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This paper describes high quality teaching practices in two schools that produce exceptional growth for all kinds of students. These practices focus on making the most of instructional time and exposing students to high quality content in a variety of contexts. They prove teachers don't need to choose between differentiating to meet students' needs and giving them access to grade-level learning.

School authorities, universities, and employers often schedule multiple tests on the same day or week, causing overlapping exam preparation and a dense testing schedule. This multitask learning can be intense, under pressure, and challenge the student's mental and physical perseverance. As a result, it can compromise performance relative to a more 'relaxed' schedule. This paper examines the consequences of multitasking for test scores and cheating in exams and its implications for the ability and gender cognitive gap. The empirical context is high-stakes exit exams in Israel, done at the end of high school. I leverage the empirical setting on two natural experiments to estimate the causal effect of this multitasking learning. The first exploits random variation in the number of weekly tests--the second hinges on days with multiple exams versus days with a single exam. The results show several important regularities. First, the number of exams in a day or a week harms test performance. Second, these effects are evidenced for high and low-ability students, boys and girls. They are much more extensive for immigrants than natives. Third, the harm of such multitasking is larger in tests later in the schedule, daily or weekly. Fourth, these effects are larger in tests of STEM subjects. Fifth, dense exams schedule increase the likelihood of students behaving dishonestly in exams.

College-educated mothers spend substantially more time in intensive childcare than less educated mothers despite their higher opportunity cost of time and working more hours. Using data from the 2010-2013 and 2021 waves of the Well-being Module of the American Time Use Survey, we investigate this puzzle by testing the hypothesis that college-educated mothers enjoy childcare more. We find that among all mothers, spending time in childcare is associated with higher positive feelings compared to spending time in other activities. However, college-educated mothers experience no more positive feelings and no fewer negative feelings during intensive childcare than other mothers. Moreover, college-educated mothers report substantially fewer positive feelings for time spent in management activities and substantially more negative feelings for time spent in educational activities with their child. Findings are robust to controlling for a rich set of covariates, mother fixed effects, and simulations to account for selection into intensive childcare.

This paper evaluates the behavioural responses of multitask agents to the provision of incentives skewed towards one task only. In particular it studies the case of strong research incentives for university professors and it analyzes their effects on the way university faculty members allocate effort between teaching and quantity and quality of research and on the way they select into different types of universities. I first obtain different individual level measures of teaching and research performance. Then, I estimate a difference in difference model, exploiting a natural experiment that took place at Bocconi University, which heavily strengthened incentives towards research in 2005. I find evidence that teaching and research efforts are substitutable in the professors' cost function: the impact of research incentives is positive on research activity and negative on teaching performance. The effects are driven by career concerns rather than by the monetary incentives and are stronger for low ability researchers. Moreover, under the new incentive regime lower ability researchers tend to leave the university. Since I estimate that teaching and research ability are positively correlated, this implies that also bad teachers tend to leave the university. These results are consistent with a model of incentives where agents allocate effort between two substitute tasks and ability is multidimensional. An appendix shows how the author solved the model (for internal solutions) and shows the equilibrium effort level.

We study teachers' choices about how to allocate class time across different instructional activities, for example, lecturing, open discussion, or individual practice. Our data come from secondary schools in England, specifically classes preceding GCSE exams. Students score higher in math when their teacher devotes more class time to individual practice and assessment. In contrast, students score higher in English if there is more discussion and work with classmates. Class time allocation predicts test scores separate from the quality of the teacher's instruction during the activities. These results suggest opportunities to improve student achievement without changes in teachers' skills.

In this paper we examine how failing to make adequate yearly progress under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and the accountability pressure that ensues, affects various non-achievement student behaviors. Using administrative data from North Carolina and leveraging a discontinuity in the determination of school failure, we examine the causal impact of accountability pressure both on student behaviors that are incentivized by NCLB and on those that are not. We find evidence that, as NCLB intends, pressure encourages students to show up at school and to do so on time. Accountability pressure also has the unintended effect, however, of increasing the number of student misbehaviors such as suspensions, fights, and offenses reportable to law enforcement. Further, this negative response is most pronounced among minorities and low performing students, who are the most likely to be left behind. The following are appended: (1) Descriptive Statistics; (2) Offense Measures Used; (3) Supplemental Analyses; and (4) Alternate Model Specifications.

