The Impact of the Support Our Students (SOS) After-School Program on the Achievement of Middle-Grade Students at Risk of Academic Failure

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of an after-school intervention on student achievement. The study uses two-tailed t tests to compare the growth in actual scale scores achieved by two groups of students taking the North Carolina End of Grade (EOG) test from 1999 to 2001. It compares the scores of those who participated in the Support Our Students (SOS) program to the scores of nonparticipating students to determine the effect that the SOS program had on student performance on the EOG test.

To conduct the research, I obtained assistance from Edstar Research in compiling a complete list of all students participating in the SOS program who were in sixth grade in 1998?1999 and who scored a level I or level II on their math/language arts EOG. The identifiers included were county, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, and EOG scores for math and language arts for each of the 1998—1999, 1999—2000, and 2000—2001 school years. With the assistance of the North Carolina Education Data Center, I obtained a data set representing the stratified group of students who were level I or level II who did not participate in the SOS program.

This study's findings are as follows:

1. Students who participated in the Support Our Students program for three years in middle school from the years 1998 to 2001 showed no significant difference in math or reading scores from those who did not participate in the program.

2. There was no significant difference in math or reading scores between participating and nonparticipating students in the minority subgroup.

3. There was no significant difference in math or reading scores between participating and nonparticipating students in the free or reduced-price lunch subgroup.

4. There was no significant difference in math or reading scores between participating and nonparticipating students in the male subgroup.

5. There was no significant difference in math or reading scores between participating and nonparticipating students in the female subgroup.

The results of this study provide educational leaders with information on how after-school programs function as a method of addressing the needs of students at risk of academic failure as defined by their progress on the North Carolina EOG tests. This study also serves to raise awareness of the larger issue of discovering and developing effective interventions for the large number of students projected to fall short of student accountability and promotion standards in the years to come.