The Relationship of School-Community Partnerships with ACT Benchmark Scores in Rural Tennessee School

The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine if a relationship existed between the quality of school-community partnerships and the average score of each ACT subtest for rural Tennessee high school students. Specifically, the researcher examined the following schoolcommunity partnerships: business partnerships, university partnerships, service learning partnerships, school-linked service integration, and faith-based partnerships (Sanders, 2006). Administrators from 62 rural Tennessee high schools rated the partnerships present in their schools using the Improving Community Partnership Quality rating scale developed by Sanders (2006). Each of these ratings was compared to the participating school's mean score for each ACT benchmark to determine whether these partnerships could be linked to success on the ACT. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated for each partnership type and each ACT subtest. The results revealed that a statistically significant relationship did not exist between schoolcommunity partnerships and ACT subtest scores.