Policymakers and educators alike increasing focus on faculty adoption of interactive teaching techniques as a way to improve undergraduate education. Yet, little empirical research exists that examines the processes whereby faculty make decisions about curriculum design and classroom teaching in real-world situations. In this study, I use the idea of the "problem space" from cognitive science to foreground the importance of actor-situation dynamics in shaping instructional decision making. Using data from a freelisting exercise and retrospective recall interviews, I describe the perceived affordances, planning strategies, and both the planned and enacted curricular artifacts for a group of 58 STEM faculty. Then, to examine these processes as they unfold in practice, I examine the cases of two physics instructors as they planned and taught specific classes. Results indicate the primacy of fixed affordances such as time, course content, and class size, and the influence of time constraints that lead to the dominant planning strategy of recycling and fine-tuning old lecture notes and PowerPoint slides. The paper also delves into the importance of these artifacts as cultural tools that mediate practice. The paper contributes a new approach to the study of instructional decision making while also providing actionable insights to improve practice. In particular, I recommend instituting departmental policies that require faculty to engage in brief, post-class and post-course reflection that results in minor updates to their curricular artifacts and will not require a significant time commitment.

Bolstered by the recommendations of the 1998 Boyer Report, US federal agencies have put significant resources into promoting opportunities for undergraduates to engage in research. American universities and colleges have been creating support programs and curricular opportunities intended to create a "culture of undergraduate research." Yet our knowledge about the commonality of undergraduate research engagement--how it integrates into the educational experience, and its benefits or lack thereof--is still very limited. Universities exude the ideal of a pivotal link of teaching and research. We have assumed that personal interactions between active scholars and undergraduates--via traditional curriculum, research courses, working in a lab or doing fieldwork--have positive influences on students' maturation and their overall academic and social experience. The following exploratory study looks at data generated by the 2010 Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) undergraduate survey, an online census administered that year at fifteen major research-intensive universities. In this case study of mostly AAU campuses, we find that while some 83 percent of upper division students (juniors and seniors) students experience one or more courses with a significant research requirement like a research paper or project, many lower and upper division students do not--a disappointing finding that needs to be addressed by these campuses. At the same time, undergraduate research engagement outside of the traditional classroom is a relatively common experience. Among those students we find that research engagement leads to self-reported learning gains across many areas, but especially in the areas of field knowledge, how to present and communicate knowledge, research skills, higher levels of satisfaction, better use of time, and higher levels of non-quantitative skills. Yet not all research activities are created equally. Participating in student research and independent studies contribute much more to the learning gains across all dimensions than merely assisting faculty in research. Among the two research activities, participating in student research course is more effective than independent studies in enhancing student learning. Among the three activities involving assisting faculty research, assisting faculty research as a volunteer without credit tends to be connected to higher level of gains than for credit and for pay. Taken together, it appears that research activities that involve active learning contribute more to student learning. We offer a number of recommendations to SERU campuses, including: 1. We encourage member campuses to explore what are the causes for some students not engaging in a research paper or project and seek a path to have all students have this form of research engagement; 2. Use the SERU database to provide regular reports on undergraduate research engagement, and include those reports in Academic Program/Department reviews; 3. Expand existing efforts so that most, if not all, undergraduates have the opportunity for two or more non-classroom forms of research engagement, perhaps depending on the field of the major and discipline. [The 1998 Boyer Commission Report--"Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America's Research Universities" is available in ERIC at ED424840.]

