Date of Award

12-15-2014

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Department

Educational Leadership and Policies

First Advisor

Zachary Kelehear

Abstract

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2001 was designed to ensure that all students are receiving an appropriate education. All states were mandated to implement state-wide assessments to monitor student achievement. With the identification of student needs that came from the results of state-wide assessments, leaders at both the state and district levels began to develop programs to address these needs. The virtual high school is one of the alternative settings for education that came out of this movement. Full-time virtual high schools have a growing enrollment every year. However, the progress these schools are making in the area of student achievement has not been researched in depth to determine the impact these schools have on reaching the goals set forth by NCLB. This study examines the high school graduation rate for low socio-economic students in full-time virtual schools in South Carolina as compared to the graduation rate for low socio-economic students in South Carolina brick and mortar settings. The data in this studywas used to conduct descriptive research by making make the comparison between the graduation rates of low socio-economic students attending full-time virtual schools and low socio-economic students attending brick and mortar schools. Data were collected from the district level and school level report cards for South Carolina State Department of Education. It was found that there is a significant difference between the graduation rate for low socio-economic students attending full-time virtual high schools versus low socio-economic students attending brick and mortar high schools. According to the data in this study, virtual high schools are performing at asignificantly lower rate in the area of high school graduation rate in comparison to low socio-economic students attending brick and mortar high schools. versus low socio-economic students attending brick and mortar high schools. According to the data in this study, virtual high schools are performing at a significantly lower rate in the area of high school graduation rate in comparison to low socio-economic students attending brick and mortar high schools.

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