The Relationship Between Reading and Mathematics Achievement of Middle School Students as Measured by the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills

The purpose of this study was to determine the strength and direction of the relationship between the three different levels of reading achievement on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills and the mathematics achievement of middle school students in a large urban school district in southwestern United States as assessed by the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.

A correlational research design was used to study this relationship. The participants were current high school students who were administered both the Reading and Mathematics sections of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills in their sixth, seventh, and eighth grade year in middle school (N = 652). A bivariate analysis using the Pearson product-moment correlation technique was used to determine the strength and direction of the relationship between the three different levels of reading achievement and mathematics achievement as measured by the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.

Students who achieved a Commended performance and a Met Standard performance in the Reading section of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, all yielded a correlation coefficient that was statistically significant with a p-value < .01. This also held true for the overall relationship in sixth (r = + .481 and N =652), seventh (r = + .537 and N = 652), and eighth (r = + .385 and N = 652) grade. These results suggest that there is a moderate to strong relationship between the reading achievement and mathematics achievement of sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students who achieved a Commended or Met Standard performance on the reading section of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.

The seventh grade students who achieved a Did Not Meet Standard in the Reading section of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, N = 53, yielded a correlation coefficient, r = + .325, which was statistically significant with a p-value < .05. These results suggest that there is a moderate relationship between the reading achievement and mathematics achievement of seventh grade students who achieved a Did Not Meet Standard performance on the reading section of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.

The sixth (n = 360) and eighth (N = 22) grade students who achieved a Did Not Meet Standard in the reading section of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills resulted in a correlation coefficient that was not statistically significant with a p-value > .05. This suggests that there is not a statistically significant relationship between the reading achievement and mathematics achievement of sixth and eighth grade students who achieved a Did Not Meet Standard performance on the reading section of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.

The overall results of this study concur with the current body of literature in that there exists a relationship between reading achievement and mathematics achievement. The results from this study suggests that reading achievement has an important role in the mathematics achievement of middle students in high stakes testing, which is something that should be considered from the classroom all the way up to the top of the educational chain of command.