27  Sample

The overall sample (Table 27.1) comprises 3130 students from 39 schools in 18 rural and urban school districts across California. We sampled purposefully such that (i) our sample is broadly representative of the public school population in California and (ii) we have sufficiently large group sizes for subgroup analyses.

Table 27.1: Demographic Characteristics of the Sample (N = 3,130) by Grade and Screening Language
Characteristic
English
Spanish
K
N = 889
G1
N = 800
G2
N = 818
K
N = 392
G1
N = 297
G2
N = 255
Academic Year





    AY 23/24 650 (73%) 515 (64%) 663 (81%) 278 (71%) 174 (59%) 174 (68%)
    AY 24/25 239 (27%) 285 (36%) 155 (19%) 114 (29%) 123 (41%) 81 (32%)
Gender





    Female 425 (49%) 393 (50%) 406 (50%) 181 (49%) 148 (53%) 140 (55%)
    Male 445 (51%) 390 (50%) 410 (50%) 189 (51%) 131 (47%) 115 (45%)
    Unknown 19 17 2 22 18 0
English Proficiency Label





    English Learner 358 (44%) 323 (41%) 236 (30%) 321 (84%) 236 (80%) 186 (75%)
    (Re)classified Proficient 56 (6.9%) 80 (10%) 91 (12%) 48 (13%) 46 (16%) 38 (15%)
    English-only 395 (49%) 379 (48%) 451 (58%) 15 (3.9%) 13 (4.4%) 25 (10%)
    Unknown 80 18 40 8 2 6
Home Language





    English 463 (53%) 396 (50%) 451 (58%) 33 (8.5%) 18 (6.1%) 29 (12%)
    Spanish 342 (39%) 334 (42%) 251 (32%) 350 (90%) 276 (94%) 217 (88%)
    Other 74 (8.4%) 64 (8.1%) 75 (9.7%) 4 (1.0%) 1 (0.3%) 2 (0.8%)
    Unknown 10 6 41 5 2 7
Ever IEP/504 65 (8.5%) 55 (7.9%) 64 (10%) 31 (9.0%) 21 (8.8%) 13 (6.0%)
    Unknown 128 107 191 46 57 37
Struggling Readers (our definition) 166 (19%) 165 (21%) 148 (18%) 78 (20%) 71 (24%) 63 (25%)
Struggling Readers (normative) 357 (40%) 318 (40%) 241 (29%) 212 (54%) 125 (42%) 119 (47%)