The Impact of Parental Military Status on the Achievement, Attendance, and Attitudes of Fourth Grade Students

Military service men and women provide security and services both locally and globally. These services sometimes require deployment and separations of active duty military personnel away from their families. These separations and the subsequent stresses could be substantial in the lives of younger children. Not only can these students be affected emotionally, but the achievement, attendance, and attitudes of these fourth grade students in this study are compared to fourth grade nonmilitary students to evaluate the differences between the two groups. How does the fourth grade military student group measure up to their counterpart? To address this question, the researcher analyzed three areas of data for fourth grade students. First is achievement, the Terra Nova Normal Curve Equivalence Scores for reading, language, and math of students with an active duty parent and compared to the congruent test scores for nonmilitary fourth grade students. The next factor, the attendance rates for fourth grade students were compared to those of nonmilitary students to determine if there is a significant difference. Finally, the social skills ratings from report cards of these two groups were analyzed to determine if there is a significant difference between the military and nonmilitary students. (This dissertation investigates one approach to measuring the differences in these three areas to assess the effects of mobility, family adaptation, and resilience of younger children.