Honors Thesis Archive

Author	Courtney Rae Long
Title	Investigation of Information Sharing Between In School and Summer School
Department	Education & Urban Studies
Advisors	Brian Yontz, Robert Welker, and Sally Brannan
Year	2017
Honors	University Honors
Full Text	View Thesis (1270 KB)
Abstract	Students in the typical American school spend nine months in school, then three months away from school. Research has shown that students from low-income backgrounds, such as urban areas, lose ground in academic achievement over the summer, while students from "better-off" backgrounds continue to gain in academic achievement (Leefatt, 2015). Summer programming for these students have been shown to limit these negative effects, and even positively affect student achievement (2011). This study focused on how these summer programs communicate with schools in regards to student performance, especially focusing on students at risk for retention. A mixed methods study provided the following results: 1) there is little to no formal communication between summer programs and schools in the school studies, 2) teachers in this study received little valuable information on their students from the regular school year or summer school, 3) teachers in this study preferred to get to know their students personally, but also desired information regarding the families of their students and motivation tactics that work for them.