A Study of the Reading Proficiency of Fourth Grade Children in North Dakota with Special Emphasis on the Disabled Reader

Purpose of the Investigation: The purposes of the study were two-fold: (1) to determine the reading proficiency of fourth grade children in North Dakota, with a primary focus on the identification of disabled readers and (2) to ascertain the assistance that was provided for disabled readers by the schools and classroom teachers. Questions of Study: The Study was designed to ascertain answers to the following questions: 1. How Xv^ell do fourth grade children in North Dakota read? The analysis of this question has three parts: how x^ell they read overall, how boys and girls compare in their reading, and how well they read by school classification. 2. What percentage of fourth grade children in North Dakota are disabled readers. The analysis of this question has three parts: hox^ well they read overall, how boys and girls compare in their reading, and how well they read by school classification. 3. What percentage of fourth grade children in North Dakota who are disabled readers received supplementary instruction and what is the weekly time allocation for such instruction overall, and by school classification? 4. To what extent were disabled readers appropriately placed for reading instruction with regard to material difficulty by their classroom teachers overall and by school classification? Summary of the Design and Procedures: The sample of the study was 2,069 fourth grade students enrolled in fifty-seven North Dakota public school districts. The school districts were randomly selected by population size (Classification I - 400 or more pupils; II - 200-399 pupils; III - 100-199 pupils; IV - 99 or less pupils) in an attempt to secure an approximate mix of school sizes and pupil distributions that prevailed in the State of North Dakota at the time the study was undertaken. Criteria for inclusion of a school district in the study were: (1) classification as a public high school district, (2) selection from the random sample, (3) willingness of the school district to participate in the study, and (4) availability of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills test data on fourth grade students enrolled in the school districts. The Iowa Test of Basic Skills and Lorge Thorndike Intelligence Test were administered as group tests to all fourth grade students in the study sample group by school district personnel. The investigator and a trained group of twenty-three diagnosticians individually tested potential disabled readers with the Slosson Intelligence Test for Children and Adults and the Informal Reading Inventory and collected additional student and test data on the Diagnostic Summary Sheet and Pupil Information Form. The analysis of data were accomplished through the use of the student\u27s t-distribution and multiple comparisons. The chi-square statistic was also employed in the treatment of dichotomous data. Summary of Findings: The mean reading achievement grade equivalent score of North Dakota fourth grade students in the study sample group was A.31. The national norm for fourth grade students taking the Iowa Test of Basic Skills in October, 1971 was A.10. The sample group achieved a mean grade equivalent score that was approximately two months higher than the A.10 national norm. The mean reading achievement grade equivalent score for each of the four school classifications exceeded the A.10 grade equivalent national norm. The mean reading achievement grade equivalent score of female subjects in the study sample group was A.52, while male subjects scored a mean reading achievement grade equivalent of A.12. An examination of the 2,069 North Dakota fourth grade students\u27 test results indicated that 28A or 13.73 percent of the students met all four criteria for disabled readers as defined in the study. An analysis of disabled readers on the basis of sex illustrated that 198 or 69.72 percent of the 28A disabled readers in the study sample group were male subjects, and 86 or 30.28 percent of the disabled readers were female subjects. An examination of data collected on the 28A fourth grade disabled readers in the study sample group indicated that 95 disabled readers or 33.A5 percent received supplementary instruction in their school district. One hundred eighty-nine disabled readers received no supplementary instruction. The data available on 26A disabled readers\u27 instructional placement in reading established that 57 disabled readers or 21.59 percent were appropriately placed for reading instruction and 207 disabled readers or 78.41 percent were not appropriately placed for reading instruction. Diagnostic test data on the 264 disabled readers indicated that 254 or 96.21 percent of those on whom data were received should be placed in reading materials below the fourth grade level. On the basis of actual placement data acquired from school districts participating in the study, 217 of the 264 disabled readers or 82.19 percent were actually placed at or above the fourth grade level for reading instruction. The two most striking findings of the study were the degree to which school districts involved in the study failed to place disabled readers appropriately for instruction (78.41 percent of the time) and the incidence with which grade level materials were prescribed to disabled readers (82.19 percent of the time). Such findings caused the investigator to conclude that the diagnostic and placement techniques and practices, as well as subsequent prescriptive/instructional procedures, are not sufficiently well developed or operationalized. Such conditions will not foster confidence that the special problems of disabled readers will be detected, appropriately treated, and diminished in the school districts involved in this study, unless present practices are dramatically altered

