U. S. Office of Education: Report on Research Projects.

attention been focused on that portion of the school population termed the disadvantaged. Although the educational profession has neglected this population, a concerted effort is now taking place which is directed toward providing facilities and instruction geared to meeting the needs of these students. A great deal of research has been conducted which is alleged to provide the educational establishment with information about the disadvantaged student, or with methods and materials to be used in teaching him. Several of the current studies appear promising and may ultimately yield valuable results. A majority of the disadvantaged students speak a dialect which may differ rather sharply from standard English, and, because of this difference, they may experience difficulty in the classroom where activities generally are geared to the speaker of standard English. Various panaceas are suggested which range from teaching standard English as a second language before attempting to teach a child to read to using only materials which are written in the child’s dialect. To date the only available information about dialect patterns has been data collected by linguists using informants. Perhaps the instrument currently being developed by Petersen will enable the classroom teacher to acquire more information about the language of her students. The diagnostic test, which will identify nonstandard speech and language patterns of disadvantaged Negro students, should provide information of value for curriculum planning and, possibly, remedial work. A pool of items based on dialect deviations identified by linguists will be tested on a random sample of Negro and Caucasian students with the ultimate