<p> Attrition among students costs individuals, institutions, and communities. As a result, alternative schools are growing rapidly. In 2010, over half a million students were enrolled in public alternative schools in the nation (Carver, Lewis, &amp; Tice, 2010). Alternative programs offered at secondary, middle, and elementary schools exhibiting a variety of practices, structures, and philosophies combat this epidemic of attrition. This mixed study investigates best practices in an alternative middle school setting from a student's perspective. Uncovered exemplars could allow administrators to implement strategies best suited to meet alternative middle school students' needs. Qualitative data consisted of two rounds of interviews with 10 participants. Quantifiable data collected included Idaho Standard Achievement Test scores (ISAT), grade point averages (GPAs), and attendance records prior to attending Span Academy and after completion of the program. Results from the ISAT scores revealed eight to 13 points of growth, equivalent to two to three years of growth. GPAs on a 4-point scale improved 1.5 points in language and 1.3 points in math. Students who achieved Level 5 and transitioned had 26 fewer absences while attending Span Academy than their previous year in school. In accordance to research protocol, two questions were rephrased to eliminate ambiguity and retain the integrity of student responses. Finally, it also became apparent that students attending alternative programs carry a stigma. This understanding provided an awareness that resulted in changed practices and procedures at Span Academy. Additionally, this research revealed that alternative middle schools, like Span Academy, contrary to the original design as a transition school, are better served as a 2-year intervention program, where the research revealed few students transitioned as of 2009 to present, and most preferred to remain at Span Academy through their eighth-grade year. Accordingly, Span Academy redesigned its program from a typical transition school to a comprehensive 2-year intervention program. Overwhelmingly, the student responses, supported by the quantifiable data, resulted in two overarching themes of accountability and relationship. The results from this research not only lend to best practices in an alternative middle school environment, but provide answers and strategies to best assist students in a traditional setting as well.</p>

<p>Over my Ph.D. study, I work on various projects about the school choice reform in New York City, with a special focus on understanding how students or parents choose high schools and evaluating education policies. Specifically, my dissertation consists of two essays: the first one aims to detect whether small schools are effective in improving students' academic performance; the second one measures how one's own school choice is affected by his or her neighbors. </p><p>In the first chapter, which is coauthored with Atila Abdulkadiroglu and Parag Pathak, We use assignment lotteries embedded in New York City's high school match to estimate the effects of attendance at a new small high school on student achievement. More than 150 unselective small high schools created between 2002 and 2008 have enhanced autonomy, but operate within-district with traditional public school teachers, principals, and collectively-bargained work rules. Lottery estimates show positive score gains in Mathematics, English, Science, and History, more</p><p>credit accumulation, and higher graduation rates. Small school attendance causes a substantial increase in college enrollment, with a marked shift to CUNY institutions. Students are also less likely to require remediation in reading and writing when at college. Detailed school surveys indicate that students at small schools are more engaged and closely monitored, despite fewer</p><p>course offerings and activities. Teachers report greater feedback, increased safety, and improved collaboration. The results show that school size is an important factor in education production</p><p>and highlight the potential for within-district reform strategies to substantially improve</p><p>student achievement.</p><p>In the second chapter, I use the exact home addresses and the complete high school application records to estimate neighborhood impact on the choice of high schools in the New York city. This paper converts home addresses to location coordinates and exploit that metric to rank students' neighbors by distance and estimate the marginal influence of the school choice of the immediate (ten nearest) neighbors relative to that of more distant neighbors. With the assumption that one's immediate neighbors are formed roughly randomly within the reference group, I find that students are 20\% more likely to rank the identical schools as their immediate neighbors than their more distant neighbors. The estimated effects are stronger among students with homogeneous ethnic and academic backgrounds. For a robustness check, I match the home addresses with the 2010 census data to group students into different census blocks and block groups. This alternative definition of neighborhood peers by census geographic boundaries further confirms the existence of social interactions on school choice. Further, I study if elder neighbors' experience of school choice benefits younger neighborhood peers. On one hand, information sharing can be beneficial: experience from older students improves their nearest neighbors' probability of being matched with their top choice. On the other hand, inefficient herding for students living in the less informed areas can be a disadvantage of neighborhood interactions.</p> / Dissertation

