1 / 12

“Mind the Gap” for Students with Disabilities

“Mind the Gap” for Students with Disabilities. Mary E. Yakimowski, Michael Faggella-Luby, and Michael Alfano University of Connecticut Presentation at the annual meeting for the American Educational Research Association New Orleans, LO April 2011. Office of Assessment. Purpose.

aladdin-reed
Download Presentation

“Mind the Gap” for Students with Disabilities

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. “Mind the Gap” for Students with Disabilities Mary E. Yakimowski, Michael Faggella-Luby, and Michael Alfano University of Connecticut Presentation at the annual meeting for the American Educational Research Association New Orleans, LO April 2011 Office of Assessment

  2. Purpose To examine differences over time between the performance of students with disabilities in comparison to their typically achieving peers.

  3. Focus on how the UConn Neag School of Education is examining K-12 performance More specifically, we would like to examine the patterns of Connecticut’s grade 3-8 pupils of graduates of our Teaching Education Program as part of our Neag Assessment Plan through our Teachers for a New Era project

  4. Examining Achievement Gap Theories Delayed or Developmental Lag • An initially lower reading achievement than Students with No Disability (SND) but later accelerated growth as schooling continues (Francis, Shaywitz, Stuebing, Shaywitz, & Fletcher, 1996).

  5. Examining Achievement Gap Theories Deficit Model of Reading Growth • An initially lower reading achievement yet parallel growth over time when compared to SND (e.g., Catts, Bridges, Little &Tomblin, 2008; Francis, Shaywitz, Stuebing, Shaywitz, & Fletcher, 1996).

  6. Cumulative Trajectory or Matthew Effect • An increase in variability among growth trajectories over time as SNDs start slow in reaching achievement and develop at slower rates than SNDs. Consequently, SWDs fall further behind as each year of school passes leading to a widening, rather than a closing achievement gap(Leppanen, Niemi, Aunola, & Nurmi, 2004) or Matthew Effect (Stanovich, 1986). Examining Achievement Gap Theories

  7. Method • Subjects • Convenience sample of 5 districts employing Neag graduates • 8,541 students with matched scores for three consecutive years between 3rd Grade and 8th Grade • 1:5 ratio of students with to students without disabilities • Analysis • DV=Connecticut Mastery Test-Fourth Edition (CMT-4) Reading Comprehension scores 2006-2008 • IV=Grade span cohorts, SWD vs SND • Cohort 1: Grade 3, 4, 5 • Cohort 2: Grade 6, 7, 8 • Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance (RMANOVA)

  8. Results support the Deficit Model of Reading Growth

  9. Results • Overall reading scores are higher for 6th Grade cohort when compared to 3rd Grade cohort with improvement at each time point. • Therefore: Both SWD & SND improve over time rather than plateau. • Statistically significant difference between SWD & SND reading scores at each time point • Therefore: The achievement gap persists • Mean differences on the reading score gap between SWN & SND across each year for upper and lower grades NOT statistically significantly different • Therefore: While the achievement gap persists, the gap does not appear to grow larger over time supporting the Deficit Model of Read Growth.

More Related