T he purpose of the present study was to determine the extent to which children identified on preschool readiness tests as "high risk" for development of learning difficulties do, in fact, demonstrate low achievement in basic school skills by the time they have completed several years of elementary school. A review by Keogh and Becker (1973) cited nine studies that attempted to locate children with potential learning problems in kindergarten or earlier. However, only four of these studies reported the percentage of correct predictions. A recent review of research published through 1973 (Schaer & Crump 1976) points out the lack of consensus regarding the feasibility of early identification of learning disabilities. Studies conducted from 1973 to the present provide no more reason to be confident about the validity of early identification of learning problems. False-positive rates are often high, and rates of correct prediction differ for failing as well as successful students (Dimitrovsky & Almy 1975, Eaves, Kendall, & Crichton 1974, Feshbach, Adelman, & Fuller 1974).If significant correlations are found between scores on a preschool instrument and later school achievement, it has generally been assumed that the preschool instrument has been established as a valid means of identifying children at risk for developing future learning problems. However, educators who are currently classifying children as at risk or not at risk based on the child's performance on such preschool measures may be making unwarranted assumptions regarding the validity of predictions for individual children. SUBJECTS AND MEASURESThe 732 subjects in the present investigation were drawn from the 1,613 participants in the Educational Follow-Up Study (EFS) (Rubin & Balow 1977), a prospective longitudinal investigation of the educational and behavioral outcomes associated with perinatal and early childhood conditions and events. The EFS subjects, born at the University of Minnesota Hospitals over a five-year period during the 1960s, are normally distributed on measures of IQ. The Metropolitan Readiness Tests (MRT) were administered to EFS subjects at age 5 the summer prior to kindergarten entrance and again at age 6 prior to entering the first grade. The word meaning, spelling, and arithmetic computation sections of the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT) were individually administered during the summer of the calendar year in which subjects reached their ninth birthday. At the time of the SAT administration, 212 (29.0£) of the subjects had completed grade 2, and 520 (71.0*) had completed grade 3. All EFS subjects who had been administered the MRT at both ages 5 and 6 as well as the SAT at age 9 at the time these data were collected were included in the present study. METHODS Correlations between scores on the MRT andeach of the three subtests of the SAT were first computed separately for the five-year and sixyear MRT performances. The MRT scores from 62 Journal of Learning Disabilities at UNIV OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ on April 5, 2015 ldx.sagepub.c...
A number of studies have been done on the relation between reading disability and complications of pregnancy and birth. The procedures and results of major studies are critically reviewed in this document, with attention given to issues of research design, test use, and statistical methods. Although none of the studies reviewed is free of methodological problems, the weight of the evidence supports the hypothesis that perinatal problems, especially low birth weight, are related to reading disability. Neonatal neurological damage is suggested as the major independent variable for investigators to pursue in the future. Included are an annotated list of references, an extensive table charting the findings of the major studies discussed in the document, and an appendix listing the reading and intelligence tests used in the major studies.
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