The effects of a looping classroom among third grade students in an urban school district

Abstract

This quantitative study compared the AIMSweb academic achievement in the area of reading and mathematics of third grade students assigned to looping classrooms and non-looping classrooms in one urban school district. Further, the study examined the parent perceptions of their students' academic and affective experiences in the looping classrooms and non-looping classrooms. Parents of the third grade looping classrooms and non-looping classroom were invited to participate in a survey of Likert-scale items to communicate their perceptions of academic and affective outcomes in these classrooms. The results for this survey indicated academic and affective experiences were not rated significantly higher by parents of the third grade looping classrooms than those parents of the third grade non-looping classrooms. The AIMSweb Reading Curriculum Based Measure (R-CBM) data and the Mathematics Concepts and Applications (M-CAP) Assessment data from the 2009-2010 school year were analyzed. AIMSweb achievement scores of third grade students assigned to looping classrooms were compared to the third grade students assigned to the non-looping classrooms using an independent samples t-test. Analysis of the AIMSweb reading and mathematics data indicated that all third grade students assigned to the looping classrooms did not perform significantly higher when compared to all the third grade students assigned to the non-looping classrooms.