The relationship between participation in extended-day programs and mathematics achievement of Title I-eligible students

Background. In 1965, the Federal government declared war on poverty and the educational inequities resulting from the stratification of the socioeconomic classes. Title I provided educational resources to raise achievement and close the socioeconomic status achievement gap. Research on the effectiveness Title I implementation remains inconclusive.;Purpose. To assess the relationship of participating in a Title I-funded extended-day mathematics program and improving academic achievement and closing the minority and SES achievement gaps.;Setting. Suburban district in Central New Jersey.;Population. 284 students enrolled in Grades 2 through 5.;Intervention. 87 Title I-eligible students received 60-75 minutes of mathematics instruction after school weekly. Non-participant comparison groups included 75 Title 1eligible and 122 ineligible students.;Research design. Nonexperimental, cross-sectional, explanatory research design.;Data. t-test analyses of DBA mathematics pre- and posttests, TerraNova percentile rankings, and NJ ASK 3 and 4 assessments. Information regarding instructional strategies used, nature of staff training, content taught, time-on-task, curriculum materials used and class size were collected from teacher anecdotal notes.;Findings. Although participants scored significantly lower on the DBA pre- and posttests than did the comparison groups, there was no significant difference in the pre-posttest gain scores between the groups. Participants were progressing at the same rate as all other students. Participants scored significantly lower on 6 of the 7 NJ ASK indicators than did the comparison groups, however the NJ ASK mathematics cluster reliability estimates are relatively low and the standard errors of measurement are relatively high. There was no significant difference between participant performance and that of the comparison groups on 3 of 7 TerraNova indicators. Participants scored significantly higher on 1 of the 7 TerraNova indicators than did the comparison groups.;Conclusions. Findings are congruent with current research which shows that short-term participation in Title I extended-day programs yield small positive gains at improving achievement and few, if any, positive gains at closing the achievement gaps. However, similar to class size research, the findings show that long-term, consecutive-year participation in Title I extended-day programs that incorporate and maximize the opportunity-to-learn (OTL) variables yield positive gains at improving academic achievement and closing the achievement gaps.