The effects of school entrance age and gender on math and language arts achievement
Abstract
Using a causal-comparative research design, this study investigated the effect school entrance age and gender had on achievement scores of a population of students at the kindergarten, third grade and fifth grade levels. The students in this study were from three rural schools in the Upper Cumberland area of Middle Tennessee. The independent variables for the study were school entrance age and gender. The dependent variables for the study were Kindergarten achievement test scores and TCAP test scores in math and language arts from the students' third and fifth grade years. With alpha set at .05, t-tests were conducted to see if each of the variables had an effect on academic achievement of the students at kindergarten, third grade and fifth grade. All five hypotheses that were tested with gender as the independent variable were retained at all grade levels. This study found that gender did not have an effect on academic achievement at kindergarten, third grade or fifth grade. Four of the five hypotheses were retained with school entrance age as the independent variable. No statistically significant differences were found in language arts achievement scores at the kindergarten, third grade, and fifth grade with school entrance age as the variable. Also, no statistically significant difference was found in math at the fifth grade level. There was a statistically significant difference in the math scores of students in third grade due to the variable of school entrance age with the older students scoring significantly higher on the TCAP math achievement test. This finding led to the recommendation that educators consider approaching legislators with the suggestion that school entrance age be raised so that all students will be five when beginning kindergarten.
Subject Area
Education Policy|Early childhood education
Recommended Citation
Donna Nell Grissom,
"The effects of school entrance age and gender on math and language arts achievement"
(2013).
ETD Collection for Tennessee State University.
Paper AAI3591074.
https://digitalscholarship.tnstate.edu/dissertations/AAI3591074