A Causal-Comparative Study of Christian School Special Needs Student Test Scores Based on Teacher Degree

Special education is a field that is expanding at a rapid pace. A second field of education that has been in existence for only a few decades is the modern Christian K-12 day school. The merging of the two of these phenomena in education creates a research platform that few have studied in unison. There is little research when pairing these two fields, but the need to study them is great. This study will focus on the academic achievement of students with special needs, based upon standardized math and reading test scores, using the Stanford 10 (SAT 10) standardized assessment utilized by many Christian schools nationwide. The study will analyze standardized stanine scores of these students based on the formal college degree field of their classroom teacher. Using data from reading and math sub-tests of the SAT 10, the data determined whether there was a significant difference in reading and math stanine scores of high school students with an Individual Education Plan (IEP). The study compared scores of students whose teachers have one of the following degrees: a special education degree, a general or other education degree, or a non-education degree. A non-experimental, causal-comparative design was used to collect and analyze data. Test scores from the Spring 2019 SAT 10 were collected, matching those students’ scores to the credentials of the reading and math teachers. Data were collected from the administrator of each participating school via a data collection form using student numbers. The students’ SAT 10 reading and math stanine test score data from the 2019 school year was analyzed, using an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) significance test for math scores and an independent samples t-test for the reading scores. Results of the study showed that there is not a significant difference in reading and math test scores based on teacher degree