High School Underachievers What Do They Achieve as Adults?

For years, educators, counselors, and parents have debated whether underachievers can outgrow this behavior and perform up to their abilities as adults. What happens educationally, occupationally, and maritally to underachievers after they leave high school? In the largest sample of underachievers and the first long-term (13-year) study ever conducted, the authors explore whether underachievers "catch up" after high school to the level of their abilities, the traits of those who do, and the traits of those who don't. Through an analysis of the 13-year longitudinal study, they compare underachievers with students who receive the same grades and students who have tested at the same ability level but who have performed better in school. Covering such issues as personality variables, learning strategies, self-esteem, classroom structure, the educational system, and parental styles, the authors sift through the data to discover what factors are associated with underachievement and what techniques have worked to help these students improve their performance. USE FOR NEXT MAILING (11/94): "Good, substantive research on underachievement has been lacking in the field of gifted education for some time. McCall's book fills a needed void in the literature. . . . University libraries and resource centers for gifted education will want to add this book to their inventories. High School Underachievers is a timely addition on the most current information about underachievement." --Roeper Review "McCall has taken an unusually thorny and controversial area (controversial in the sense that historically there has been little agreement among workers in the area as to even the definition of the phenomena) and quite clearly defined a series of issues of interest to him. He has then applied a methodology to address those issues. . . . It seems to me that it is a good piece of work." --Mark Appelbaum, Vanderbilt University "This brief volume contains good data about a problem, underachievement, that represents a longtime concern of parents and educators. The authors discuss theories, but the only hypothesis tested was that underachievers might form a meaningful syndrome. They had an opportunity to analyze data--including the outcomes 13 years after high school graduation--on a sample of substantial size, and they obtained more relevant and dependable information about the supposed phenomenon than has heretofore been available. More psychological research should have this outcome and this beginning." --Contemporary Psychology