The Southeast Minnesota Educational Cooperative Service Unit (SMECSU) is an organization of public and nonpublic school districts that voluntarily joined together to provide educational programs and services which could best be done cooperatively. Of 54 school districts in the 11-county region, 23 public schools joined SMECSU the first year, along…

The conference reported here was held (1) to assist the Office of Health Resources/Health Resources Administration in developing a long-range plan and identifying strategies to improve the efficacy of women in the health system and (2) to recommend by priorities those actions which would have the most positive impact on the status of women in…

This paper, presented at a 1976 conference on the theory and practice of beginning reading instruction, introduces the theory that reading development occurs in stages patterned after Piaget's cognitive development stages. The stages include the prereading stage (until the age of six years); the decoding stage (first/second grade); the stage of…

The primary thesis of the "audread" model of language development is that children in a literate society first learn to think, then they learn to communicate and receive thoughts through oral language, and then they learn to communicate through written language (graphic representations). Four projects based on concepts from the audread…

Some basic pattern-analyzing functions that occur during the reading process are described in this paper. The functions deal mainly with the analysis of typographical factors such as word shape, spacing, and orientation, but they also interact with contextual variables. The research interpreted in the paper proposes an attentional model of reading…

The dependence of reading on speech is based on three assumptions: speech is the primary language system, acquired naturally without direct instruction; alphabetic writing systems are more or less phonetic representations of oral language; and speech appears to be an essential foundation for the acquisition of reading ability. By presupposing…

An exploration of specific deficits of learning disabled children, especially in the auditory system, is presented in this paper. Disorders of attention, perception, phonemic and visual discrimination, memory, and symbolization and conceptualization are considered. The paper develops several questions for teachers of learning disabled children to…

This paper discusses some specific issues about testing and relates the discussion to reading teachers and reading instruction. The issues that are discussed include the goals, criteria, and methods of classroom assessment. The paper concludes that teachers need to learn more about the process of assessment in order to use tests effectively, and…

A major problem that continues to plague United States education is the fact that large numbers of disadvantaged black students are not learning to read well enough to function in society. This paper discusses three reasons for the problem of teaching reading to these students. First, there exist no comprehensive developmental reading theories, no…

Proceedings are presented from a conference of over 1,000 people, the purposes of which were (1) to look at the future of vocational education, (2) to examine the influences which make an impact on present and future vocational education decision and policymakers, and (3) to arrive at a suggested national policy for vocational education. Sections…

This report focuses upon the efforts of public school educators and administrators in Washington, D.C., to improve teaching and learning through a comprehensive educational plan. One of the goals in this plan was defined as the promotion of academic excellence for the attainment of knowledge, competencies, and skills. Special education projects…

This document contains seventeen presentations delivered at the ninth annual meeting of the Florida Statewide Conference on Institutional Research. Part one contains: (1) "Your Legislative Session--1976"; (2) "Equal Access/Equal Opportunity: Institutions, Students, Politics, and Fairness"; (3) "The Impact of the Equal…

This document contains the proceedings of a conference focusing on the emerging need for postsecondary educational opportunity programs in New York state. The conference consisted of a series of addresses on issues such as the status of equal educational opportunity programs and the changing climate of higher education and the disadvantaged. In…

The purpose of this study was to determine if there are developmental tasks unique to the older female student returning to undergraduate school. These students are attempting to meet obligations to family, society, and self, while engaging in educational pursuits often experienced by others before assuming family or income-producing obligations;…

Nine essays collected from a conference titled "The Teaching Process and the Arts and Aesthetics" examine the relationship between research and teaching in the arts and in aesthetic education. Issues which guided presentations and discussions were: the relationship between general research in education and the teaching process in the arts and…