DOES SCHEDULING MATTER? AN ANALYSIS OF A NEW HIGH SCHOOL ACADEMIC SCHEDULE POLICY AND ITS IMPACT ON ATTENDANCE, DISCIPLINE AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

ABSTRACT The purpose of this exploratory study was to analyze a Missouri school district’s newly adopted academic schedule type policy. The school’s new traditional academic schedule type replaced its previous block academic schedule type, effective for the 2005–2006 school year. This study reviewed the effectiveness of the policy change by analyzing the impact of each of the high school’s academic schedule types, block and traditional, on the high school’s targeted areas of student concern: attendance, academic achievement, and discipline incidents over a period of ten academic terms, 2000–2001, 2001–2002, 2002–2003, 2003–2004, 2004–2005, 2005–2006, 2006–2007, 2007–2008, 2008–2009, and 2009–2010. Attendance data was defined as average daily attendance. Academic achievement was defined as tenth grade Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) mathematics subtest results, eleventh grade MAP communication arts subtest results, and the American College Test composite scores. Discipline was defined as the number of incidents per one hundred students enrolled during each academic year. Quantitative methods were utilized in this study. Descriptive statistics allowed for a review of each data set to calculate the means and variances requiring further analysis, and to determine whether the data met the assumptions of such analysis tools. One way Analysis of Variance was performed using each data set to determine if there were significant differences between and within each of the group/category means. This study yielded mixed support of the school’s new academic schedule policy. Therefore, as suggested in the literature review, a hybrid academic schedule policy may prove to ultimately provide for the best academic schedule type in meeting the needs of students, course content, and school goals. The hybrid allows a school freedom to utilize a combination of both the traditional and block academic schedule at its discretion