most prestigious journals in North America, the Journal of Negro Education.

Dr. Amanda Datnow recently joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins' Center for the Social Organization of Schools. A former assistant editor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Dr. Datnow is conducting research into the role of teachers in school reform efforts and conditions affection the effectiveness of title I programs.

The articles in the journal will be written for an audience of professional educators, policy developers, and practical researchers. They will not be written for a highly technical audience. Articles that review research and report on research results will be in-depth and of high-quality and will be edited for a readability and understandability by an educated lay audience. On the other hand, strong research is important - lay readers may need to stretch occasionally as we include the research analyses that makes the case for program effectiveness.

Articles that report on practice ( descriptions and case studies ) will also be held to high standards. We will present conversation and description and in-the-trenches reality, but we will present it connected to student achievement and other outcomes. JESPAR will celebrate enthusiasm, delight, and pride in accomplishment, but it will be connected to evidence of improvements in the lives of students.

We believe effective practices and programs have been and are being researched, developed, and used in many schools; that many other schools can adapt theses and create others based on research findings; that all the stakeholders involved in these efforts can communicate with and inform one another; and that this common effort will succeed in vastly improving the learning and development of the young people we now refer to as students placed at risk. We hope that JESPAR will contribute to this effort and this outcome.

About this Issue

This first issue illustrates the range of voices and perspectives tat readers can expect in future issues. We believe the following articles provide that range of topics and methods while offering uniformly high quality information.

Compensatory education updates from the federal and state perspectives (by Mary Jane Le Tendre, U.S. Department of Education's director of compensatory education and Janet Carroll, the elected president of the National Association of State Coordinators of compensatory education and Rhodes island's Title I Coordinator) will be regular features of JESPAR. Their columns are intended to provide timely information for practitioners regarding changes in federal and state laws and policies.

It is not accidental that the first full article in JESPAR is written by two teachers. Debra Mentzer ad Tricia Shaughnessy provide a striking open self-effacing, consistently inspiring account of Hawthorne Elementary School's multiyear struggles to become a superb inner-city school. The voices of these teachers describing "our children, with their beautiful faces, their gorgeous smiles pulling you toward them," and the work of the teachers, principal, and community , make an authentic, forceful case for the value of using national and local resources to further site-based school restructuring.

The article by Bruce Frazee details Trinity University' actively supportive role in Hawthorne Elementary School's renaissance. Frazee describes the positive results of a university taking the Holmes Group proposals seriously.

The third article in the Hawthorne set, by Gail Schubnell, provides an evaluator's view of the quantitative effects of the Core Knowledge Sequence and other reforms at the school. The results are very encouraging. Together, the articles by Schubnell, Frazee, and Mentzer and Shaughnessy provide a triangulating perspective on the need for and potential effectiveness of systemically supported site based reform. The set also presents the diversity of voices that JESPAR's editors believe must be heard for reform to reach all students placed at risk.

The Success for All article, "Success for All: A Summary of Research," (Slavin et al. ) provides the most detailed review available of the effects of one of America's most widely discussed and deeply researched school restructuring programs. The Success for All program clearly presents a viable option for improving the academic accomplishments of students placed at risk.

The Catherine George, James Grissom, and Anne Just study of schools involved in Chapter 1 program improvement addresses one of the most important issues in American educational reform: how to improve schools that have been targeted for school or program improvement. The authors identify eight potentially alterable clusters of characteristics of schools experiencing greater versus lesser success with improvement efforts.

Each issue of JESPAR will include at least two reviews of recent books that are relevant to improving the educations of students placed at risk. In this issue, Jim Golubich reviews Schooling Homeless Children. The volume provides a case study of hope and possibility in addressing the nearly overwhelming needs of this highly at-risk group of young people.

Pamela Nesselrodt review the entire sequence of volumes in the Core Knowledge Series. Among its other strengths, this reviews provides what we hope will be one of the trademark characteristics of JESPAR: interrelation among at least some of the articles in each issue. By pairing case studies with research articles or book reviews, we hope to provide not only breadth of coverage, but regular, in-depth analyses of diverse educational improvement options.