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This final report discusses the activities and outcomes of a project designed to provide technical assistance to Puerto Rican public and private agencies, institutions, and organizations providing early intervention, educational, transitional, vocational, early identification, and related services to children with deaf-blindness, to ensure that they more effectively implement services for the deaf-blind population. Project staff worked to increase collaboration efforts between public agencies and non-profit programs to enhance direct services, increase opportunities for professional development among teachers and service providers, and initiate local research in the area of deaf-blindness. Yearly workshops were provided to student teachers and graduate students to establish awareness among future professionals. Direct technical assistance to teachers was provided on educational aspects, while separate technical assistance activities were focused on broadening awareness among professionals, parents, and other service providers. Services promoted effective transitions for youth with deaf-blindness which involved training and skills development, focusing on educational trends that have been successful in the social integration of individuals with deaf-blindness. Activities to promote parental involvement included provision of increased opportunities for parents to benefit from direct technical assistance and workshops. A flyer, program brochure, and functional assessment documents presented in Spanish are included. (CR)

This booklet describes the issues and findings of a series of symposia on Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico and in the United States. From 1988 to 1992, six symposia were held, three in the United States and three in Puerto Rico, on topics such as migration, culture and language, community characteristics, strengthening relations between the two communities, economic development, community health, and education. The meetings resulted in a strategy and an agenda on which several groups agreed to collaborate. An introduction describes the symposia process. Section II discusses the emergence of the two Puerto Rican communities, their politics, migration patterns, changing perceptions, intercommunity relationships, and migration between the two areas. Section III looks at education and discusses the unique problems faced by both communities: literacy, technology, the impact of migration, retention, and teacher training. This section offers seven recommendations. Section IV considers health issues and delivery systems and policy as well as primary and preventive care, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, mental health, and 13 recommendations. Section V discusses community economic development starting in the 1960s and continuing particularly in the 1980s. Five findings and 13 recommendations are provided. The final section outlines the agreed-upon agenda for collaboration. Symposia participants with organizational affiliations are listed. (JB)

The Puerto Rico Nursing Career Cooperative Demonstration Project and Associate Nursing Program provided education and onsite occupational training laboratory to upgrade the education of 20 licensed practical nurses (LPNs) from 1989-90. The nurses were upgraded to associate nurses in an 18-month period at the Technological Institute of Puerto Rico. The program upgraded their education, developed professional competencies, acquainted participants with different aspects of associate nursing, and motivated continuing education. Resources and personnel of the institution achieved program objectives. The project consisted of 5 terms equivalent to 72 credits at undergraduate level for an associate nurse degree. (Courses within each of the five terms are listed in this final report along with evaluations and results. In addition, evaluation design, programmatic activities for fiscal year 1989-90, and a timeline for 1990-91 are included.) Two appendices contain a contract in Spanish and a cooperative agreement between the Board for Vocational, Technical, and High Skills Education of the Puerto Rico Department of Education and the Sociedad Espanola de Auxilio Mutuo y Beneficencia--in English. (NLA)

The acquisition of Spanish as a first language was investigated in a study of eight Puerto Rican children ranging in age from 17-39 months. The speech of the four children studied in Puerto Rico was analyzed in detail and compared with that of the four children taped in Boston. The children's speech was taped in natural situations and analyzed in terms of the accuracy and complexity of the verb system. A common developmental pattern for the acquisition and appearance of the verb system was observed. For most of the children, repetitions seemed to influence verb system development. In comparison with the Boston group, the Puerto Rican group showed more diversity in developmental patterns. In general, the Puerto Rican children were more similar to the Boston children (individually) than to one another. (Author/RW)

A report on the Puerto Rico Dental and Other Health Professions Student Orientation and Recruitment program is presented. Project objectives were to: (1) plan, develop, implement, and assess a formal recruitment program designed to enroll and train a higher proportion of highly qualified Puerto Rican high school and baccalaureate students for the D.D.S. degree; and (2) design and implement an orientation program to complement the formal recruitment program. The orientation program was designed to interest students in choosing a career in the health professions in general, including dental and dental auxiliary careers. Project activities included: (1) the reorganization and integration of all recruitment and orientation services of the Medical Sciences Campus; (2) eliciting the participation of faculty and students from the five schools of the Medical Sciences Campus; (3) developing promotional materials; (4) undertaking recruitment efforts in programs with a recruitment problem; (5) conducting orientation programs in the six regions; (6) coordination with health centers for orientation purposes; (7) establishing an information and counseling service within the Deanship of Student Affairs. Information on assessment goals and level of achievement are presented, and problem areas are listed. Overall benefits of the project are also outlined. (SW)

This final report describes a coordinated dissemination program that was developed to help provide educational information to the teaching personnel of the Puerto Rico Department of Education. Objectives, problems, accomplishments, and recommendations are included; appendices provide the program's budget, the questionnaire used to assess the needs for educational information dissemination, tables of minimal competencies in areas of critical underachievement (for fourth and seventh grades of the Barranquitas School District), summaries of Title III validated projects, summaries of documents, and a list of documents collected in the dissemination center. (JD)

A study evaluated vocational guidance services and guidance counselors in Puerto Rico. It included the guidance counselors in the Vocational and Technical Program and a representative sample of guidance counselors in all other programs in the Department of Public Education. Findings were made regarding guidance counselors and supervisors, students in vocational and technical institutes, superintendents and school directors, the Program of Guidance at the central level of the Department of Public Education, and the curriculum in guidance and counseling at institutions of higher education in Puerto Rico. Personnel exhibited good interpersonal relations skills, but they recognized and admitted the extreme austerity regarding insufficiency of human, material, and monetary resources and in the physical facilities and environment in which guidance services are provided. The support system for guidance services was very insufficient and discouraging. Given the limitations, the goals and objectives of the guidance program were unrealistic. Basic deficiencies were exposed in the organizational structure, foundations, and administrative operations. Continuous, systematic, and rigorous evaluation was absent. A radical reform in guidance services was recommended. (YLB)

