Ninth grade academy programs and implementation

¶ … Ninth Grade Academy on Student Achievement

The title of the dissertation "The effects of a ninth grade academy on student achievement" leaves the reader somewhat unclear about the subject matter: what is meant by an 'academy?' Is it a specialized private school or merely a generalized institution of learning? Eventually, it becomes clear upon reading the text that ninth grade 'academies' are designed to ease the academic and social transition from middle to high school. These 'bridging' institutions deal with some of the problems that afflict students in high school, such as a notable decline in attendance and grades. The dissertation specifically focuses on the state of Georgia, which has struggled to meet required NCLB (No Child Left Behind) goals and uses such 'academies' to pinpoint the areas of education in which students often show notable deficits.

The study design was identified as an 'ex post facto causal comparative design' whereby schools that had and had not created the 'academies' were compared in terms of their retention rates, dropout rates, standardized testing scores, attendance rates, and the number of discipline referrals of schools. The control group was 'matched' so as to be demographically similar to the experiential group. Data was collected two years prior to implementation, during the first year of the academies, and one year afterward. The hypotheses of the experiment were designed to determine if there was a statistically significant difference between students at the schools which had implemented the academies and those which had not. The experimental group involved 41 high schools, all of which had an enrollment of ninth grade students spanning from 182 students to 749 students, and the control group was of similar size and demographic composition, as detailed in the dissertation in terms of the demographics and performance levels of the matched schools.

To compare retention rates, a repeated-measures ANOVA found that "there was no statistically significant difference in the average proportion of ninth grade students who were retained for the two years prior to implementing an academy and the average proportion of ninth grade students who were retained for the year of implementation and the year following implementation" (Pate 2010: 108). Repeated-measures ANOVA were similarly used to evaluate discipline referrals, and once again there was no statistically significant difference between the two groups. This was also true of the attendance rate and retention rates, although there were a statistically significant lower proportion of students who dropped out in schools that implemented the academies and those that did not. In terms of academic performance, there was no significant difference between the groups in terms of who passed the English and math End-of-Course Test, although there was an increase in the number of students who passed the literature EOCT.

Regarding the structure of the dissertation, first the schools are profiled, followed by a review of the educational problems of the state of Georgia, followed by a throughout summary of the rather underwhelming statistical results of the implementation of the academies. There is very little discussion as to why there is little evidence of the benefits of the academies. The description of the comparative statistics is thorough; there is a great deal of detail as to how each null hypothesis was constructed and summarily rejected or not rejected. But the dissertation is overall not very illuminating as to why the programs do not seem to achieve the desired objectives. 'Logically' it might seem like the smaller class sizes of the academies and the other intimate features provided by the structure would facilitate academic achievement, but the statistics overall do not support this assertion.