Reading levels of 161 Louisiana inmates were tested with the Peabody Individual Achievement Test, Slosson Oral Reading Test, and Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine. Average level was fourth to sixth grade, indicating that inmates had difficulty reading prison intake materials and were unable to benefit from correctional education…

Intensive reading practice using recorded books permits teaching to the levels needed for success. High interest, high-level reading material recorded in small amounts with a slow pace and short phrases can accelerate the progress of low-level readers. (SK)

Asserts that the means by which student achievement in reading are reported should be a focus rather than an afterthought. Discusses key questions related to developing report cards that serve a variety of audiences. Provides guidance and models of report cards that are more closely aligned with the literacy curriculum than traditional report…

Describes the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and its activities. Offers a summary of the 1990 NAEP reading assessment, and describes the 1992 reading assessment. Looks ahead to future NAEP projects and student assessment. (PRA)

Provides a nine-item annotated bibliography of publications in the ERIC database related to literature and the language arts. Offers useful resources that satisfy a variety of professional needs. (MG)

Investigates whether poor readers differ from their reading age controls in terms of their ability to make rhyme judgments, and determines whether intelligence levels affect the kinds of difficulties they experience. Finds that average intelligence poor readers performed with the same overall accuracy as their reading age controls. (MG)

Describes a reading model that suggests seven components essential for meeting the reading instructional needs of all students in a school. Notes that the model provides differentiated instruction for below-average, average, and above-average readers. (SR)

Although systematic monitoring of student progress has been associated with improved achievement, few teachers engage in progress monitoring because of testing-time requirements. Compared accuracy of 14 trained fourth- and fifth-grade general education students' curriculum-based reading assessments of second and third graders to accuracy of…

Calls into question the validity and usefulness of classifying poor readers into learning disability and nonlearning disability categories on the basis of the discrepancy between their IQs and reading achievement scores. A review of the research indicates that the premises on which this classification rests are not valid. (SLD)

A connectionist feedforward network implementing a mapping from orthography to phonology is described. This model develops a view of the reading system that accounts for irregular word and pseudoword reading without relying on any system of implicit or explicit conversion rules. The model accounts for skilled reading performance and the patterns…

A study explored the influences of preschool learning environments of normal ability, primary-age children (n=163) on their reading achievement. Critical factors included reading aloud to children; developmentally appropriate books; modeling by parents; selective television viewing; early literacy experiences; and homes that are psychologically…

Examines the reading standards of eight cohorts (years 1989 to 1996) of Year 6 children from five randomly selected primary schools within one Local Education Authority in England. Finds little movement in the mean scores of the eight cohorts over time and, in fact, there has been a slight but significant decline in mean scores. (RS)

Test scores of 106 employees on the Test of Adult Basic Education showed combined reading level in comprehension and vocabulary to be above 12th grade. Educational background was correlated with reading ability. Management perceptions of employee reading deficiencies were contradicted by these results. (SK)

Investigates which phonological awareness tasks are more or less difficult in Spanish; whether phonological awareness is a good predictor of reading achievement in Spanish; and whether training in Spanish phonological awareness increases Spanish reading achievement. Offers examples of phonological awareness activities for Spanish early literacy…

Discusses regression toward the mean and the confusion this can cause in the interpretation of educational data. The regression effect has two causes, imperfect measurement of the variables and imperfect correlation between the variables. Uses the example of reading achievement test scores in a Hawaiian private school to illustrate the discussion.…