<p> Required experiential learning within the context of higher education is on the rise. This dissertation endeavors to expand current understandings of resistance to required experiential learning including root causes, implications, and opportunities to address and alleviate resistance. The debate regarding the merits of required service, service-learning, study abroad, and other experiential learning opportunities is examined. In addition, access to such opportunities, causes and effects of resistance that develops for some participants, and ways of addressing this phenomenon are identified. To this end, an exploration of existing literature related to required experiential learning and reluctant participation is offered. In addition to a case study of Susquehanna University&rsquo;s Global Opportunities program, data for this study was gathered through research methods including focus groups and semi-structured, open-ended interview. Findings reveal a variety of causes of resistance, why resistance manifests for some students prior to required study away, and strategies that practitioners in the field of experiential education employ to address such resistance.</p>

<p> The academic achievement of African American male students has been one of the most over- researched topics in the education community for the past decade. Most of these studies report findings of social issues as predictors for the underachievement of African American male students. Examples of such issues are poverty, culturally irrelevant curriculum, disengaged families, involuntary immigration due to the slave trade and sociopathological issues. These findings are being debated among prominent educators to determine whether or not they are valid. This study was conducted using a qualitative approach to hear the voices of African American parents in order to determine what other factors could contribute to the decline in academic success among this group of students. The conceptual framework was framed around the works of Pedro Noguera, Linda Darling- Hammond, John Ogbu, and Michael Gurian, social scientists, who have concluded that the achievement level of African American males requires additional research. In this qualitative study, narrated stories from parents, teachers, and students at a private secondary school in Savannah, Georgia were collected. The stories were identified and placed in categories of experiences and events narrated by the participants. In evaluating the responses, the study unfolded themes that provided insights into the perceptions of parents and the importance of their views in future discussions regarding school reforms for academic success of African American male students.</p>

PhD / When the problem of young people using illegal drugs for recreation emerged in New South Wales in the 1960s drug education was promoted by governments and experts as a humane alternative to policing. It developed during the 1970s and 1980s as the main hope for preventing drug problems amongst young people in the future. By the 1990s drug policy experts, like their temperance forbears, had become disillusioned with drug education, turning to legislative action for the prevention of alcohol and other drug problems. However, politicians and the community still believed that education was the best solution. Education Departments, reluctant to expose schools to public controversy, met minimal requirements. This thesis examines the ideas about drugs, education and youth that influenced the construction and implementation of policies about drug education in New South Wales between 1965 and 1999. It also explores the processes that resulted in the defining of drug problems and beliefs about solutions, identifying their contribution to policy and the way in which this policy was implemented. The thesis argues that the development of drug education over the last fifty years has been marked by three main cycles of moral panic about youth drug use. It finds that each panic was triggered by the discovery of the use of a new illegal substance by a youth subculture. Panics continued, however, because of the tension between two competing notions of young people’s drug use. In the traditional dominant view ‘drug’ meant illegal drugs, young people’s recreational drug use was considered to be qualitatively different to that of adults, and illegal drugs were the most serious and concerning problem. In the newer alternative ‘public health’ view which began developing in the 1960s, illicit drug use was constructed as part of normal experimentation, alcohol, tobacco and prescribed medicines were all drugs, and those who developed problems with their use were sick, not bad. These public health principles were formulated in policy documents on many occasions. The cycles of drug panic were often an expression of anxiety about the new approach and they had the effect of reasserting the dominant view. The thesis also finds that the most significant difference between the two discourses lies in the way that alcohol is defined, either as a relatively harmless beverage or as a drug that is a major cause of harm. Public health experts have concluded that alcohol poses a much greater threat to the health and safety of young people than illegal drugs. However, parents, many politicians and members of the general community have believed for the last fifty years that alcohol is relatively safe. Successive governments have been influenced by the economic power of the alcohol industry to support the latter view. Thus the role of alcohol and its importance to the economy in Australian society is a significant hindrance in reconciling opposing views of the drug problem and developing effective drug education. The thesis concludes that well justified drug education programs have not been implemented fully because the rational approaches to drug education developed by experts have not been supported by the dominant discourse about the drug problem. Politicians have used drug education as a populist strategy to placate fear but the actual programs that have been developed attempt to inform young people and the community about the harms and benefits of all drugs. When young people take up the use of a new mood altering drug, the rational approach developed by public health experts provokes intense anxiety in the community and the idea that legal substances such as alcohol, tobacco and prescribed drugs can cause serious harm to young people is rejected in favour of an approach that emphasizes the danger of illegal drug use.

