Abstract
Relatively few studies have examined the extent to which variability in growth across different reading outcomes is associated with differences across children, classrooms, or schools. The purpose of the current study was to investigate child, classroom and school sources of influence on variability in growth of oral reading fluency (ORF), vocabulary and reading comprehension in a sample of schools participating in Florida’s Reading First (RF) program. Over 110,000 students in the first through third grades attending RF schools during the 2005-2006 school year comprised this cross-sectional sample. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) revealed that although differences across children explained a large portion of variability in growth across each outcome, a substantial amount of the variability in growth, especially in ORF, was associated with variability across classrooms after the influence of classroom demographic characteristics was controlled. Further, differences across classrooms, as compared to differences across schools, were more strongly related to reading growth across each outcome when controlling for the demographic characteristics of students. Importantly, a considerable amount of the variability in reading growth associated with differences across schools, particularly for vocabulary, was accounted for by the demographic characteristics of children that attended each school. In addition, a significant, but small association was found between school reading curricula and reading growth that was independent of school demographic characteristics. Overall, these results underscore the importance of examining the sources of influence contributing to variability across children and RF classrooms, such as the individual characteristics of children and the specific practices of teachers.
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