The paper presents the results of an evaluation research that studied the impact of a nationwide home intervention program, the Mother-Child Education Program, on both children and mothers immediately after the termination of the program and at the end of the children's first year of formal schooling. A pre/post control group quasiexperimental…

This study investigated the effects of learning communities on the educational development of first-year college students at a large, urban, highly selective, research university. These communities, known as "clusters," comprised a year long sequence of theme-oriented courses that were team taught and that included interdisciplinary lectures and…

Students in early childhood teacher education programs are expected to know, plan curriculum, and teach within several sets of content area, national, state, and local, learning standards. Understanding where these standards originated and why they are important within the context of classroom practice will help new teachers begin their careers…

Children whose homes are filled with books, whose parents read to them, and who have begun to understand the reading process have higher levels of reading skills and knowledge when they enter kindergarten than children who do not have such rich literacy experiences before entering school. This article describes a family literacy project developed…

Following a brief review of the literature on cognates, and a discussion of six arguments in favor of using cognates as a vocabulary acquisition device, a study is described which was designed to determine whether students were able to utilize English-French cognates in listening and reading comprehension in French. Seventy-four tenth grade…

University professors gave inservice workshops for intermediate grade teachers and continued to support teachers by modeling reading instruction techniques and monitoring implementation of reading strategies in the teachers' classrooms. Results for 82 fifth and sixth graders showed significant gains in Metropolitan Achievement Test reading scores…

This article describes the Woodcock Diagnostic Reading Battery, an instrument designed to assess the abilities and achievements of individuals ages 4 through 90 in the areas of basic reading skills, reading comprehension, phonological awareness, oral language comprehension, and reading aptitude. Its administration, standardization, reliability,…

This article describes the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests Revised/Normative Update, an instrument designed to assess reading ability in students in grades K-12, undergraduate college students, and adults. The tests evaluate basic reading skills, reading comprehension, and reading readiness. Its administration, standardization, reliability, and…

The Association Method is an instructional strategy currently being used with children with hearing loss, children with speech and language disorders, and children with reading disabilities. It is a systematic, incremental, phonetically based, multi-sensory approach designed to increase the understanding and use of spoken language; improve…

According to statistics compiled by the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL), more than 40% of working-age adults in the United States lack the requisite skills and education to succeed in life (Merrifield, 1998). In the field of adult education, however, there is much debate about how programs can best serve…

In this article, the author describes the Violence Prevention Through Cooperative Learning (VPTCL) project. Developed in 1999 by the Hawai'i Friends of Civic and Law Related Education, this hands-on program aims to support at-risk secondary school students and help them learn problem-solving and conflict-resolution skills. These skills are…

FAME is an acronym for a four-course program titled Foundations, Adventures, Mastery, and Explorations. Reading Is FAME is a research-based, developmental reading program for adolescents reading below grade level. The program incorporates a series of four courses designed for students in grades 7-12. The FAME curriculum helps students by…

According to recent U.S. census reports, while the population of the United States increased by 10%, the population speaking languages other than English at home increased by 38% between 1980 and 1990. One in six of all youth in the United States, ages 14 to 19, either speaks a language other than English at home, was born in a foreign country, or…

Literacy, which has only positive connotations in most cultures, has long been associated in Native communities with colonial education, "the reculturing and reeducation of American Indians by the secular and religious institutions of colonizing nations." Early educators imposed literacy on Indian children attending government-organized boarding…

The National Council of La Raza launched Project Excellence in Community Educational Leadership (EXCEL), in 1985 to contribute experiences and input from the community level to the school reform process and to address some of the short-term needs of the students currently enrolled. Project EXCEL, which is designed to help Hispanic American…