College 101 courses--also called student success, introduction to college, orientation to college, or freshman experience courses--provide students with information about college and campus services, assistance with academic and career planning, and techniques to improve study habits and personal skills. This study investigated College 101 courses at three community colleges in Virginia through interviews with 169 college staff members, faculty members, and students combined with observations of 19 course sections. Although College 101 courses were found to be widely supported by stakeholders, contextual factors made implementation challenging and undermined the courses' potential to create long-lasting impacts on students' outcomes. College 101 courses provided students with important information, but they did not offer sufficient opportunities for in-depth exploration and skill-building practice. However, the authors found strong evidence of the worth and promise of College 101 courses and identified ways to optimize them and generate long-term results. (Contains 2 figures, 5 tables and 7 footnotes.)

The impact of class time lengths on student achievement is a complex issue with multiple extraneous factors and without definitive answers. A major theme across many of the studies reviewed is that the amount of instructional time is not so important as how that time is spent. Key points include: (1) The commonly held conception that students in other countries outperform U.S. students because they spend more time in school is not supported by research; (2) Neither increased days/year nor hours/day have been shown to increase student learning significantly except in special circumstances; and (3) Studies on block scheduling have reported mixed results.

Recent research is revealing a great deal about how changes in educational practices and policies can revamp classrooms and schools to close the achievement gaps and promote excellence in learning for all students. This working paper examines best practices that shift classroom management's emphasis from controlling students' behavior to creating "learning-centered" classrooms that foster their engagement, autonomy, and sense of community by giving them progressively more responsibility, under the teacher's careful guidance. These practices are part of an instruction strategy aimed at helping students achieve high academic, moral, and social goals. The report illustrates the implementation of changes in learning goals, classroom environments, management strategies, and assessment practices through the experiences of "Bill," a science and social studies teacher in an urban middle school, and "Patricia," a teacher in an elementary school on the border between city and suburb. (Contains 4 tables.)

We evaluate two low-cost college support programs designed to directly target insufficient study time, a common characteristic among a large fraction of undergraduates. We conduct our experiment across three distinct college-types: (i) a selective urban college campus, (ii) a less selective suburban college campus, and (iii) an online college, using a combination of unique survey and administrative data. More than 9,000 students were randomly assigned to complete an online planning exercise with information and guidance to create a weekly schedule containing sufficient study time and other obligations. Treated students also received weekly study tips, reminders, and coach consultations via text message throughout the academic year. Despite high levels of fidelity and initial participation, we estimate precise null effects on academic outcomes at each site, implying that the planning treatment was ineffective at improving student credit accumulation, course grades, and retention. We do find suggestive evidence, however, that the planning treatment marginally increased student study time. Taken together, the results suggest that, in addition to helping students stay organized, an effective intervention may need to provide stronger incentives or specific guidance on the tasks to complete while studying.

This paper describes the activity-based costing approach used to report and capture the time spent by faculty for specified activities at one Midwestern university. For each department, four major areas (instruction, research, public service, and administration) and 14 activities were identified. During the annual goal-setting period, each faculty member and the department head allotted the faculty member's time for the following academic year using the 14 identified activities. Funding allocation decisions at the department level were based on these staff assignments. Two reports were derived from the process. The first report showed the state dollar amount allocated for each of the four areas for each department. The second report provided data on faculty time utilization within the four general activity areas. Finally, university data were compared to national norms based on results from a triennial national survey. Evaluation of the process after three years determined that training and better provisions of information to departments and units was needed. (Contains 11 references.) (DB)

Canadians' employment and working patterns were examined by analyzing the 1998 survey called New Approaches to Lifelong Learning and other recent surveys by Statistics Canada. "Work" was defined as comprising household labor, community volunteer activities, and paid employment, and "learning" was defined as comprising informal learning activities, initial formal schooling, and adult education courses and programs. The data indicated that Canadian adults generally spent as much time in unpaid household and community work as in paid employment. Canadians were extensively involved in learning throughout their lives. According to their self-reports, Canadian adults devoted an average of 15 hours each week to informal learning activities related to their paid employment, household duties, volunteer community work, and other general interests. Those in the labor force averaged 6 hours each week in job-related informal learning pursuits. A generally positive association between the amount of time people spend in paid employment, household labor, and community work and the time spent in work-related informal learning was found. Employment-related informal learning was more extensive than course-based training across nearly all employment statuses and occupational groups. At least 20% of the employed labor force saw itself as having skill levels exceeding those required by their jobs. (Contains 27 tables and 152 references.) (MN)

