With the recent proliferation of college service-learning programs and tutoring programs, college students have more opportunities to serve as tutors in elementary schools than ever before. A number of reports have appeared in the research literature describing tutoring programs that could serve as models for tutoring initiatives. Based on this…

The Technology Immersion Pilot (TIP) sets forth a vision for technology immersion in Texas public schools. The Texas Education Agency (TEA) directed nearly $14 million in federal Title II, Part D monies toward funding a wireless learning environment for high-need middle schools through a competitive grant process. A concurrent research project…

This study examined the relationship between high-stakes testing pressure and student achievement across 25 states. Standardized portfolios were created for each study state. Each portfolio contained a range of documents that told the "story" of accountability implementation and impact in that state. Using the "law of comparative…

The International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) was a collaborative effort by seven governments and three intergovernmental organizations to describe and compare the literacy skills of people from Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. Each country drew a probability sample from which results…

This publication reports on student achievement in the basic skills of reading and mathematics at Years 5 and 7 in 52 urban schools of the Northern Territory of Australia in 1986, the third year of implementation of the Primary Assessment Program (PAP). PAP has been acknowledged by the national committee of the Australian Cooperative Assessment…

To weigh the negative effects of "primerese" against its supposedly improved readability, a study compared the reading of controlled basal stories with that of the same stories minimally rewritten into more natural language. Participants were 64 white, lower middle class first grade students selected from five classrooms (all with basal…

Gender differences in achievement were studied in five academic areas: (1) vocabulary; (2) language usage; (3) reading; (4) mathematics problem solving; and (5) using sources of information. Standardized achievement test scores for a sample of 3,002 students (1,642 females and 1,360 males) who were tested in each of 10 consecutive years, grades 3…

In fall 1985, a study was conducted at Cosumnes River College (CRC) to obtain information about the college's PREP (Personal development, Reading/writing skills, Educational goals, and Preparing for the future) program, follow-up data on students who have enrolled in remedial and non-remedial courses, and enrollment data on remedial students and…

Papers in this yearbook cover a variety of topics in the field of language arts instruction, such as creative writing instruction, reading assessment from a Whole Language perspective, journal writing, and strategies for modifying commercial reading materials. Papers and their authors are as follows: (1) "Let's Get Creative about Creative…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 14 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the effect of dialect variation on second grade students' perception of phoneme-grapheme correspondence; (2) communication rules and perceived outcomes within…

The effects of early education bilingual programs on subsequent educational achievement were studied with Spanish-speaking children of migrant farm workers in southern Texas. The children were enrolled in the Individualized Bilingual Instruction (IBI) program for at least one year from preschool through grade 3. About 30-50 children were tested at…

The effectiveness of an instructional improvement project in the Greeley-Evans Schools, Colorado, was studied. Teachers were provided inservice education in a class called the Essentials of Instruction. Recognizing that receiving training was not the same as being an implementer of the innovation, the Levels of Use instrument identified teachers…

The results of different types of reading achievement measures were compared for 58 low-income urban black third graders. Two formal tests were administered: the norm-referenced California Achievement Tests (CAT), and the criterion-referenced Alabama Basic Competency Test (ABCT). Informal measures included the Houghton-Mifflin Informal Reading…

A study of the pronunciation problems of language-minority children had as subjects 578 first, third, and fifth-graders from seven ethnolinguistic groups (urban and rural Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban-Americans, Franco-Americans, Native Americans, and Chinese-Americans) from low to low-middle income communities in California, Texas,…

Student outcomes and participant opinions in four experience-based career education (EBCE) programs were compiled and compared. Difficulties were encountered in finding or creating measures for the nine goals of the program: (1) career development; (2) self knowledge; (3) reading skills; (4) problem solving skills; (5) oral communication; (6)…