Ways that reading evaluation programs can bring reading success to individual students are presented. Each chapter is written by an authority on one of the following topics: what evaluation is, who does it, and when it should be done; reading program goals as the basis for evaluation; informal techniques for assessing prereading behavior; use of…

The minimal comprehension principle asserts that the act of comprehension must entail an interaction between an incoming linguistic message and the reader's world knowledge. An analysis of current tests of reading comprehension indicates that test passages are likely to draw broadly from knowledge of the world, so that some of the variability in…

As part of a statewide (Massachusetts) evaluation in all areas of education, the reading assessment described in this report tested all 9- and 17-year-old students in 31 school districts in an effort to examine student performance statewide as well as in the individual educational regions and communities. The first four chapters of the report…

Three hundred fifth grade pupils in an urban school district and in three rural schools in Tennessee participated in a study of relationships among attitudes toward reading, reading achievement, socioeconomic status (SES), and sex. Each pupil was rated on the Heathington Attitude Scale and the Hollingshead Two-Factor Index of Social Position and…

This study examined student attitudes toward reading and evaluated the effects of grade level, reading achievement, sex, race, and social status upon reading attitudes. Fifteen classrooms, consisting of 260 fourth and sixth grade students, participated in the study. After individual reading achievement scores were determined for each student, two…

Forty-eight black seventh-grade pupils participated in a study to test the assumption that the previously learned dialect of black inner-city pupils interferes with reading achievement. Standardized reading achievement test scores were used to classify the students in three groups representing three levels of reading proficiency. Speech variables…

This study investigated students' learning performances in reading and academic achievement after an experimental group took a reading improvement course in which vocabulary and comprehension improvement exercises were derived from their content area textbooks and a comparison group took a general reading improvement course with materials…

The problem under investigation was to determine the differential effects of three types of treatment on students' test-taking skills. The study also investigated whether test-taking instruction would result in significant mean test score gains on a standardized reading test for white and black, high and low socioeconomic status (SES) third-grade…

The Second Year Communication Skills Program (SYCSP) consists of instructional materials and procedures designed to improve the reading skills of first-grade children. The reading achievement of students was measured in 10 classrooms using the SYCSP. The Second Year Program Test, used to judge the effectiveness of the program, was administered to…

The relative value of individual or small group tutoring and isolated or contextual phrase presentation on the reading achievement scores, self-concepts, and reading attitudes of 78 inner-city third-grade Mexican-American subjects was explored in this study. All subjects received regular classroom reading instruction, but the contrast group was…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether boys read to by their fathers for the six-month period immediately preceding entrance into first grade would score significantly higher on predictor instruments for first-grade reading achievement when compared with boys read to by their mothers or boys in an unplanned situation for the same…

This study questions the developmental nature of the ability to understand syntactic structures. An exploration is made of the possibility of learning more about reading comprehension and readability by examining responses made to sentences described by transformational grammarians as structurally ambiguous. A group of fifth grade students were…

This study investigates the factors that have a bearing on the elementary urban child's standardized reading test scores. Three areas were investigated: parental contact with the school, supportive services that the child received, and the teacher's perception of the child's behavior and the behavior of the child's class. The study included 637…

This study was planned as two parts. In the first part, a prereading index similar to the ones created for kindergarteners was developed for preschool age children. The second part was an examination of the relationship between the prereading measure and four contextual variables. Thirty-six 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 year-old children were randomly selected…

The overall effectiveness of the Title I program is questionable, according to this report to Congress. Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act authorizes federal financial assistance for programs designed to meet the special educational needs of educationally deprived children living in areas with high concentrations of children…