This analysis is the third in the Center's series on child poverty in America. The first part of this study is a historical view of trends in child poverty by race and Hispanic origin for children in families below the age of 18 years. The second part presents projections of child poverty rates and levels for the three largest racial groups to the…

The Applied Biological and Agribusiness Interest Inventory was revised to reflect seven agricultural career clusters and to measure agricultural interest of eighth-grade students. A study conducted in Pennsylvania tested the interests of 8th-grade students and then developed scoring keys using 10th-grade students as the basis for the key. The…

This paper presents a research summary on ability grouping and tracking, and makes recommendations to school practitioners on successful alternative strategies to educate children from diverse backgrounds. The research reveals little evidence that ability grouping improves academic achievement, while overwhelming evidence exists that it retards…

The results of a study of six rural Appalachian high schools in Kentucky and Tennessee are presented. Multiple data sources were used to identify the relative effectiveness of these schools. Data were collected via administration of the: Wayson School Climate and Context Inventory to a stratified random sample of 20 faculty; Likert's…

Issues related to conception, assessment, decision-making, and instructional programming for the retarded in the adaptive behavior domain are discussed. Issues in the conception of adaptive behavior include its relationship to other constructs such as cognitive competence and emotional competence, the nearly universal use of certain domains,…

Institutional responsibility for assisting underprepared students was discussed in a caucus session. Four questions were addressed as follows: (1) to what extent should colleges and universities be responsible for ameliorating academic deficiencies among high risk students? (2) should separate facilities be established to serve high risk students,…

A study was conducted at Pima Community College to determine the relationship between the final grade received by students in an introductory, algebra-based physics course (PHY 121) and their scores on the reading, writing, and mathematics portions of the college's nonmandatory assessment test. Between 1983 and 1988, 639 students obtained a final…

Factors that affect the decision of a high school senior to attend or not to attend college were studied, using a path analysis model. Data were drawn from the 1980 High School and Beyond national survey of 58,000 high school sophomores and seniors, which was sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics. The study sample was 14,287,…

Previous studies of test item bias have investigated how different groups of examinees perform differently on a given set of items. These studies imply that examinees should be treated in a certain way because they are of a particular sex or race rather than as individuals in their own right, but it is unrealistic and unfair to assume such an…

This study examined the characteristics of family environment and its relationship to attitudes toward science. Data were collected from over 800 seventh-grade and over 1,400 tenth-grade students during a longitudinal, multi-dimensional study of the relationship between the variables of home, school, and self as related to attitudes toward and…

Oneonta and the campus of the State University have been the principal home of the Saturday Seminar Program from its beginning in 1958. Oneonta is the center of a sparsely-settled rural region of New York and the area has many small schools with an average size, K-12, of about 400. Since smaller enrollments often limit the range of course…

A study was conducted to compare the writing performance of tenth grade students across three modes of discourse. Subjects were 80 students who had been classified as "masters" or "nonmasters" of writing based on their scores on the writing section of the Texas Assessment of Basic Skills. The students were assigned three…

Interviews with the parents of 153 randomly selected fifth-grade students in urban and suburban schools in the Chicago (Illinois) area provided the data for addressing two hypotheses: first, that parents' choice among educational alternatives for their children may depend on parental dispositions toward the role of schooling in their children's…

Standardized achievement tests are often misused as indicators of a school's quality or effectiveness relative to other schools. This is an incorrect use because it ignores variation among schools in student abilities, family support of education, student mobility, and other factors. People also misuse tests because they impute to them more…

This survey was designed to investigate reading and number work (arithmetic) performance of 7-, 9-, and 11-year-old children attending parish primary schools in Victoria and to compare levels of performance with variables relating to general adjustment, personal variables, home circumstances, and school organization. Subjects, obtained by…