Date of Award
2003
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Department
Programs for Higher Education
Advisor
Karen Kimball
Committee Member
Lucille Beisner
Committee Member
Barbara Packer
Committee Member
Claudia Santin
Keywords
academic skills, archival data, assessment, benchmark testing, continuous assessment, dissertation, ESL, ethnically diverse, fourth grade, inner city school, intervention program, language development, learning community, linguistically diverse, post-test, pretest, reliability, second semester, southwest United States, state assessment, students, TAAS, teacher-student conferencing, teachers, Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, third grade, Title I, writing, writing folders, writing interventions, writing process, writing rubric, writing scores, writing strategies
Abstract
This dissertation described an intervention program that was designed to improve the quality of writing in an inner city school in the southwest United States. It was an ethnically and linguistically diverse Title I learning community of about 300. The program targeted 44 second semester 3rd graders who would be first semester 4th graders following the July summer break. Two fourth grade teachers, both with at least four years of experience and extensive writing process training, implemented the program at both grade levels.
The focus was to raise writing scores, as measured by the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) writing rubric. A full implementation of the writing process, inclusive of daily ESL/language development instruction, continuous assessment, writing folders, teacher-student conferencing, a pretest and a post-test were used over an eight-month period in an attempt to do just that. From the beginning to the end of the program, one 4th grade teacher evaluated all of the intervention compositions to ensure the reliability of the scores.
The significance in implementing this program in this manner was to begin preparing 3rd grade students for the state assessment before and into 4th grade. The archival data from 1999-2001 revealed that though 100% of those 4th graders passed TAAS writing, of concern was that 77% had only met minimum expectations by making the lowest possible passing score of two.
The benefit was that as a direct result of the program, students made incremental growth over the course of the intervention. By the program's end, 56% of the participants scored at the higher levels, making a three or four on the post-test. This was an increase of 32% above the 24% who scored that on TAAS writing in the three preceding years.