The goal of this study was to explore the long-term effects of all-day kindergarten programs on children's academic performance. The study used three waves of data from a nationally representative database from the United States, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS), with the first wave at the beginning of kindergarten and the third wave…

The author works as an academic adviser and adjunct instructor at a small, public, four-year university that provides the usual spread of bachelor's degree programs, as well as several master's degrees. He has done similar work at a private liberal arts college and at a branch campus of a large state school. He brings to this work not only a PhD…

Special education teachers working in intermediate grades and in middle school grades face many challenges as they teach both developmental reading skills and subject matter material. Not only must they deal with the increased vocabulary and domain demands of teaching informational text, they must also handle the needs of students who have not yet…

Experts from the White House to the Ivory Tower agree--and real teachers of real children concur--that reading is the most important skill young students must acquire. Whether they learn through whole language or phonics, children must leave the elementary grades competent in the art of decoding written text in their native language. Even…

Nearly all Hispanic adults born in the United States of immigrant parents report they are fluent in English. By contrast, only a small minority of their parents describe themselves as skilled English speakers. This finding of a dramatic increase in English-language ability from one generation of Hispanics to the next emerges from a new analysis of…

One of the key requirements of the Common Core State Standards for Reading is that all students must be able to comprehend texts of steadily increasing complexity as they progress through school. By the time they complete the core, students must be able to read and comprehend independently and proficiently the kinds of complex texts commonly found…

The validity of three subtests of the Dynamic Indicators for Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) was investigated for kindergarten children in a large urban school district. A stratified, random sample of 330 participants was drawn from an entire cohort of kindergarten children. Letter Naming Fluency, Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, and Nonsense…

Students demonstrated their reading comprehension skills by responding to questions about various types of reading passages on the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading assessment. Reading abilities were assessed in the contexts of literary experience, gaining information, and performing a task. A nationally…

This technical report covers almost every aspect of the United States component of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's (IEA) International Reading Literacy Study, from the inception of the project to the production of the reports. The report notes that since much has already been learned from studies such…

This study measured the extent of reading deficiencies in the United States. The research focused on reading skills that are required to cope with everyday experiences common to the lives of most Americans. Interviews were conducted with randomly designated respondents in 100 different locations throughout the country. The national sample used is…

Over the last two decades it has become clear that there is a strong relationship between literacy and health. It is known, for example, that people who are less literate are more likely to have poorer mental and physical health than those who are more literate. It is also known that people with lower levels of literacy have difficulty reading…

Using a new method to measure identity, we attempt to capture salient identities of young children developing into "good students." Using a nationally representative sample of American kindergarteners who advance to the first grade, derived from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, we examine identities based on socio-economic status,…

In developed countries like the United States and Britain, the continuing challenge for educators is to sort through the choices of an all-you-can-eat school system and teach the basic skills. Despite so-called universal education, an alarming number of people still fail to reach even basic levels of literacy. The "literacy hour" was…

Lifelong learning has become an important goal of education over the last decade. According to the United States Department of Education (2001), nearly 3 million students over age 17 (excluding those institutionalized) enrolled in adult basic education, adult secondary education, or English as a second language classes in the United States.…

This brochure presents 30 reprints of short articles selected from American Education from November 1971 through November 1972. (EA)