The Comprehensive Basic Skills Program Review was designed by the New Jersey State Department of Education to provide a diagnosis of problems contributing to inadequate achievement in the basic skills. Local program reviews followed the state developed process and were conducted by many schools. The process analyzed the existing school programs…

Features of a model of reading that is both sensitive to individual differences and consistent with the assumption that reading processes are interactive are discussed in this report. A description of how this model accounts for individual differences in reading skill suggests three types of reading problems: slow word decoding, slow sentence…

The development of certain cognitive skills to a certain level may be necessary to acquire beginning reading skills. A review of research on cognitive skill development and beginning reading revealed that only a few studies investigated the need for ascertaining the presence of some cognitive processing abilities before reading instruction is…

Three local norm methods for deriving Elementary Secondary Education Act Title I normal curve equivalent (NCE) gains are compared to each other and to the usual Model A1 which uses national norms. The 1977-78 Title I evaluation data for Chicago students ages 9-13 were used to estimate gains. Reading and total math scores from the 1971 Iowa Tests…

The Program Analysis and Monitoring in Reading (PAM) package helps teachers and administrators anlayze, understand, and improve school reading programs by providing them with monitor reports and program reports. Both types of reports include results of student performance on tests of reading comprehension--the monitor report provides detailed…

The third in a series concerning some implications of learners' cognitive style for the development of reading competence, this paper reports on a study that was concerned with the effectiveness and efficiency with which ninth grade field dependent and field independent readers processed prose in silent reading at three difficulty levels. Results…

A study examined the efficacy of using various types of worksheets (representative of those typically used in instruction) that had been specifically designed to elicit differing achievement effects and to promote cognitive processing at the semantic level. Fifth grade students from five classrooms were divided into groups of high, middle, and low…

Intended for reading teachers and others involved in the testing or placement of students, this paper describes the development and evaluation of a prescribed individualized reading program. Following an introduction to the program (which allows students to progress through each reading level at their own pace), the second and third sections of…

Current reading theory suggests that oral language skills and reading skills interact with and implement each other. Three guidelines are helpful in shaping the development of proficient readers. (1) From kindergarten on, each year should be spent moving from oral language to print. Furthermore, the move within oral language should be from…

The problems in implementing and evaluating a television project for teaching reading in thirteen District of Columbia schools are described, and the opinion is offered that the project was successful in producing a rapid improvement in the students' interest in improving their reading ability. Participants were 300 students in grades four through…

The articles in this publication look at how tests can be used to improve the quality of reading instruction and more generally at what excellence in a reading program means. Among the topics are: changes in the reading assessment prepared by the National Assessment of Educational Progress; a discussion of the limitations and possibilities of…

Test score data for kindergarten and first grade children were subjected to several forms of multivariate analysis. First, all fall and spring kindergarten data were factor analyzed to reduce the test scores to the least number of dimensions possible. General ability factors corresponding to the expected test dimensions were obtained in all…

Fifty-two first- and second-grade students participated in a basal reader study in 1974-1975, as a follow-up to a 1973-1974 study. All but four of the subjects had entered the Ginn 360 reading program the previous year as kindergarten and first-grade students; of the 52 subjects, 38 were making satisfactory progress in reading and were considered…

The progress and problems of five Spanish-speaking fourth graders who have learned to read only in English are traced. An attempt is made to ascertain the relationship between oral fluency in Spanish and English and reading ability in English, the effects of dialect-based miscues on reading comprehension, and the types of reading strategies these…

FOR THE THIRD YEAR, THE FOLLOWING FOUR DIFFERENT METHODS OF TEACHING READING WERE CONTRASTED--(1) THE INITIAL TEACHING ALPHABET, (2) A PHONIC, FILMSTRIP, WHOLE-CLASS APPROACH, (3) A WHOLE-WORD, ECLECTIC BASAL READER METHOD, AND (4) THE PRECEDING APPROACH SUPPLEMENTED BY A PHONICS PROGRAM. SOME 400 FIRST-GRADE PUPILS WERE RANDOMLY ASSIGNED TO…