Program

Education Doctorate

Year Approved

2018

First Advisor

Tahtinen-Pacheco, Sarah

Abstract

In this era of accountability, schools work hard to find ways to improve students’ achievement especially performance on standardized tests. This quantitative study utilized two-by-two factorial ANOVAs and Chi-square tests of independence to test its primary and secondary research questions. Primary research questions included finding out whether or not there was a difference in third and fifth grade students’ MCA-III math and reading scores based on whether they attend a total language immersion school or a traditional model school. Secondary research questions looked at potential differences in MCA-III math and reading scores between black and Free/Reduced Lunch students in total language immersion schools and black and Free/Reduced Lunch students in traditional school models. The study used MCA-III data from three total language immersion schools and three traditional model schools in two districts. Findings substantiated Cummins’ Threshold Hypothesis which constituted the main theory at the basis of this research. Data analysis indicated that traditional school students’ performed better in the third grade MCA-III especially in reading. However, immersion students outperformed their counterparts in mainstream schools in math especially in the fifth grade MCA-III. The null hypothesis related to the secondary questions was mostly rejected with black and Free/Reduced Lunch students in total immersion schools scoring higher than black and Free/Reduced Lunch students in the traditional control schools.

Degree Name

Education Doctorate

Document Type

Doctoral dissertation

Terms of Use and License Information

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

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