School-age child care

The purpose of this study was to determine whether at-risk elementary school students enrolled in an after-school program offering resiliency training would be positively affected both academically and behaviorally. Survey results and literature reviews indicate that the issue of at-risk, neglected, or abused students is the number one issue facing society and has moved it to the forefront of educational prominence. Although there is a substantial amount of literature on the subject, most is not research based and is focused only on the pathology or risk factors with which children have to cope, rather than on controlled, evaluative studies that could assess success or failure of specific strategies or programs. The researcher evaluated students from two Florida elementary schools identified by the Florida Department of Education as "critically low performing schools." The students in the population were identified as critically low academic achievers and/or those demonstrating aggressive behaviors. The key characteristics of students targeted were academic performance and behavior in school. The schools identified in the study, in addition to having low academic achievement and a high level of behavior problems, also had demographic issues that contributed to the needs of the school population. The researcher targeted appropriate activities and behaviors necessary to evaluate the programs within each of the schools selected. Although results of the statistical treatment failed to reveal significant differences among the hypotheses tested, resiliency enhancement is still a viable means by which academic or behavioral gains can be made with students. The researcher suggests that additional evaluative activities be incorporated into future studies. It is recommended that further analysis to determine the specifies of problems facing individual schools be more qualitative. It is also suggested that increasing the sample size to increase the power of the analysis will rule out the inconclusiveness of the analysis. Previous research indicates that although students may make academic or behavioral gains, they may still be far from the absolute levels of performance that are recognized as being significant. This research has also established that the imperative for growth and development exists and develops naturally in the presence of certain environmental attributes. Other conclusions and recommendations for further study were offered.

The purpose of this investigation was to compare the attitudes of district superintendents, school board chairpersons and elementary principals toward Florida public schools' responsibility for school-age child care. A survey was sent to 534 subjects and a total of 455 surveys were returned. Each participant indicated certain demographic information and, in addition, responded to the six attitude items. The demographic data were analyzed by each opinion item on the survey. Utilizing cross-tabulation procedures, chi-square statistics were reported. Cooper's test for item polarity was also utilized. In order to determine the strength of the association between the independent demographic variables and the dependent opinion variables, an analysis of variance was done. In addition, the Scheffe procedure was used. The findings of the study indicated that a majority of the respondents (65.1%) do not agree that school-age child care should be a responsibility of the public schools. However, if school-age child care is located in the public schools, a majority of the respondents (58.5%) agree with it being administered by public school personnel and a similar percentage disagree with the program being administered by community agencies. A large percentage (84.6%) agree that school-age child care should be primarily financed through fees paid by parents and 93.3% disagree with funding from school board budget. There is no significant difference in attitudes toward the issue among the three responding groups. In addition, there is no significant relationship between the number of K-12 students in the school district and the attitudes of corresponding respondents nor between the socio-economic level of the school's population and the attitudes. There is a significant relationship between the attitudes of the respondents and the following variables: geographic location of the school district; present status of the district involvement with school-age child care; and the principals' experience with school-age child care.