A COMPARISON OF NARRATIVE AND EXPOSITORY TEXT COMPREHENSION FOR STUDENTS AT VARYING LEVELS OF SES: A LATENT GROWTH CURVE ANALYSIS

Abstract

Research on secondary student reading comprehension performance is scant, yet demands for improved literacy at college and career levesl indicate that an understanding of trends and growth patterns is necessary to better inform teaching and learning for high school students. To improve understanding of reading performance at the secondary level, reading growth trajectories were investigated for 9th (n = 5752) and 11th (n = 3754) grade students. Free or reduced lunch membership (FRL) served as a proxy variable for student socioeconomic status (SES). Item performance of narrative and expository text was examined based on SES status by trend analysis and by latent growth curve anaylsis (LGCA) to determine if SES impacts initial starting point and growth on reading comprehension. Results revealed linear and quadratic trends of reading comprehension growth for 9th and 11th grade students. The dominant linear trend for 9th grade performance suggests that performance improved throughout the academic year. The dominant quadratic trend for 11th grade performance indicates that student performance declined at the second test administration before improving at the third test. Performance on English I expository tests showed a negative intercept-slope relationship indicating that students who scored lower initially performed better on subsequent exams compared to those who scored higher initially. The positive SES-intercept impact suggests that SES is correlated with performance on initial test administration. The negative SES-slope impact suggests that, during the academic year, student SES does not correlate with comprehension growth, possibly owing to the equalizing effects of the school environment on student achievement (Alexander, Entwistle, & Olson, 2007; Cooper, Nye, Charlton, Lindsay, & Greathouse, 1996; Entwistle & Alexander, 1992, 1994; Heyns, 1978; Jamar, 1994; Pfost, Hattie, Drfler, & Artelt, 2014). Performance on narrative items revealed a positive relationship on the intercept and slope as well as a positive impact for both SES-intercept and SES-slope. For English III scores, results indicated positive relationships on intercept-slope, SES-intercept, and SES-slope for expository items. Due to the poor model fit for the narrative models, impact and relationship among these variables could not be determined.