Virtual School Student Engagement and Mathematics Achievement a Quantitative Study: Does Monitoring Virtual School Student Engagement Impact Mathematics Achievement?

Abstract

The current causal-comparative quantitative study examined whether weeklymonitoring of student engagement throughout one semester impacted studentachievement as measured by changes from pre- to posttest on student STAR™ MathNormal Curve Equivalent (NCE) scores for middle and high school virtual schoolstudents at one Florida Virtual School franchise (FLVS). A causal-comparative researchdesign compared the changes in NCE scores by student engagement status to test whethersignificant differences existed between the means of students who were engaged andstudents who were not engaged. NCE growth data and teacher on pace data were utilizedto conduct two independent individual sample t-tests on middle school student data, andhigh school student data respectively. The results of the independent sample t-testsindicated that both high school and middle school students at the participating schooldistrict who were consistently on pace throughout one semester of a mathematics courserendered a higher mean growth as measured by the STAR™ Mathematics NCE scoresthan did high school and middle school students who were not considered engaged. Theresults also indicated that virtual school students who were not consistently engaged didnot achieve the same amount of growth as virtual school students who were consistentlyengaged.