Background. Ethnicity, language and poverty have all been linked to the academic achievement of children within our educational system. Purpose. The purpose of this study was to determine if ethnicity, ELL and poverty are indicative of third, fourth, and fifth grade performance on the Nebraska State Accountability Reading Test (NeSA-R). Methods and Results. An archival data set was volunteered by an elementary school in a small Midwestern town. The data set for the ethnicity portion included 347 students from two schools combined, while the data set for the poverty/ELL subset included 197 students from only one of the schools as the other did not have poverty/ELL data. An analysis of the data concluded that ethnicity is not a significant factor in the performance scores on the NeSA reading test among the three ethnic groups (p> .05). Additional analysis of the data set concluded that there is a significant difference between students who receive free and reduced lunch and are ELL and students who only receive free and reduced lunch (t(195)=6.551, p<.05). Conclusions. The findings of this study provide implications that ethnicity alone will not have a significant impact on student performance on the NeSA-R. Results indicated the students who are likely to have the lowest scores on this standardized, high-stakes test are those who are ELL and receiving free and reduced lunch. Thus, providing implications for how the results of this standardized test are used when looking at the scores of students from diverse backgrounds.