In January, W. H. Brady Scholar Charles Murray stepped back from current education debates about reauthorization of the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act and education funding in the president's budget to ask more fundamental questions about the goals that should shape American education in the future. This "On the Issues" is adapted from…

It is the particular concern of the present paper to examine some important features of the cognitive deficit model, and in particular, to look closely at the assumptions on which compensatory education is based. (Author)

Presents social scientists' claim that IQ scores can determine a person's social, educational, and occupational future at an early age. Echoes the Platonic idea that each individual should be put to the use for which nature intended, and that IQ, which is thought to be hereditary, can effectively predict this use. (58 citations) (EMH)

Developmental and individual differences in mathematical aptitude were investigated as a function of knowledge structure and processing variables. Results indicated the relative importance of knowledge structure and strategy skills in aptitude test performance. Protocol data further elaborated the interrelationships between knowledge and process…

Various hypotheses and opinions relating to cognitive differences between males and females are reviewed. It is shown that the largest sources of cognitive differences between the sexes can be traced to courses of study and other aspects of relevant experience based on outmoded sex role stereotypes. (Author/GC)

Developmental differences in reasoning ability and item processing demands are analyzed in a study of cognitive determinants of number analogy performance in two IQ levels of elementary school children and college students. The amount of solution-related information in working memory was the crucial processing demand. Process differentiations of…

Three distinct theories can be set forth for viewing intelligence: a "super-intellect theory" associated with the belief in innate ideas; a sensualistic theory that posits no intellectual role beyond synthesizing of sense-data; and a concept of intelligence as a power to abstract, judge, and reason. Many chronic and current educational…

The author presents a discussion of certain portions of Arthur Jensen's controversial article. The general conclusion is that Jensen has not provided substantial evidence that there are differences in neural structure among children from different social or ethnic groups which are genetically determined. The reviewer reacts to Jensen's conclusion…

According to confluence theory, a child is helped or hindered in intellectual development according to the average absolute intelligence (mental age) in the family when the child is born. An analysis of test scores, family information, and socioeconomic data of 36,000 college applicants in Colombia failed to support this theory. (Author/CP)

A model of the sources of differences in the learning potentials of students is presented, including group differences in learning potentials between gifted and nongifted students; interindividual differences between gifted students; intraindividual differences within one gifted student; and independent and interactive contributions of…

Discusses the most widely used individual intelligence tests: Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) and Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale (Form L-M). Covers what the tests measure; psychometric or technical properties of the tests; and how test results are used. (JOW)

Reviews data from the "High School and Beyond" study to examine sibling intellectual symmetry and the degree to which family background affects the siblings' intellectual ability. Finds considerable symmetry in intellectual skills. Discovers little impact on symmetry from gender or birth order. (CFR)

Social, physical, emotional, and cognitive developmental rates for gifted children do not correspond to each other and--except for physical development--do not necessarily correspond to age peer norms. Giftedness itself causes asynchrony; that is, it causes children to be out of sync with other components. In the classroom, the teacher is…

Maintains that intellectual ability has become a more important determinant of occupational success in recent decades, resulting in increased social class differences. Finds that, contrary to the usual view, class differences have become smaller and current social problems cannot be ascribed to low-ability people in the lower classes. (CFR)

This is an extensive study of Ann Arbor's first school desegregation effort, involving the 1965 closing of Jones elementary school and subsequent reassignment of its predominantly Negro population to predominantly white schools. The research focused on the first year of school desegregation, exploring academic, social, behavioral, and attitudinal…