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Abstract
Over a decade of research has demonstrated the positive effects of extended school day programs on various elementary and middle school student outcomes, both in the short and long term. The efficacy of extended school day programs in promoting academic outcomes among high school students is less well understood. This study contributes to the existing literature by examining school attendance, credit attainment, and standardized reading and math scores in a group of students at risk of academic failure who participated in extended school day programming. The study compared their outcomes to those of a group of demographically similar students who did not participate in the program. The extended school day program is provided within a full-service Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN) Community School (CS) in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area. Results suggest an advantage for SUN students in terms of better school attendance and earning credits toward graduation, but not in terms of standardized test scores. Implications for future research and extended school day policy are discussed.
Notes
1For all 21st Century Community Learning Center-funded programs, such as SUN, the US Department of Education defines a regular attendee as having attended 30 or more days of programming (Ozuna, Clara, & Larsen, Citation2011). This guideline was used for the purposes of identifying regular attendees for the SUN program.
2Eighth-grade Oregon Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (OAKS) math scores were not used in the propensity matching process because they were strongly correlated with OAKS reading scores, r = .62, and did not predict a significant amount of variation in SUN program participation over and above reading scores.
Notes. OAKS = Oregon Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. Estimates for attendance were weighted by number of days enrolled and were adjusted for attendance from the previous year. Estimates for credits earned were adjusted for grade and previous achievement as measured by 8th grade OAKS reading scores. Estimates for OAKS math and reading scores were adjusted for 8th grade achievement in that particular subject.
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.