Quantum-inspired feature and parameter optimization of evolving spiking neural networks with a case study from ecological modelling

The paper introduces a framework and implementation of an integrated connectionist system, where the features and the parameters of an evolving spiking neural network are optimised together using a quantum representation of the features and a quantum inspired evolutionary algorithm for optimisation. The proposed model is applied on ecological data modeling problem demonstrating a significantly better classification accuracy than traditional neural network approaches and a more appropriate feature subset selected from a larger initial number of features. Results are compared to a naive Bayesian classifier

Development of a peer support intervention to improve the experience and outcomes of discharge from inpatient mental health care: the role of experiential knowledge in a coproduced approach.

OBJECTIVES: Peer support is rapidly being introduced into mental health services internationally, yet peer support interventions are often poorly described, limiting the usefulness of research in informing policy and practice. This paper reports the development of a peer support intervention that aims to improve outcomes of discharge from inpatient to community mental health care. People with experiential knowledge of using mental health services-peer workers and service user researchers-were involved in all stages of developing the intervention: generating intervention components; producing the intervention handbook; piloting the intervention. RESULTS: Systematic review and expert panels, including our Lived Experience Advisory Panel, identified 66 candidate intervention components in five domains: Recruitment and Role Description of Peer Workers; Training for Peer Workers; Delivery of Peer Support; Supervision and Support for Peer Workers; Organisation and Team. A series of Local Advisory Groups were used to prioritise components and explore implementation issues using consensus methods, refining an intervention blueprint. A peer support handbook and peer worker training programme were produced by the study team and piloted in two study sites. Feedback workshops were held with peer workers and their supervisors to produce a final handbook and training programme. The ENRICH trial is registered with the ISRCTN clinical trial register, number ISRCTN 10043328, and was overseen by an independent steering committee and a data monitoring committee

Anisotropy and chemical composition of ultra-high energy cosmic rays using arrival directions measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory

The Pierre Auger Collaboration has reported evidence for anisotropy in the distribution of arrival directions of the cosmic rays with energies $E>E_{th}=5.5\times 10^{19}$ eV. These show a correlation with the distribution of nearby extragalactic objects, including an apparent excess around the direction of Centaurus A. If the particles responsible for these excesses at $E>E_{th}$ are heavy nuclei with charge $Z$, the proton component of the sources should lead to excesses in the same regions at energies $E/Z$. We here report the lack of anisotropies in these directions at energies above $E_{th}/Z$ (for illustrative values of $Z=6,\ 13,\ 26$). If the anisotropies above $E_{th}$ are due to nuclei with charge $Z$, and under reasonable assumptions about the acceleration process, these observations imply stringent constraints on the allowed proton fraction at the lower energies

The impact of working as a peer worker in mental health services: a longitudinal mixed methods study

