Established Trend for Non-White Students,

¶ … established trend for non-white students, particularly Latino and African-American students, to perform less well in high school and college and university courses, with a smaller proportion of these students even entering higher education institutions, and with greater high school drop out rates. This issue is far more prevalent in some areas of the country than others, but has been a well-known and empirically verified problem throughout the nation for its entirety. Studies have also shown that early and ongoing intervention in the education of non-white students, especially in at risk-populations and areas, has a much more dramatic effect on dropout rates, high school and college performance, and future success than do interventions and assistance programs that focus on students already in high school or studying in higher education.

The proposed research study will examine aspects of young education intervention programs and attempt to determine their impact on non-white students in the intermediate elementary stage (grades 3-5). Developing classroom methods for addressing the racial differences that appear in high school and college performance, as well as high school completion and college attendance, will have more profound and widespread effects than supplemental programs, and in making recommendations for certain of these methods this research will be furthering this aim. Early educational methods (pre-K through 2nd grade) have received greater amount of focus from many scholars and practitioners; this research will also attempt to determine the specific skill sets that can and should be developed at the intermediate elementary level to enhance future academic performance.

Annotated Bibliography Prep

Before attempting to find appropriate journal articles in the library itself, the use of electronic databases is highly recommended. The larger databases, such as EBSCO Academic Complete and ProQuest will pull articles on a variety of topics that contain the user-entered search terms, which could lead some to be highly specific and lengthy with their terms. I have found it helpful to peruse broader results first, though, noting out any articles that appear to be relevant, then using key words from these articles to conduct more refined searches. This creates a body of literature that will be on topic and inter-related, making comparisons easier during the research and the writing phases of the study.