Do Preschool Children Recognize Auditory-Visual Numerical Correspondences?

The present study investigated the ability of 3- and 4-year-old children to perform tasks which require matching sets of sounds to numerically equivalent visual displays. We found that 3-year-olds performed at chance on the auditory-visual matching task, while 4-year-olds performed significantly above chance. There is evidence that mastery of the linguistic counting system is related to success on this task. These findings are unexpected given previous research reporting that 6–8-month-olds can detect the numerical equivalence between a set of sounds and items in a visual display.     

A multivariate examination of parent involvement and the social and academic competencies of urban kindergarten children

The primary objective of this study was to obtain a multidimensional picture of parent involvement in kindergarten. Participants in this study were 307 low‐income, ethnic minority children and their primary caregivers in a large, urban school district in the Northeast. Results revealed that kindergarten parent involvement dimensions (i.e., from the Parent Involvement in Children's Education Scale; Fantuzzo, Tighe, McWayne, Davis, & Childs, 2002) were congruent with those established with preschool (Head Start) parents. Multivariate relationships were found between kindergarten parent involvement dimensions and children's social and academic competencies. Parents who actively promote learning in the home, have direct and regular contact with school, and experience fewer barriers to involvement have children who demonstrate positive engagement with their peers, adults, and learning. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 41: 363–377, 2004.     

In Their Own Words: Teachers' Reflections on Adaptability

Current research explores adaptability by gathering teachers' reflections on their adaptations. However, the field knows little of what the term adaptability means to teachers who currently teach in today's educational context. In this article, adaptability is discussed from the perspectives of 3 practicing classroom educators, teaching in various contexts (geographic region and grade level). Teachers' voices of adaptability are examined and a definition of adaptability is discussed. Obstacles are presented in these teachers' efforts to adapt their instruction in their respective contexts. Teachers then discussed the ways in which they navigated these obstacles to modify their instruction to fit a variety of learners and experiences despite these constraints.     

The Boston compact: A community response to school dropouts

The transition from school to work is difficult for many American inner city youth. In 1982, Boston's leaders signed an agreement known as the Boston Compact to tackle the student dropout and employment problems. This paper reviews the process of the Compact from 1982 to 1986, traces the steps being taken to create a communitywide plan that responds to Boston's school dropout problem, and summarizes Boston's Draft Dropout Prevention and Reentry Plan.This paper was presented at the symposium, Dropping Out in America: A New Way of Looking at The High School Dropout Problem, American Educational Research Association Meeting, San Francisco, April 20, 1986.     

Temporal patterns of schedule-induced drinking and pawgrooming in rats exposed to periodic food

Five rats were exposed to fixed-time food schedules, ranging from 30 to 480 sec. Three rats displayed a postfood pattern of schedule-induced drinking, with short latencies from food delivery to drinking at all interfood interval durations. In contrast, drinking for the other 2 subjects tended to occur at lower overall levels, and drinking bouts frequently began in the middle of the interfood interval, such that the latency from food delivery to drinking increased dramatically as the interfood interval increased. Observation of these 2 subjects revealed that another form of licking-pawgrooming-occurred reliably after food delivery and before drinking bouts. A between subject comparison of the 3 postfood drinkers and the 2 pawgroomers revealed that, in addition to a common topography (repetitive licking), pawgrooming and drinking were similar with respect to their temporal locus, relation to the interfood interval, and extinction baseline levels. These similarities suggest that drinking and pawgrooming are induced by a common mechanism. Cohen, Looney, Campagnoni, and Lawler’s (1985) two-state model of reinforcer-induced motivation provides a useful framework for the interpretation of these results.     

Teaching Quality Across School Settings

Districts are increasingly making personnel decisions based on teachers’ impact on student-achievement gains and classroom observations. In some schools, however, a teacher’s practices and their students’ achievement may reflect not just individual but collaborative efforts. In other settings, teachers’ instruction benefits less from the insights and support of their colleagues. This article analyzes multiple measures of teacher and teaching quality for 24 language arts teachers in New York City who teach in different types of school environments. Teachers in different value-added quartiles were observed and scored using two protocols, PLATO and CLASS. Schools were categorized as more and less functional using Department of Education environment grades. To compare the practices of higher and lower value-added teachers in more and less functional schools, we conduct MANOVAs of observation scores and use qualitative coding of field notes. We find value-added measures and observation protocols provide confirmatory information in less functional schools but provide contradictory information about teacher quality in more functional schools. Implications for teacher education, policy, and future research are discussed.     

Educating students with mild disabilities in general education classrooms: Minnesota alternatives

This article reports two major data collection efforts conducted during successive years. Study 1 examined the relationship between the school effectiveness variables identified in the Minnesota Educational Effectiveness Project (MEEP), and the attitudes and achievement of students in 31 MEEP schools. Study 2, which focused on 11 of the Study 1 schools, compared the instructional programs provided to students with mild disabilities in three integrated programs in these 11 schools, with those provided by conventional resource "pull-out" programs in three other schools. We not only contrasted program characteristics, but analyzed differences between program characteristics and cognitive and affective outcomes. Results do not provide a strong basis for concluding that general efforts at school improvement will provide the framework for improved outcomes among low-achieving students.