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Despite the work of teachers, reading specialists, curriculum directors, and principals inthe secondary levels, adolescent literacy skills are not keeping pace with the rapid growth of theinformational age (Alvermann, 2001). As students progress to the secondary level, formalreading instruction decreases at the middle school and high school. Adolescent literacy is variedand builds on the foundational skills acquired in the elementary grades. Secondary educatorsstruggle with how to best equip students to be college, career, and life ready.The setting for this study (District A) was an urban school district located in the southKansas City, Missouri metropolitan area. Participants in the study were 333 sixth grade students(50.5% females and 49.5% males) in two middle schools. The primary purpose of the study wasto examine the difference of 6th grade students’ reading achievement after being taught by areading specialist compared to being taught by a regular classroom teacher based on twoassessments. The first assessment to be used was the required Missouri state English LanguageArts assessment and the second assessment to be used was the Scholastic Reading Inventory.The results of the study provided evidence that there was not a statistically significantdifference in the students’ MAP English Language Arts mean score and the Scholastic ReadingInventory mean score whether the students were taught by a reading specialist or a generalclassroom teacher. |
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