This Dissertation is under indefinite Embargo at Author's Request.

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship that exists between student attendance and student achievement of Georgia’s elementary students in the areas of Science and Social Studies as measured by their performance on the Criterion Referenced Competency Test (CRCT).  The focus of this research was to determine if a statistically significant relationship exists between student attendance and academic performance as measured by the Science and Social Studies CRCT.  This research also compared the relationship of student attendance of all academic areas as measured by the CRCT to identify in what academic area student attendance is the most highly correlated to student achievement.  Furthermore, this study examined the relationship between student attendance and academic achievement by looking at CRCT scores of students with perfect attendance, 95.0% to 99.9% attendance, 90.0% to 94.9% attendance, 85.0% to 89.9% attendance, and below 85.0% attendance. This research also examined the variable of “grade” to see if there was a difference in the strength of the relationships between student attendance and student achievement in Science and Social Studies between Georgia’s third and fifth grade students.  The results of this study indicate that the number of absences was positively correlated with all four CRCT domains examined in this study, but that the effect sizes were small according to Cohen’s (1992) definitions of effect sizes.   The findings also suggest that the number of absences is most strongly correlated to CRCT Math scores followed by CRCT Social Studies scores and CRCT Science scores, with the smallest correlation being between the number of absences and CRCT Reading scores.  The findings also show that the mean scale score of Science and Social Studies CRCT scores go down as the number of absences goes up.  However, the variable of attendance only accounts for between one and two percent of the variance of scores between the attendance groups (perfect attendance, 95.0% - 99.9% attendance, 90.0% -94.9% attendance, 85.0% to 89.9% attendance, and below 85%).  Finally, the results shows that there were statistically significant differences in the strength of the relationship between student achievement and scores on both the CRCT Science test and the CRCT Social Studies test for third and fifth grade students, but that these differences
were so small that they are of no practical importance.