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For a second year, Multistudio researchers worked with St. James Academy to study the impact of their new academic support hub within their campus: the Spark Center for Academics. Our Year 1 results showed that student visits to the Spark Center led to higher performance on the Math and English portions of the ACT. In Year 2 we looked more closely at how the student experience leads to impacts in student confidence that translate to higher performance.
The Multistudio Research Center is collaborating with St. James Academy and the Brown Family Foundation to study the impact of the Spark Centner for students using the space. The Spark Center’s popularity nearly doubled from its already successful first year – there were 6,087 total student visits during the 2023-2024 academic year. That represented more than 4 out of every 5 students at St. James Academy visited the Spark Center during the year (Table 1).
Once again, the team looked at student data from St. James Academy students representing their progress in English and Math at multiple stages of their high school career. We adjusted the model for Year 2 by incorporating student survey data collected from those who use the Spark Center about their experience in the space, which included how they felt the time in the Spark Center had improved their confidence in the subject for which they had sought help. Using the same state-of-the-art Rasch modeling techniques we looked at how the updated statistics could tell us what about the student experience was leading to positive impacts for students on their ACT performance.
The results showed Spark Center engagement moves the needle by improving student confidence in their ability to succeed in Math and English. The predictive statistical model looks at how different combinations of student characteristics combine with different types of Spark Center engagement to predict ACT performance. Using the model, we can walk through a hypothetical student’s performance to understand how different factors lead to different outcomes (Figure 1). We see that Spark Center engagement for students who experience a boost of confidence leads to dramatic improvement in ACT performance.
This study was Year 2 of a multi-year study. We remain excited to see how the project concludes in the final year of our 3-year study window. Click here to read the Year 2 report in full. See the linked project below to go back to our Year 1 results, and check back next year for the final Year 3 report from this project.
Photography by St. James Academy
