A Study of the Impact of Socioeconomic Status on Student Achievement in a Rural East Tennessee School System.

<p>The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of socioeconomic status on academic achievement as measured by the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program Achievement Test and the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program Writing Assessment. The population consisted of 8th grade students enrolled in 4 elementary schools in a rural school system in Tennessee. Data were analyzed for the population of the 2006-2007 academic school year. A 2-way analysis of variance model was used to compare the means among the schools, the means between economically disadvantaged students and those who were not economically disadvantaged, and whether there was a significant school by socioeconomic status interaction. The independent variables were the schools ( School A, B, C, D) and the socioeconomic status of the students (those who qualified for free or reduced price meals and those who did not qualify for free or reduced price meals). The 5 dependent variables in the study were the number of items students answered correctly on the math, language arts, science, and social studies portions of the test and the holistic writing test scores.</p><p>The quantitative findings revealed the <em>F</em> test for the school by socioeconomic status interaction term was not significant in all 5 research questions. The mean score of economically disadvantaged students was lower than noneconomically disadvantaged students in math, language arts, social studies, and science. Results indicated no difference in the mean writing scores between students who were economically disadvantaged and students who were not. When the main effect of school was significant, the Bonferroni post hoc multiple pairwise comparisons test was used to determine which pair of school means was different. The main effect of school was significant in math, social studies, science, and writing. There were no significant differences in the mean number of language arts items answered correctly among the schools.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

EdD (Doctor of Education)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation - unrestricted

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Educational Leadership

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Pettigrew, Eydie J.

• academic achievement
• economically disadvantaged
• socioeconomic status
• poverty
• Educational Sociology
• Social and Behavioral Sciences
• Sociology

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright by the authors.

Repository record dc:identifier

https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/1844

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dc.etsu.edu:etd-3196