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Achievement for Latinos Through Academic Success (ALAS)


File number :
PPEE-ISC-11e

Bibliographic reference :
Larson, K., & Rumberger, R. (1995). Doubling School Success in Highest-Risk Latino Youth: Results From a Middle School Intervention Study. In R. F. Macias & R. Garcia Ramos (Eds.), Changing Schools for Changing Students (pp. 157-179). Santa Barbara: University of California at Santa Barbara.

Abstract :

Program Description
Achievement for Latinos Through Academic Success (ALAS), a three-year program launched in 1990, was designed to prevent dropout and improve the academic achievement of poor Latino students in middle school (seventh to ninth grade) with behavioural and emotional problems. The program's holistic approach called for the involvement of students, their families, schools and communities, and for academic, cultural and psychosocial interventions.

The program covered four points: 1) students were individually trained to help them solve their own social problems and provided with guidance advice in order to develop recognition of their student status and their sense of belonging to their school; 2) teachers provided students and their parents with regular feedback on classroom behaviour, absenteeism and uncompleted homework; 3) parents were trained to participate in school life and develop more acceptable behaviour in their children; and 4) school partnership with the community was encouraged.

Assessment
The evaluation presented here was conducted at the end of the third year of program implementation (ninth grade) in a middle school with 2000 students, 94% of whom were Latino American. In the first year of program implementation, 96 of the school's most at-risk students, two-thirds of whom were male students, had been targeted and randomly divided into an experimental group and a control group, with each group having the same male-female ratio.

Main Results
The evaluation results have shown greater stability in the experimental group; at the end of the ninth grade, 20% of the students of this group had left school, as opposed to 35% in the control group. Absenteeism was also less prevalent in the experimental group, and academic achievement was better. For instance, 15% of the experimental group students failed in English, compared to 31% of those in the control group. Lastly, the students in the experimental group had acquired a greater number of credits than those from the control group in ninth grade, which is the most critical grade for these students since 60% drop out at this point.



Key Words :
Psychosocial Interventions, Ethnic Group, Underprivileged Environment, Behavioural Problems, School Dropout, School-Family-Community Partnership, Secondary School/High School

Monitored Countries :
United States