The sometimes poor performance of Career and Technical Education (CTE) concentrators on a state-mandated proficiency test is a major concern of CTE educators. This study examined whether (a) there are performance differences on state-mandated 11th-grade math and reading tests between CTE and non-CTE students with similar proficiency scores in the…

BLACK AND WHITE FILMSTRIPS THAT REPRODUCED STILL PICTURES AND SOUND TRACK FROM EDUCATIONAL TELEVISION BROADCASTS WERE USED TO STUDY THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ETV REPRODUCTIONS IN AIDING POOR ACHIEVERS. THE SPECIFIC ADVANTAGE OF SUCH A REPRODUCTION WAS THAT IT COULD BE PACED TO THE LEARNING TEMPO OF THE STUDENTS RATHER THAN USING THE TOO-FAST PACE OF A…

Describes how 40 middle-school students and 2 teachers design a curriculum integration program centered on student-generated learning, characterized by strong student-to-student and student-to-teacher relationships. Covers choosing the students, setting the stage, and determining what to study. Provides examples of student-developed themes. (PKP)

The first U.S. charter school opened in 1992, and the scale of the charter movement has since grown to 4,000 schools and more than a million students in 40 states plus the District of Columbia. With this growth has also come a contentious debate about the effects of the schools on their own students and on students in nearby traditional public…

Compares pedagogical practices in an eighth-grade middle school classroom with those a of one-room Amish school studied in an earlier work. Taken together, the two settings suggest that one must seek "the present status and performance of the U.S. education system" not in the usual indicators, but in the contradictory beliefs and…

This study compares middle schools to K-8 schools, as well as to newly formed K-8 schools that are part of a K-8 conversion policy. The outcome is student achievement, and our sample includes 40,883 eighth-grade students from 95 schools across five cohorts. The analysis uses multilevel modeling to account for student, cohort, and school-level…

TECHNIQUES OF PROGRAMING WHICH ALLOW FOR A MORE SYSTEMATIC METHOD OF RELATING THE DIFFICULTY OF A FRAME TO THE ABILITY OF THE LEARNER WERE DEVELOPED AND EVALUATED IN FOUR SEPARATE STUDIES. EXPERIMENT ONE TESTED THE HYPOTHESIS THAT ACHIEVEMENT IS A FUNCTION OF THE INTERACTION OF THE ABILITY OF THE LEARNER AND THE AMOUNT OF INFORMATION CONTAINED IN…

THE DISCRIMINATION OF PICTURES AND PICTURE ELEMENTS AMONG 5TH-, 8TH-, AND 11TH-GRADERS WAS STUDIED (1) TO DETERMINE THE DIFFERENCES IN INTERPRETATION OF SPECIFIC STATIC VISUAL STIMULI WHEN PRESENTED THROUGH TWO TYPES OF ILLUSTRATIONS (PHOTOGRAPHS AND OUTLINE DRAWINGS OF THE SAME SCENES) AND (2) TO GAIN INSIGHT INTO VARIATION IN THE INTERPRETATION…

This article reports on the Pittsburgh Public Schools Oral Ratings Assessment for Language Students (PPS ORALS) project, a Title VI Foreign Language Assistance Program grant-funded project to create an online testing Software program that makes large-scale oral testing in a world language not only feasible, but also easy to create, administer, and…

TWO DIFFERENT USES OF VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS FOR SCIENCE INSTRUCTION WERE INVESTIGATED. THE FIRST STUDY EXAMINED THE HYPOTHESIS THAT USE OF PICTORIAL INSTRUCTION WOULD PRODUCE HIGHER CORRELATION BETWEEN RESULTS OF VISUAL APTITUDE TESTS AND LEARNING TESTS, AND THAT VERBAL INSTRUCTION WOULD PRODUCE HIGHER CORRELATION BETWEEN RESULTS OF VERBAL…

Correlates of reading and writing achievement were examined in Pennsylvania's Educational Quality Assessment program. Data came from the 1978 and 1979 assessments of fifth, eighth, and eleventh grade students. The 35 variables serving as correlates were classified as school (manipulable) and home/community (nonmanipulable), and were derived from…

The Pennsylvania industrial arts curriculum guide for grades 7 and 8 reflects changing philosophy and practices in industrial arts education as well as incorporating the effect of technological changes. Objectives unique to industrial arts education are: (1) to develop literacy in a technological civilization, (2) to develop an insight and…

Researchers used the 1981-84 Pennsylvania Educational Quality Assessment Program to study student socioeconomic status (SES), race, and gender as related to mathematics achievement in fifth, eighth, and eleventh graders. At all three levels, Whites scored higher than Blacks, and achievement varied directly with SES levels. There were no replicable…

Instruments to measure decision-making skills of grade 5, 8, and 11 students were developed as a part of Pennsylvania's statewide assessment program. A decision-making model was formulated based upon John Dewey's five major steps of the critical thinking process: (1) identify the problem; (2) establish the facts; (3) formulate the hypothesis; (4)…

Using primary sources, this unit explores the founding of the 12th and most successful of the English colonies in North America, Pennsylvania. Established by the Quaker civil libertarian William Penn, Pennsylvania was intended to demonstrate that a society founded on mutual respect, tolerance, and individual responsibility could flourish. The…