The seven articles in this journal issue focus on the evaluation of reading programs at the elementary and secondary school levels. The articles contain (1) guidelines for evaluating reading materials, (2) a checklist designed to provide a broad overview of a school reading program, (3) an interview with Wayne Otto concerning techniques for…

The individualized reading approach is a means of teaching reading to middle school students using self-selection of books by students, individual teacher-student conferences, and grouping according to needs and interests. During the teacher-student conferences, the students share their feelings about the book they are reading as the teacher…

Surveys show that literature is virtually absent from secondary level second language (SL) programs; at the same time it is often asserted that literature used to dominate these programs. The thoughts of authorities and educators in Ontario, Great Britain, the United States, the Canadian province of Ontario, and Germany over the period of 100…

Three papers addressing the topic, "Toward Consensus on Minimum Criteria for Educational Products" provide a state-of-the-art review of useful criteria for evaluating educational products in part I of this report. The second part is a summary and comparison of the research findings of two EPIE surveys on selection criteria being used by state and…

The study compared male and female performance on the Cadet Evaluation Battery (CEB), a measure of Army officer potential, and compared male scores achieved in two testing periods 4 years apart. The CEB was administered to 637 male cadets in the second year of the Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) in 1971 and to 1,035 female and 926…

The educational accountability movement is changing the teacher's role in curriculum development from that of autonomous decision maker to agent of public school policy makers. To assess teacher reactions to factors influencing their autonomy, 75 teachers were exposed to pressures to change the content of fourth grade mathematics instruction in a…

An overview of minority recruitment problems, laws, and experiences with American law enforcement personnel is provided in this manual. Potential areas of discrimination in the law enforcement personnel system are investigated. The mechanics of career development are addressed in order to demonstrate its importance in recruitment and especially in…

This learning module on developing a delivery system is one of nine developed for use in training administrators, teachers, and prospective teachers in the utilization of Vocational-Technical Education Consortium of States (V-TECS) catalogs of performance objectives, criteria-referenced measures, and performance guides. Readings are provided on…

Historically less emphasis has been put on the importance of attitude factors than on the skills of reading. When defining attitudes as a person's views, interests, expectations, and so on, attitude toward reading is a combination of all components that contribute to a person's underlying disposition to reading including expectations, interest,…

As part of the development of a functional literacy test for fourth through eighth grade children in Title I compensatory education programs, this report enumerates a set of criteria for selecting appropriate tests. The criteria are grouped into six categories: (1) test background; (2) psychometric quality; (3) examinee appropriateness; (4)…

Bibliotherapy may be of assistance in helping children cope with problems in the following ways: by helping them learn to analyze their attitudes and behavior; by assisting them in comparing their beliefs with those of others; by offering possible solutions to problems; and by contributing to their socialization. To identify the types of problems…

The 66 school censorship cases reported between 1976 and 1978 (it is estimated that only one censorship case in 25 is ever reported) do not really reveal clearcut regional patterns, but they reflect individual and selective group pressures against profanity, blasphemy, un-Christian thoughts, indecency (sexually explicit language and nude…

This technical plan for developing, managing, and operating a national periodicals center (NPC), which was prepared at the request of the Library of Congress, is designed so that it could be used by the Library or any other agency prepared to assume responsibility for the creation of a major periodicals facility. The overall goal of the NPC is to…

Although there were improvements in salary levels, percentage and total numbers of blacks employed in Kentucky State government between 1974 and 1975, a disproportionate number of blacks were still concentrated in a few job categories, primarily in the lower half of the pay scale. Major agencies such as transportation, agriculture, and state…

The purpose of the Communications Survival Kit is to serve as a guide for counselors to assist in planning, developing and implementing a public relations program for the guidance department at the local school level. The kit contains practical information in three categories. First is a rationale for a public relations (PR) program, what PR is…