Data from 24 restructuring elementary, middle, and high schools are used to examine teacher empowerment in schools with at least four years of experience with decentralized or school-based management. Findings suggest that empowerment is an important but not sufficient condition of change that does affect teaching quality and student performance.…

Discusses a study examining the relationship between student academic performance in an exit-level, developmental mathematics course and subsequent academic performance in a college-level mathematics course. Finds that developmental course performance and student age were significantly and positively related to academic success, while length of…

Discusses the development of soft skills such as management and sales or collaborative problem solving through the use of interactive distance education. Highlights include performance support, including interpersonal skills; long-term cognitive restructuring; and linking training to organizational goals. (Author/LRW)

This article examines the complex needs of students with disabilities in learning rigorous standards-based curricula, the need of educators to teach this population standards-based curricula effectively, and the contextual factors that affect teaching and learning standards-based curricula in secondary schools. Exemplary and promising practices…

This article discusses how text variables interact with reader, strategy, and task variables to affect readability, including text coherence, text organization, signaling, and text structure. It considers how classic readability formulas, in concert with consideration of text, text reader, and strategy variables, can be used to match texts to…

Assessed effects of sleep restriction and extension on 9- to 12-year-olds' neurobehavioral functioning. Found that modest sleep restriction led to improved sleep quality but to reduced reported alertness. Children who extended sleep improved significantly from baseline their performance on the digit forward memory test and reaction time on the…

A meta-analysis of 30 studies found the following learner characteristics influenced the treatment responsiveness of early literacy interventions: rapid naming; problem behavior; phonological awareness; alphabetic principle; memory; IQ; and demographics. With the exception of the demographic category, the obtained effect sizes for the primary…

Three experiments obtained same-different judgments from children and adults to trace normal development of local and global processing of hierarchical visual forms. Findings indicated that reaction time was faster on global trials than local trials; bias was stronger in children and diminished to adult levels between ages 10 and 14. Reaction time…

This study examined the relationship of school-level changes in the reading performance of students in general and special education to school environmental variables associated with "effective schools" reforms in 56 California schools. Results indicated inverse relationships between changes in general and special education students'…

Guidelines for assessing the classroom environment for optimal student performance cover physical environment, time/instructional management, behavior management, and teacher effectiveness. Vignettes illustrate classroom problems and suggest management solutions. A checklist identifies instructional methods and conditions that positively affect…

This article presents conceptual models of relationships between print size and reading speed and preferred viewing distances. These models illustrate how various factors can influence reading behaviors and influence decisions about the optimal angular size of print and resolution reserve. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

This article analyzes policy and legislation pertaining to special needs education in South Africa. It examines South African research and projects aimed at developing sustainable inclusive education policy and practice and concludes that sustainable inclusive education programs must be linked to programs for social and economic growth and…

This book focuses on topics germane to cognitive abilities viewed from a "minority psychology" perspective. The most contentious chapters concern test bias and heredity, with culture, socioeconomic status, and case viewed as the chief explanations for test score differences between social classes and racial and ethnic groups. The reviewer…

A study investigated relationships among 59 elementary teachers' reading-related content knowledge, their philosophical orientation toward reading instruction, their classroom practice, and their students' learning. Relationships emerged between content knowledge and instruction and between kindergarten teachers' phonological knowledge and their…

This article examines the possible meaning of the construct "emotional intelligence". Two case studies of adolescent males are presented and indicate that emotional intelligence has a significant impact not only on the qualitative level of intelligence actualization but also on the quantitative level of intelligence measurement and…