A study of the impact of migrancy on reading for Hispanic students in rural South Texas schools

The federal government has allotted funding to a local education agency for the purpose of assisting migrant students in receiving a high quality education and performing at-least at proficiency level on state standardized test, but there remains some debate concerning whether or not there have been improvements. Migrant students are facing many obstacles and challenges that may be hindering their education. This study attempted to determine the relationship between factors of migrancy and Hispanic migrant students’ success or lack thereof in Reading in rural south Texas school districts. The researcher used a quantitative ex post facto research design for this study. One- Way ANOVA statistical tests were used to examine differences on 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) reading exam scores between migrant and non-migrant Hispanic students at the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade levels. The data analysis suggests that there was a pattern in the mean when comparing reading performance for migrant and non-migrant Hispanic students at the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade levels for the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 school years by grade level as measured by the STAAR reading exam each and every time. Although a pattern in the mean did exist, there was no significance in six of the eight tests conducted between migrant and non-migrant Hispanic students in rural south Texas school districts. This could be based on the small sample size as a larger sample group may produce significance between the groups. The effect sizes demonstrated small relationships between migrant and non-migrant Hispanic students in six of the eight One-Way ANOVA tests conducted