Low-performing Children Research Articles

Sleep‐dependent consolidation of procedural motor memories in children and adults: the pre‐sleep level of performance matters

In striking contrast to adults, in children sleep following training a motor task did not induce the expected (offline) gain in motor skill performance in previous studies. Children normally perform at distinctly lower levels than adults. Moreover, evidence in adults suggests that sleep dependent offline gains in skill essentially depend on the pre-sleep level of performance. Against this background, we asked whether improving children's performance on a motor sequence learning task by extended training to levels approaching those of adults would enable sleep-associated gains in motor skill in this age group also. Children (4-6 years) and adults (18-35 years) performed on the motor sequence learning task (button-box task) before and after ~2-hour retention intervals including either sleep (midday nap) or wakefulness. Whereas one group of children and adults, respectively, received the standard amount of 10 blocks of training before retention intervals of sleep or wakefulness, a further group of children received an extended training on 30 blocks (distributed across 3 days). A further group of adults received a restricted training on only two blocks before the retention intervals. Children after standard training reached lowest performance levels, whereas in adults performance after standard training was highest. Children with extended training and adults after reduced training reached intermediate performance levels. Only at these intermediate performance levels did sleep induce significant gains in motor sequence skill, whereas performance did not benefit from sleep in the low-performing children or in the high-performing adults. Spindle counts in the post-training nap were correlated with performance gains at retrieval only in the adults benefitting from sleep. We conclude that, across age groups, sleep induces the most robust gain in motor skill at an intermediate pre-sleep performance level. In low-performing children sleep-dependent improvements in skill may be revealed only after enhancing the pre-sleep performance level by extended training.

Four Effects of the High-Stakes Testing Movement on African American K-12 Students

In order ensure that American are competitive with in other countries, since the 1980s, U.S. policymakers have been trying improve the K-12 public school system. Recent reform efforts have led the current high-stakes testing movement, which measures student achievement and school effectiveness mainly by standardized test scores. In this article, the authors explain how the current high-stakes testing movement has harmed African American through (1) instructional practices that have not resulted in widespread higher test scores; (2) increasing student apathy; (3) more punitive discipline policies and pushing more youth into the prison pipeline, and also by (4) creating a narcissistic education system that strives make schools look good, even if are not really learning information that will help them improve the quality of their lives. The authors conclude with recommendations that can improve the schooling experiences of African American youth.Key words: apathy, achievement gaps, prison pipeline, narcissism, NCLB, school reformIntroductionFrom its creation until the present time, there has been an on-going quest improve the U.S. ?? 2 public school system, and promises of reform have been a foundation of many political campaigns. Nevertheless, the school system has continuously failed live up its potential (Spellings, 2012). Consequently, some receive a quality education that prepares them for college or enter the workforce, and others receive an education that prepares them for lowpaying jobs or perpetual unemployment (Hale, 2001). One of the most far-reaching reforms began in the 1980s after Nation at Risk. . (The National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) was published. This report revealed that U.S. were not performing as well academically as their counterparts in other nations. A flurry of educational reforms followed, include: the 1987 High Schools That Work Reform (Smith, 2005), 1993s Success For All (Smith, 2005), and the Comprehensive School Reform of 1997 (Smith, 2005).The latest reform endeavor was codified in 2002, when the U.S. Congress enacted the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which amended the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (U.S. Department of Education, 2002). According its statement of purpose, NCLB was created to ensure that all children obtain a high-quality education and reach a minimum proficiency on challenging state academic achievement standards and state academic assessments (U. S. Congress 2002, p. 15). These goals would be accomplished through a twelve-step process that includedmeeting the educational needs of underperforming from historically underserved backgrounds; closing the achievement gap especially. between high- and low-performing children and their more advantaged peers; and significantly elevating the quality of instruction by providing staff in participating schools with substantial opportunities for professional development. (U.S. Congress, 2002, p. 15)Although the authors of NCLB explicitly outlined a multifaceted approach school reform, in the end, NCLB became equated with one ultimate objective: producing high test scores. A major consequence has been the current high-stakes testing movement that has made standardized test scores the main criteria by which student knowledge, teacher efficacy, and school quality are assessed. An even greater problem has been that although the authors of NCLB had good intentions, a decade after the reform was enacted most of its goals have not been met (Hightower, 2012; Klein & Rice, 2012).Former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings stated, Half of our minority don't graduate from high school on time. And of move through the system without having basic reading and math skills (Spellings 2012, p. 42). Among the millions of students whom Spellings referred are African Americans, a group who has historically been underserved and even harmed through low expectations, culturally irrelevant instructional practices, unfair discipline practices, underrepresentation in gifted classes, and overrepresentation in special education classes by the U. …

Evaluation of Floors and Item Gradients for Reading and Math Tests for Young Children

Ignoring the adequacy of floors and item gradients for tests used with young children can have serious consequences. Thus, because of the importance of early intervention for reading and math problems, we used the criteria suggested by Bracken for adequate floors and item gradients, and reviewed 15 reading tests and 12 math tests for ages 4-0 through 7-11. Results indicate that few of these tests have adequate floors at the age at which their norms begin. Although most of the reading tests have adequate item gradients, only 4 of the 12 math tests did not have item gradient problems. If test floors and item gradients are not considered, examiners risk misdiagnosing young children and drawing invalid conclusions for research and program evaluation, especially for low-performing children.

