The Journal of Special Education

Racial and cultural test bias continues to be a major concern among all professionals involved in the placement and treatment of handicapped children. Though embroiled in social, political, and emotional snarls, the issue must be addressed, professionally, from a primarily empirical standpoint. This paper reviews the research program of the author and several of his colleagues in their attempts to evaluate empirically the merits of the cultural-test-bias hypothesis. There is little evidence to substantiate claims of bias for well-constructed, properly standardized tests. Correspondingly, minority and other disadvantaged children with low academic and aptitude test scores need remedial and special educational help just as much as do their white middle-class counterparts.

In mental-retardation research the developmental approach states that when retarded groups at a particular developmental level—as determined by mental age (MA)—perform more poorly on experimental tasks than do nonretarded groups who are at the same developmental level, the poorer performance of the retarded groups is due to the baleful influence of motivational and related noncognitive processes. A critical review of the ample literature raises questions about the statements by developmentalists that there is a substantial body of valid evidence to support their claims.

The authors review recent findings with respect to minority representation in educable-mentally-retarded programs. Two procedures outlined in federal regulations to ensure nonbiased assessment of such children are reviewed. Multidisciplinary teams, a long-standing resource in some states, do not appear to have been effective in curtailing large representation of minority students. Further, a review of monitoring efforts indicates serious lapses on the part of evaluation team members in collecting and reporting adaptive-behavior data. Implications are discussed and alternatives proposed.

The purpose of the study was to contrast the academic performance of behaviorally disordered (BD) and learning-disabled (LD) pupils. Sixteen LD and 16 BD pupils were given three standardized achievement tests. In 10 of 12 comparisons significant dif ferences were found; in all cases BD pupils were functioning at a higher grade level than were LD pupils. Implications in relation to cross-categorical education are discussed.

This study attempted to determine the influence of syntax on the difficulty of written mathematical problems with low-achieving eighth-grade students. Three tests, composed of increasingly more difficult sentence structures, were administered. These tests were developed at a fourth-grade level or below in reading vocabulary and mathematical computations. The subjects were functioning at a minimum fourth-grade achievement level for both reading and mathematical computations. The results revealed a significant difference between the test that contained the most complex syntax and the other 2 tests. Therefore, educators need to be aware of the syntactic structures contained in achievement tests and textbooks, and instruct students in developing a strategy that breaks difficult sentences into shorter sentences that are easier to read.

A model is presented for analyzing the components of instructional programs that are likely to affect generalization with severely handicapped students. The literature is summarized in terms of such issues as natural vs. artificial environments, materials, cues, and contingencies. The authors also review empirical evidence about the relative efficacy of serial vs. concurrent presentation, prompts vs. corrections, and various instructional arrangements. Suggestions are offered for implementation, and research needs are described for several components. Future research on the interactive effects of the components with each other and with the learners' characteristics are discussed.

Twenty-four survey textbooks in special education published from 1974 through 1982 were analyzed with the Flesch formulae to determine levels of readability and human interest. These figures were compared with those found in a similar study dealing with books published from 1970 to 1975. Subject coverage and organization were also analyzed. The researchers conclude that while survey texts are dull and difficult, they are complete in subject coverage. Topics such as severe/profound handicaps, multiple handicaps, early childhood handicaps, and culturally different handicapped children, however, received scant coverage in most books. Some evidence was found that difficulty levels may be somewhat lower today than in 1976. Some books lack adequate author and subject indices and glossaries.

The impact of technology on special education was initially in the area of computer-assisted instruction. More recently management uses of technology have been rapidly introduced to reduce paperwork, meet federal and state reporting requirements, and track students from referral to placement into special education programs. This study outlines the status of computer use by special education directors in the Council of Administrators of Special Education, which commissioned the survey. The results are organized around seven questions from development to current and future applications. The results are discussed in terms of two competing frameworks that guide technology use in business and education. The authors provide a development process that capitalizes on the knowledge of special education managers and their reported needs.

The problem of providing dental care to disabled persons has been inconsistently and inadequately dealt with by the educational community. The author offers those responsible for the oral-hygiene training of handicapped children and adults (a) a comprehensive statement of the problem, (b) a review of related information, and (c) a model for an interdisciplinary solution. Implementation issues of such a program are identified.

This third article of a series suggests that many behavior modifiers would prefer the label of applied behavior analysis for their field. This group has grown considerably in the past decade and now includes several subsets, two of which are precision teaching and direct instruction. This column discusses some contributions of the former group (founded by O. R. Lindsley at the University of Kansas). To illustrate the work of this group, 4 articles from the Journal of Precision Teaching are summarized. The topics addressed in the articles are developing performance criteria in the basic skills, creative writing, improving one's self-image, and the increasing number of references to precision teaching in special education texts.

The concept of developmentally delayed children was introduced in the Soviet defectological literature in 1966 with the publication of M. Pevzner's book entitled Children with Developmental Deviations. This column reviews recent studies that compare the clinical characteristics of developmentally delayed, mentally retarded, and average children. A number of Soviet defectologists have studied attention, memory, and intellectual functioning of developmentally delayed children, as well as educational potential and performance. Verbal facility of developmentally delayed children has been reported by numerous investigators as being inferior to that of average children. The Soviet defectological literature indicates that students called developmentally delayed are in many respects similar to those called learning disabled in the United States.

This article illustrates the use of generalizability theory to estimate the reliability of a measure when there is more than one source of error in the universe of inference, and how the effects from changing the number of items and/or raters can be evaluated.