This evaluation of the 1989-90 Cumulative Deficits in Basic Skills Program (CDBSP) in Washington (District of Columbia) public schools uses achievement gains on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS) and teacher use of specially developed instructional materials to assess program effectiveness. Information was gathered from an analysis of…

Achievement in reading and mathematics of students at elementary schools participating in the Columbus (Ohio) 1989 School Improvement Program (SIP) has improved for the seventh year in a row, but achievement of low income students remains below that of other students. The goal of SIP, an effective schools project, is to improve the academic…

Normative data reported by publishers of the California Achievement Test, the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills, and the SRA Assessment Survey were used to illustrate a procedure for specifying goals for Title I programs in terms of normal curve equivalent (NCE) gains. The procedure was based on the amount of growth reflected in student reading…

When a program evaluation is conducted on the basis of gains made in standardized achievement test scores between a pretest and a posttest, serious bias can result where a floor effect exists on one or both of the test levels. Based upon the expanded standard scores on the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills from three successive regular spring…

The 39-day Summer Academic Skills Achievement Program in Franklin County, Ohio, was designed to increase the basic reading and mathematics skills of persons of at least high school age. It enabled clients to earn a full credit and up to $200 ($3.35 an hour) for successfully completing the program. Among the major findings of an evaluation of the…

"Helping One Student to Succeed" (HOSTS) is a nationally validated Chapter 1 exemplary program adopted by 24 schools in the Portland School District (Oregon) during 1984-85. Designed to help low performers learn to read by providing individualized instruction on a one-to-one basis through the use of volunteer tutors, HOSTS served 833…

This report describes the major outcomes of the Response to Educational Needs Project (RENP), a compensatory education program implemented by the Anacostia district of Washington, D.C. The problem of students falling further and further behind is discussed with particular reference to reading and mathematics achievement, training teachers to cope,…

The current study is an extension fo the Instructional Dimensions Study (IDS), part of a comprehensive study of compensatory education programs. This study had two purposes: (1) to investigate achievement changes over the summer of 1977 and during the 1978 calendar year for IDS students, and (2) to compare summer gains of compensatory and…

Prescription Learning is a multi-media diagnostic prescriptive program providing individualized instruction using six instructional strategies. Nine elementary schools and four middle schools in the Portland Public School District used Prescriptive Learning to provide supplemental reading and math instruction to low-performing students. Selected…

The long-term effects of state compensatory education (SCE) and Chapter 1 programs on the development of basic skills and academic achievement of Sacramento (California) were studied for a sample of over 6,000 SCE and Chapter 1 students in grades 2 through 5. Follow-up and retroactive approaches were used to ascertain the degree to which thinking…

The effectiveness of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act Title I reading and mathematics laboratories were evaluated to assess the improvement of underachieving elementary school students' academic skills. Laboratory students were selected on the basis of academic (rather than socioeconomic) criteria in grades 2 through 5; the control…