Differences in the Writing Performance of Texas Elementary School Students as a Function of their Economic Status, Gender, and Language Status: A Multiyear Statewide Investigation

The overarching purpose of this journal-ready dissertation was to determine the degree to which differences existed in Grade 4 STAAR Writing performance by student economic status, gender, and language status. In the first article, the purpose was to investigate the extent to which student economic status (i.e., Not Poor, Moderately Poor, Extremely Poor) affected their writing performance. In the second article, the purpose was to ascertain the degree to which boys and girls differed in their writing performance. In the third article, the purpose was to determine the extent to which student language status (i.e., Emergent Bilingual, non-Emergent Bilingual) influenced their writing performance. In each of these articles, the degree to which trends were present in student writing performance by their economic status, gender, and language status was addressed over a 3-year time period.

For this quantitative study, a causal-comparative, non-experimental research design was utilized (Johnson & Christensen, 2020). An archival dataset of the Texas Grade 4 State of Texas Academic Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) Writing test was obtained from the Texas Education Agency Public Education Information Management System for the 2016-2017, 2017-2018, and 2018-2019 school years.   After conducting the analysis of the data, Texas Grade 4 students who were Extremely Poor had statistically significantly lower writing scores than students who were Moderately Poor. Students who were Moderately Poor had statistically significantly lower writing scores than students who were Not Poor. A clear stair-step effect (Carpenter et al., 2006) was present in that the higher the degree of poverty, the lower the writing performance. With respect to gender, boys had statistically significantly lower writing test scores than girls. In all three Writing Reporting Categories and all Performance Standards, girls outperformed boys. Regarding language status, students who were Emergent Bilingual scored statistically significantly lower on the Grade 4 STAAR Writing than students who were non-Emergent Bilingual. In all three Writing Reporting Categories and all Performance Standards, students who were non-Emergent Bilingual outperformed students who were Emergent Bilingual. The effect size for the Writing Reporting Categories were small for all three school years.