Participation in a Full Service School After Hours Enrichment Program: An Assessment of Students' Academic and Social Progress

Full service school programs are developed to address the unmet social, academic, medical, and economic needs of the students and communities they serve. Even though two schools may both be considered "full service", they can still look very different in practice, depending on the specific needs of the community. Although the idea of full service community schools has existed for over a century (Dryfoos, Quinn, & Barkin, 2005), the empirical research base is scant. This study addresses the academically related domains outlined by Kronick (2005): attendance and tardiness, and academic grades. An experimental group and a control group were used. A repeated measures ANOVA was conducted on the math and reading grade data. A Mann-Whitney U test was conducted on the attendance and tardiness data. It was found that after receiving the treatment the experimental group had statistically significantly higher reading grades than the control group. Math grades were higher in the experimental group then in the control group, post-treatment. No significant between-group differences were found with either the attendance or the tardiness data. Implications, limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed.