Evaluation of project reentry

This report describes a project designed to return to regular classrooms a group of rural poor elementary schoolchildren who were suspected of having been misplaced in special classes for the educable mentally retarded. At the end of the 3-year project, more than half the children were returned to regular classrooms, with proportionately more boys than girls being returned. The total sample of Project students gained significantly in verbal IQ over the course of the project, compared with a sample of students who remained in special education classes. The implications of the project for research, intervention programs, and educational practices are discussed.This study was supported by a grant from the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health.     

Assumptions underlying psychological testing

Tests purporting to reflect the learning aptitudes of school children differ much more than generally is recognized. However, error in assesing such learning aptitude inheres much more in the users of the tests than in the tests themselves. Assumptions fundamental to such assessment, or even testing, are considered. It is particularly important that the assessor, or tester, constantly be sensitive to the nature of the relationship between the psychological demands of test items or tests and the learning demands confronting the child. Even tests that generally are grossly or crudely used often can yield psychoeducationally meaninful information if their results are differentially perceived in terms of the light they throw on the psychological operations fundamental to learning, “process,” as contrasted with that thrown on the results of the functioning of such operations, “product.”     

Does the pot melt, boil, or brew? Black children and white assessment procedures

The experiences Black youths bring to school with them constitute a distinctive, viable culture. Their subsequent performance in educational and psychological testing situations cannot be assessed adequately without consideration of their particular attitudes, perceptions, and behavioral patterns, for all of these are determined by a kind of cultural conditioning which differs, in some fundamental ways, from mainstream Americans. Several of the social and psychological characteristics of Black culture are discussed. Included are Blacks' attitudes toward whites, systems of time allocations, expressions of identity, attitudes toward learning, dissemination of information among Blacks, Black learning styles and maturation processes. Each is discussed further in terms of its manifestation in a testing or assessment situation; how it conflicts with the assessor's orientations and expectations; and how distorted, unreliable evaluations result from the failure of assessors to consider implications of cultural relativism in interpreting Black behavior.     

Validating a selection test,a predictive probability approach

The problem of inferring the validity of a selection test (x) as a predictor of some criterion (y) when completexy data are not available is investigated. The basic approach is to construct the predictive probability distribution of the unobservedy scores and then derive interval estimates of the least squares regression weights, the difference in averagey scores for selected and unselected cases, and the residual variance in predictingy fromx. Further, an approximation to the predictive distribution of the squared correlation betweenx andy in a future group is derived.     

Psychotherapy and the locus of control

Underlying various actions of both the therapist and the patient are expectations about the measure to which an individual's experiences are the product of powerful external forces or of the person's own actions and decisions. While most of our anthropological theories support the notion that a person's experience is subject to an external locus of control, neither that view nor the opposite emphasizing freedom and autonomy is adequate for the therapeutic enterprise. THere are elements of truth in both positions that ned to be incorporated in therapeutic expectations if the enterprise is to proceed in an orderly fashion.     

The menstrual taboo in the Judeo-Christian tradition

The menstrual taboo continues to be a primary reason why women in Judaism and Christianity are excluded from positions of authority. This is demonstrated by examining positions taken toward menstruation by religious leaders in past history and in the present day. Jesus and Gregory the Great are notable exceptions to the disdain expressed by male religionists toward menstruants. Only after the removal of this persistent taboo will religious bodies come to treat women as full participants.     

Methodological issues in school-based evaluation

Methodology in school-based evaluation is importantly affected by economic and ethical constraints often absent or less pressing than in larger-scale evaluations. These and other factors also operate in the specialized school-based evaluations such as that of school psychological services. Defensible evaluation designs must take into account the impossibility of random assignment and reduced options for the use of control groups. In addition there are numerous pressures on the construction and deployment of measuring devices and a need for ingenuity in performing statistical analyses. This article explicates these issues and outlines alternative approaches to methodology which can result in usable data for school decision making.     

On the matrix formulation of Kaiser's varimax criterion

The author provides a full-fledged matrix derivation of Sherin's matrix formulation of Kaiser's varimax criterion. He uses matrix differential calculus in conjunction with the Hadamard (or Schur) matrix product. Two results on Hadamard products are presented.