Doctor of Philosophy / Curriculum and Instruction Programs / Charles Heerman / Educators have realized that low-income students have a higher probability of lower
achievement than students from a higher SES background and that these low-income students
may very well continue into the cycle of poverty. The purpose of this study was to refine our
understanding of the relationships between low-income student status and low income academic
achievement in Kansas high schools. This study explored high school low income, low reading,
low mathematics, low science achievement correlations among three metropolitan locations and
four sizes of high schools. The dependent variables were the school building rates of low income
and the school building rates of low achievement. The independent variables were school
location and school size. The data was retrieved from the Kansas State Board of Education
website. The three metropolitan areas studied were the Wichita, the Topeka-Lawrence and the
Greater Kansas City Metropolitan Areas. The four sizes of high schools studied were the 6A-,
5A-, 4A-, and 3A-sized high schools. There were seven research questions in this study. All the
research questions were non-directional except for research question #2. Correlation coefficients,
standard deviation scores, range scores, frequency scores, intercorrelations, coefficient of
determinations, partial correlations and ANCOVA scores were used to analyze the data.
The major conclusions for each research questions were: (1) the unsatisfactory + basic
scores of all three low achievement areas (reading, mathematics and science) were the most
consistent representation of low achievement. (2) in the three metropolitan areas, where income
differences were greater, low income and low achievement correlations were greater. Where
income differences were smaller, low income and low achievement correlations were smaller. (3)
smaller schools did not have the better school results. (4) the low reading, mathematics and
science correlations had different magnitudes depending on the group. Either low mathematics or
low science achievement produced the largest correlations with low income in all seven groups.
(5) the smaller standard deviation and range scores may have contributed to the smaller
correlations in metropolitan area 2 and the 4A-sized high schools. Findings in the frequency
distributions have reinforced the standard deviation and range results. (6) low mathematics and
low science achievement were as important as low reading achievement. (7) the lowachievement
rates (adjusted for low-income rates) did not differ much across the subject areas
when the seven subgroups were considered. The idea of building smaller schools was not
supported by the findings.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:KSU/oai:krex.k-state.edu:2097/330 |
| Date | January 1900 |
| Creators | Yee, Johnny Yi |
| Publisher | Kansas State University |
| Source Sets | K-State Research Exchange |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
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