Date of Award
2001
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Department
Programs for Higher Education
Advisor
Thomas McDowell
Committee Member
Charles L. Faires
Keywords
afterschool program, assessment, class performance, control group, educational intervention, eighth-grade students, English, faculty development, failing students, Forest Grove Middle School, language arts, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment Test, Massachusetts Department of Education, mathematics, MCAS, parent advisory group, passing grade, pupil enrollment, remedial education, remedial program, school year 2000-2001, skill improvement, staff development program, state norms, student absences, test performance, vacation remedial program, volunteer participants, Worcester
Abstract
This report describes an afterschool remedial program during the 2000-2001 school year at Forest Grove Middle School in Worcester, Massachusetts. The remedial program was an effort to improve the skills of 8th-grade students who fall short of the state norms on the mandatory 8th-grade Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment Test (MCAS; Massachusetts Department of Education, 1999). An analysis of the 1999 test indicated that 480 8th-grade students in a 905-pupil enrollment at the school fell short of the passing grade, 51% in the mathematics section and 21% in the language arts section.
Planned solution strategies included (a) an afterschool and vacation remedial program for 60 of the failing students who volunteered to participate in the program, (b) a staff development program for involved faculty, and (c) a Parents Advisory Group. The project was intended to improve the skills of the involved students in the expectation that a higher percentage of the class would pass the 10th-grade MCAS (Massachusetts Department of Education, 1999) test in 2002.
The results show that the English and language arts students did not improve significantly compared to the control group, but the mathematics students in the program improved significantly in comparison to the control group. There was a significant difference in absences between the study group and the control group. The percentage difference between the 2 groups was 150%.