The purpose of this study was to describe, for a selected group of kindergarten children, the commonalities and differences related to present or expected low academic achievement. The sample of 81 students included only those students who entered the regular education segment of the district's kindergarten in the years 1983-84 and 1984-85 and who were evaluated by a school psychologist at some point in their kindergarten year. The following variables were considered: age, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, primary language, significant family history, significant health history, perinatal influence, social behavior, ability, achievement, perceptual motor skill, attention span, speech and/or language disorder, fine motor coordination, and gross motor coordination. These data were analyzed and described in terms of frequencies, percentages, correlations, means, standard deviations, analysis of variance, and multiple regression procedures. No single ethnic group or gender had a significantly high or low percentage of children described by any of the variables studied. Of all the variables included in the study, only ability and perceptual motor skill were significantly related to academic achievement in the kindergarten year. Kindergarten achievement was the only variable which predicted academic achievement in the following year. In years two and three post evaluation, academic achievement tended to be predicted by the previous year's achievement scores.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:pacific.edu/oai:scholarlycommons.pacific.edu:uop_etds-4229 |
| Date | 01 January 1990 |
| Creators | Wilson, Beth |
| Publisher | Scholarly Commons |
| Source Sets | University of the Pacific |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations |
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