A STUDY WAS CONDUCTED TO DETERMINE THE RELATIONSHIP OF READING METHOD AND COMPOSITION AND TO DISCOVER A WAY TO EVALUATE FIRST- GRADE COMPOSITION. PARTICIPANTS WERE 779 LOW INCOME, FIRST-GRADE CHILDREN FROM SIX CITIES. THERE WERE NO SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE EXPERIMENTAL AND CONTROL GROUPS IN SOCIAL BACKGROUND, MATURATION, INTELLIGENCE,…

The Preschool Academic Skills Test was developed from an analysis of first-grade reading and mathematics materials to identify those behaviors that were assumed to be in students' repertoires prior to first grade. The 105 items are grouped in 10 subtests: Vocabulary, Color Naming, Classification, Functional Relationships, Visual Matching, Auditory…

TO TEST THE APPLICATION OF THE GENERAL SYSTEMS APPROACH IN CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT, A PROBLEM WAS PROPOSED IDENTIFYING THE PHENOMENA AND CONTINGENT VARIABLES OF THE CURRICULUM SYSTEM WITHIN THE INPUT-OUTPUT FRAMEWORK. WITH TEACHERS, SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS, AND GRADUATE STUDENTS OF EDUCATION AS VOLUNTEER PARTICIPANTS, TWO EXPERIMENTAL GROUPS GIVEN…

The study of ability factors in young children has passed the stage of demonstrating that separate factors exist, the effort now being devoted to systematic identification of measurable abilities. This study was designed to confirm some of the tentative abilities demonstrated in other studies and to extend the exploration into memory processes and…

To carry out this study, personal interviews were conducted with licensing personnel in the geographically diverse states of New York, California, Florida, Illinois, and Texas. The nonprofessional occupations (those requiring not more than two years of post-high school training) examined for licensing requirements in at least one of the five…

A study was conducted to design a system of testing and interviewing which would bring into some relationship the personal characteristics of teacher education students and the external or setting demands made on public school teachers. The major purpose was to provide an opportunity for each student to examine his behavior in a safe and…

This outline for research constitutes the report and recommendations of a conference conducted by the Center for Applied Linguistics under contract with the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Two Conference papers are included. The first, By Countney B. Cazden and Vera P. John, "Learning in American Indian…

An experimental design was employed to assess the impact of standardized tests on 47 second grade Irish teachers' judgments of their 1,566 students. Teachers receiving test results showed greater shifts in their ratings of students than teachers not receiving test results. However, these shifts tended to be in the positive direction and for only a…

Current research and treatment methods view test anxiety as the student's problem. The author challenges the prevailing view and describes test anxiety not only as the student's psychological problem, but also as one result of the university's struggle to maintain power over the students. Consulting with faculty, acting as student advocates, and…

The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness of an individualized program for learning-disabled children. The subjects participated individually prescribed learning activities, which involved small-group interactions directed toward the growth and development of perceptual skills, perceptual-motor skills and self-concepts, and…

At a reading conference devoted to analysis of the impact of statewide testing of reading in New Jersey, the following nine questions were addressed: How can scores be used by teachers? How should test results be reported to the press and the public? Do state tests replace commercial, normed tests? Is the state test unfair to minorities? How might…

Presented are abstracts and general information on 28 instruments useful for educational assessment of severely developmentally impaired students. An introductory section provides brief discussions on the limitations of the instruments, general rules for administering standardized tests, norm referenced tests, criterion referenced tests,…

An experiment was carried out to investigate errors in translation exercises done by French students studying English as a second language. A code was devised to rate errors as being: (1) lexical or grammatical, and (2) related to the signifier or the signified, with further subdivisions within these groups. While this method has the advantage…

This report describes the general plan for a study to clarify the interpretation of group performance measures of student achievement. Group tests are the most efficient procedure for collecting achievement information from a large number of students, but they also require item formats that may be different from the form in which students normally…

In this keynote address, the author introduces several topics of concern for participants in a workshop on competency-based adult education (CBAE). First, he defines four basic terms: adult performance level, minimum competency testing, comptency-based education, and competency-based adult education. Then he reviews the historical background of…