Overlap: Age 13, 17, Adult

Objective I: Comprehend what is read.

Subobjective C: Read paragraphs, passages, and longer works.

This passage discusses the balance among both living and non-living environmental factors and how an upset in any one of them can affect many others. The author sums this up in the final sentence of the passage, and this is the important fact the 9-year-olds were asked to recognize. Only 25% of them were able to do so. Thirty-five percent either made no response or honestly admitted not knowing the answer. The remainder chose answers that suggest a total lack of comprehension of the passage.

Objective I: Comprehend what is read.

Subobjective C: Read paragraphs, passages, and longer works.

Eighty-six percent of all 9-year-olds were able to glean

the fact that the weather was wet from the sentence "It started to rain and the fog grew thick."

CHAPTER 4

RESULTS FOR AGE 13

The 13-year-olds participating in the 1970-71 Reading assessment were born during the calendar year 1957. About three fourths of them were enrolled in the eighth grade at the time of the assessment and most of the remainder were enrolled in the seventh grade.

First we describe each group's overall behavior on the Theme 5 exercises, then we indicate those exercises on which the group's performance differs atypically from the group's median level. Finally, we present each released exercise and an exhibit showing the results for each group on that exercise.

Thirty-seven specific effects (behaviors) on gleaning significant facts from passages are summarized at age 13. Nineteen of these represent released exercises and are described in detail. The other 18 behaviors represent unreleased exercises to be used in future assessments. Exhibit 4-1 shows the distribution of the 37 effects representing Theme 5 for each group relative to the national level indicated by the line. Each group's median level is indicated by an arrow (→). (→). Each specific behavior is represented by a box with an X (X) unless it differs atypically from the group's median level; then it is represented by an open box ().

When a group's overall behavior has been described as tending to be above (+) or tending to be below (-) or as characteristically above (++) or characteristically below (--) the national level, a specific behavior for that group can be: (1) atypically farther from the national level than is the group's median level or (2) atypically closer tol the national level.

lAn atypical effect (or behavior) described as closer to the national level may be (1) less extreme in the same direction as a group's tendency or characteristic, or (2) it may occur in the opposite direction from the national level as the group's median level.