Background Peer workers are increasingly employed in mental health services to use their own experiences of mental distress in supporting others with similar experiences. While evidence is emerging of the benefits of peer support for people using services, the impact on peer workers is less clear. There is a lack of research that takes a longitudinal approach to exploring impact on both employment outcomes for peer workers, and their experiences of working in the peer worker role. Methods In a longitudinal mixed methods study, 32 peer workers providing peer support for discharge from inpatient to community mental health care - as part of a randomised controlled trial - undertook in-depth qualitative interviews conducted by service user researchers, and completed measures of wellbeing, burnout, job satisfaction and multi-disciplinary team working after completing training, and four and 12 months into the role. Questionnaire data were summarised and compared to outcomes for relevant population norms, and changes in outcomes were analysed using paired t-tests. Thematic analysis and interpretive workshops involving service user researchers were used to analysis interview transcripts. A critical interpretive synthesis approach was used to synthesise analyses of both datasets. Results For the duration of the study, all questionnaire outcomes were comparable with population norms for health professionals or for the general population. There were small-to-medium decreases in wellbeing and aspects of job satisfaction, and increase in burnout after 4 months, but these changes were largely not maintained at 12 months. Peer workers felt valued, empowered and connected in the role, but could find it challenging to adjust to the demands of the job after initial optimism. Supervision and being part of a standalone peer worker team was supportive, although communication with clinical teams could be improved. Conclusions Peer workers seem no more likely to experience negative impacts of working than other healthcare professionals but should be well supported as they settle into post, provided with in-work training and support around job insecurity. Research is needed to optimise working arrangements for peer workers alongside clinical teams

Update on the correlation of the highest energy cosmic rays with nearby extragalactic matter

Data collected by the Pierre Auger Observatory through 31 August 2007 showed evidence for anisotropy in the arrival directions of cosmic rays above the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuz'min energy threshold, \nobreak{$6\times 10^{19}$eV}. The anisotropy was measured by the fraction of arrival directions that are less than $3.1^\circ$ from the position of an active galactic nucleus within 75 Mpc (using the V\'eron-Cetty and V\'eron $12^{\rm th}$ catalog). An updated measurement of this fraction is reported here using the arrival directions of cosmic rays recorded above the same energy threshold through 31 December 2009. The number of arrival directions has increased from 27 to 69, allowing a more precise measurement. The correlating fraction is $(38^{+7}_{-6})$, compared with $21$ expected for isotropic cosmic rays. This is down from the early estimate of $(69^{+11}_{-13})$. The enlarged set of arrival directions is examined also in relation to other populations of nearby extragalactic objects: galaxies in the 2 Microns All Sky Survey and active galactic nuclei detected in hard X-rays by the Swift Burst Alert Telescope. A celestial region around the position of the radiogalaxy Cen A has the largest excess of arrival directions relative to isotropic expectations. The 2-point autocorrelation function is shown for the enlarged set of arrival directions and compared to the isotropic expectation.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astroparticle Physics on 31 August 201

Advanced functionality for radio analysis in the Offline software framework of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The advent of the Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) necessitates the development of a powerful framework for the analysis of radio measurements of cosmic ray air showers. As AERA performs "radio-hybrid" measurements of air shower radio emission in coincidence with the surface particle detectors and fluorescence telescopes of the Pierre Auger Observatory, the radio analysis functionality had to be incorporated in the existing hybrid analysis solutions for fluoresence and surface detector data. This goal has been achieved in a natural way by extending the existing Auger Offline software framework with radio functionality. In this article, we lay out the design, highlights and features of the radio extension implemented in the Auger Offline framework. Its functionality has achieved a high degree of sophistication and offers advanced features such as vectorial reconstruction of the electric field, advanced signal processing algorithms, a transparent and efficient handling of FFTs, a very detailed simulation of detector effects, and the read-in of multiple data formats including data from various radio simulation codes. The source code of this radio functionality can be made available to interested parties on request.Comment: accepted for publication in NIM A, 13 pages, minor corrections to author list and references in v

Search for First Harmonic Modulation in the Right Ascension Distribution of Cosmic Rays Detected at the Pierre Auger Observatory

We present the results of searches for dipolar-type anisotropies in different energy ranges above $2.5\times 10^{17}$ eV with the surface detector array of the Pierre Auger Observatory, reporting on both the phase and the amplitude measurements of the first harmonic modulation in the right-ascension distribution. Upper limits on the amplitudes are obtained, which provide the most stringent bounds at present, being below 2% at 99% $C.L.$ for EeV energies. We also compare our results to those of previous experiments as well as with some theoretical expectations.Comment: 28 pages, 11 figure