The qualitative study Juvenile justice alternative educational placement: An examination of achievement levels, attendance, and behavior upon return to home campus, focuses on the issue of rather students expelled from school for conduct violations, in two school districts in Texas, improved their grades; attendance; and behavior, as a result of attending an alternative school and then returning to their regular schools. The researcher for the study examined available data on behavior; grades, and attendance of 32 expelled students attending two school districts' (covering a total of 10 high schools) JJAEP programs. The study was informative, with a clear objective, and with three clearly-articulated research questions that drove the study. The study was well focused, and as the short-term study it was, provided specific short-term answers to the research questions that the researcher posed at the beginning.

             The study relied on a combination of empirical data-gathering (e.g., student grades and attendance records) and interviews with school administrators. The 32 students themselves whose grades; attendance, and behavior were the subject of the study, were not interviewed by the researcher, nor did they themselves provide any additional input into the study. One of the issues discussed at the end of the study was that student motivation, academically; behaviorally, and in terms of school attendance, m must come from students themselves. It might therefore have added another dimension to the study had the researcher also interviewed the students themselves in order to try to ascertain the true extent and nature of their initial motivation in school, but why that motivation decreased, within both the JJAEP and the regular school setting, after a relatively short period. .

             The researcher provided good background information on how the study itself came to be done, and why.