Term of Award

Spring 2011

Degree Name

Doctor of Education in Education Administration (Ed.D.)

Document Type and Release Option

Dissertation (open access)

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

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

Department

Department of Leadership, Technology, and Human Development

Committee Chair

Brenda Marina

Committee Member 1

Arline Edwards-Joseph

Committee Member 2

Bryan Griffin

Abstract

As result of the dropout problem in the United States and in Georgia, many school systems around the nation have placed much emphasis on reducing the incidents of students dropping out of high school. The purpose of this study was to examine the association between the graduation coach program and Georgia's graduation rate of over a 7 year period of time, 2004-2010. The research sought to determine if differences existed between graduation rates pre the induction of the graduation coach programs and post the induction of the graduation coach program when controlling for variables such as, school locale, free and reduced lunch percentages, science achievement data and race and ethnicity percentages. I used quantitative design to gather descriptive statistics and to test differences in means scores pre and post the induction of the graduation coach program. The participants were 343 public high schools in the state of Georgia with pre coach program graduation rates and post coach program graduation rates. The spreadsheet was developed so that pre graduation coach program data and post graduation coach data was easily distinguishable. The data set contained statistical information on all 343 schools with pre and post graduation rate data. The results of this study indicate that graduation rates were statistically significant higher after the induction of the graduation coach program when compared to the period prior to the induction of the graduation coach program. In fact, this advantage persisted across city high schools, rural high schools, suburban high schools, town high schools, metropolitan Atlanta high schools and high schools outside of metropolitan Atlanta. However, when looking at Atlanta Public Schools, Dekalb County Schools and Clayton County Schools, no significant difference was found for Atlanta Public Schools.

Research Data and Supplementary Material

No

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