Minority Student Academic Achievement and Social Background

This research presents a proposal for the conduct of a research study. The area of research will be the relationship between socioeconomic background and minority student academic achievement. This proposal is presented in the contexts of (1) the problem to be investigated, (2) background information and review of related literature, (3) procedures, (4) anticipated findings, and (5) summary and potential conclusions.

The problem to be investigated is described in this sec-tion. The problem description is presented in the contexts of (1) the purpose of the proposed study, (2) justification for the conduct of the proposed study, (3) research questions to be investigated and research hypotheses to be tested, and (4) definitions of terms.

The purpose of the proposed study will be to assess the effects of socioeconomic background variables on the academic achievement of minority students. The effects on academic achievement of racial, ethnic, economic, and sociological characteristics will be examined.

The relatively poor performance of minority group children

on standardized tests in language and mathematics is an issue of national concern in the United States (Entwisle and Alexander. 1992, p. 72). The existence of a string relationship

. . .
easurement of parental educational attainment, one of the principal factors generally included in the definition of socioeconomic status. Some researchers interviewed parents to ascertain their educational attainment, while others accepted the word of students as to parental educational attainment. And some accepted the estimates of teachers as to parental educa-tional attainment, still other researchers accepted the estimates of central school administrative officers as to the mean levels of parental educational attainment within different schools. With all of the potential variables that could explain the range of correlations found in the literature, White (1982, pp. 461-481) decided to apply meta-analysis techniques to as many of the studies reported in the literature as were or could be made usable for the purpose. Eventually, the results of 101 separate studies were incorporated into this research; studies which yielded a total of 636 separate correlations related to the socioeconomic status/academic achievement relationship (White, 1982, p. 466) In the meta-analysis of the 101 studies, the impact on the reported correlations of 15 factors were measured. These 15 intervening factors were as follows: the unit of analys
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Literature White, Steinbrenner Bent, Tested Five, Pacific Islands, Background Information, Resnick Resnick, PROPOSAL Introduction, Research Sample, Black English, Terms Academic, academic achievement, socioeconomic status, student academic, student academic achievement, status academic, socioeconomic status academic, home atmosphere, median correlation, white 1982, white 1982 pp, 1982 pp, internal validity, pp 461-481, 1982 pp 461-481, status academic achievement,
Approximate Word count = 4278
Approximate Pages = 17 (250 words per page)

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