PREVALENCE OF WRITING PROBLEMS ACROSS 3 MIDDLE SCHOOL SAMPLES

This study reports the prevalence of writing problems exhibited by a s ample of 1,274 middle school students from three middle schools locate d in southeastern (n = 251), midwestern (n = 446), and western (n = 57 7) areas of the United States. The overall sample ranged in age from 1 0 to 16, and consisted of 967 white and 301 minority students. There w ere 624 males and 650 females; socioeconomic status ranged widely, wit h 25.9% receiving a free or subsidized lunch. About 6% were receiving some form of special education, although none was classified as mental ly retarded or receiving special education services in a self-containe d setting. Reading, math, and language skills, as defined by group ach ievement testing, were at or near the mean for each of the samples. Re sults from the Spontaneous Writing Quotient of the Test of Written Lan guage-2 (TOWL-2) varied across samples in the percentage of student fa iling less than or equal to 1 standard deviation below the mean: south eastern middle school = 42.2%, midwestern middle school = 51.3%, and t he west coast middle school = 19.6%. The proportion of the population falling at least 1 standard deviation below the mean reflected signifi cant gender differences across all three sites, with males exhibiting more difficulties than females. Racial differences and trends were fou nd in the southeastern and western samples, respectively, with minorit y students experiencing significantly greater difficulties than white students. In general, the data suggest a high prevalence of writing pr oblems in these middle school populations when compared to normal curv e expectations, particularly when using spontaneous writing samples in diverse samples of middle school students.