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NEW LITERATURE    WEAVER

results which may be interpreted as successful.  Consequently glowing reports are written about the effectiveness of the programs for the disadvantaged but very little data are collected or published which specify how changes in behavior are induced or even the actual changes which accrue to the children as they participate in the program.  Changes are reported in general mass data based on tests which may or may not be germane to the children, or their ghetto experience.

Moreover, very few teachers and even fewer administrators are prepared to believe that the one-group procedure, which is so consistently used, should be abandoned.  This procedure gives such very poor evidence of program effectiveness.  The result is that the "new" literature presents, as yet, very, very few reasonable grounds for the many claims and allegations of causal connections between improvement and procedure.  There is an alarming lack of the classical required and necessary effort for control and comparison in the "new" literature and in the programs for the disadvantaged.  Dr. Doxey A. Wilderson, in Education for the Disadvantaged, identifies this deficit this way:

"The research valuation of any program of compensatory education would seem to require (a) precise description of the educational experiences involved, (b) clear formulation of hypotheses concerning the effects of specified and controlled pragmatic activities, (c) definition of appropriate tests of such hypotheses, and (d) collection and interpretation of relevant data through technically adequate procedures.  Most of the studies here reviewed do not satisfy any of these requirements, and their infirmities are less pronounced than those of many other investigations not selected for review.  As a consequence currently available research in this field typically reports ambiguous outcomes of unknown or amorphous educational variables."

The result is that much of the "new" literature and, perhaps many of the programs for the disadvantaged, are based on naive, perhaps even intuitive, decisions and programming.  This possibly accounts for many of the contradictory and premature conceptual based and trends which the "new" literature reflects.  It is also quite likely that, since a very, very few of the programs and/or professionals, some of the contradictory and premature aspects of education for the deprived are due to inadequate experience, identifica-

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