Editors' Introduction
Sam Stringfield and John Hollifield

This issue of JESPAR illustrates both the challenges we face and the promises we see in the education of students placed at risk. Many schools face formidable challenges in their student populations, such as extreme poverty, homelessness, and deliquency. However, there are promising actions that schools can take to reverse the cycle of failure plaguing many students, even in the most impoverished, high student mobility areas. The articles in this issue of JESPAR reinforce our belief that effective, research-based educational programs provide hope for raising the achievement of students placed at risk.

Our federal Title I and state Title I communication features exemplify the themes of challenge and hope that pervade this issue. Mary Jean Le Tendre, the director of compensatory education for the U.S. Department of Education, cites statistics on the low achievement of homeless, delinquent, and migrant children, and emphasizes that these students, who are most often forgotten, deserve special attention by schools. Virginia Plunkett, president of the National Association of State Coordinators of Compensatory Education, invites educators to raise their expectations for all children, and suggests two practices to improve children's reading achievement: paired reading and repeated reading.

Focusing on another at risk population, the potential high school dropout, the case study of the Cooperative Alternative Program (CAP) by Rossi, Vergun, and Weise describes an effective alternative high school program for students in living in a rural area. Their research is a welcome addition to our knowledge base, as there is a dearth of research on the students in rural schools who face many of the same social and economic challenges as those in urban areas.

Like the communication features, the two research articles in this issue also serve as challenges - and - promises bookends. Bateman and Kennedy describe the educational plans of adolescent African-American males from single-parent families. The authors argue that while this group bears a disproportionate burden of negative life circumstances (i.e. drugs, violence, incarceration), there are school and community interventions that can potentially make a difference for these students.

Fashola and Slavin present a comprehensive research review of the current state of evidence of effectiveness for replicable programs available to elementary and middle schools serving at risk students. This article is premised on the belief that schools and districts have increased opportunities and pressure to implement effective models of school reform, but that there is little evidence about what works, when, and why. Fashola and Slavin seek to change this by assessing the evidence of effectiveness of 30 different programs, ranging from whole school reform models to reading/writing/language arts programs.

The two book reviews completing this issue also reflect a blend of challenge and hope. Banks' review of an important new reference work, The Encyclopedia of African-American Education, highlights the volume's significant contributions in explaining the formidable struggle of African-Americans to obtain a quality education, despite substantial barriers, including institutional racism. Jeffries' review of The School that Refused to Die applauds the author's compelling account of several generations in the life of Thomas Jefferson High School.