0.2 Reading and math differences between hispanic students and  (Page 4/10)

According to the Texas Education Agency, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) passing standard for reading and math in the fifth grade are as followed:

In reading, 40 is the total possible points given to a student to receive 100% passing rate and 28 points for students to receive 70% passing rate; and in writing, 32 is the total possible point that are given to a student to receive 100% passing rate and 18 points for students to receive 56% passing rate (http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/aeis/2008/glossary.html#appendf).

Results

After checking the assumptions for normality for students’ TAKS reading scores and their math scores, it was determined that the datasets for all 7 years of data demonstrated evidence of non-normality. That is, the standardized skewness coefficients (i.e., the skewness value divided by its standard error) and the standardized kurtosis coefficients (i.e., the kurtosis value divided by its standard error) were almost all outside of the boundaries of +/- 3 (Onwuegbuzie&Daniel, 2002). Accordingly, nonparametric procedures were utilized to answer the research questions delineated above.

Yearly differences

In regard to the 2008-2009 academic year, the Wilcoxon signed-rank test revealed the presence of statistically significant differences in passing rates in reading between Hispanic students and students who were LEP, z = -35.17, p <.001, and in passing rates in math, z = -30.11, p <.001. Effect sizes were large, with a Cohen’s d of 1.25 for the reading pass rate difference, and moderate, with a Cohen’s d of 0.78 for the math pass rate difference (Cohen, 1988). An analysis of the descriptive statistics table reveals that Hispanic students averaged 19.29% points higher in their reading pass rates and 10.96% points higher in their math pass rates than students who were labeled LEP. Readers are referred to Tables 1 through 4 for the descriptive statistics for these analyses.

For the 2007-2008 academic year, the Wilcoxon signed-rank test revealed the presence of statistically significant differences in passing rates in reading between Hispanic students and students who were LEP, z = -33.62, p <.001, and in passing rates in math, z = -30.24, p <.001. Effect sizes were large, with a Cohen’s d of 1.26 for the reading pass rate difference and a Cohen’s d of 0.84 for the math pass rate difference (Cohen, 1988). Hispanic students averaged 19.19% points higher in their reading pass rates and almost 12% points higher in their math pass rates than students who were labeled LEP.