A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Background

The 1988 Hawkins-Stafford Amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) mandated a national longitudinal evaluation of the impact of Chapter 1. The evaluation, which is referred to as Prospects, is designed to do the following:

• compare the educational achievement of those children with significant participation in Chapter 1 programs and comparable children who did not receive Chapter 1 services, and

• examine a range of cognitive, behavioral and affective outcome measures such as achievement, truancy, delinquency and school dropout rates, employment and earnings, and enrollment in postsecondary education.

This interim report is the first of two reports included in the legislation; a final report is due to Congress on January 1, 1997. Companion Report: Chapter 1 Service Delivery

Selected Findings

The Learning Gap between High- and Low-Poverty Schools

• At each grade, large differences in reading and math scores distinguish students in low-poverty and high-poverty schools, especially in higher-order skills. Students in low-poverty schools generally score from 50-75% higher in reading and math than students in poor schools.

• The gap between scores of students in high- and low-poverty schools in reading and math is larger for the students in the seventh grade cohort than it is for the students in the third grade cohort suggesting that the learning gap increases as children progress through school.

• The average achievement of all students in high-poverty schools (those with at least 75 percent poverty) is almost the same as that of Chapter 1 students in low-poverty schools (those with poverty levels below 20 percent).

• Students in high poverty schools are more likely to receive lower grades in reading-language arts, English and math, to have been retained in grade at some time in their school career, to have excessive rates of absenteeism and tardiness, and to be suspended from school. The teachers of students in high-poverty schools are also less likely to judge their students to have high "overall ability to perform in schools," and are more likely to judge their students to be performing below grade level in reading and math.

• Students in high-poverty schools are much more likely to be identified as living with a single parent, to have a total family income of under $10,000 per year, to be receiving welfare benefits, to have a parent who is under-employed, to have a parent who has failed to attain a high school education, and to have a parent for whom English is not his/her native language.

• High-poverty schools tend to have substantially higher rates of student transfers. On average, about 34 percent of the students in high poverty schools transfer out to another school over the course of a year. This has implications for the continuity of their education, and may lead to serious gaps in their schooling.

• High-poverty schools tend to have somewhat larger class sizes, but more total staff per enrolled student. This probably reflects the addition of Chapter 1 and other compensatory education funds resulting in more instructional aides and staff (ESL/bilingual teachers, special education teachers and aides, counselors, and psychologists), but not more regular classroom teachers.

Chapter 1 Participants

• Chapter 1 participants are heavily concentrated in the South and in urban areas. Between 36 and 41 percent of Chapter 1 students are located in the South, depending on grade level.

• The largest number of students in the Chapter 1 program are white, not of Hispanic origin; in the first grade, 41 percent of the students are white, 28 percent are black, and 26 percent are Hispanic.

• The initial learning gap for Chapter 1 students did not change during their participation in compensatory education over the school year. The percentile ranking of Chapter 1 participants improved only among the seventh-grade cohort in reading. Chapter 1 students' scores dropped slightly relative to national norms among participants from the third-grade cohort both in reading and math, and among the seventh-grade cohort in math.

• The gains of compensatory education participants were no better than matched nonparticipants among the third grade and seventh grade cohorts. The students were matched on 60 variables, to control for family socioeconomic status and prior achievement. These results were the same on both norm-referenced tests and criterion-referenced tests.

• Chapter 1 students are at least twice as likely to be economically disadvantaged as other students. According to parent reports of fourth-graders, 46 percent of Chapter 1 participants receive free or reduced price breakfast and 65 percent receive subsidized lunch, compared with 21 and 33 percent, respectively, of all students.

• Chapter 1 students are less likely to have participated in preschool education programs than other students. One-third (33 percent) had no preschool experience at age 4 compared with 24 percent of nonparticipants. Those who attended preschool were at least twice as likely to participate in Head Start as other students.

• Chapter 1 participants generally score in the lower quarter of the achievement test distribution in both reading and math. Participants in the high-poverty schools fared worst, typically scoring lower than other Chapter 1 participants.

• Teachers were more likely to report that Chapter 1 students have problems with health and/or hygiene; nutrition or rest; absenteeism, class-cutting or truancy; cheating in school; and, physical or verbal abuse of others compared with non-participants. Even in the first grade, Chapter 1 students are reported more often by their teachers as having an absenteeism problem than are nonparticipants (12 percent compared with 7 percent).

Compensatory Education Services

• Overall, close to half of the low achieving students in the 1st and 4th grades receive some form of compensatory education assistance in reading/language arts. Participation levels in the upper grades are considerably lower with less than one-fourth of low-achieving 8th graders receiving reading assistance.

• Participation rates in compensatory math classes are lower than reading/language arts for all grade levels.

• Many children who are in need of extra assistance are not being served by the existing compensatory programs. Fully 23 percent of the low achievers in first grade and 18 percent of low achievers in fourth grade do not receive services, and about half in eighth grade are located in schools where there is no Chapter 1 reading/language arts program. These figures are even higher with respect to Chapter 1 math programs.

• Chapter 1 serves more limited-English-proficient (LEP) students than does Title VII, the federal bilingual education program targeted specifically for LEP students. Seventeen percent of first- graders and 19 percent of fourth-graders served by Chapter 1 were LEP.

• In high-poverty schools, 54 percent of the Chapter 1 ESL teachers are certified in ESL.

Methodology

Annual data are collected on three cohorts of children beginning in grades 1, 3, and 7 for six years. Data include independently administered standardized tests, grades, retentions in grade, attitudes toward school, school and out of school activities, and information on family activities related to schooling. Annual data are also collected from the students' current teachers (Chapter 1 and regular), their parents, the school principal and the district Chapter 1 coordinator.

Copies of this report are available from the Planning and Evaluation Service, Office of the Under Secretary, U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Avenue, S.W., Room 4165, Washington, DC 20202-8240.

-###-

Return to the Title I Evaluation Page

mail to esed@ed.gov

Last update September 1996 (swz).