Written language skills of middle and high school students in an alternative program

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the written language skills of middle and high school students who were attending alternative programs in Southern California. The participants of this study were 114 students who were identified and served under Delinquency Prevention Program (DPP) and 83 students who were identified and served under Court Ordered Probation (COP). The Test of Written Language -3 (TOWL-3) (Hammill & Larsen, 1996) was administered to the participants in order to obtain written language measures. In addition, this study investigated whether any relationships exists between written language skills, academic measures and selected demographic characteristics of the participants. The descriptive findings of this study indicated a descriptive profile of participants enrolled in alternative programs: a majority of the participants were males; Hispanics and a large number of them were English Language Learners. In addition, the majority of the participants in group DPP were new to the program while the number of the participants who were re-enrolled was higher in group COP. Although, the findings of this study revealed no significant difference among groups on written language measures the majority of the participants in both groups performed far below the norms for their age. A moderate association was found between participants’ written language and reading measures (r=.30) which was significant at 0.01 level and written language and math performance(r=40) at 0.05 level for participants in group DPP. Findings of multiple regression analysis revealed some gender, ethnicity, language designation, group (DPP or COP) influence on participants’ written language and academic achievement measures.