ii DEDICATJON This dissertation is dedicated to the children and youth in the Jefferson County Public Schools, whose families send them off to school with trust and hope, who begin school with enthusiasm and great potential, and who catTy away knowledge of themselves and of the world molded by their experiences during their most vulnerable years. May we educators better fulfill our most sacred mission: guiding the development of all the young minds entrusted to our stewardship.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSJ have been most fortunate to have Dr. Stephen K. Miller as a dissertation advisor. His guidance and endless patience have been invaluable. Our many discussions about the results and issues involved were stimulating intellectual experiences that have made this study both more interesting and more valid. I have benefited over and over from his attention to detail and professional approach to both teaching and writing, which enabled me to produce a final draft that passed muster with my committee. I would like to express my great thanks to him and hope to follow his good example as a mentor of developing researchers. This study investigates the progress of standards-based accountability in eliminating the effects of student background and school composition factors on student achievement and school performance in a large, urban district in Kentucky.The factors included gender, socioeconomic status (SES), ethnicity, mobility, family structure, giftedness, and disability. The school composition variables were the percentages of those factors in the school populations. Each grade and level--elementary, middle, and high school--was analyzed by multiple regression.At the student level, SES, giftedness, and disability predicted 15 to 36% of the variance in scores. Black was an influential factor on norm-referenced tests but not on criterion-referenced tests.At the school level, SES, family structure, and mobility rate accounted for 56 to 91 % of the variance in aggregate scores. The effects were greater in middle and high schools than in elementary. These findings have implications for creating more equitable and effective schools and accountability systems.