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AN ANALYSIS OF THE FACTORS AFFECTING REGRESSION AND RECOUPMENT OF SKILLS OF SPECIAL EDUCATION STUDENTS FOLLOWING SUMMER VACATION
Abstract
Recent court decisions have indicated that the need for summer school for special education students should be based on the amount of skill lost over the summer (regression) and the length of time to regain previous skill levels (recoupment). The purpose of this study was to examine the extent of regression and recoupment in special education students and to analyze the influence of summer school attendance and other variables on measured regression and recoupment. This study examined the percentage of correct performance on self-help objectives from IEP's of sixty-seven students from severe-profound and trainable classrooms. The ratio of September to May performance level was examined as the measure of regression, while the return to May level by October and December constituted the measure of recoupment. The relationship of summer school attendance to these two measures was examined, as was the influence of five predictor variables, using a multiple regression analysis and discriminant analysis, respectively. The results supported the acceptance of three of the seven hypotheses examined: Adaptive Behavior Scale (ABS) score was found to be a significant predictor of the variance in the ratios of September to May performance levels; the categorization of students by whether their October performance level was greater or less than that of May was found to be significantly related to summer school attendance; and the ABS score, Teacher Experience, and Amount of Summer Instruction variables provided a significant discrimination between students who had returned to May performance levels by October and those who had not. While some results implied that summer school attendance had a detrimental effect on student retention, other results suggested a confounding between summer school attendance and functioning level, with the majority of those attending being lower functioning students. A major implication of this study was the need to examine the effectiveness of summer school for lower functioning students.
Subject Area
Educational psychology
Recommended Citation
MENOUSEK, PAUL EDWARD, "AN ANALYSIS OF THE FACTORS AFFECTING REGRESSION AND RECOUPMENT OF SKILLS OF SPECIAL EDUCATION STUDENTS FOLLOWING SUMMER VACATION" (1983). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8404839.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8404839