Date of Award

Spring 2021

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Committee Chair

Philip Rapp

Abstract

This case study examined four impoverished middle schools in South Carolina to identify the factors prevalent in successfully performing impoverished middle schools which set them apart from underperforming impoverished middle schools. The study’s objective was to provide principals working in similar (impoverished) settings an understanding of the factors they might wish to replicate in improving school achievement. Data were collected from several sources. Qualitative data points were collected from the principal and teacher interviews as well as obtained from school report cards to assess student performance, school environment, student engagement, and teacher retention rates. A walkthrough was to be conducted at each school; however, the restrictions of COVID-19 did not permit that to happen. An interview was conducted with the principals to allow them to elaborate on what attributed to the successful performance or underperformance of their schools. All the data collected was utilized to determine if the impoverished schools that were performing well were more aligned to Edmonds’s (Taylor, 2008) Seven Correlates than the two schools that were not performing well.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

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