A descriptive and exploratory longitudinal study was conducted to investigate whether a gap existed between grade level standards and the academic achievement of students with low school readiness and to determine if the gap widened as those students progressed through school. The cohort of interest was students who had taken the KITE readiness test and had attended schools in the Leon County school district from kindergarten through tenth grade for the school years 1974-75 through 1984-85. Students were divided into low, average, and high readiness groups on the basis of their readiness test scores. / Mean differences and variability in communication and mathematics achievement among readiness groups on the norm-referenced CTBS test series and the criterion-referenced SSAT-I test series over time were examined. Because maturation and learning play such a vital role in academic achievement, the achievement patterns of the cohort were examined in the context of the fan spread growth model. It is assumed in this model that as variability within each group increases over time, so does the mean gap between the groups of interest. / Analyses revealed that the students in the low readiness groups did fall further from the set academic standard for the CTBS test series, however, the reverse was true for the criterion-referenced SSAT-I test series. Although for the CTBS tests little fan spread was found between the low and average readiness groups, a notable increasing fan spread was found between the average and high readiness groups. For the SSAT-I tests, overall, fan spread between readiness groups was small and decreasing. When analyzing the data by race and by sex, it was found that the largest differences were between white students and black students, not between males and females. For the CTBS, black males scored consistently lower than other subgroups. For the SSAT-I, black females performed below other subgroups. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-06, Section: A, page: 1437. / Major Professor: F. Craig Johnson. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76297 |
| Contributors | Fletcher, Gail Marie., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 206 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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