Rising With De Colores: Tapping Into the Resources of la Comunidad to Assist Under-Performing Chicano-Latino Students

This article explores the dynamics and educational potential of De Colores Community Learning Center, an after-school program serving low-performing Chicano-Latino children. The article discusses the foundational characteristics of De Colores and its quest to become a model of empowerment, instead of a more traditional model of service. Finally, it examines the potential of targeted, multi-resourced prevention intervention program, with high levels of community participation, as a possible alternative to special education placement. Preliminary data suggests that this school-based, community-supported program is having a positive academic impact, while fostering a renewed spirit of partnership among participating families and the school. Key words: Latino education, special education, prevention interventions, remediation, community-based learning, parent involvement

Perceived control and academic performance: A comparison of high- and low-performing children on within-person change patterns

Children with high expectations of control do better in school than their peers with low perceived control. This finding is based largely on cross-sectional research and longitudinal research with long time intervals. Little attention has been paid to short-term, within-child variability in this important construct. Information about intraindividual change in perceived control, behaviour, and performance is critical to determining the processes by which the link between perception and outcome is affected. In this study, short-term variability in children’s perceived control, perception of task demands, and school performance was assessed and the concurrent and lagged relationships among these variables were considered. High-achieving and low-achieving children were compared. Results of dynamic factor models suggested that both the concurrent and lagged relationships among these variables are stronger and better organised for the high-achieving children. Implications for perceived control theory are discussed.

Recognition of lexically controlled words and sentences by children with normal hearing and children with cochlear implants.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the combined lexical effects of word frequency and neighborhood density (acoustic-phonetic similarity) on the recognition of words spoken in isolation and words spoken in sentences for children with normal hearing and children with cochlear implants. Lexically controlled sentences were created from a subset of words obtained from the spoken vocabulary of children between the ages of 3 and 5 yr. Two sentence lists were generated, applying the definitions and procedures of Kirk, Pisoni, and Osberger (1995) in accordance with the Neighborhood Activation Model ( Luce, 1986; Luce & Pisoni, 1998). One list was composed of lexically "easy" words (those high in frequency of occurrence but phonemically dissimilar to other words) and the other list was composed of lexically "hard" words (those low in frequency of occurrence but phonemically similar to other words). Each list consisted of five practice and 20 test sentences that were syntactically correct but semantically neutral (low in predictability). Three key words were used in constructing each of the 5- to 7-word sentences, resulting in 15 practice and 60 key words per test list. In the first of three experiments, 48 normal-hearing children between the ages of 5 and 12 yr were asked to repeat the words and sentences at one of six presentation levels to establish performance-intensity functions. In the second experiment, 12 normal-hearing children between the ages of 5 and 14 yr repeated the words and sentences under spectrally degraded conditions. Twelve children with cochlear implants ages 5 to 14 yr repeated the unprocessed stimuli in a third experiment. The lexically easy stimuli were recognized with greater accuracy than the lexically hard stimuli for the children tested in all three experiments. Sentence scores were significantly higher than word scores for the normal-hearing children (Experiments 1 and 2) and nine high-performing children with cochlear implants (Experiment 3). Word scores were higher than sentence scores for the three low-performing children with cochlear implants. There was a statistically significant relationship between chronological age and sentence score for the normal-hearing children listening under spectrally degraded conditions. For the children with cochlear implants, the relationship between language quotient and sentence and word scores was statistically significant. Sensitivity to the combined lexical properties of word frequency and neighborhood density was evident both for words and sentences. Lexically easy stimuli were recognized with greater accuracy than lexically hard stimuli across groups, affirming the robustness of this effect and verifying that words were being organized in relation to the frequency and acoustic-phonetic properties of other words. Syntactic context facilitated word recognition for the children with normal hearing and the high-performing implant group. The three low-performing children with cochlear implants recognized words more accurately than sentences, reflecting limitations in linguistic and cognitive capacity.

The Effects of Peer-Assisted Literacy Strategies for First-Grade Readers With and Without Additional Computer-Assisted Instruction in Phonological Awareness

This research examined the efficacy and feasibility of (a) Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies for First-Grade Readers (1st-Grade PALS) conducted for 35-min sessions, three times per week for 16 weeks with first-grade children of varying reading ability, and (b) the impact of adding 8–10 hr of phonological awareness instruction via the computer to the curriculum already including 1st-Grade PALS with low-performing children. Conducted in naturally constituted academically heterogeneous first-grade classrooms, 36 first-grade teachers in eight schools in a southeastern medium-sized school district participated: 12 conducted 1st-Grade PALS, 12 conducted 1st-Grade PALS and computer-assisted instruction (CAI), and 12 continued their typical instruction. Within these classrooms, the impact of the interventions was investigated with 183 first-grade students (118 low-, 33 average-, and 32 high-achieving students). Data collected included (a) time-series phonological awareness and reading fluency data and (b) pre- and post-measures of concepts of print, decoding, fluency, and comprehension. Students and teachers also were asked to rate their satisfaction with various aspects of the interventions. The results indicate that 1st-Grade PALS enhanced reading performance both in terms of statistical significance and in terms of educational relevance, although not equally for all learner types. Results also indicate that CAI in phonological did not impact student performance beyond that achieved with 1st-Grade PALS alone. Both students and teachers implemented 1st-Grade PALS with relative ease, demonstrated high fidelity, and reported high levels of satisfaction.

Special Education and the Regular Education Initiative: Basic Assumptions

The regular education initiative (REI) is a thoughtful response to identified problems in our system for educating low-performing children, but it is a not a detailed blueprint for changing the system. Educators must achieve consensus on what the REI actually proposes. The authors infer from the REI literature five assumptions regarding the roles and responsibilities of elementary regular classroom teachers, concluding that these teachers and specialists form a partnership, but the classroom teachers are ultimately in charge of the instruction of all children in their classrooms, including those who are not succeeding in the mainstream. A discussion of the target population and of several partnership models further delineates REI issues and concerns.