Cognitive Correlates of the Covariance in Reading and Arithmetic Fluency: Importance of Serial Retrieval Fluency

This study examines the core predictors of the covariance in reading and arithmetic fluency and the domain-general cognitive skills that explain the core predictors and covariance. Seven-year-old Finnish children (N = 200) were assessed on rapid automatized naming (RAN), phonological awareness, letter knowledge, verbal counting, number writing, number comparison, memory skills, and processing and articulation speed in the spring of Grade 1 and on reading and arithmetic fluency in the fall of Grade 2. RAN and verbal counting were strongly associated, and a constructed latent factor, serial retrieval fluency (SRF), was the strongest unique predictor of the shared variance. Other unique predictors were phonological awareness, number comparison, and processing speed. Findings highlight the importance of SRF in clarifying the relation between reading and arithmetic fluency.     

Making a Difference in the Lives of Youth: Mapping Success with the “Six Cs”

Many museums offer specialized programs for young people during out‐of‐school time, yet the consequences of such programs are not well documented. This article explores the potential utility of borrowing a conceptual framework from the youth development literature as a tool for assessment. The authors map findings from three studies of museum youth programs onto the youth development framework as an exercise in understanding the extent to which this model may be useful in developing museum youth programs. Results from this preliminary analysis demonstrate that the framework could serve as a viable tool for program design, and could offer a clear, grounded framework with common language for articulating program impacts often known intuitively and/or anecdotally but not formalized.     

A Drop in the Bucket: Randomized Controlled Trials Testing Reading and Math Interventions

The purpose of this study was to determine the proportion of empirical studies published in the last 5 years in a sample of special education peer‐reviewed journals that (1) assessed the effects of reading and math interventions with group designs and (2) used random assignment to treatment conditions to test those interventions. A hand search of articles from the Journal of Special Education, Exceptional Children, Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, the Journal of Learning Disabilities, and School Psychology Review yielded 806 relevant articles, of which 5.46 percent tested a reading or math intervention using a group design and 4.22 percent used random assignment. These findings indicate that randomized experimental designs, which offer the highest level of evidence of an intervention's efficacy, are underrepresented in the literature, at least in the area of reading and math interventions.