Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in the assignment of students to schools, classes, ability groups, and tracks in programs or activities that receive federal assistance. These assignments may not be made on the basis of race, color, or national origin. The law does not require schools and activities to be racially…

A study investigated the development of information processing as it relates to the development of reading skills by studying how good readers and poor readers utilized orthographic information. Subjects, 90 good and poor readers from grades 2, 4, and 6, participated in four 30-minute sessions in which they were required to make a same/different…

The Graduate Record Examination (GRE) subject-matter achievement tests are offered in 17 fields. This study investigated the performance of U.S. and non-U.S. citizens on the Subject Tests, and the relationship of selected English-proficiency-related background variables to the test performance of non-U.S. citizens. It was also concerned with…

This paper is the second of a series of four reports that document the achievement monitoring component of a three-year study on the acquisition of addition-subtraction problem-solving skills by young children. A set of performance objectives contained in or ancillary to 10 instructional units on sentence-writing for verbal problems and algorithms…

A study was conducted to describe conceptions of the usefulness of reading (the function or "why" of reading) and conceptions of the reading process (the form or "how" of reading) among preschool and first grade children in Sweden. The research paradigm used--based on the work of Vygotsky and Piaget--was called the "second…

Sample forms and form completion instructions are provided for the referral, initial placement, annual review, and reevaluation of exceptional children. The forms were developed for use by North Carolina local educational agencies. The forms encompass the exceptionalities of academically gifted, specific learning disabled, behaviorally-emotionally…

This paper, presented at the "Ingenium 2000" conference, reports an attempt by the Natal Education Department in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, to design, develop, and implement a curriculum extension program to meet the intellectual and/or other needs of the exceptionally able, with no additional provision of staff or facilities. The…

Conference papers and discussions presented in this volume reflect recent research results that suggest the human infant is not a tabula rasa but an organism endowed at birth with an array of capabilities. Contents focus on several issues, including the possibility that infants have a rich affective life from their earliest days and that even…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 15 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) reading achievement as a function of home media environment and orientations toward learning; (2) reading ability and offense categories of delinquents; (3)…

The 11th annual report from the New Jersey Basic Skills Council provides information on the level of basic skills (verbal, computation, and elementary algebra) among freshmen admitted to New Jersey's public colleges and universities. Proficiency levels are estimated from performance on the New Jersey College Basic Skills Placement Test (NJCBSPT).…

An overview of contemporary assessment practices often used with Latino students is provided, and it is maintained that these practices often overlook the influence of culture and linguistic proficiency on cognitive performance. A new approach, the Sentence Verification Technique (STV), is proposed as an alternative method to assess the linguistic…

One hundred first year scholars in highly selective programs in five American universities took part in a preliminary study of outstanding high school graduates and the teachers who had contributed in special ways to their academic success. Fifty-three teachers who were identified by the scholars participated in the study by providing information…

Many teachers work in the difficult situation of teaching academic subjects to students who are not academically oriented. Especially in high school, non-college-bound students are required to take two or three years of science and social studies. For these students schools offer lower-track classes that exhibit high failure rates and low teacher…

Proceeding from a definition of "story schema" as an idealized internal representation of the parts of a typical story and the relationships among those parts, this paper explores the role of story schemata in reading comprehension. The paper also identifies variables that may affect the way in which schemata function and outlines the…

An alternative curriculum for Freshman Composition, designed to help students develop cognitive skills useful for academic writing in other courses, involves eight discipline-specific assignments, building from relatively simple writing tasks such as taking lecture notes and keeping an academic journal, through book reports, essay examinations,…