Empirical Research
Illuminating Adolescent Voices: Identifying High School Students’ Perceptions of Teacher Caring
Reviewed By Rubén Garza, Gail Ryser, Kathryn Lee
Volume 7 - Issue 4
Jan 8, 2010 - 12:29:03 PM

Currently, one of our nation’s most pressing challenges in its tapestry of diverse schools is to narrow the achievement gap and decrease the dropout rate “in light of current national reform efforts to achieve high academic standards, end social promotion, and ratchet up educational accountability” (Christenson & Thurlow, 2004, p. 36). For example, according to a report published by Diplomas Count 2008, 1.23 million students will not attain a high school diploma and a majority of those students are African-American, Hispanic, and Native American students. Worse, almost 50% of Black, Hispanic, and Native American male students fail to graduate from high school (Orfield, Losen, Wald, & Swanson, 2004).