A study was conducted to determine if participation in a pre-first grade transactional program would be more effective than grade repetition in enhancing first grade readiness. The transition program emphasized the acquisition of academic and behavioral skills necessary for a successful first grade experience. Students in the program were trained…

A study designed to provide insights into reading programs and materials, specifically those in the 21 elementary schools in one California school district, is described in this report. Following a brief presentation of the background of the study, the report states the 15 questions investigated and describes the variables, population, and…

To learn about the problems inherent in the testing of basic skills and how these problems might be solved, the University of Cincinnati administered the "Pre-Professional Skills Test" (P-PST) to its junior education majors. Using a cut-off score of 170 on the P-PST, 30 students were found to need remediation in reading. These students…

A study was conducted to examine the influence of topic familiarity on good and poor readers' ability to identify and use important information in expository texts. Subjects were 56 eighth grade students and 37 adults. After indicating their familiarity with the topics of eight experimental passages using J. P. Guilford's method of paired…

A discussion of ongoing efforts to identify and analyze city schools which were instructionally effective for poor and/or minority children is presented. The "Search For Effective Schools" project attempted to answer the question: Are there schools that are instructionally effective for poor children? Two thousand five hundred pupils in…

The Benjamin Franklin High School Unit Program in New York City was designed to overcome the serious academic deficiencies identified as criterion for entry into the program: retardation in reading and mathematics and to improve attitudes toward school, increase classroom attendance and participation, reduce the dropout rate, improve self-image…

The Primary Reading Program was initiated in 117 classrooms in 40 North Carolina schools, to improve the reading achievement of the primary school students. The same number of control classrooms were also selected for comparison. Features of the program included increased funding for instructional materials; use of volunteers and teacher aides for…

Systematic classroom observation instruments were used to study the relationship between student coping style and student growth in reading. Classrom behaviors were recorded in the fall and the following spring with the Coping Analysis Schedule for Educational Settings (CASES). Data were analyzed separately for two types of classroom setings:…

This practicum report describes the planning and implementation of a program to improve scores on the Basic Skills Reading Mastery Test at a senior high school that has been experiencing a decline in standardized test scores in recent years. A variety of strategies were used by the principal to make the improvement of reading skills a total staff…

A 4-year project, Conceptions of Reading, was established to provide information about how teachers use reading theories and models and other conceptions as they plan and carry out reading instruction. The nature of the methodology dictated that the over-all goal of the project be to characterize how teachers think about reading and their reading…

As part of the annual evaluation of Title I Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) projects, this report was produced. It is organized into six sections: (1) Programmatic Goals; (2) Evaluation Techniques; (3) Findings; (4) Discussion; (5) Summary and Conclusions; and (6) Abstracts of Project Reports. The abstracts are based on annual…

The limitations and advantages of any given measure of performance used to classify students as good or poor readers have not been investigated thoroughly. A study was conducted to determine what happens on several dependent measures of comprehension when the same students are separated into good and poor readers based on different criteria.…

This interim report summarizes the procedures and results of the Sustaining Effects Study (SES) on Compensatory Education, conducted at selected elementary schools during the 1967-77 school year. Data from the study are presented for the following findings: (1) poor and educationally needy children are the principal recipients of Compensatory…

This report offers the premise that a psychology of reading instruction has a set of questions of its own, questions that concern the ways in which the environmental interventions called instruction interact with cognitive processes to modify competence. The report discusses two streams of psychological research as they relate to reading…

A computer managed instructional system for reading, begun five years ago in Belvedere-Parkway Elementary School in Calgary, contains 329 behavioral objectives ranging from kindergarten to 8th grade levels, with testing performed online. After completion of a test, a student receives a printout listing the objectives completed, those that need…