An outline of the organization of a local reading resource center, its scope, and its function are presented. Such a center is a combined project of the Office of Education, ERIC/CRIER, and the International Reading Association and is designed to supply teachers, students, laymen, school officials, and researchers with the latest information about…

The achievement of four groups of children as measured by the Stanford Achievement Test was compared at the end of the first, second, and third year of school. The four programs used were the initial teaching alphabet (i.t.a.), Words in Color (WIC), Phonetic Keys, and teacher-designed analytic programs. At the end of the first year there appeared…

Current research dealing with the importance of reading, various beginning reading programs, and reading and the disadvantaged child was surveyed. This was followed by an explanation of the DISTAR Reading Program, which was designed to teach reading to disadvantaged children. The remainder of the report described a study which was conducted to…

This study proposes the use of the readability analysis as an evaluative model of programing techniques where program adaptations can be evaluated both in relationship to student performance and to the program structure (frame, response, content presentation, and organization variables). A computerized means of determining reading difficulty to…

A description of the evaluation plan used in the Reading Improvement Project in Cleveland's target Title I elementary schools is presented. The plan's formation was influenced by two guidelines: (1) the necessity of providing for procedures to overcome threats to the validity of the findings so that some sound assessment of program effects could…

The purpose of this investigation was to determine the effect on first-grade reading achievement of completing a program designed to teach the names of the letters of the alphabet before beginning formal reading instruction. Information was sought on the differential effect of this program on either boys or girls of different levels of…

This study related the style of writing found in literature for children and the relative level of readability of this material. Cloze tests of readability on 10 passages from five juvenile biographies of Lincoln were given in 1 week to a hemogeneously grouped upper elementary school reading class (n=28) in suburban Detroit. The mean T-unit…

One class of first graders used Sullivan's Programmed Reading for the 1966 school year and continued in the program through the second grade. The first-grade teacher used the program again with her 1967 class. An evaluation was conducted of the use of programed reading for these two groups as compared with the use of Scott, Foresman's basal…

Experimental analysis of the results of an ESEA/Title I remedial reading program utilizing after-school study centers is presented. An experimental group of 1,521 New York city fourth-grade students who were enrolled in the reading program was compared with a matched control group from the same schools and a matched group from schools not having…

Two studies were carried out to measure the difficulties in visual perception which affect the reading abilities of disadvantaged children. The first study involved children in the first grades of eight poverty-area schools. Results reinforced earlier findings that urban disadvantaged children scored poorly on tests of visual perception.…

An investigation was made of the success of a developmental reading program with students possessing limited skills, the effect of reading instruction and counseling on grade point average, and the effect of reading instruction and counseling on attrition rate. Ninety freshmen students from the University of Missouri-Rolla were divided into three…

This research project was designed to explore suitable operant methods to assure successful acquisition of some initial formal reading skills by first and second graders. The subjects were 12 pupils diagnosed as predicted reading failures by failing scores on four or more subtests of a 10 test battery suggested by DeHirsch, Jansky, and Langford…

An experiment was conducted on 13 normal and 13 retarded readers, matched for age, IQ, and vocabulary. Recent findings suggested that reading retardates had difficulty in the cross-modal transfer of information from the auditory to the visual modality (e.g., converting auditory taps into visual dot patterns). Prior research by the present authors…

The disagreement on terminology used to describe reading difficulties and to classify reading underachievers is illustrated. Some of the research findings on physical, intellectual, emotional, and educational factors which cause reading difficulty are described, with emphasis on replying to questions asked by parents and on clarifying some…

Little research has been done to explain just why words are recognized more easily than letters alone; although, this phenomenon has been accepted widely by educators. Therefore, a model of the processes involved in word recognition and suggestions concerning how these processes can be put to use in reading instruction are presented. The model…