Date
11-2008
Department
School of Education
Degree
Doctor of Education (EdD)
Chair
Elizabeth Ackerman
Primary Subject Area
Education, Administration
Keywords
Professional Learning Communities
Recommended Citation
Long, Chanda, "A Comparison of Student Achievement Between Missouri Professional Learning Communities Project Participants and Non-Participants" (2008). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 111.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/111
Abstract
The purpose of this non-experimental quantitative study was to suggest a response to the following research question: Is there a significant relationship between student scores on the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) achievement test and the type of Missouri high school attended, PLC or NPLC? This study focused on two populations of high school students in the state of Missouri: those that were participants in the state’s Professional Learning Communities Project (PLC) and those that were not participants in the state’s Professional Learning Communities Project (NPLC). Both school populations were arranged in a typical ninth through twelfth grade configuration.
The means and standard deviations for 2006 and 2007 eleventh grade communication arts Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) scores and tenth grade mathematics MAP scores were calculated for both populations of high schools. 2006 and 2007 MAP historical data for each student was obtained via the archives of the Office of Social and Economic Data Analysis (OSEDA) at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Using this retrieved database, a model was organized with the following variables: MAP scale score, type of school (PLC or NPLC), IEP status, free/reduced lunch status, and ethnicity. This study evaluated a null hypothesis relating student achievement and type of Missouri high school, PLC or NPLC, in four different contexts: (a) 2006 MAP Communication Arts, (b) 2007 MAP Communication Arts, (c) 2006 MAP Mathematics, and (d) 2007 MAP Mathematics. A significance level of .05 was used to accept or reject the null hypothesis.
It was determined that there was no statistically significant relationship between student achievement and type of Missouri high school attended, PLC or NPLC, in three of the four contexts analyzed: (a) 2006 MAP Communication Arts, (b) 2007 MAP Communication Arts, and (c) 2006 MAP Mathematics. The fourth context, Null Hypothesis 4, was rejected because there was a statistically significant relationship between student performance on the 2007 MAP achievement test in Mathematics and type of Missouri high school, PLC or NPLC.
