This review examines the literature on auditory skills for evidence regarding the relationship of the sound blending skill and reading achievement. Factors that might affect this relationship are discussed. (Author/MV)

Authors bring an historical perspective to the present debate over reading achievement. From an historical examination of selected European and American models of literacy, they conclude that reading instruction has been aimed at attaining either a low level of literacy for a large number of people or a high level for an elite. (Editor/RK)

Reviews research literature on Puerto Rican youth and summarizes findings on factors influencing return migration and the cultural and physical adjustment of return migrants. Presents findings of a survey of Puerto Rican students, non-migrants and return migrants, which attempted to determine whether there was a relationship between reading…

Concludes that standardized tests do not always reflect children's actual reading achievement and that the tests may not measure performance on the same types of material emphasized in basal series. (FL)

Explores sources on sex differences in reading achievement and presumed causes. Reports that explanations fall into two categories that are not necessarily mutually exclusive: physiological-maturational and cultural-societal. (NH)

Tested integrated learning set training on unidimensional classification, unidimensional seriation, and number conservation for kindergarten children lagging in cognitive development. Subjects (N=22) receiving instruction had low scores on Educational Ability Series (EAS) of Science Research Associates' Survey of Basic Skills. Subjects made twice…

Scores on the Holbrook Screening Battery, administered at age four, correctly predicted 89 percent of good readers and 75 percent of poor readers in a sample of 116 eighth graders. Characteristics differentiating good and poor readers included birth history, family history of learning disability, speech delay, and socioeconomic status. (Author/DB)

Reviews the strengths and weaknesses of the Nelson-Denny Reading Test (NDRT) and compares the use and misuse of the test as revealed through published surveys. Finds problems in the use of the NDRT to diagnose the specific reading needs and deficiencies of low-achieving students and to measure individual growth. (CBC)

Reports two studies in which 5- and 6-year-old children were given word order awareness tasks, followed 3 or 5 months later by vocabulary, reading achievement, and reading readiness (for the 5-year-olds) tests. (Author/NH)

Reports on the cost-effectiveness of four educational interventions and their effectiveness in raising student achievement in mathematics and reading. Research shows that tutoring yields the best results. (MD)

According to studies using the Degrees of Reading Power system for estimating readability, most high school graduates cannot read at a level enabling them to understand much of what they read in newspapers, periodicals, work-related documents, or many high school texts or tests. (PGD)

This study investigated the effectiveness of reading only, regular note taking, and paragraph summaries for questions at the six levels of Bloom's taxonomy. Paragraph summaries were most effective at the application and analysis levels and least effective at the synthesis and evaluation levels. (Author/LMO)

Examines whether learning rates vary across students, teachers, and subject matter as a function of instructional time. Offers a model of the relationship between time and learning. Discovers that the varying positive effects of instructional time on reading and mathematics achievement depend on teachers' and students' initial ability. (ETS)

This study assessed the influence of reading ability and difficulty of material on types of oral reading errors made by 42 second-grade children. Overall, types of errors changed as the material became more difficult. The interactions between reading ability and difficulty level were also significant. (Author/BS)

A paired-associate memory task with pictures and words as items was used to categorize fourth graders into four learner types (high/low picture x high/low word performance). Poor paired-associate learners profited more than did good paired-associate learners from picture aids on the prose task. (Author/BW)