An Analysis of the Reading Achievement Gap Between Non-English Language Learners and English Language Learners in Kansas Public Schools

The rapid increase of English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) students and the slow increase in the number of qualified ESOL teachers in the public schools of the State of Kansas prompted the researcher's attention to investigate how the reading achievement gap between the non-ESOL and ESOL groups changed over the time of the study. This study examined how the reading achievement gap between the two groups evolved over the five years of data collected and how the gap between the groups was expected to differ at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. In addition, this study investigated how the number of teachers with ESOL endorsement and the number of ESOL students who received ESOL services influenced the non-ESOL and ESOL groups' reading achievement. The effects of time, three school levels (i.e., elementary, middle, and high school) and two time-varying predictors (i.e., ESOL teacher and ESOL student predictors) were analyzed by means of a multilevel model of growth.