Two public policy shifts in the past 10 years--the move from welfare to work and the end of social promotion in school--are intertwined in their implementation in the lives of working poor families. This report draws on ethnographic data from a 6-year study of working poor families in New York City over the period in which welfare reform became a reality, focusing on families' adaptations as adults increased work hours and as children responded to increased demands at school. Data collection methods included a survey of 900 Dominican, Puerto Rican, and African American families, 3 interviews with 100 families conducted over a 6-year period, and the daily monitoring of 12 families with 11 elementary-aged children and 3 preschoolers over 1 year. Findings illustrate three types of family adaptations: (1) monitoring children in school despite problems of poverty and illness by parents who know how and when to intervene and have significant others on whom to rely; (2) struggling parents who lack time flexibility, with older children pressed into taking responsibility for young siblings and children exhibiting behavior problems; and (3) parents who are unable to secure steady work, are overwhelmed by family demands, are in partnerships in which the wife is unable to enlist much help from the husband, and who are limited by their own educational limitations. The report finds that as parents are being told it is up to them to ensure that their children are prepared to take standardized tests, they are also being told they must put the financial support of their households first. Most of the families in this study have already made a trade-off between these two priorities and, with few exceptions, their children are paying some of the price. (Contains 31 references.) (KB)

This briefing paper provides 3-year trend data on Arizona school counselors' use of time. They hypothesis is that if career guidance were to be emphasized in the schools in accordance with the School-To-Work Act, a shift in counselors' roles could be expected to reflect more time spend on career guidance. An overview of the survey is provided including methodology and respondent characteristics. Data for each year includes counselors' allocation of time to counseling students, working with teachers and guidance curriculum, responding to crises, providing system support, and non-guidance activities. Although the pattern of time use has remained stable over three years, non-guidance and system support time have decreased in favor of guidance activities. Changes are small. Percentage of time spent in student counseling is further analyzed by issues. Counselor awareness of the School-To-Work initiative and their job satisfaction has increased. However, no significant changes in counselors' roles or duties were found in spite of considerable professional development efforts at state and local levels. These results are compared with the Comprehensive Competency-Based Guidance model, and sound practice in school counseling is discussed. Policy questions are raised. (EMK)

This paper was prepared to assist the National Education Commission on Time and Learning. It provides a review of available research on major issues facing the commission and is organized to conform to the commission's legislative mandate as expressed in Public Law 102-62. An overview section reviews the major points discussed in each section of the paper. Subsequent sections present information on the following topics: the history of the length of the school day and year in the United States; the length of the school day and year in the United States and other countries; ways in which time is being allocated to academic subjects; ways that schools can better motivate students so that they learn more in the available time; the extent to which time spent on homework increases total learning time and achievement; ways in which students spend time outside of school; ways in which the extended school year affects teachers' professional development; the implications of extended learning programs for use of school facilities; additional costs to state and local governments resulting from school day/year extensions; and current approaches to extending schooling in the United States. References accompany each section. Twelve exhibits are included. (LMI)

This paper compares the characteristics of faculty in comprehensive institutions of higher education with those of faculty in other college and university categories. The paper summarizes demographic features, working conditions, satisfaction and participation in academic work organizations, mobility and careers, and attitudes and orientations toward the profession and its organization. Study findings are detailed in 25 tables which display data on: (1) distribution of regular faculty by tenure status; (2) distribution of full-time and part-time regular faculty by institutional category; (3) age, gender, ethnicity, and mean income of full-time and part-time regular faculty by institution category; (4) average number of hours per week devoted to classroom teaching, by institution category; (5) orientation toward research or teaching; (6) percentage of time allocated to teaching, research, and administration by full-time and part-time regular faculty, by institution category; (7) relation of publication and number of publications to achieving tenure; (8) percentage of full-time regular faculty satisfied with their jobs, by institution category; (9) basic skills of undergraduates, by institution category; (10) quality of life, by institution category; (11) rating of administration; (12) choosing teaching as a profession; and (13) developments in respondents' disciplines. (JDD)

