Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

2010

Document Type

Dissertation - NSU Access Only

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice

Advisor

Jennifer Reeves

Committee Member

James Ferguson

Committee Member

Dana Scott Mills

Keywords

ERIC Descriptors: Intervention, Middle School Students, Retention (in Grade), Academic Failure

Abstract

This applied dissertation was designed to determine if the Leap Intervention program was successful at meeting its goals during the 2009-2010 school year at a suburban middle school in central Florida. The Leap Intervention program was developed by the school in response to the elimination of the school’s summer school remediation program. The Leap Intervention program’s 2 primary goals were to provide an opportunity for selected students to earn delayed assignment to the next grade level as well as to reduce the percentage of students experiencing academic failure at the end of the school year.

The Leap Intervention program has 4 core components: (a) mentoring, (b) tutoring, (c) rewarding students, and (d) progress monitoring. Through the implementation of those components, the program attempted to increase academic achievement for the participants. To determine the success of the program, an outcomes-based program evaluation was conducted consisting of quantitative and qualitative data. The research questions focused on the academic outcomes of the participants as well as whether or not the program had an impact on 4 factors affecting academic achievement: (a) student attendance, (b) discipline referrals, (c) student motivation, and (d) parental involvement. The quantitative data showed student grades, the school’s retained list, student attendance records, and student discipline referrals. The qualitative data were obtained by conducting a focus group interview of the mentor teachers (MTs) and centered on whether student motivation and parental involvement were factors for a student to have success in the program as well as the overall effectiveness of the program.

The study found that the MTs believed that student motivation did impact a student’s success in the program. However, parental involvement was very minimal and, thus, made it difficult to determine if a relationship existed between parental involvement and student success in the program. The MTs also believed that the mentoring component of the program was the most important and most effective, whereas the tutoring component was the least effective. The study also showed that, overall, the program was effective at meeting its primary goal of assisting students to earn delayed assignment but that the program was not successful in decreasing the number of students experiencing academic failure, increasing student attendance, or decreasing student discipline referrals.

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