Assessment of a Primary School Educational Program

Abstract

Historically, governmental reaction to perceived educational deficit has been to establish new programs, as did the Florida legislature (the Primary Education Program) (3) to implement in Grades K-3 appropriate instructional strategies for prereading readiness, precomputational skills, auditory discrimination, visual perception, and kinetic and motor skills. Evaluation of the program was completed in an east central Florida school district. Over the past five years the district has administered a test of motor, visual, auditory, and language status to kindergarten children, The Yellow Brick Road (4). In Grade 2 each pupil was given the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (1) with specific subscales of reading, language, and mathematics (2). Transition to the program created a unique quasi-experimental, time-lagged situation so students in and out of the program could be compared on academic achievement. Since the program had not begun, the 1979 group served as controls. A second pool of similar pupils in the new program in 1980 were designated the experimental group. Samples involved about 37 schools. 500 teachers, and 12,000 children. Groups, compared on age, gender, and racial composition, were equivalent. Randomly selected samples (programs = 227 and nonprograms = 223) were drawn from each population and differences in scores on the Yellow Brick Road and Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills compared by multivariate analyses of variance. Also, univariate P ratios were computed for each score. The multivariate test for scores on the Yellow Brick Road was nonsignificant (P,,M = 2.28, p < .06), which established the groups' equivalence on these scores. Means, standard deviations, and P ratios for scores on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills in the table show a significant over-all difference between the two groups (P3,rro = 5.19, ? < .01). Each univariate P ratio indexed a significant difference favoring children In the program on reading. language, and mathematics. These such programs designed for early intervention with young children may improve their academic functioning, but the differences observed here were small and might well be related to uncontrolled factors.