A study examined workers' access to benefits, the extent to which they valued those benefits, and an analysis of variation in work-family time conflict for union and nonunion households. The survey design involved interviews with 520 Ohio respondents who were currently employed or recently unemployed. Findings indicated that union respondents and their households were more favored in access to benefits than nonunion respondents and households. Workers valued benefits to varying degrees; they placed high value on such benefits as pensions, vacations, medical care and hospitalization, and lower value on the newer "family-friendly" benefits such as day care vouchers, family leaves, and cafeteria plans. In looking at the value of benefits, differences between union and nonunion respondents were largely nonexistent. Analysis of the ease with which respondents found time for activities suggested that characteristics of jobs, family configuration, and work arrangements within the home all played a role. Even with job characteristics, family characteristics, and home work arrangements controlled, women still reported greater difficulty in finding free time than men. (Four data tables are appended.) (YLB)

This paper discusses the five components of preschool program planning. The first component involves reviewing information about child development, developmental characteristics of young children, and the specific needs of children and families enrolled in the program. The second component involves formulating goals that reflect the philosophy of the program and provide the larger framework into which teachers organize day-to-day learning experiences. Sample program goals are provided. The third component comprises designing a classroom environment in terms of planning the space, organizing materials and equipment, and setting up the learning environment. The fourth component involves preparation of a schedule of activities, routines, and transitions that will provide the time frame for implementing the daily program. Preparation of a written daily schedule is considered a critical part of this component, and written policies and procedures that address emergency and routine situations are also required to implement the schedule. The last component relates to determining and developing an appropriate curriculum by identifying strategies to implement planned experiences. Three steps characterize a curriculum planning strategy: (1) brainstorming; (2) designing a theme's implementation; and (3) planning specific activities for the group as a whole and for learning centers. A sample plan for small-group experiences and a chart outlining the physical, social, emotional, creative, and cognitive components of the curriculum are included. Additional resources are also included. Contains seven references. (BAC)

This paper examines student learning time as a key educational resource. It presents an overview of how different OECD countries allocate instruction time. It also develops a model to understand the effective use of allocated instruction time and examines how different OECD countries compare on this. The paper confirms the value of sufficient instruction time as a key educational resource, but the key conclusion is that what matters the most is the way in which allocated time is used. Student learning time and academic achievement seem to have complex and curvilinear relationship with diminishing returns to scale. The paper also cautions that there should be realistic expectations on how effectively students can learn throughout the school day and year. Accordingly, it suggests that instruction could be organised to better optimise times when students are better able to concentrate. Evidence on lost instruction time in different OECD countries points to areas of potential increased effectiveness within existing time allocations, for example by improving classroom management and matching instruction to better meet students' learning needs. Tables and figures are included in an annex.

The goal of the Intensive Partnership (IP) initiative is to improve student success by transforming how teachers are recruited, developed, assigned, rewarded, and retained. RAND and American Institutes for Research (AIR) have been studying the seven IP sites (including three districts and four charter management organizations--CMOs) since the 2010-11 school year to understand which strategies for improving the teaching workforce are successful. This report summarizes key findings about how school leaders and teachers have changed the way they allocate their time among various activities across the three years since implementation began (2010-11 through 2012-13). The report contains a preface, acknowledgements, and an executive summary and then presents the findings in five parts. They are: Part I: Introduction; Part II: Methodology; Part III: School Leader Time Allocation Findings; Part IV: Teacher Time Allocation Findings; and Part V: Summary and Concluding Thoughts. The report also includes the appendices: (1) Detailed Discussion of Methodology; (2) School Leader and Teacher Survey Response Rates; (3) Descriptive Statistics of Individual and School Characteristic Categories by Site and Year; (4) School Leader Time Allocation by Site; (5) Teacher Time Allocation by Site; (6) Survey Questions and Categories; (7) Analysis of Individual Questions for Selected Categories for School Leaders; and (8) Analysis of Individual Questions for Selected Categories for Teachers.

