Ethnic and gender disparity in TVAAS achievement gains in reading and mathematics

• Main Author: Taylor, Faye Porter
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Digital Scholarship @ Tennessee State University 2003
• Subjects: Educational evaluation|Mathematics education|Literacy|Reading instruction; Terranova
• Online Access: https://digitalscholarship.tnstate.edu/dissertations/AAI3107465

This expost facto study examined ethnic or gender disparity in the five-year-average reading and mathematics achievement gains and achievement levels of students in grades three through eight in Tennessee during 1998 to 2002. Archived achievement data produced by the Tennessee Value Added Assessment System using the TerraNova achievement test produced by CTB/McGraw Hill were disaggregated by race/ethnicity and gender into five quintiles of prior achievement and were compared to the TerraNova national norm gain. Comparisons were also made among the subgroups within quintiles to identify disparity in gains among students. Effect size statistics for meta-analysis were used to determine the significance of differences found. It was concluded that ethnic disparity was evident but gender disparity was not. Ethnic disparity was found consistently in the percentage of prior achievement scores found in each quintile at each grade level and often in cumulative gains, but the differences found in gain scores were not consistently in favor of one ethnic group. Disparity was found between the gains of students in the upper and lower quintiles of prior achievement regardless of race/ethnicity or gender.