Inconsistent findings within the existing literature tend to confuse the ability of behavior-focused alternative schools to address behavior problems of at-risk juveniles. Recent studies have suggested that juveniles who successfully commit to greater self-regulation skills display both academic success and positive classroom behavior. Although self-regulation skills have been positively associated with behavioral success among juveniles placed in behavior-focused alternative schools, it remains unclear as to what aspects of these programs that juveniles experience as facilitating the development of such skills. This phenomenological study used semistructured interviews of 5 students in Grades 10 through 12 enrolled in a behavior-focused alternative school to improve the understanding of how juveniles experience and perceive alternative school programs as facilitating the development of self-regulation skills in promotion of positive behavior outcomes. Structural functionalist theory provided an appropriate lens through which data of juvenile experiences and perceptions of the functions of an alternative school program could be interpreted. Data analysis consisted of a process of open coding, categorizing, and interpreting data for meaning. The findings of the current study revealed that when aspects of alternative schools function to develop reasoning skills and a willingness to adhere to school standards, such functions may be beneficial in juvenile commitment to behavioral self-regulation. The data provided by this study may be valuable for stakeholders and policymakers in assessing the influence of behavior-focused alternative schools.

An alternative high school campus in the State of Georgia introduced a new program to support academic growth and engagement among at-risk students. This program, the APEX program, merges technology with content to provide students with self-paced learning facilitated by teachers with the objective of improving test scores, course completion, and graduation. The purpose of this goals-based evaluation was to examine the relationship between APEX program usage and the academic success measures of EOCT scores, course credit accrual, and graduation; it was grounded in the behavior objectives approach. The study followed a cohort of students who were enrolled in Grade 9 in 2010-2011. Data sources were archival test scores and preexisting APEX data. This APEX data included accrued credit hours, completion rate, and documentation of mastery learning outcomes for the enrolled students in Grades 9-12. Analysis of the quantitative data sets entailed the use of ANOVA, Chi-Square, and t tests. The study findings showed that students using the hybrid APEX instructional model accrued significantly more credit hours, were more likely to graduate, and have higher end of course grades than students using the APEX-only model. These results suggest that a broader use of APEX labs for students identified as at-risk in both alternative and traditional schools provides a flexibility in instructional settings that helps more students succeed. This study suggests the most effective use of resources with the implementation of APEX to reach the largest number of students. This study promotes positive social change by confirming the efficacy of a tool for reaching more students to improve higher district-level graduation rate, course accrual, and end-of-course test scores.

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This study was an evaluation of the Abeyance Alternative Schools Program (AASP) in the Brevard County Public School System, which consisted of three sites located in the north, central, and south areas of the county. The purpose was to investigate the effect that the AASP had on expellable, felony suspension, or community control students who had transitioned back to their home schools after participation in the AASP. Pre- and post-data in the areas of attendance, discipline, and grades were compared to ascertain if students' performance had improved after AASP participation. Further, the study examined if any particular AASP site demonstrated more student success, and if so, what factors may have contributed to this success. The study was conducted in Brevard County, Florida, the ninth largest school system in Florida. The research population included 113 students who were returning to their home schools after spending a minimum of four months in the AASP. It was noted that this was a small research group and a delimitation of this study. The data collected were primarily from students' cumulative files and the school system's mainframe computer. Data were nominal in nature and descriptive statistics as well as Pair-Wise T-Tests were utilized to compare pre- and post-data. A semi-structured interview with five AASP site administrators, five counselors, and seven teachers was also conducted to determine program differences among sites and offer suggestions for improvement of the AASP. An overall analysis of the total population data revealed that students were classified as "Improved" in the area of academic performance only. Further, it was established that students attending the North Area AASP showed improvement in attendance and discipline while students attending the South Area AASP showed improvement in grades. The following conclusions were reached: (a) Alternative programs must embrace the research-based characteristics of successful programs to maximize success for all students; (b) Alternative schools should conduct evaluations of incoming students and develop individual education plans based on students' .academic and social problems; and (c) The AASP should be funded to provide adequate numbers of computers and other innovative materials. Recommendations for further research were made.

The purpose of this study was to determine personality characteristics of students who are successful on traditional campuses and students who are successful on alternative campuses. With this knowledge, more students may be served on the traditional campus without the necessity for alternative education.

This dissertation deals with new approaches of alternative schooling in foreign countries which recently became very popular. These three schools and approaches chosen for this dissertation are not known in Czech Republic yet. The dissertation presents these alternative schools and proposes alternative brushing up of the ideas to the maintain schools. The first school and the first approach of alternative is democratic school or also free school. The oldest democratic school is Summerhill in the east of England. The second interesting approach and school is Te Whāriki from New Zealand. The framework deals with education through socio-cultural context. The last representative of schooling which dissertation deals with will be Reggio Emillia, which is from Italy and based on ideas of Loris Malaguzzi. The dissertation applies to main philosophies of these three alternatives, which appears abroad and mainly in Great Britain. This piece of work evaluates similarities and differences of these alternative schools. According to from which country the concrete school comes from and circumstances influencing the origin. The dissertation should contribute to the extension to Czech awareness of more alternative schools that are developing in the world. Also the piece of work devotes to ideas which could be...

