"Reading Recovery"[R] is a short-term tutoring intervention program intended to serve the lowest achieving (bottom 20%) first-grade students. Students are chosen for "Reading Recovery"[R] by school staff, and selection is based on prior reading achievement, diagnostic testing (the Clay Observation Survey of Early Literacy…

Focusing on school failure among lower-class and minority children, the paper reexamines the relationship between "cognitive style" and school performance, and questions whether lower-class school failure really concerns cognitive performance at all. "Cognitive style" is defined as information processing habits which represent the learners'…

In the book, "How Children Fail", John Holt simply but honestly records classroom interactions in a refreshing, realistic and humorous style of delivery. Many of Holt's real stories have to do with teachers often falling into the trap of asking students questions and looking only for "right answers." Holt's main thrust is child failure in a…

For the last four years the author has been involved with the design, administration and writing up of the results of competency tests which have been conducted for Grades 3 (ages 8-9)and 6 (ages 11-12) in his home province of the Western Cape, South Africa. In the course of this work, he and some of his colleagues working on this project have had…

A large body of research evidence highlights the required conditions for children to become skilled readers. Within the past decade, research also has uncovered the fact that the origins of skilled reading begin to develop even before children start school. The intent of this article is to provide a brief summary of what is known about the…

This article is based on the presidential address I delivered at the 12th annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, held in June 2005 in Toronto. I trace the development of my interest in instructional research in, first, beginning reading and, more recently, in comprehension, and I describe studies designed to improve the…

Purpose: This research proposes a framework, which identifies the underlying factors that shape learning behavior in the workplace. It takes organizational members' perspectives into consideration to gain better understanding on managing people and their behavior in the organizational learning process. Design/methodology/approach: Primary data…

School counselors often have to give difficult news to parents, a process that can be stressful and troubling for everyone involved. While the reaction of each parent is unique, research indicates that many parents who have been given difficult news about their children feel that the information was delivered poorly. This article provides…

In this article, the author talks about his experience as an 11-year-old swimmer and shares the lessons he learned as a member of the swim team. In his experience as one of the slowest team members, he discovered that slow and steady does not win the race, and when the focus is only on achievement, one loses the value of failure. As an adult, he…

The Math Essential Skills Screener--Upper Elementary Version (MESS-U) is part of a series of screening tests designed to help identify students ages 9-11 who are at risk for mathematics failure. Internal consistency, test-retest reliability, item analysis, decision efficiency, convergent validity and factorial validity of the MESS-U were studied…

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the regulation of goal orientations and strong "oughts" in students with learning disabilities (LD). Participants were 132 Greek students with state-identified LD using the achievement-discrepancy criterion, and 538 typical students. The first hypothesis tested was that feeling obliged to…

A widely held perception is that public schools are failing American children and society. Some research indicates that 9th-graders are more at risk for school failure than are students in other grades. This paper presents findings of a study that examined 9th-graders in the Durham Public School System (North Carolina) who were enrolled in a Basic…

Boys Town cares for boys and girls (average age 15 years) who are socially and emotionally at risk because of problems such as chronic neglect or abuse, broken homes, and school failure. The majority are behaviorally disordered and emotionally impaired. Within a week of coming to Boys Town, students take the Diagnostic Assessments of Reading Test.…

Academic failure is a common threat to many students in universities. Addressing this issue are intervention techniques that attempt to alleviate the negative consequences of failure and ensure continued striving for success. Attributional training is one specific approach that has been demonstrated to improve performance for at-risk students who…

This study investigated the correlation between attendance and grade point average among high school juniors, hypothesizing that there would not be a significant correlation between the two. The sample consisted of 32 students randomly selected from among 172 high school students enrolled in a Chicago public school during school years 1995-1996…