Best Practices Employed by Georgia High School Administrators to Reduce Student Tardiness

The problem of student tardiness was reported by principals over the past two decades as being one of the major problems facing 21st century high schools. This study employed a mixed methods approach and utilized one Georgia school district's student tardiness data for one school year to investigate the extent of tardiness across the district including factors, such as school size, school location, minority enrollment, socioeconomic status, and gender. The qualitative portion of this study utilized interviews to gain stakeholder's descriptions of conditions that contributed to tardiness and their views of what strategies and practices were most effective at reducing tardiness. The major results of this study found student tardiness to be a continuing problem in 21st century high schools. Major causes of tardiness were categorized as student issues, such as socializing and defiance; school factors, such as overcrowding, bathroom breaks, and locker problems; and personnel factors, such as teacher inconsistency and lack of administrative and teacher presence in the halls. All of the stakeholder respondents considered the best ways to reduce student tardiness were by the consistent issuing of consequences, such as after school detention, in school suspension, out of school suspension, and Saturday school detention.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Education in Education Administration (Ed.D.)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation (open access)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Department of Leadership, Technology, and Human Development

Year dc:date.available

2010

Author dc:creator

• Moore, Jason Scott

Contributors dc:contributor

• Barbara Mallory
• Linda Arthur
• Sam Hardy

• ETD
• Student tardiness
• Punctuality

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/319

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu:etd-1319