Interest in understanding how principals and school districts hire teachers has increased as empirical evidence on teacher effectiveness has grown. Case studies suggest late hiring timelines are pervasive in large urban school districts and result in the loss of more qualified teachers to surrounding suburbs. This paper uses labor market fixed effects regression techniques to provide the first empirical estimates of the relationship between the timing of teacher hires and teacher qualifications. Using the 1999-2000 SASS, I find that urban and low SES districts make over half of their teacher hires late. However, analyses find no relationship between timing and teacher qualifications including selectivity of university attended, certification, and master's degree. Null results persist across multiple specifications and subgroup analyses. (Contains 9 tables and 4 footnotes.)

Pay for Performance (PFP) is once again gaining popularity within education. This study examines teacher attitudes toward PFP policies, and how these views vary by teacher experience, subject area specialization, grade level(s) taught, educational background, risk and time preferences, and feelings of efficacy. Data were collected through a voluntary, online survey instrument fielded over a two-week period at the end of the 2006-2007 school year. The sample comprised all full-time instructional personnel in 199 traditional public and magnet schools in a large, urban school district in Florida. Results suggest only modest support for PFP policies among teachers. We detect some association between teacher demographics and views on PFP policies. Moreover, we find that teachers who have a more positive view of their principal's leadership ability and more confidence in their own teaching ability are more supportive of incentive pay. In addition, teachers who are more risk-seeking and who have higher discount rates express support for incentive pay. Finally, we find that teachers appear to have very little understanding of how the two most recent PFP initiatives in Florida operate. Survey Instrument is appended. Individual sections contain footnotes. (Contains 9 tables.)

In recent years, there has been increased policy interest in the way young people spend their time out of school, and in promoting the availability of opportunities for them to spend this time in productive and developmentally supportive ways. Out-of-school opportunities (such as arts and music programs, sports teams, community service, youth entrepreneurship opportunities, and a broad range of after-school programs) are increasingly seen as potentially powerful tools to promote positive youth development and to prevent problematic behaviors and poor youth outcomes. In order to inform policy and practice that seeks to support youth development through the systems that affect young people and the programs available to them, it is essential to understand the nature of these opportunities, who participates in them, the reasons behind such participation, and the barriers and potential incentives that condition participation. This paper explores young people's perspectives on their out-of-school time and the influences, barriers, contexts, and processes that contribute to their choices and experiences. Research Questions guiding this study include: (1) How do young people find out about and initially decide to become engaged in structured activities? (2) What are the influences of key individuals in their lives, including parents, peers, and other adults? (3) What are the influences of their neighborhood and school contexts on these decisions? (4) What are the influences of program quality or content? (5) How important are the auspices under which activities are provided? (6) What barriers exist to program participation, and how do young people work to overcome these barriers? (7) What gaps exist between young people's interests and program availability? (8) What do young people expect to get out of programs, and how is this connected to their goals and expectations for the future? This study helps researchers and policymakers understand more about how youth negotiate both opportunities and constraints, the preferences they have, and what this suggests for policymaking and practice. In particular, it provides some insight into how to improve strategies for outreach, access, engagement, and provision. (Contains 4 figures and 1 table.)

