Pronouncements emphasizing the importance of the teacher in any reading program are shown time and time again in the literature. Exactly what teacher characteristics make a difference and what relationships indeed exist between teacher performance and student reading achievement has been a continuing puzzlement to educational researchers. Research…

A study of the reading and writing abilities of students aged 7 to 19, in Linkoping, Sweden, was conducted from 1971 to 1975 and contained two parts: a survey of the development of certain reading and writing skills and an attempt to establish the extent to which pupils leaving school had reached satisfactory levels of reading and writing skills.…

Effects of assignment to a regular classroom, to a resource room, or to a remedial reading group were examined in a study of gains in reading achievement of 49 elementary school boys. Measures used included the Slosson Intelligence Test, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, the Primary Mental Abilities Vocabulary subtest, and the…

The relationship of socioeconomic status to the reading achievement of Anglo, Mexican-American, and black pupils was investigated in a sample of 144 third- and fifth-grade pupils. Pupils who participated in a free lunch program were classified as belonging to the poverty group; those who did not participate were classified as nonpoverty. At both…

This study investigated the language performance of two groups of children in grades four, five, seven, and eight. One group was composed of 15 children who began first grade at less than six years, three months of age; the other group included 15 who began first grade after they were over six years, eleven months of age. Results from a series of…

Examines the relationship between ability-grouping policies in British secondary schools and (1) pupils' reading and mathematics attainment at age 16 and (2) prospective public examinations entries. No significant relationship was found between ability-grouping policy and scores, but there was an indication that mixed-ability schools enter their…

The relationships between the quality of a student's group membership and four student outcomes (reading achievement, self-concept, attitudes toward school, and anxiety) were studied in fifth and sixth grade classrooms. Significant main effects were found for group membership and social structure. (Author/GDC)

Good and poor readers' visual and auditory memory were tested. No group differences existed for single mode presentation in recognition frequency or latency. With multimodal presentation, good readers had faster latencies. Dual coding and self-terminating memory search hypotheses were supported. Implications for the reading process and reading…

Cites examples that show that schools do make a positive difference and that reading scores have not declined. (MKM)

Rural Brazilian first graders who read stories about their local environment performed better than their counterparts who read stories with urban settings. (MKM)

Study habits and memorization strategies were found to differ in fourth grade good readers and poor readers. The good readers also achieved higher recall. With training in efficient mnemonic strategies, however, the poor readers performed as well as the good readers. (GDC)

Study investigated efficacy of predicting academic achievement as measured by the WRAT, using Verbal and Performance scores of WISC-R as predictors. Both tests were given to 155 children referred for psychological evaluations. Performance IQ did not significantly predict academic achievement, and Verbal IQ significantly predicted only Reading and…

Thirty-six conduct problem first graders were randomly assigned to either a special class of eight children or regular classes. (Author)

This study supports the premise that children's attitudes toward reading and concepts of themselves as readers reflect their classroom status as readers rather than their actual reading ability. Compared were six of the poorest readers from a high-achieving class and five of the best readers from a low-achieving class. (BF)

To aid in the early identification of potential learning disabled children, the predictive efficiency of three kindergarten measures (a reading readiness test, a reading achievement test, and a teacher rating scale) for 87 children was correlated with first grade achievement. (Author/CL)