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Fostering success in reading: a survey of teaching methods and collaboration practices of high performing elementary schools in Texas

This study examined reading programs in 68 Texas elementary schools that were
identified as successful by their scores on TAAS assessment results in the 1999-2000
school year. These schools’ student populations had a high proportion of culturally
diverse and low-SES students. The purposes of this study were: (1) to determine if and
how teaching methods and collaboration (intervention/support teams) were used by
effective schools to foster reading success in all students; (2) to identify cohesive
patterns (clusters) or models in schools’ use of collaboration and teaching methods; (3)
to examine these clusters of similar schools and see if the patterns differed based on the
school/community demography (urban, suburban, or rural). The study was conducted in
68 schools in 33 school districts that represented various demographic settings from 12
different Education Service Centers across Texas. From these original 332 variables, 26
variables were selected that were of medium frequency and strongly correlated with high
TAAS scores over a 4- year period. These 26 variables were used to examine the 68
high-performing Texas elementary schools for clusters. K-means analysis and HCA were both applied to the 26 response variables, using them as complementary techniques
to arrive at a five cluster solution. Results from correlations of individual characteristics
and from identifying school clusters suggested that school community type could
possibly be moderately predictive of student performance on the TAAS/TAKS over
time.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/3968
Date16 August 2006
CreatorsEvans Jr., Richard Austin
ContributorsParker, Richard I.
PublisherTexas A&M University
Source SetsTexas A and M University
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeBook, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text
Format367121 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, born digital

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