2003 - The Relationship Between Degrees of Poverty and Student Achievement

Attribution: Sorhaindo, Linda
Researchers: Linda Sorhaindo
University Affiliation: University of Miami
Email: linda.sorhaindo@myunion.edu
Research Question:
Determine whether there were differences in the academic achievement for 4th and 8th grade students at three different levels of poverty.
Published: 1
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: University of Miami
Journal Entry: Dissertation
Year: 2003
Findings:
  • The academic achievement of students in 4th and 8th grade in both reading comprehension and mathematics applications was significantly different at schools with different school composition. Students in low poverty schools scored significantly higher than students in the medium poverty schools, who scored significantly higher than the students in high poverty schools.
  • Although the academic achievement of students in 4th and 8th grades in both reading comprehension and mathematics applications was significantly different at the three levels of poverty, the factor of poverty as operationalized by free or reduced price lunch status accounted for very little of the variance in SAT scores.
  • Although there were significant differences in the academic achievement among students at the three poverty levels, other unidentified sources of variance that were not included in the design may have been responsible for the differences.
  • Significantly higher achievement for students in the low poverty schools at both the 4th and 8th grades on both the mathematics applications and reading comprehension subsets of the Stanford Achievement tests. Students in the low poverty schools had a mean scale score that was significantly higher than that of students in the medium poverty schools.
  • Results indicated that differences in the percentage of poverty level students in a school significantly affected scores in reading comprehension and mathematics applications at both 4th and 8th grades.
Keywords: Academic AchievementCompositionMathPovertyReadingSESRegions: SouthMethodologies: QuantitativeResearch Designs: Secondary Survey DataAnalysis Methods: Multilevel Models Sampling Frame:Miami-Dade County Public Schools
Sampling Types: RandomAnalysis Units: StudentData Types: Quantitative-Cross Sectional
Data Description:
  • Sample population of 9,000 students, Fifteen hundred students in each of the three poverty categories were selected from each grade level, 4,500 4th graders and 4,500 8th grade students for the 1997-98 school year.
  • Three levels of poverty defined as: high poverty (over 90% of students receiving free or reduced price lunch), medium poverty (family income below 130% of the federal poverty line) and low poverty (income between 130% and 185% of the federal poverty line).
  • DV: Academic Achievement (Stanford Achievement test reading comprehension and mathematics applications)
  • IV: Student level variable of poverty, school level variable of school composition (three levels of poverty: high poverty (over 90% of students receiving free or reduced price lunch), medium poverty (70-90% of student receiving free or reduced price lunch) and low poverty (less than 70% receiving free or reduced price lunch)).
Theoretical Framework:
Relevance:
Archives: K-12 Integration, Desegregation, and Segregation Abstracts