A representative sampling of male Puerto Rican youths was studied in order to analyze post-counterculture attitudes toward family, society, school, drugs, use of leisure time and future aspirations. The counterculture of the 1960s is described, with the implication that changes brought about by this movement influenced current youth attitudes in Puerto Rico. Attitudes toward family are described in terms of satisfaction, the mother's role, discipline and family shared activity. Attitudes toward society are discussed in relation to the present socioeconomic crisis in Puerto Rico, rebellion against authority conflicts with adults, views of adulthood, religion and cultural identity. Personal problems, social atmosphere, self discipline, self responsibility, curriculum and material facilities are used to evaluate school attitudes while diversity of activities and student preferences are used to examine the use of leisure time. Future aspirations are discussed in terms of "world views," sexual liberation, materialism and future education plans. In addition, drug experimentation and drug abuse among Puerto Rican youth are considered in the context of the countercultural movement. Tables indicating study findings, a sample questionnaire (in Spanish), and a list of references are also included. (EB)

The first followup study of the graduates of the Department of Graduate Studies in Education at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Pedras campus, was undertaken with seven objectives to determine: the satisfaction of graduates in their present work; the specific preparation provided by the graduate program; whether graduates are working in positions for which they were trained; the satisfaction with formal college training; how job satisfaction is related to individual motivation; the graduates' perception of the reinforcement provided by their jobs; and what information will be most helpful in future student selection and orientation. The conclusions reached are that: (1) the graduate department is efficiently preparing students for work; (2) job security seems more important than competitiveness to Puerto Rican students; (3) the program in secondary education has set clear goals for its students, and the graduates express high satisfaction; (4) administration and supervision seems a very rewarding profession for its graduates, whereas guidance and counseling is less so; (5) there are very few people who are meant to be leaders in their fields, and they could be located by testing; and (6) younger professionals tend to be more internally controlled than older people, and are more willing to take risks and introduce changes. A number of specific recommendations are made for the program. (Author/MSE)

An analysis is presented by the Puerto Rico office of the College Board of the English as a Second Language Achievement Test (ESLAT), which was undertaken to measure the specifications and item content of the examination against the students' performance. The report, based on 400 randomly selected structure items used in one or more versions of ESLAT, focuses on an examination of differences in question form, success of the distractors, linguistic factors affecting item difficulty, and ways these factors operate on student responses to certain areas of grammar. The linguistic factors examined are frequency of occurrence in common usage, range of applicability, variability, interference, and reinforcement of an English language pattern by a native language pattern. After the study of the interplay of these factors, the language areas tested by the 400 items are divided into four levels of difficulty and significant correlations between certain language areas and difficulty levels are discussed. In addition to the structure items, 10 reading selections are examined and discussed. Finally, an attempt is made to relate the ESLAT results to the emphases in the textbooks used in Puerto Rican public high schools. It is concluded that, while the ESLAT is an excellent testing instrument, interference problems are still a major source of difficulty for English as a second language students. (AMH)

This paper provides an overview of recent developments in the science of linguistics, and considers their relevance to the teaching of Spanish in Puerto Rico. First, three significant trends are explained and summarized: (1) structuralism, which emphasizes phonetics, pattern, and distribution, and rejects meaning as a tool of analysis; (2) transformationalism, which assumes the existence of two general linguistic levels, "deep" and "surface," and (3) the study of language acquisition, which attempts to understand the process whereby children achieve fluent control of their native language. Following this broad overview, research findings which have applied linguistics research to Spanish instruction are summarized. Data is described showing that the pervasive loyalty toward Castilian Spanish should be reoriented to develop acceptance of language variations such as regionalism, dialectism, and students' idiolects. Additionally, findings are outlined which suggest that a descriptive attitude and a comprehensive view toward language should take precedence over the prescriptive attitude toward language teaching. Words, it is argued, should be learned in context, by association, and should be functional. Various principles are outlined to support the assertion that Spanish grammar instruction should have a strong theoretical foundation. Finally, among other prescriptions and considerations, teachers are encouraged to develop their own personal philosophy of language teaching. (KH)

In 1962 and again in 1965, a group of sixth and ninth grade students in selected schools in four Puerto Rican communities were interviewed to investigate the factors influencing students' decision to withdraw from school before completing twelfth grade and to identify some characteristics of dropouts. Of 616 students interviewed in 1962, 20.9% of the sixth graders and 16.3% of the ninth graders could not be located in 1965. About the same percentage of elementary boys as girls (17.3% versus 17.7%) dropped out of school, but at the ninth grade level 25.2% of the boys and only 18.6% of the girls left school. Rural students, especially in the Tobacco and Coffee Regions, tended to drop out more than urban students in the Industrial Region. Sixth and ninth grade girls with low media exposure, students with no plans to attend college, students older than the normal age level for their grade, and students with low academic averages tended to drop out more. No relationship existed between dropouts and father's occupation, satisfaction with school, or the student's most influential person. Recommendations included publicizing vocational schools, establishing kindergartens, counseling potential dropouts, increasing economic help for needy students, and differentiating curricula for advanced students. (Author/SB)