This report provides a critical review of the current research literature on the consequences of unintended childbearing for families and children. The review addresses the following potential consequences: prenatal and perinatal risks (e.g., inadequate or delayed initiation of prenatal care, smoking/drinking/substance use during pregnancy, prematurity, low birthweight and not breastfeeding); risks for the children born from unintended births (e.g., poor physical and mental health; poor developmental, behavioral and educational outcomes; poor mother-child relationships; and weaker union formation in young adulthood); and risks for parents who have an unintended birth (e.g., poor psychological well-being, negative attitudes towards parenting, and low relationship quality). In compiling the review, the authors identified the most methodologically- and analytically-sound articles they could find that examine the potential outcomes associated with unintended childbearing. They rely primarily on multivariate studies, but they also report findings from bivariate and qualitative analyses that offer important insight into this topic. When reporting on results from only one study to support an argument, they specify the sample and methods used in the analysis. They focus their examination on articles published since 1995 and, when possible, distinguish those births that were reported as mistimed at the time of conception (i.e., occurred sooner than originally wanted) from those that were unwanted. Although there is research on the prevalence and consequences of unintended pregnancies that result in abortion or miscarriage, they focus their literature review on the consequences of only those unintended pregnancies that result in a live birth. They set out to focus their review on young adults; however, they found no research that specifically focuses on unintended births to young men and women in their early twenties, although most studies did control for maternal age. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, the outcomes reported are for unintended births that occur across a broad age range. Finally, this literature review focuses on the methodological issues of self-selection and endogeneity, to address whether or not the consequences of unintended births are primarily due to pre-existing characteristics of the parents involved. Thus, where relevant, they indicate when methods are used to control for selection effects and endogeneity. This comprehensive summary serves as an important update to the chapter on the consequences of unintended pregnancy published in 1995 in "The Best Intentions: Unintended Pregnancy and the Well-Being of Children and Families"; it provides a well-documented and more current statement about the consequences of unintended childbearing for children and families. In addition, it offers important background material for educating the public about the importance of decreasing unintended childbearing among people of all ages, not just teenagers.

The implementation and results of the Virginia Student Transition Program at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Tech) are described. The objective of the 5-week summer program is to facilitate the enrollment and retention of black college students with slightly lower than average aptitude scores through the development of academic and personal skills. During the 1983 summer program at Tech, 42 students were enrolled, and the 1984 program enrolled 52 students. Selection criteria included Scholastic Aptitude Test scores, high school rank, family economic condition, and high school grade point average. Program objectives were to: (1) develop increased knowledge in English, mathematics, biology or chemistry, writing, and reading; (2) develop skills in interpersonal interactions with peers, faculty, and administrators; (3) develop self-confidence and self-awareness; (4) gain knowledge of the complex university structure, its rules, regulations, and policies; and (5) learn successful study methods and time management. The selection of faculty and staff, credit, stipends, opening and closing ceremonies, and program evaluation are briefly discussed. Data on participant responses to attitude surveys administered before and after the summer program are included. (SW)

In five experiments with over 2,500 subjects, we examined the hypothesis that cognitive processing variables measuring breadth of declarative knowledge and information processing speed were related to learning outcomes on a paired-associates task. Experiments 1 and 2 compared recall with recognition tests, Experiment 3 assessed the effect of study-block size, Experiment 4 examined the effect of mnemonic strategy, and Experiment 5 tested the effect of mixing study times and presenting words versus nonsense syllable stimuli. Across all experiments, breadth of verbal knowledge was found to be a strong predictor of retention overall, and a strong predictor of increment in retention benefits due to increases in study time. Mnemonic strategy training improved retention but also served to enhance the relationship between knowledge and retention. Memory search speed also predicted retention, but primarily under conditions of high information flow, either as a result of short (5 seconds per pair) study or time-sharing pressure (mixed study-time blocks). High-Knowledge subjects and Fast Memory-Search subjects were also quicker at retrieving the answer, when they knew the answer; but High-Knowledge subjects took longer in retrieving an answer under conditions of uncertainty. Results are discussed in terms of a general model of associative learning in which encoding is viewed as a process of generating links by constructing elaborations of the terms studied. (Fourteen tables and 14 figures are provided. Appendixes discuss producing individual difference curves, and strategy-treatment group instructions for Experiment 4.) (Author)