The Pre-Professional Skills Test (PPST) has been given to all students as an entry requirement into teacher education programs at Tennessee Technological University (Cookeville) since 1983. All students at the University are also required to take the American College Test (ACT). One of the questions in this study related to whether the same or…

Illiteracy is intergenerational and is correlated with poverty. Especially significant is the effect of the mother's education level on children's academic achievement. A number of recent initiatives are emphasizing the role of parents as reading boosters. However, this approach fuels the debate between those who view literacy as skill development…

This study was designed to identify variables which account for successful performance in a remedial community college mathematics laboratory. Mathematics pretest scores, mathematics skills test scores, attendance time, age, gender, and attitude were used to help predict achievement. The sample consisted of the total population in the mathematics…

The proceedings are presented of the hearing before the Congressional Subcommittee on Education, Arts and the Humanities of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources. They reveal both the strengths and limitations of the proposed Educational Excellence Act of 1989. The proposed act would promote excellence in American education by: recognizing…

This report discusses issues concerning the present and future status of Hispanics in American schools and colleges. It uses enrollment data from schools and colleges through the 1986-87 academic year in order to explore the following trends: (1) the enormous growth of Hispanic enrollment since the 1960s; (2) the intensifying segregation of…

This study planned further research aimed at understanding how the current version of the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) analytical measure reflects cognitive skills that are important to success in graduate education. Several activities were completed, including selective literature reviews of: (1) cognitive and psychometric research on…

This report presents an evaluation of the Whitney M. Young Learning Center (WMYLC) program in the Portland (Oregon) School District. This after-school homework assistance and tutoring program for students in grades 7 through 12 was begun in 1980 by the Urban League of Portland. The goal of the WMYLC is to help students achieve academic success and…

A study compared the performances of adults who were learning to read with those of two groups of preliterate and second-grade children on selected cognitive tasks and on the display of certain metacognitive understandings. It was hypothesized that if the adults (who could not successfully read a passage from a fourth-grade reader) did as well as…

Relevant research literature does not generally support the notion that class size is a significant variable in learner achievement. This, if true, may be the result of various factors. Although teachers believe that they alter their teaching strategies for different class sizes, this may not be the case. More likely is the possibility that…

This dataset contains information collected by the 1989 Alaska Statewide Assessment Survey. The respondents of the survey were students in grade 4, 6, and 8 across the state, their teachers, and school principals. A total of 23,436 cases, representing more than 95% of the eligible students, are included in the dataset. The tape contains five…

Beginning in 1981, the Bay Shore (New York) School District initiated comprehensive changes in its instructional program. The process, which involved long range planning for 1982-1987 and 1987-1992, used focus groups, survey data, community input, and school-based feedback. Several of the overall goals of these plans are concerned with assuring…

The validity of several predictors was examined against multiple criteria of student program success. Subjects (N=437) were selected from about 800 students in the elementary teacher education program of a small California state university. Predictor variables for each subject included: (1) undergraduate grade point average (GPA); (2) subscale…

The evaluation process and results asociated with 1989-1990 reading (kindergarten through grade 12) and language arts (kindergarten through grade 5) programs of the Des Moines (Iowa) Independent Community School District are presented. The evaluation is divided into four parts: context; input; process; and product. Language arts instruction…

GENESYS is the GENeric Evaluation SYStem of the Office of Research and Evaluation, Austin (Texas) Independent School District. It is a method of streamlining data collection and evaluation for a variety of projects. GENESYS gathers data from the school system's data bases and reports the following information (characteristics and outcomes) on…

This study examined whether the widely reported positive relation between "authoritative" parenting and adolescent adjustment is moderated by the ecological context in which adolescents live. A socioeconomically and ethnically diverse sample of approximately 10,000 high school students provided information about their parents' behavior…