Resilency among Third Graders and their Classmates and Associations with Reading Skill Gains

This study examined if indicators of resilience were associated with students' reading skill gains and whether the resilience of classmates was associated with students' literacy learning overall. Third grade students (n=478) from a large, diverse school district were given a battery of assessments. The indicators of resilience measured were the Social Skills and Problem Behaviors scores on the Social Skills Rating System, the Resiliency Scale for Children and Adolescents (RSCA), the picture vocabulary subtest of the Woodcock- Johnson Tests of Achievement III, and the Woodcock-Johnson Passage Comprehension test. To categorize the poverty level of the schools, the percentage of students qualifying for the federal Free and Reduced Lunch Program (FARL) was used. Stronger skills on one indicator were correlated with strong skills on other indicators. Resilience indicators were higher at schools where fewer students qualified for FARL, except on the Emotion Scale Standard Score. A factor analysis of the entire sample revealed two variables. There was a Teacher and Student Perception of resilience, and these were used in remaining analyses. In schools with a FARL of greater than 50%, students who displayed higher scores on the Teacher Perception indicators of resilience also demonstrated greater gains in reading skills compared to students with lower scores for resilience. When looking at the impact of classmates' resilience, the relationship between the spring Passage Comprehension scores and the class factor of resilience was not significant.