Date of Award

2010

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Education

Abstract

The focus of this quantitative study was to identify third grade ISTEP+ data from the top 10 increasing and declining enrollment public school districts in the state of Indiana to determine if communities experiencing high percentages of increasing or declining enrollments have significantly different achievement in language arts. This data was disaggregated to examine the subgroups of English Language Learners and Socio-economic Status. Additionally, the study determined if teachers in these schools were informed about scientific, research-based reading instructional strategies and to what degree SRBI was utilized in reading instruction to meet the needs of students. School corporations experiencing high percentages of student enrollment gains had a higher mean on the language arts portion of the ISTEP+ for third grade students, and the subgroups of free and reduced lunch, and English Language Learners. These findings have practical significance in demonstrating if third grade students attending increasing enrollment schools outperformed students attending declining enrollment schools academically in language arts. This data has implications for both state and federal legislation regarding school improvement categories. The second part of the study focused on teacher survey data to determine utilization and source of knowledge regarding scientific, research-based instruction in reading. As a result, teachers believe they were utilizing scientific, research-based instruction to meet the needs of their changing student populations; however, there is no evidence teachers learned SRBI in pre-service programs.

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