Some youngsters who transfer into a new school are high-risk candidates for school and later life difficulties. During a school transfer, children are faced with the task of gaining peer and teacher acceptance, learning about the school's rules and regulations, and meeting new academic standards. Those transfer children who fail in these tasks often are from low SES backgrounds, evidence academic lags, and are confronted with multiple life stressors that detract them from focusing on the task of mastering the demands of the new setting. In the present study, 10 schools will be randomly assigned to an experimental condition and 10 schools to the control condition. The intervention will involve providing a high risk group of transfer children comprehensive intervention involving an orientation program and tutoring. At one and two year follow-ups, the program children will evidence significantly better functioning in a variety of measures than control children. The findings will be replicated with a second wave of children. High-risk non-trransfer children will also be monitored as a second comparison control group.
