Barely Started and Already Left Behind: A Descriptive Analysis of the Mathematics Ability Demonstrated by Young Deaf Children

This article presents a rich context of information for interpreting Stanford Achievement Test scores and for describing the achievement of deaf and hard-of-hearing students. The publisher's national norming of the Stanford Achievement Test provides a context of actual performance of hearing students. The publisher's Performance Standards provide a context of expectations for hearing students as determined by a panel of experts. The Gallaudet Research Institute's norming of the test on a national sample of deaf and hard-of-hearing students provides a context of test performance by this special population. A smaller subsample of the deaf and hard-of-hearing students who take the same test levels as hearing students provides an additional reference group with respect to the Performance Standards. Information from these sources is brought together into two graphical contexts to address these questions: Can the normative data from the publisher's national standardization of the test with hearing students, and the normative data from the GRI's national norming of the test with deaf and hard-of-hearing students provide a useful context for the interpretation of individual test scores? Can they provide a useful way to examine achievement of groups of students? Can the new Performance Standards defined by the test publisher offer a useful context for test score interpretation for high-achieving deaf and hard-of-hearing students?

The purpose of the longitudinal study was to investigate the prediction of children's academic achievement on the basis of cognitive tasks given prior to kindergarten, and academic attitudes on the basis of teachers' and mothers' ratings of the children's general cognitive abilities and actual achievement. Subjects were tested initially before entering kindergarten; from 105 to 154 of the 255 kindergarten children were followed through grades 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10. A subset of cognitive tasks maintained a high relation to high school achievement scores, especially in reading. Tenth-grade self-concept of ability, expectancy for success, value of success, and perception of task difficulty showed effects of sex and academic content area, with boys generally being more favorable toward math and girls more favorable toward reading. Children's attitudes were related both to mothers' earlier ratings of their children's cognitive abilities and actual achievement scores; this was especially the case for girls. There was a negative relation between mothers' ratings and girls' attitudes toward mathematics. Sex differences in all measures throughout the 11-year period are reviewed.