The role of testing in American education is becoming increasingly important in grouping students for educational purposes. This article reviews practices adopted by educators or administrators to improve student test scores. Stopgap measures for improving standardized test scores include (1) switching to easier tests; (2) eliminating certain…

The report provides statistical data on disabled American college freshmen based on a 1985 survey of almost 300,000 entering college freshmen at 546 institutions of higher education. Information on income, funding sources, academic achievement, academic goals, career aspirations, and political views was collected. Results indicated an increase to…

These comments provide further details which expand upon the recommendations of the subcommittee on National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Writing. Three issues are discussed. The first concerns how objectives of assessment in writing ought to be stated. The 1984 objectives are stated in general terms without reference to what might…

An increasing number of studies have examined the movement patterns of older people between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas in the United States. Most of these studies, however, have not considered whether the relocation patterns of older persons differ systematically from those of younger populations. The 1975-1980 migration stream and net…

A comparison of British and Australian experiences with language awareness curricula and the contexts in which they have been offered led to three conclusions: (1) language awareness courses are not a panacea for the problems of the second language teaching profession, and should not be designed both to contribute to the success of the foreign…

The inappropriateness of using standardized achievement tests to measure the cognitive skills of Navajo children was demonstrated in a 1975-76 case study of 17 Navajo preschool and daycare children in Los Angeles. The Circus Receptive Vocabulary Test and the Circus Quantitative Concept Test were given individually to each child. Scores were…

Two experiments were undertaken in Hong Kong to examine sociocultural factors in the speech acts of making apologies in Cantonese. The first experiment involved ten men who were given role cards describing various situations with minor to serious problems for which they must apologize. The influence of certain situational variables on the…

To examine the relationship between parent and child news media use within specific age groups and to evaluate the stability of this use over time, 501 parent child pairs were interviewed by telephone in the winter and again in the fall of 1980 on their political views, social values, and media use. Findings on exposure to five types of…

Information is given about the cultural and religious background of Indochinese refugees arriving in the United States since 1975, to be used as a basis for promoting cross-cultural adjustment and communication with and in this group. The Indochinese exodus since 1975 is briefly described, focusing on the journey undertaken and the spread of…

The present study investigated whether parents' own behaviors and beliefs or their interpretations of their children's behaviors relate more closely to children's own mathematics achievement beliefs. Age and sex differences in children's perceptions of their parents' beliefs were explored. A total of 740 children in fifth through twelfth grades…

Educational interests of women aged 60 and over were studied, and a correlation between the respondents' ages, educational levels, marital status, as well as the number and types of educational topics they chose was investigated. The subjects' preferences as to selected program design questions were also identified. One hundred current members of…

Research has shown that small children and other people view old age and the elderly very negatively. Unless parents and teachers begin to initiate changes in thinking, old age will be a tragedy for most of today's youth. In this study, 67 second graders and 59 sixth graders in Mississippi responded to a modified Children's Attitude toward the…

Misconceptions interfere with the formation of new insights and provide a faulty foundation. This causes difficulty in the learning of new materials. Therefore, effective teachers strive to know which misconceptions students have, and then develop a plan by which these suspected misconceptions can be corrected or averted. This paper reports on an…

College seniors--129 who were 25 years of age or older, and 734 younger students were administered the objective portion of the American College Testing (ACT) College Outcomes Measures Project (COMP) test. The total COMP scores and subscores were compared for the two groups, as well as their entering ACT scores and grade-point averages using…

Employing a new procedure for measuring peer concepts, this study investigated the development of differentiation and accuracy of children's concepts of their peers' attributes. Subjects, 18 second-graders, 23 fourth-graders, and 18 sixth-graders, were asked to rate characteristics of their peers in mathematics, athletics (running), and in two…