This study investigated the interactions between 26 parents and their 3-to 5-year-old children as they collaborated to write a letter to someone during a 10-minute videotaped session. Observations of these sessions were coded using categories designed to indicate: (a) the manner of the exchange of information, (b) the types of information that parents and children exchanged during the writing, and (c) the nature of the children's written input into the resulting letter product. Regression analyses were used to examine how the parents' level of control was associated with: (a) the nature of the children's communicative input into the literacy exchange, (b) the type of information about writing upon which the interchange was focused, and (c) the nature of each child's written input into their letter product. Parents exhibiting higher levels of control tended to have children who exhibited higher levels of response and recognition that they heard the parents, had exchanges that focused on spelling, and had written products that were conventional in nature. Parents demonstrating lower levels of control tended to have children who exhibited higher levels of initiations and verbal input, had exchanges focused on the content of the letter, and had written products that were emergent in nature. These results are discussed in terms of the parents' perception of the experimental task and the amount of instructional support needed to complete the task.

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Reading involves phonologic decoding, in which readers "sound out" a word; orthographic decoding, in which readers recognize a word visually, as in "sight reading"; and comprehension. Because reading can involve multiple processes, dyslexia might be a heterogeneous disorder. This study investigated behavior and gross lobar anatomy in subtypes of dyslexic and control subjects. Subjects aged 18 to 25 years with identified reading problems and a group of healthy controls were given cognitive and behavioral tests and volumetric brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Because atypical cerebral laterality has been proposed as a potential neural risk for dyslexia, dyslexic and control subjects were compared on anatomy of gross lobar regions. On asymmetry quotients, no significant differences were found between groups. Examination of the percentage of total brain volume of each structure revealed that control and dyslexic subjects were significantly different (P = .018). Dyslexic subjects had a larger percentage of brain volume than did the controls in the areas of total prefrontal (P = .003; 9.30% larger) and superior prefrontal (P = .004; 11.48% larger region). A Pearson correlation was performed to investigate whether a relationship existed between behavioral measures and either volumes of total prefrontal and total occipital regions or asymmetry quotients. A significant positive relationship between the left total occipital and word identification performance existed (R = .452, P = .045). Because it is believed by some that dyslexia occurs in varying degrees of severity, and because one of the research questions in this study is whether anatomy relates to severity or to distinct biologic groups, subjects were grouped according to both the nature and distinct pattern of reading or language performance and the degree of deficit. A battery of reading tests revealed five clinical subgroups of control (two) and dyslexic (three) subjects. These subgroups were statistically different on all cognitive and behavioral measures. When asymmetry was investigated across subgroups, significant differences between subgroups were found at the multivariate level (P = .043). Only the phonologic deficit groups (weak phonologic controls, phonologic deficit dyslexic subjects) had atypical asymmetry patterns. This finding suggests that lack of subtyping could have confounded earlier studies and that anomalous asymmetry might be related to phonologic dyslexia, whereas other subtypes might be reflective of environmental factors. Examination of volume at the subgroup level also showed differences between subgroups that might have implications for the nature of compensation. This study supports the concept that anomalous anatomy might reflect anomalous functional cerebral laterality, which could be a risk factor for developmental dyslexia, varying according to the nature of the deficit.

The impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita has been well documented (see Introduction and chap. 1, this volume), and few institutions fared worse than schools. Of 2,000 primary schools in Louisiana, 1,500 were within the parishes most affected by the storms (Kent, 2006). Hurricane Katrina directly affected 930 Louisiana schools with 480,000 students and teachers, whereas Rita affected 515 schools with 235,000 students and teachers. Some schools were closed for days and some for months, reopening when the initial cleanup This chapter is based on work supported by National Science Foundation Grant 0555387 and the Louisiana Board of Regents, Teresa K. Buchanan, Principal Investigator. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this chapter are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of these organizations.Diane C. Burts and Timothy Page were coinvestigators on this project. Diane Burts's work on the materials and protocol, as well as her work with Timothy Page to develop the stories for the interviews, was critically important to this project. Virginia Gil-Rivas provided the tools used to measure teachers' psychological well-being, training, and teachers' and children's hurricane-related personal experiences. Ana Morales provided invaluable assistance throughout the entire project. We are grateful to these wonderful colleagues. We also appreciate the hard work of research team members Rhonda Norwood, Susheel Brahmeshwarkar, Sharbari Dey, and Kyung-Ran Kim and the perceptive assistance of Deborah Conway on this manuscript. We are deeply indebted to project consultant David Klahr, who offered critically important support and insight.

Not everything that counts can be counted. And not everything that can be counted counts. -Attributed to Albert EinsteinDetermining what counts, and what does not, as evidence of young children's development has become an increasingly complex issue for early childhood educators. A broad range of stakeholders in the education of young children, from parents and teachers to administrators and policy-makers, have their own views about how children develop and how learning should be supported and assessed in American schools. There is often vehement disagreement about what constitutes appropriate evidence of achievement and equally passionate differences of opinion about how that evidence should be collected, analyzed, reported, and used to make instructional decisions (