The Extent of Academic Retardation in a Residential Treatment Center

Abstract

RESEARCH INTO causal relationship be tween disturbance and educational dis ability is necessarily complex. Many authorities support view that this relationship is an in teracting vicious circle phenomenon. Bennett (1) and Monroe (5) support this view. Robinson (6) produced clinical evidence to support this reciprocating theory. Gates (2) estimated that 75 percent of severely disabled readers showed personality maladjustment and in about 25 per cent of cases factors were a contributing cause of reading difficulty. Harris (3) thinks this is a serious underestimation and found that almost all of cases seen in his clinic exhibited some type of maladjustment. His staff estimated that in at least 50 percent of cases difficulties were causally related to reading problems. Recently Tamkin (7) using chronological age rather than mental age as basis from which to measure educational achievement, felt that emotional problems could not be construed as a cause of educational disability since . . . only one third of emotionally disturbed children had accompanying educational disabilities. Tamkin also found in line with Jastak's (4) theory a sig nificant difference favoring reading achievement over arithmetic achievement even though accord ing to Tamkin arithmetic scores were in accord ance with expected achievement of pupils that age. He used chronogical age rather than mental age as a base because of unavailability of I.Q. scores for all cases in sample, and said that, the justification for this procedure was predicated upon assumption that S's would not show extreme dispersion about average I.Q. range. The purpose of this study is to replicate Tarn kin's work using more sensitive instruments: to survey reading comprehension and arithmetic computation achievement in emotionally disturbed children, to ascertain frequency of educa tional disability, and to measure relationship between reading comprehension and arithmetic computation. It is hypothesized that in a dis turbed population there will be severe academic retardation, and there will be no evidence sup porting a significant difference favoring reading comprehension over arithmetic computation achievement.