The 1994 NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) Reading Assessment was administered to a national sample of students in grades 4, 8, and 12. National reading proficiency results were reported for students at each grade and within various subgroups of the population. State-level results were reported for individual states or…

Year after year, students, teachers, administrators, politicians, and parents are faced with the dilemma of reading assessment. Sheila Valencia (1990) feels that reading assessment has become a hot topic because the outcome tends to differ from school to school. Evaluations should be authentic and trustworthy. Roger Farr (1992) has noted that the…

This study examined the implementation of an early intervention program, Success for All (SFA), in elementary schools in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. A total of 543 at-risk students from four elementary schools participated in the study, with three schools serving as controls and one as the experimental site. Students completed achievement measures,…

The reading teacher needs to determine what each pupil needs to be a successful reader. In collaborative reading, the teacher guides the pupil to read, cooperatively, content that is stimulating yet predictable, consisting of rhymes, refrains, and poems. Most children like to read orally and reading together with others hurdles difficulties in…

This paper discusses literacy, language education, language achievement, and bilingual education policies and practices in Japan. The paper first describes the Japanese writing system (consisting of the "kana" and "kanji" scripts) and notes that students typically study English from grade 7 to the first 2 years of college. The…

The argument between advocates of the whole language approach and the phonics approach threatens to become so polarized and politicized that agreeing on a middle ground seems at times impossible, and the voices of reason and experience are drowned out. The debate erupted anew in California after alarming news stories about reading scores ranked…

A longitudinal study examined the relationship between the emergent literacy knowledge of preschool entrants and their subsequent reading performance, 5 years later. Subjects were selected randomly for the preliminary class lists of 6 separate preschools located in a mid-size midwestern city. Within the first 4 weeks of preschool, 8 informal…

A study investigated whether lowering the reading level of a health education pamphlet would increase comprehension by adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) readers. The reading level of a general pharmacy education handout was lowered by changing vocabulary, sentence structure, and organization, by highlighting the main idea of each point, and…

A practicum was designed to determine board-wide standards for assessing student achievement in reading and writing in kindergarten through grade 8 by creating analyzed exemplars of student work. Reading and writing indicators were developed to be used as the basis for analyzing the reading and writing exemplars. Teachers collected writing…

School districts throughout Pennsylvania are attempting to implement new state regulations, including the establishment of new standards for high school graduation. As school districts consider standards, they should also make sure that all students have the opportunity to meet those standards. This includes insuring that all students leave third…

A study examined the underlying relationships between birth order and reaching achievement. Subjects were 269 students attending a suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, senior high school who took the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT) in the spring of their seventh- and eighth-grade years. One way, two way, and multiple analyses of variance were…

The applicability of a standardized performance measurement procedure is critically investigated, in order to assess reading growth for students with severe reading difficulties in a longitudinal design. To establish an appropriate growth model, several approaches are reviewed. Among them, a simplex model is chosen and tested with various…

This concise report presents excerpts from the two full reports of the 1992 Integrated Reading Performance Record (IRPR), which examined the reading habits and oral reading of a subgroup of fourth graders who participated in the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) study. The report presents major findings of the two full…

This study was conducted to assess the first year of full implementation of a teacher incentive program (TIP) in South Carolina. The study examines the relationship between student achievement and teacher participation in one of several incentive model programs. The research also explores award winning teachers and their association with higher…

Noting that Reading Recovery is a short-term, supplementary reading and writing intervention for the lowest achieving first-grade children, this report describes Reading Recovery as a way of increasing the possibility of literacy success for all children. Distinctions that contribute to the success of Reading Recovery are highlighted in the…