The under-representation of women and African Americans in engineering spurred the research documented in this study. This document reports the reults of a study investigating middle school (in a southeastern rural community) children's attitudes toward persistence, life goals and sex-stereotypes, as potential barriers to their pursuit of…

A study involving all students taking the California Achievement Test (CAT) in the Cleveland City School District (Ohio) during the fall of 1989 was conducted to assess the effects of the use of parallel test forms. Each spring, all students in grades 4, 6, and 8 are selected to take the appropriate level of the CAT reading test, Form E. As a…

This study investigated whether alcohol use by public school students differs in its relationship to other variables when analyzed on the individual level versus the aggregated group level. The study presents a model and a set of analytic techniques for studying the ways that school and individual variables relate to adolescent alcohol abuse.…

Empirical norms are a traditional and accepted tool for reporting performance. Other methods (e.g., statistical regression) are used more often in a research context to make conditional statements about performance given a certain demographic context. This paper illustrates a method for the construction of differentiated school norms and the…

This study examined differences in predicting achievement by sex on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) from the verbal, quantitative, and nonverbal scores on the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT). The sample (n=10,000) consisted of all students in Grades 2, 5, and 8 who completed both tests in fall 1984. Examinations of means and standard…

Since the fall of 1984, the Pennsylvania Department of Education has conducted a yearly statewide testing of the reading and mathematics competencies of students in grades 3, 5, and 8. Because Pennsylvania does not mandate statewide curricula, the Department has had to rely upon committees of state educators to determine which objectives to test.…

A study of the correlates of cognitive achievement in Pennsylvania's Educational Quality Assessment Program was conducted by examining both individual (student level) and ecological (building level) correlations. Analyses were completed for grade levels 5, 8 and 11 for the 1985 state assessment. Twenty-four student derived condition variables or…

This study explored the importance of group interaction for learning. It investigated: (1) the relationship between group interaction and achievement, and whether this relationship was constant across ability levels; and (2) the importance of ability, extroversion-introversion, and group composition as predictors of group interaction. The sample…

Performance of rural 13-year-olds on the 1971-1972 social studies assessment by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were reviewed in terms of three major exercise themes. Performance on skill exercises revealed rural strengths in source selection and human affairs insights, but weaknesses in reading maps and graphs. Fewer than…

A study examined 64 eighth-grade students' perceptions of opportunities available from participating in service learning and contrasted these with perceived learning opportunities available in school. Each student was enrolled in a 10-week required service learning course. Students visited service sites daily and had reflection periods two times…

Motivation orientation, planning, and self-evaluation strategies were examined in 25 students in grades 6 through 8. The students' answers to the surveys were audiotaped, transcribed, and analyzed. Recurrent themes were identified and were chosen for examples that most reflected students' ideas and strategies. On the issue of motivation, the…

The relationship between school-level minimum competency testing (MCT) programs and student reading proficiency measured by the 1983-84 National Assessment of Educational Progress was studied in subsamples of 10,367 fourth graders, 10,829 eighth graders, and 13,513 eleventh graders. No advantages of MCT programs were seen in grade 4. (SLD)

State-mandated testing programs have been in place in New Jersey since the 1976-77 school year. In 1989, the current test was replaced with two new testing programs, the Eighth Grade Early Warning Test (EWT) and the Eleventh Grade High School Proficiency Test (HSPT11). This paper follows the Trenton (New Jersey) Central High School Class of 1995,…

This study explored teachers' behavior as related to effective teaching practices in 8th, 9th, and 10th grade English classrooms in Jordan. The study also examined some variables that could predict teachers' implementation of effective teaching practices and aimed at finding an estimate of the percentage of students in 8th, 9th, and 10th grades…

A study of 15 eighth graders with behavioral disorders in Quebec evaluated the effectiveness of a social and school-related skills training program in which goals were decided by the students, their teachers, and their parents. A first year pilot study assessed the effect of parent and teacher participation in the selection of skills to be learned…