A study investigated whether lowering the reading level of a health education pamphlet would increase comprehension by adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) readers. The reading level of a general pharmacy education handout was lowered by changing vocabulary, sentence structure, and organization, by highlighting the main idea of each point, and…

A practicum was designed to determine board-wide standards for assessing student achievement in reading and writing in kindergarten through grade 8 by creating analyzed exemplars of student work. Reading and writing indicators were developed to be used as the basis for analyzing the reading and writing exemplars. Teachers collected writing…

School districts throughout Pennsylvania are attempting to implement new state regulations, including the establishment of new standards for high school graduation. As school districts consider standards, they should also make sure that all students have the opportunity to meet those standards. This includes insuring that all students leave third…

A study examined the underlying relationships between birth order and reaching achievement. Subjects were 269 students attending a suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, senior high school who took the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT) in the spring of their seventh- and eighth-grade years. One way, two way, and multiple analyses of variance were…

The applicability of a standardized performance measurement procedure is critically investigated, in order to assess reading growth for students with severe reading difficulties in a longitudinal design. To establish an appropriate growth model, several approaches are reviewed. Among them, a simplex model is chosen and tested with various…

This concise report presents excerpts from the two full reports of the 1992 Integrated Reading Performance Record (IRPR), which examined the reading habits and oral reading of a subgroup of fourth graders who participated in the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) study. The report presents major findings of the two full…

This study was conducted to assess the first year of full implementation of a teacher incentive program (TIP) in South Carolina. The study examines the relationship between student achievement and teacher participation in one of several incentive model programs. The research also explores award winning teachers and their association with higher…

Noting that Reading Recovery is a short-term, supplementary reading and writing intervention for the lowest achieving first-grade children, this report describes Reading Recovery as a way of increasing the possibility of literacy success for all children. Distinctions that contribute to the success of Reading Recovery are highlighted in the…

A study examined the effectiveness of a program designed to help the hardest-to-teach, lowest-achieving readers to function at the level of the same-aged peers. Subjects, 35 children referred from Reading Recovery who did not meet discontinuation criteria, worked with specially trained teachers for 30 minutes daily, 5 days a week. The main…

Designed to provide practical information for all elementary teachers, whether they are just getting started, getting comfortable, or fine-tuning their assessment program, this book examines manageable and practical ways to collect information about young learners. It presents the voices of many elementary teachers at various grade levels…

This report describes a program of peer tutoring using specific learning and metacognitive strategies to increase reading comprehension . The targeted population consisted of first through fourth grade students in self-contained regular education classrooms located in two adjacent suburbs of a large metropolitan area. The problem of poor…

A study examined the ecological validity of five modified measures for children in the prereading and initial reading stages of development. Subjects, 650 students in two cohorts, kindergarten through second grade, were administered modifications of the Early Reading Test (ERT), the Chicago Reading Test (Chicago), the Error Detection Test (EDT),…

A study examined the relationships among elementary school principals' knowledge of reading, principals' involvement in the school reading program, teachers' knowledge of reading, and elementary school student reading achievement. Subjects, 20 principals and 68 teachers from 20 schools in a small western city, responded to a 20-item survey…

A study investigated the attention of 116 children in 6 second- and third-grade classrooms while they participated in 4 lessons involving progressively more difficult stories. Analysis of videotapes of the lessons revealed that the likelihood of a lapse of attention was highest during the first 15 seconds of attention episodes. Lapses in attention…

The reading pariety study for 1989-90 provided information for the Cleveland, Ohio school district, parents, and community to determine what progress the school system is making toward parity in reading proficiency. Parity will be attained when statistically equivalent proportions of Black and White students score at or above the thirty-fourth…