Seniors at a Western Tennessee High School perform their "civic duty" by evaluating their high school program

More basic principles of the U.S. Constitution have been fulfilled as the Tennessee high school graduating seniors evaluated the high school program which they have participated in for the past four years. Nine of the 10 parts of the Senior Student High School Rating Scale were rated above average. The one part rated below average was "Psychological Services." In a democracy individuals are expected to evaluate programs that deal with major aspects of their lives, and our high school seniors are no exeception tot this basic rule.

The seniors students at a Western Tennessee High School completed an important "civic duty" that is characteristic of grown individuals in a democratic society. They used the Senior Student High School Rating Scale by Cassel (2002). The scale has 10 different major evaluations: (1) Job Career Plan, (2) School Rules, (3) School Song, (4) Portfolio, (5) Parent evaluation of school, (6) Standards, (7) Testing, (8) School-to-work Program, (9) School Psychologist, and (10) Personal Development.

Group Involved

The group included all 84 members of the Senior graduating class for 2002. They ranged in age from 17 to 19 years with a mean age of 17.52 years and with a standard deviation of 0.53 years. There were 38 girls and 46 boys, and there was no significant difference in their ages.

Overall Evaluation

Th data in Figure 1 below shows the evaluation of the Tennessee High School by 84 seniors near the end of their senior year. Only one of the 10 ratings was give a below average rating of 12, where 15 is the average. All of the other 9 ratings were considered by the students to be average or better. Five of the 10 ratings were 17; which is considerably above average.

The scoring instructions for the Cassel rating scale provide for the elimination of data form any student record giving a "0" rating in 3 or more of the 10 ratings areas. Such individual depicts a high level of cognitive dissonance present characteristic of psychiatric problems. No student records were eliminated from this profile.

A t-statistic was computed between the male and female senior students' ratings, and because only 2 of the 10 ratings showed a significant difference the data is not shown. The girls gave a significant lower rating than boys for: (9) School Psychology Diplomate, and (10) Student Personal Development Programs-character education, drug abuse education, health and personal development-girls giving a lower rating (13.15) than boys (16.18).

Correlation of Data

The data in Table 1 below shows a Pearson r with all variables involved in the evaluation by seniors. All correlations with the 10 different scales for gender are negative, showing that girls gave higher ratings than boys. Without exception all inter-correlations involving the 10 different scales are statistically significant at the .001 level of confidence. This means there was excellent agreement among the students in relation to the ratings being given.

References

Cassel, R.N. (2002a). Senior Student High School Rating Scale.(SHRS) Chula Vista, California:Cassel Research Institute.

Cassel, R.N. (2002b) Parent High School Evaluation Scale (PHSES). Chula Vista, California: Cassel Institute.

DR. DONALD F. DEMOULIN

University of Tennessee at Martin,

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