Most young children are exuberant and enthusiastic about their futures, believing they can do almost anything. But many eventually lose hope. Efforts to understand at what developmental point children lose hope is the focus of this paper. Students in grades 1 through 12 (N =990) who attend Catholic and public schools were administered the Children's Hope Scale or the Young Children's Hope Scale for the purpose of determining the relationship of the variables of age, ethnicity, and gender to hope as measured by those scales. Results show a significant difference in the levels of hope between Catholic and public school students, with Catholic school students scoring higher on total hope and on the agency sub scale. Other analyses suggest, however, that this difference may only hold for grades 1 through 5. No significant findings relation to the criterion variables were evident for the public school sample, but among Catholic students a significant main effect was found for ethnicity and age on total hope scores, with African American students reporting higher levels of overall hope than their Caucasian peers. Age also was a factor, with a steady decline evident in students' agency as they age. (RJM)

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