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given these letters of permission, 45 students received parental consent
to participate.
Within the total group, 39 were female and 24 were male. Of this
total, 22 females and 19 males participated in the research. Twenty-two
of the 26 females participated because they returned their letters of
consent within the specified time; all males who returned their letters
participa ted.
Thirteen females and five males did not participate in the in
dividual phase of the research. When the individual testing was com
pleted, these nonparticipating students were questioned to determine
why they had not participated. The reasons they gave are as follows:
four said they had never received the letters of permission; five said
they had lost the letters; two said their father or mother had not
wanted them to participate; three said they did not want to participate;
one said she was too busy; three said they did not belong to this group
of Cubans. The first two reasons are viewed as unlikely because students
were reminded daily for 2 weeks of the importance of returning the
letters of permission. Many students were given as many as three
additional letters because they had specified that the letters had
been lost. Teachers stated that all students who had been counted as
1980 Cubans were in fact 1980 Cubans and did belong to this group.
Data Collection
Research permission was obtained from the Protection of Human
Subjects Corranittee at the University of Florida, the school board
staff of the local governing school board agency, the school principal,
and the bilingual classroom teachers.