A quantitative program evaluation of the impact of a three-teacher act preparatory model at a midwestern suburban high school

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether an ACT prep program taught by three teachers at a Midwestern U.S. high school, each with certification in the ACT subtest topic they taught, generated statistically significant results in the ACT scores of its participants. The secondary purpose of this study was also to determine whether the three-teacher ACT prep course effectively served underrepresented students, helping to close multiple ethnic and socioeconomic achievement gaps (Darling-Hammond, 2000). Ultimately, the three-teacher model did not demonstrate statistically significant differences in scores for its participants, including underrepresented students. Using the economics of schooling as a conceptual framework that "views the schooling process as an input-output model, where the inputs are students, teachers, and school resources and the outputs are student learning achievements" (Qiu & Wu, 2011, p. 65), it was revealed that the inputs of the three-teacher model were not worth the outputs, when outputs can be considered statistically significant differences in scores.