The importance of alignment between identification processes and program design is widely noted in gifted and talented education literature. We analyzed publicly available district gifted program plans (Grades 3-5) from two states to examine the extent to which district identification practices matched intervention strategies. Our team developed a coding scheme matrix with 133 items for State 1 ( n = 115) and State 2 ( n = 178). The results of this study indicated that, at least in terms of planning, districts in the two states we examined appeared to be aligning identification and programming practices to meet the needs of gifted students identified in mathematics and/or reading/English language arts. In State 1, at least 60% of the districts reported the following intervention strategies in mathematics and reading/English language arts: faster pace of coverage, regular grade-level standards, in-depth coverage, preassessment, above grade-level standards, and expanded grade-level standards. In contrast, State 2 districts reported faster pace of coverage; however, with less commonly utilized interventions, subject-matter identification significantly influenced their usage. Differentiation was the primary learning environment strategy utilized by districts in both states.

Children's oral language skills typically begin to develop sooner than their written language skills; however, the four language systems (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) then develop concurrently as integrated strands that influence one another. This research explored relationships between students' errors in language comprehension of passages across oral and written modalities (listening and reading) and in language expression across oral and written modalities (speaking and writing). The data for this study were acquired during the standardization of the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement-Third Edition (KTEA-3). Correlational analyses from the total sample (n = 2,443-3,552) and within grade bands revealed low to moderate correlations (.26-.50). No evidence of convergent or divergent validity was found when comparing correlations of "same-name" error types (e.g., inferential errors across modalities) with correlations of "different-name" error types. These results support previous research findings and hypotheses that language by ear, eye, hand, and mouth are separable but interacting systems that differ in more ways than modality of input/output.

Children with a specific learning disability in reading/writing (LDRW) and/or language impairment (LI) are likely to have difficulties across all areas of academic achievement, as a great deal of teaching and learning depends on intact reading skill and linguistic communication. Despite a large number of studies examining academic difficulties among these groups, there has been minimal research investigating types of errors made on tests of academic achievement. The present study compared academic error types of children with LDRW (Group 1) and children with LI (Group 3) to two distinct demographically matched control groups (Groups 2 and 4) using the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement-Third Edition (KTEA-3) error analysis system. Findings indicate that children in the LDRW group or LI group, on average, made a greater number of errors than their matched counterparts. Statistically significant differences, with moderate effect sizes, were found between examinees in the clinical groups and their respective matched control groups across several error categories. Some of the largest differences were found in the Written Expression and Oral Expression subtests. Most importantly, the patterns of errors made by LDRW and LI samples differed notably on the various tasks, providing new insights about these clinical samples.

No abstract

An understanding of the strengths, weaknesses, and achievement profiles of students with giftedness and learning disabilities (G&LD) is needed to address their asynchronous development. This study examines the subtests and error factors in the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement-Third Edition (KTEA-3) for strength and weakness patterns of students with G&LD in higher and lower level thinking skills by comparing G&LD students (n = 196) with academically gifted (GT; n = 69) and specific learning disability (SLD) students (n = 90). Several one-way MANCOVAs were conducted with subtest error factor scores as dependent variables and grouping variable (G&LD, GT, or SLD) as the independent variable. The G&LD means scores across subtests were in between the two control groups. On many higher level thinking tasks, the G&LD group scored similar to the gifted group. The results support the use of error analysis to gain further understanding into the profile of students with G&LD.