Reading comprehension was assessed in 1974 and again in 1979 for 1,664 hearing-impaired students enrolled in special education programs across the United States. The Special Edition for Hearing Impaired Students of the 1973 Stanford Achievement Test, an adaptation of the regular edition of the Stanford but with identical items and subtest structure, was used to assess students' achievement both years. The major research question concerned the relative importance for achievement growth of the most salient handicapping characteristics of the population (specifically, the degree of hearing loss and the presence of any additional, educationally significant handicaps) compared with basic student demographic characteristics, such as race, age, and sex. A repeated-measures statistical analysis' of the data indicated that the growth in reading achievement of the typical hearing-impaired student over a 5-year period was approximately one-third that of the average hearing student. In addition, degree of hearing loss, age, and racial background had significant effects on reading-comprehension growth.
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