The Impact of Mentoring on School Success of At-Risk Youth

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine if students who live in non-traditional homes would increase their school success measures (improved attendance, behavior, and grades) after participating in a check-in/monitoring intervention. Data examined included students’ attendance records, office referrals, and students’ grades and work completion rates. This study applied a one group quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design to compare these variables before and after the first five weeks of the intervention. Statistically significant gains were seen in the areas of attendance and behavior, so hypotheses 1 and 3 were rejected. Mean attendance rates went up by 26.493 with is a percent increase by 50.35% and mean referral rates decreased by 4.223 which is 92.69% decrease. Improvements were seen in all areas assessed, although work completion and grades (percentage correct on work completed) did not improve statistically significantly, so hypotheses 2 was retained. Research in this area should continue as there is little information available regarding interventions for students residing in non-traditional homes.