Editors' Introduction
Sam Stringfield and John Hollifield

The articles and the authors in this JESPAR issue exemplify the complexity of the work involved in achieving school improvement for students placed at risk, and the need for a combination of approaches and attention to multiple issues in the service of achieving high standards through changes in curriculum, instruction, school organization, and parent and community involvement. School improvement for students placed at risk -- indeed, for all students -- is a complex, multifaceted, and difficult enterprise.

In our communications columns, LeTendre examines how Title I opens the doors for schools to use technology in the pursuit of student achievement of high standards, providing examples of what schools are doing and explaining how the rules and regulations apply in various cases. Plunkett, in her first JESPAR column as the newly elected president of the National Association of State Coordinators of Compensatory Education, addresses another theme -- the need to develop cohesive high-content curricula directly linked to each state's high content standards and, simultaneously, to embed the teaching of reading/language arts into the curricula.

Our case studies zero in on two facets of school improvement. McHugh and Spath illustrate how a school can adopt an effective program. They describe how Carter G. Woodson Elementary School in Baltimore City is adopting the philosophies, curriculum, and instructional processes of the Calvert School, a private school that began in 1897 and has developed a home instruction program now used by more than 16,000 children worldwide. Cureton, in another approach, examines the themes, beliefs, and practices of successful African American teachers in urban schools, suggesting that their commonalities reflect the existence of an "effective practice" -- an African American pedagogy that can be used by urban school teachers to improve schooling for their urban students.

This issue's research studies also reflect the multiple aspects of school improvement. Baenen et al. examine a district adoption of Reading Recovery (high on many people's list of effective programs for students placed at risk). The results are not as good thus far as they might be, illustrating that program adoption requires collaborative effort from school and district personnel in assuring full implementation, making decisions about emphases on program components, and examining how effective programs mesh with the entire school program. In our other research study, Madhere analyzes High School and Beyond data to compare not only the academic performance but also the post-secondary success of Black, White, and Hispanic high school students. Among his findings: Instructional and pedagogical practices greatly affect variations in academic performance in high school among the three ethnic groups -- more strongly than family background or basic cognitive skills. At the same time, the number of advanced courses taken and the curriculum track to which students were assigned greatly affects post-secondary success for all three student groups. The variables that affect the outcomes of students placed at risk, and their relationships to those outcomes, Madhere reminds us, are many and complex.

This issue's book reviews further reinforce our complexity theme. Philipsen, reviewing Hope at Last for At-Risk Youth, applauds a book that presents effective practices and programs, but bemoans the lack of attention to theories and issues that aren't so clear cut. Howard, reviewing Other People's Children, highlights the book's concern with the presence of a middle-class culture of power in schools that determines which students will succeed and which will not. Finally, Davis gives us a treatise on the extensive cultural, political, scientific, emotional, and other forces that get interwoven with school improvement in his essay review of The Bell Curve and varied responses to it -- The Bell Curve Wars, The Bell Curve Debate, and Measured Lies: The Bell Curve Examined.

We thank Mitzi Beach for her tenure as a columnist representing the National Association of State Coordinators of Compensatory Education, and welcome Virginia Plunkett's acceptance of that role.