2020 Doctoral Capstone Projects

Academic achievements and regular attendance are considered to be two important indicators of college and career readiness. Students who are economically disadvantaged and do not have regular attendance in school do not achieve at the same rate as their peers (Garcia & Weiss, 2018). Additionally, attendance in middle school is considered a reliable predictor of high school success. This project was designed to determine if regular communication and engagement strategies with parents of economically disadvantaged students is effective in promoting regular attendance and preventing truancy, or habitual truancy, for students in this at­ risk population. An additional inquiry was sought to determine if improved attendance then increased student performance on standardized tests. Tier 1 strategies were applied to all middle school students in a high poverty, rural school district. Tier 2 and Tier 3 strategies were implemented for some students and proved to be successful in remediating truancy issues and preventing habitual truancy from occurring. School records from before and during the intervention year were compared to determine any differences in attendance rates and achievement. While some of the data was interrupted due to a national pandemic, it was determined that a tiered system of support was effective in promoting regular attendance for all students and even more so for students who are economically disadvantaged. Three recommendations for future action are provided for educational leaders who wish to improve attendance statistics.

Considerable amounts of financial resources and human capital are dedicated to school improvement efforts in the state of Pennsylvania each year. The factors that guide school improvement designation stem from federal education legislation, and include achievement, academic growth, attendance, graduation, EL proficiency, and career readiness. At the same time, many of the schools designated for school improvement also experience high rates of student transiency. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect that mobile students have on school accountability indicators, and by extension, on school improvement designations. The school improvement accountability data from two school districts with a combined total of eight schools was examined. Transient students were identified, and mock school accountability indicators were calculated, controlling the percentage of transient students in the group to the regional average of 8%. These controlled-score accountability indicators were then compared to published all-student group values in an effort to identify the impact of high percentages of mobile students using a bivariate correlation analysis. The results of the study suggested a strong correlation between transiency rate and change in school accountability indicators for attendance, math growth, math achievement, and ELA achievement, and a moderate correlation with career readiness benchmarks. Of all the school accountability factors examined, the only factor with which student mobility had a small correlation was ELA growth.