<p> This analysis considers whether or not second-career/career-changer teachers are possibly more effective than traditional, first career teachers in teaching tasks and building relationships with students in low socioeconomic status (SES) schools. Analysis of the differences between those entering the education profession as traditional college students and those who are <i>career- changers</i> provides insight into an alternative type of diversity the latter may bring to the classroom and how that diversity might positively impact students who are not only trying to develop the knowledge and skills necessary for academic and career success, but also a sense of identity and purpose, as we continually transition to a more global society. Challenges unique to second-career teachers are addressed, as well as ways administrators and teacher educators might support these teachers during the early stages of their new vocation. Indications for additional research that could further explore this unique facet of the teaching profession are discussed. </p><p>

<p> The achievement gap in American schools between middle class students and students from poverty is well documented. This paper outlines the findings of a study designed to explore the experience and conscientization of struggling students from poverty. The argument will be made that poverty can be viewed as a culture and that this view may shed significant light on the dynamics of the achievement gap. Further, using the construct of poverty as a culture provides real life applications that have the potential to impact the achievement gap. The study explored the lived experiences in a public school setting of intermediate students from poverty, hoping to capture their voice and insights. The research utilized a Critical Pedagogical Approach to attempt to understand why American schools struggle with these populations and what could be done to address the achievement gap.</p><p>

<p> The Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) dispensation requires a Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP) in which the public participates in a Public Planning Process (PPP) with the district. The problem this qualitative phenomenographic study addressed is how the LCAP&rsquo;s omission of a definition for the inclusive and transparent PPP may unintentionally lead to disproportionate inclusion of individual participants or stakeholder groups. Therefore, the researcher examined 10 California school district superintendents&rsquo; or their designees&rsquo; conceptions about what constitutes an inclusive, fair, and open PPP. For the purposes of this study, the International Association for Public Participation&rsquo;s (IAP2) Quality Assurance Standards, specifically the 7 core values, served as the conceptual framework. </p><p> The objective of the research was twofold, first to identify how local educational agency (LEA) leaders conceive the use of the IAP2&rsquo;s core values to define successful public stakeholder engagement for the LCAP in terms of inclusivity, fairness, and openness. The second goal was to determine what measures, guidelines, and techniques these leaders believe can contribute to the inclusiveness, fairness, and openness of the LCAP public stakeholder engagement process. </p><p> This study resulted in 3 conclusions study. First, the interviewees accepted the IAP2 core values as a foundation for best practices in the LCAP&rsquo;s stakeholder engagement process. Second, data from the study clearly suggest that each interviewee has his/her own conception of what measures, guidelines, and techniques contribute to the inclusiveness, fairness, and openness of the LCAP stakeholder engagement process. Third, authentic participation, communication, equity, facilitation, local control, and trust are suggested as imperative to an inclusive, fair, and open stakeholder engagement PPP. </p><p> The researcher made three recommendations. First, the California Department of Education (CDE) should adopt a set of stakeholder engagement PPP core values for districts to use as a foundation. Second, the CDE should seek out a district or districts to pilot a set of core values to guide the stakeholder engagement component of the LCAP. Third, until the CDE is able to establish a rubric or set of core values to guide the stakeholder engagement PPP, districts should identify their own set of core values based on current research such as IAP2.</p><p>

Debates about book censorship and selection are far-reaching and ongoing, however little research has lingered in the spaces of irresolvable tension within these debates, and specifically the debates that focus on novels read in school. In an intertextual analysis of literary theory and editorial-blog responses to a recent debate about the suitability of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale as a high school text, I work to broaden and trouble understandings of what it means to read this novel in school. The online forum for discussion is a unique space that offers new and different insights into an age-old conversation. Weaving online reader responses to the Handmaid's Tale debate with a large body of research that struggles with our complicated relationship with reading, this thesis strives to add complexity and depth to an often-polarizing issue.

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