Editor's Introduction
Sam Stringfield

Our most recent issue (Vol. 5, Nos. 1 & 2) brought us several firsts. The issue was our first summary of five years’ work of a national research center. It may well have been our most intellectually challenging and coherent issue. It was our most widely distributed issue, with over 1,300 copies being distributed from Washington state to Washington, D.C., and from Hong Kong to Germany. It was our first double issue, and our first issue the publication date of which begins with a "2." Perhaps most importantly, it was our first, and we hope last for a long time, memorial issue.

The contents in this issue of JESPAR, too, establish several additional firsts. We begin with a Communications Feature reporting on indicators of Title I progress. Our hope is to make this an annual report.

Mullen and Patrick, in "The Persistent Dream: A Principal’s Promising Reform of an At-Risk Elementary Urban School," then explore the power of belief and determination in creating a more effective urban school. This is an important story, describing the kind of progress we hope to be able to report for years to come.

Teachers’ knowledge of indicators of child abuse, explored in "Child Abuse: What Teachers in the 90s Know, Think, and Do," is a new and important area for JESPAR. This is a problem that is all too common, and the levels of ignorance uncovered by Stuhlmann and Fossey not only won’t make child abuse go away, they almost certainly exacerbate the problems.

That Hispanic young people drop out of schools in disproportionate rates is well documented. The National Center for Educational Statistics regularly reports on this troubling fact. However, numbers by themselves offer no directions for improvement. By bringing an ecological perspective to the field in "Dropouts Among Mexican American Youth: Reviewing the Literature through an Ecological Perspective," Hess brings new, and in some ways hopeful, much needed insights to the field.

As a nation, we are going to be very, very hard pressed to solve our problems with primary grade reading without the help of adults reading to children beyond regular school hours. Huebner reports on an exemplary effort to bring community-based support for preschool reading, and reports most encouraging results in "Community-Based Support for Preschool Readiness Among Children in Poverty."

Our book review section certainly isn’t new. However, it does continue its own strong tradition of thoughtful reviews of volumes addressing important topics relevant to JESPAR. Beverly Caffee Glenn’s review of When Children Don’t Learn points to a variety of reasons for academic failure, and poses responses to several of them. Marilyn Irving’s review of Being Responsive to Cultural Differences points to several specific steps that can be taken to address several groups of students historic lack of academic success.

Marion Eaton and Gene Schaffer review two excellent volumes on improving high schools. Eaton’s review of New American High Schools provides insights into this thought provoking volume. Schaffer reviews one of the volumes that I’d rate among the most important of the 1990s: Forging links: Effective Schools and Effective Departments. This volume describes a multi year effort by three internationally regarded British researchers’ efforts to unpack departmental from high school effects. Both the book and Schaffer’s review make for challenging reading.

Nearly eight years ago, a few of us at Johns Hopkins began exploring ways to create a new journal, dedicated to bringing the force of science to bear on improving the education of historically disadvantaged children. We wanted articles to be of the highest quality scholarship, which meant, among other things, the writing would be of such clarity that Title I principals and teachers could read JESPAR without trouble. When this issue comes off the presses, Drs. Faustine Jones-Wilson and Amanda Datnow, Ms. Tiffany Meyers, and I will be well into the development of volume 6. In many ways, JESPAR has exceeded any reasonable expectations. The quality of the contributions has been remarkable, and continues to rise.

It is amusing to me that I originally assumed that if we could just get through five volumes, we’d have resolved several of the major issues now frustrating those working to improve schooling for poor children. Five years later, my admiration for the dedicated work of various scholars toiling in our field, and my own colleagues at CRESPAR and JESPAR is higher than ever. The same can be said for my sense of the challenges before us. Let’s get back to work.