A longitudinal study of state government homepage accessibility in Maryland and the role of web page templates for improving accessibility

It is well documented that government agencies, at all levels, continue to have problems ensuring that government web sites follow laws related to web accessibility for people with disabilities. Although there are a number of published studies on government web accessibility that are point-in-time, there are no published studies consisting of a longitudinal analysis of state-level government web site accessibility. This paper contributes to the research literature in three ways: 1) an accessibility inspection of 25 Maryland state government homepages in 2012 which involved 150 human inspections of web pages, 2) a comparison of the results from 2012 to a similar accessibility evaluation in 2009, and 3) a discussion of the role of a web page template, which was introduced in Maryland state government shortly after the 2009 evaluation. The data from this longitudinal evaluation leads to the conclusion that web page templates do tend to result in more accessible sites within state government.     

New material for teachers

Battlefields, in Teacher Education. Sam P. Wiggins. (Nashville: George Peabody College for Teachers, 1964. Pp. 109. $3.00.)

Compensatory Education for Cultural Deprivation. Benjamin S. Bloom, Allison Davis, and Robert Hess. (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1965. Pp. 179. $1.75, paper.)

Chinese Communist Education: Records of the First Decade. Stewart Fraser, editor and compiler. (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1965. Pp. xvi and 542. $10.00.)

Development in Early Children. D. Bruce Gardner. (New York: Harper and Row, 1964. Pp. 358. $5.75.)

The Predominantly Negro Colleges and Universities in Transition. Earl J. McGrath. (New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1965. Pp. 204. $2.75.)

Schools for Youth: Change and Challenge in Secondary Education. Daniel Tanner. (New York: Macmillan, 1965. Pp. 536. $6.95.)

Sigmund Freud: A New Appraisal. Maryse Choisey. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1963. Pp. 141. $4.75.)

They Closed Their Schools: Prince Edward County, Virginia, 1951–1964. Bob Smith. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965. Pp.281. $5.95.)     

Interference with avoidance behavior as a function of qualitative properties of inescapable shocks

Temporal form (continuous vs. pulsating) and shock source (alternating current vs. direct current) were factorially combined to produce four shock treatments. The effects of inescapable presentations of these stimuli on subsequent avoidance response acquisition were measured in dogs (Experiment 1) and in rats (Experiment 2) and revealed an interaction of shock variables. Initially, all groups that received ac shock showed impaired performance for the pulsating and continuous shock conditions; groups that received dc continuous shock were also impaired, while those that received dc pulsating shock were not. While this pattern of interference persisted for dogs, it was transient in rats, with only the ac continuous-shock group continuing to be impaired. Mean avoidance performance were positively related to mean activity levels during inescapable shocks for the dc shock groups but not for the ac shock groups.     

Using Publications Counts to Measure an Institution's Research Productivity

Studies that attempt to evaluate and rank institutions often overlook the research activities of an institution. In this article, we show how readily available data from the Institute of Scientific Inquiry (ISI) may be used to estimate the number of scholarly articles written by an institution's faculty. We show how institutions are ranked according to total publications and the ratio of publications to full-time faculty, how these measures vary by type of institution, and how they are correlated with other selected measures of research resources and institutional quality.     

Familiarity with School English in African American children and its relation to early reading achievement

For children whose everyday speech differs greatly from the School English (SE) they encounter in academic materials and settings, it was hypothesized that greater familiarity with SE would be associated with more successful early reading acquisition. Sentence imitation and reading skills of 217 urban African American students in kindergarten through second grade (ages 5 to 8 years) were assessed. Children in each grade varied widely in the extent to which their imitations of SE sentences included phonological and grammatical forms that are acceptable in African American Vernacular English but not in SE. Higher familiarity with SE (reproducing SE features more often when imitating) was associated with better reading achievement, and these relationships were independent of memory ability.     

Teachers College Moves Into New Building

There is a good chance that many of your pupils have already learned the science lesson you plan to present. Most science learning, according to this author, takes place in the family setting.