Campus Location

Abilene Campus (Residential)

Date of Award

Spring 5-2018

Document Type

Thesis

Department

Social Work

Degree Name

Master of Science

Committee Chair or Primary Advisor

Thomas Winter

Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor

Stephanie Hamm

Third Committee Member or Committee Reader

Sarah McLean

Abstract

The following study seeks to answer the question: What impact does a local Communities In Schools (CIS), a nationwide dropout prevention program, affiliate's interventions have on a high school student's academic performance, absenteeism, and completion rates? To do this, the study examines the grade point average, absenteeism rate, and completion rate of 1298 students across four years of existing data from a local school district. For comparison purposes, the study uses a quasi-experimental approach and breaks the data into four groups: two experimental groups (At-Risk CIS students and Not-At-Risk CIS students) and two control groups (At-Risk students and Not-At-Risk students). To calculate the above variables for the four groups, two-sample t-tests were conducted for grade point average and absenteeism, with a cross tabulation analysis was conducted to compare the completion rate of the four groups. Findings report that At-Risk students who received CIS services at one or more points during their high school career experience an average increase of 6.6% in their grade point averages, there was virtually no difference in absenteeism between those At-Risk students who received CIS services and those who did not, and there was virtually no change in the completion rate of At-Risk students who received CIS services and those who did not.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Included in

Social Work Commons

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.