1 New Horizons in Education, Vol.61, No.1, Jan 2013 Can Schools Make a Difference? “Income Equal” Schools in ESL Reading Comprehension Abdul Rashid Mohamed, Yusof Petras, Shaik Abdul Malik Mohamed Ismail and Lin Siew Eng Universiti Sains Malaysia Abstract Background: Poverty is widely recognised to have a huge impact on the outcome of learning. In many cases, however, the learning environment provided by the particular schools is proven to be able to make a difference in the academic achievement of low-income students. Aims: This study is aimed at the investigation of this function of schools in the domain of teaching English as a Second Language (ESL), on the basis of a large data obtained by an ESL reading evaluation from Malaysian secondary schools. Sample: The sample consists of the ESL reading comprehension test results of 3,567 secondary school students. Sampling was done by choosing 47 public secondary schools randomly throughout Penang state of Malaysia. Method: Income equality in education is defined here as the equal attainment of a basic level of the competence according to the curriculum standard, while the impact of income status on academic excellence is excluded from the observation. Based on the above concept, we identified a number of schools in our sample, which proved to be “income equal” in terms of teaching ESL reading skills. Results: By exploring the characteristics of this group of schools, we found that the income and gender composition of the schools, along with the motivation patterns of their students are among the various factors that can make a difference in the impact of income status on academic achievement. Conclusion: While the gender and social composition of a school is usually determined by external conditions out of its scope of authority, the motivation of students undoubtedly provides an opportunity for each and every school to mitigate income inequality, irrespectively of its social, political and financial background. Keywords: ESL reading comprehension, income equality in education, school environment 學校能起到作用嗎？──在第二語言英語閱讀方面“收入平等”的學校 Abdul Rashid Mohamed, Yusof Petras, Shaik Abdul Malik Mohamed Ismail 及 凌秀英 馬來西亞理科大學 摘要 背景：從很大程度上來說，貧窮對學習成果的影響非常大。但是，眾多案例表明，一些院校所提供的學習環 境被證明能夠對低收入家庭的學生的學術成就起到重大作用。 目標：本文的目的在於分析以英語作為第二語言教學領域的院校，並以大量馬來西亞中學第二語言英語閱讀 評估中所得到的資料為基礎進行調查。 取樣：我們對3567名中學生進行了第二語言英語閱讀理解測驗的取樣，這些學生是從馬來西亞檳城的47所中 學中隨機抽取的。 方法：此處的教育收入平等是指按照課程標準所達到的一種基本能力，但受收入影響而產生的學業優異與否 不在此研究範圍內。基於上述概念，我們確信，樣本中的很多學校在第二語言英語閱讀技能方面是收入平等的。 結果：在探索了這些學校的特點以後，我們發現，收入、性別，以及激勵學生的模式等多種因素對收入情況 對學生成就的影響起到了重大作用。 結論：性別與學校的社會地位通常由外部環境所決定。在這種情況下，學生自身的積極性無疑緩和了每所學 校的收入不平等狀況，而與其社會、政治和經濟背景無關。 關鍵詞：第二語言英語閱讀理解、教育收入不平等、學校環境