Public demand for improvements in education has motivated a search for guidelines as to what constitutes satisfactory public instruction and learning. One of the latest and most significant manifestations of this has been the efforts within the individual states to define and adopt adequate reading and English language arts standards. This digest…

Ongoing professional development is at the core of Project Reading Excellence at "Boggsville" Elementary School (a pseudonym) and is intricately woven throughout all related activities. This professional development program is built on the pillars of sound scientific-based reading research, best teaching practices, and appropriate…

The Summer Opportunity To Accelerate Reading (S.O.A.R.) program is the elementary summer school program to improve reading and literacy in the Austin Independent School District, Texas. In June 2000, the 21-day program served 2,406 students in grades 1 through 3 who were below grade level in reading or at risk of retention. The budget allocation…

Literacy in the military has seen drastic changes since the World War II era and even the Vietnam era. Qualification tests are stricter and literacy programs are more available than before. Literacy in the military is crucial in a technological world. In today's armed forces, many soldiers concentrate on the technical aspect of combat through…

As part of the test development process, this technical report is intended to present technical information from the tryout and the pilot stages of the Michigan High School Proficiency Test (HSPT) in Communication Arts: Reading. There are four major parts to this report. Part 1, Evolution of the HSPT in Communication Arts: Reading, introduces the…

As part of the test development process, this technical report is intended to present technical information from the tryout and pilot stages of the Michigan High School Proficiency Test (HSPT) in Communication Arts: Writing. There are four major parts to this report. Part 1, Evolution of the HSPT in Communication Arts: Writing, introduces the…

The Summer Opportunity To Accelerate Reading (S.O.A.R.) program is the Title I elementary summer school of the Austin Independent School District (AISD), Texas. The S.O.A.R. program provides early intervention to accelerate literacy learning for students entering grades 1-3 who are at risk of retention or are below grade level. In its second year…

Twenty-seven third-grade children in a northern Louisiana public school participated in a study which examined whether a minimum amount of direct instruction in sight word recognition, combined with drill of sight words, could result in significantly better performance for the targeted at-risk children on the story and unit reading tests. The…

This study examined whether there is an association between the activities suggested by a federally mandated Title I learning compact and the reading achievement of at-risk fourth grade students. In addition, it investigated the relationship between specific home and school parent involvement activities and student reading scores. Specifically,…

This evaluation report profiles Academics 2000: First Things First, the Texas initiative under the Goals 2000 Educate America Act to raise the level of academic achievement of all Texas students by ensuring that each child achieves fourth-grade mastery of the foundation subjects by the end of fourth grade. The report states that, at the local…

This report summarizes the spring 2003, seventh-grade reading achievement data from five different schools in an urban school district in a mid-sized city in the Pacific Northwest. The original data set contained 358 students, but 96 students were removed from the data set prior to analysis because they had no scores in any of the dependent…

When Delaware's grant proposal was originally written, statewide reading achievement data showed a wide achievement gap between students with and without disabilities. Four-year test results showed no improvement. The state was substantially below the national average on the percent of students with disabilities spending 80% or more of their day…

Describes an assessment instrument for evaluating basic reading skills, the Minimal Reading Proficiency Assessment. (TO)

Researches a basal reading and a language arts method of teaching reading, advancing the possibility of using reading readiness instead of intelligence tests to predict later reading achievement. (RB)

Reports that participants in a perceptual training program at the kindergarten level performed at a higher level than non-participants according to reading, arithmetic, and composite achievement scores obtained in grade three. (TO)