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Language And Literacy Multilevel Constructs In Young Nonmainstream American English Speakers: Examining Relationships Between Latent Variables, Souraya Mansour Mitri

Communication Sciences and Disorders Dissertations

According to the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP, 2013), children from race and language minority groups continue to perform significantly lower than their peers on reading achievement tests. Current perspectives suggest that multiple factors (e.g., household income, parent education) likely contribute to the achievement gap between African American children and their White peers and children from low income and middle income households (Barton & Coley, 2010; Chatterji, 2006; Jencks & Phillips, 1998), leading to multiple approaches (e.g., Head Start Early Reading First) to prevent or alleviate the trend (Barnett, Coralon, Fitzgerald, & Squires, 2011). However, African American children continue …