The development of the Alberta Diagnostic Reading Program (ADRP) was based on a current psycholinguistic theory that describes reading as a process in which the reader uses background information to communicate with the author. To ensure its usefulness and effectiveness, the developers of the ADRP sought the advice and direct involvement of many…

Height, weight, and triceps skinfold were measured in 1,680 Mexican American children, 10 through 14 years of age, from the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) region of Texas. Study sample measurements were compared to those gathered in 1972 involving LRGV Mexican American children as well as National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) reference data…

This bilingual handbook, presented in both Hmong and English, is designed to assist parents of language minority students who live in California. The book is part of the technical assistance effort of the State Department of Education to clarify the operations of the California schools to language minority parents so they can better support the…

These instructor materials for an aviation maintenance technology course contain five instructional modules. The modules cover the following topics: determining the relationship of voltage, current, resistance, and power in electrical circuits; computing and measuring capacitance and inductance; measuring voltage, current, resistance, and…

Phase III of the Louisiana School Effectiveness Study (LSES-III) was designed in part to obtain rich, qualitative data on the characteristics of more and less effective schools in the Gulf South. Data were gathered on eight matched outlier pairs of schools during the 1984-1985 school year. Of the eight historically ineffective schools in LSES-III,…

A project was undertaken to develop and field-test new methodologies for collecting follow-up and placement data on completers of Miami-Dade Community College (MDCC). Strategies used in the study included exploration of such nontraditional data sources as in- and out-of-state private university transfers, state university system tapes for all…

The role of language transfer in the acquisition of English as a second language as indicated in the production of relative clauses was examined. Analysis of adult Arab students' written responses to a variety of test types revealed that (1) language transfer is a significant factor in second language acquisition; (2) there is a distinction…

The aims of the projects described in this paper were to develop and evaluate a new approach to the assessment of English language skills of English as a second language (ESL) students. The approach makes use of optical scanning equipment in scoring cloze-elide test exercises, thereby providing a rapid, relatively inexpensive and objective measure…

Factors affecting the return rate of a mailed questionnaire were investigated. A survey was mailed to 196 students who had dropped out of home study courses offered by a distance education university. The effects of personalizing the cover letter and of including anonymous pre-coded personal information on the questionnaire were studied in a 2 X 2…

The question of whether a new eligibility ruling will prevent 78 student-athletes in Iowa from receiving athletic scholarships was assessed. Four surveys of Iowa high school principals evaluated the effect of eligibility rules based on grade point averages (GPA), standardized test scores, and high school core curriculum requirements. Attention was…

The problems existing during the reorganization of the Cleveland School District into a unitary administration are presented from the perspective of the head of the Research and Analysis Department. The district had been fighting a desegregation case for 9 years and operating in a receivership with a triple bureaucracy imposed upon it (the normal…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 34 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) object conservation and receptive language in day care center infants; (2) the syntactic incorporation of linguistic units; (3) implicit theories of meaning in…

This instructor's guide on solar heating and cooling is part of a series of individualized instructional materials. The guide is provided to help the instructor make certain that each student gets the most benefit possible from both the student's manual and what he/she does on the job. Notes for the instructor contain suggestions on how the…

Activities were undertaken to help correct deficiencies identified in the Long Range Planning and School Improvement (LRPSI) Project in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Diagnostic tests were administered to 800 vocational students to identify those with critical mathematics deficiencies. All instructors were taught interpretation techniques and…

This volume of measurement instruments in the English language arts is the second one produced by the Research Instruments Project (TRIP), which was designed to collect and evaluate research instruments in language arts, language and language development, literacy, literature, oral language, reading, teacher knowledge/attitudes, and writing. The…