Research indicates the potential utility of schools as sites for service delivery of mental health interventions. The application of solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) within the school domain is reflected in the child psychotherapy literature. Findings on the use of SFBT in school settings suggest that it may be well suited to school contexts given its time-efficient, goal-directed, and strengths-based behavioral approach. The primary purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of SFBT with at-risk youth in an alternative school setting. The researcher utilized a multiple case study design to examine the impact of a 6-session SFBT intervention on adolescent behavioral outcomes. Six students were randomized to one of three baseline conditions and received the SFBT intervention following baseline data collection. Data were obtained from multiple raters at baseline, posttest, and 6-week follow-up. In addition, students completed self-reported ratings at the beginning of each SFBT intervention session. Data were evaluated using non-regression approaches and visual analyses. Preliminary results indicated that four out of six students exhibited reliable change (6-point increase in post-ORS mean scores), and four out of the six students demonstrated clinically significant change (baseline ORS mean scores below the adolescent clinical cutoff of <28). Results also indicated a decrease in total problem behavior scores at posttest for all informants on a normed assessment of emotional and behavioral functioning. Follow-up data were collected for four out of six students, and results suggested that this decrease in ratings was maintained or decreased further across all raters for three out of the four student participants. Overall, preliminary results indicated the potential utility of SFBT with at-risk youth in an alternative school environment. Strengths and limitations of the current study, as well as additional research aims (e.g., impact of therapist alliance, fidelity monitoring in SFBT) and future research areas are also presented.

The topic of alternative schools is widely available in the literature; however, once a student has been labeled a "troublemaker" and has been placed in a District Alternative Education Program (DAEP), a Type II setting, there is limited information about the overall success of students upon their return to the mainstream. This study compared the success of students formerly placed in a modified disciplinary Type II setting, once they have returned to the mainstream, with their success prior to disciplinary placement. The purpose of the study was to examine if disciplinary measures that remove students from the mainstream environment negatively impact the variables that measure school success, despite legislative mandates such as No Child Left Behind, which advocates success for every student. The population for this study was 86 7th- through 11th-grade students assigned to a DAEP in Texas during the spring of 2003. A comparison of pre- and post-placement dependent variables measuring school success-attendance, passing core courses, behavioral achievement, standardized test score achievement, recidivism, and dropout rates-comprised this study. The independent variables-gender, ethnicity, grade level, socioeconomic status, and disciplinary offense-were used to compare and analyze each dependent variable. The dependent variables of attendance, passing core courses, and behavior demonstrated a decline in the measurement of school success across time. The only dependent variable that demonstrated improvement between the pre- and post-placement periods was achievement on standardized test scores. From the number of students who withdrew from the mainstream during the post-placement semesters, large recidivism and dropout rates were determined, which reflected the large percentage of students who were not successful in the district's mainstream. The comparisons of dependent variables by independent variables resulted in significance only in the analyses of attendance by grade level. This interaction was determined to be significant since p < .05. During both post-placement semesters, 11th-grade attendance increased by 20.2 points. Students in the 7th, 8th, and 9th grades maintained a slight increase in attendance between the pre-placement and first post-placement semester yet experienced an attendance decline in the second post-placement semester. This decline was seen in all three grade levels between the pre-placement and the second post-placement semesters. Attendance among tenth graders declined throughout all semesters of the study. The comparison of attendance by disciplinary offense resulted in a large effect size (eta2). The eta2 reported within 29.8% accuracy in variability when attendance was compared by disciplinary offense. Students placed for assault demonstrated a 27.7 point increase in attendance by the second post-placement semester. Despite the comparison of attendance by the grade level of students being the only significant result, and the comparison of attendance by disciplinary offense resulting in a large effect size, several specific conclusions were drawn from the analyses of the pre- and post-placement data measuring school success. All dependent variable measurements, with the exception of standardized test score achievement, resulted in an overall reduction of mean scores across time. This decline indicates that students do demonstrate a decline in school success following a removal from a mainstream setting.

Students with emotional behavioral disorders (EBD) are at greater risk for dropping out of high school than other students, and are likely to experience fewer employment options and more societal marginalization. Alternative schools have been viewed as a last chance and best option for educating many students with EBD who have not actually been diagnosed. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore persistence and retention in the alternative school setting for students who may or may not have been diagnosed with EBD. Students in this study will be referred to as EBD. Although they have not been formally diagnosed, all of the students suffered with symptoms of emotional and behavioral disorders. Interview and observational data were examined through the theoretical lens of the Bandura's theory of self-efficacy and Erikson's theory of psychosocial development. The research questions focused on the meaning of academic persistence for students in an alternative school, the institutional efforts to retain students, and the processes and consequences to improve student engagement and retention. Seven teachers and administrators from an alternative school in Georgia were interviewed, and analysis and interpretation of data from the interviews, observations, and field notes revealed five major themes: support, acknowledgment for incremental gains, struggle to focus, and we are family. These results indicated that some of the most challenging students can persist when they are provided with support (parental, academic, emotional, and community), and future longitudinal research is needed on students' post-high school functioning. The results also showed the need for systemic changes that include formal assessments and diagnoses because access to psychological services are not provided until students have been properly diagnosed.