As the foreign-born population in the United States grows, the achievement of immigrant children is a pressing concern. We examined family educational involvement in early elementary school as a potential source of support for the academic success of children in immigrant families. Using a nationally representative sample, we examined rates of…

Increasingly, schools across the nation are encountering behaviorally challenging students entering primary grade classrooms. With this project, we sought to effectively intervene with such students within a public school setting using an empirically derived team approach adapted for use in an applied setting. The Behavioral Consultation Team…

Examines the predictive validity of a screening test for children with mild learning problems. Scores on a cognitive battery were evaluated in terms of the accuracy with which they predicted the classification of children into regular or special education. A classification accuracy level of 79% was achieved for the exceptional children, and 70%…

Examines the effect of Reading Recovery, an early intervention program for first-grade children, on the rates of referral and placement in special education in New York City. The results showed that children who received the Reading Recovery program were referred for testing and placed in special education at a statistically significant lower…

Comparability of a Spanish language translation of the Preschool and Kindergarten Behavior Scales (PKBS) was examined in relation to the English language version. Children were rated concurrently by respondents on English and Spanish versions of the PKBS. Results showed virtually identical internal consistency of scores on both forms on Social…

Examines teacher-rated behavior problems and competencies during the first two years of formal schooling among African American and Caucasian children. Found a significant main effect for race for both behavior problems and competencies in repeated measures analyses. Data indicate that African American children did not maintain age-appropriate…

Investigates differences between two types of reading probe material to monitor students' oral reading fluency over time. Reading sources were the curriculum in which the child was being instructed at school, and a set of generic (curriculum-independent) passages. Results indicated that students read significantly more words correct in the generic…

Two studies compare phonology-based instructional strategies designed for improving spelling skills of elementary school children against instruction strategies that rely only on visual exposure of words. In both studies, posttests showed that children taught through psycholinguistic and phoneme awareness methods significantly outperformed the…

The field of early childhood education has undergone several changes over the years. Current issues concerning assessment-intervention programs for kindergarten and first grade children are examined. The future state of the field and how it will impact the role of the school psychologist are discussed. (Author)

Examines the effects of randomizing components of an interdependent group contingency procedure on the target behavior of 12 second-grade students. Study compares levels of disruptive behavior across baseline, an intervention phase with only randomized reinforcers, and an intervention phase with all components randomized. Results suggest that both…

Survey conducted of public and private school districts (N=755) in New York ascertained procedures and instruments used to conduct kindergarten screening. The Developmental Indicators for the Assessment of Learning, and the Brigance K and 1 Screen were the most widely used instruments. The majority of respondents (95%) reported that screening is…

Examines the effect of the kindergarten experience on self-perceptions of African-American and White students (N=209) as they progressed through their kindergarten year. Results indicate that the kindergarten experience had an equalizing effect on the self-perceptions of African-American and White children, although self-perception of cognitive…

Describes the development of the Readiness Inventory (RI), a measure of readiness for first grade. The RI was completed on 139 first-grade children and analyzed using a model of Item Response Theory. Findings indicate that behaviors dealing with academic skills are less indicative of readiness than abilities dealing with role-governed behaviors or…

Examines teachers' responses to concern about classroom misbehavior in terms of support they access, strategies they use, and information they require to more effectively deal with misbehavior. Results indicate that concern about their students' misbehavior was negatively associated with teachers' confidence and positively associated with the use…

Investigates the effect of self-modeling as an intervention to increase individual participatory behavior in the classroom using a multiple baseline design across three second-grade students. Participants closely approximated or surpassed the control students' mean rate of participation, suggesting that the intervention was effective in increasing…