Date of Award
2012
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
d
Department
Abraham S. Fischler College of Education
Advisor
Carole L. Trueman
Committee Member
Anita Barrett
Committee Member
Ronald P. Kern
Keywords
academic achievement, economically disadvantaged students, elementary school, extended-school-year program, language arts, literacy skills, oral reading fluency, reading fluency, reading programs, retelling fluency, state assessment, student achievement, student motivation, students with disabilities, summer language-arts program, writing skills
Abstract
The purpose of the study was to improve the reading and writing skills of underperforming students in Grades 3 through 5 at an elementary school located in the northeastern United States. Proficient literacy skills are essential for future academic success (National Early Literacy Panel, 2009). Because acquiring literacy skills is a prerequisite to the attainment of all other academic skills, learning to read is considered a necessary foundational ability by researchers (Krezmien & Mulcahy, 2008; Lo, Wang, & Haskell, 2009; Murphy, 2004). The problem addressed in this study was that, in the 2004-2005 to 2006-2007 school years, a mean of 51% of students with disabilities and 28% of economically disadvantaged students achieved only at the partially proficient level in language arts on the state assessment.
This study was intended to determine if an extended-school-year summer language-arts program would influence the academic achievement of the participants. The study used a quantitative, retrospective ex-post-facto design. Schiavetti and Metz (2002) stated that retrospective research analyzes data that were filed before the research question was developed. This design was focused on identifying a relationship between an independent variable and the dependent variable. In this study, the independent variable was the summer language-arts program, and the dependent variable was academic achievement measured using state language-arts literacy scores and the summer reading program’s oral reading and retelling fluency scores.
The results of the study indicated that students in Grades 3 through 5 who attended the summer language-arts program in 2008, 2009, and 2010 did not improve their achievement on the state language-arts assessment. However, the students did improve their reading fluency and retelling fluency, as measured by the summer program assessments. Suggestions for program improvements and recommendations for future research are included.