Dynamics between student teacher ethnicity and the practices of culturally plural curricula seeks to improve student performance and strives to minimize the achievement gap. This quantitative study explored whether there was a significant difference in the North Carolina Final Exam history-social science test performance between (a) African American and Hispanic students taught by a teacher from a different ethnic makeup and (b) African American and Hispanic students taught by a teacher from a similar ethnic makeup in 8th grade of social science classes. Student's performance is a key factor in evaluating the credibility of a school which is crucial to all stakeholders. The theoretical framework for this study centered around Tillmans' theory of culturally sensitive education which focused on variations of academic achievement based on student's engagements with teachers who share their cultural background or teachers who teach curricula that reflects their own cultures. Data were collected from a purposeful sampling of depersonalized archival records of 2,000 8th grade African American and Hispanic students who took the North Carolina Final Exam for Social Sciences. Data were analyzed using causal-comparative approach and focused on the fixed factor of race with 3 covariates and teacher race as the dependent variable. Results indicated that there was a significant difference in the students performance depending on the ethnicity of their teacher. Students with a teacher of their ethnic background, performed better compared to having a teacher from a different ethnic background. This study contributes to social change through the understanding of how teacher diversity and the need for relational teaching can promote greater academic achievement within their classrooms.

Ineffective professional development is a longstanding problem in education. Locally, the school district in the study lacked a comprehensive system for evaluating their secondary level professional development programs. The purpose of this case study was to investigate the district's professional development program, specifically examining its perceived strengths and weaknesses. The conceptual framework of the study was systems theory and the adaptive schools reform model. The research questions examined the perceptions of various school personnel on their experiences with the current professional development program at the study district's high school. Individual interviews were conducted with a purposeful sample of 3 teachers, 4 teacher-facilitators, 1 professional development committee member, and 1 school administrator. Interview data were concurrently analyzed using inductive analysis and typologies derived from the literature. The results were used to create a project consisting of a comprehensive policy proposal that provides detailed guidance and procedures for every stage of the school's professional development program cycle. The study project was designed to assist educators, administrators, and school districts in conceptualizing, designing, and implementing professional development programs that are tailored to meet the needs of local educators. This study promotes positive social change through facilitating the development of improved professional development programs that increase teacher quality and student achievement.

This study examines the perceptions of foreign language elementary school (FLES) teachers under current federal education legislation, specifically the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001. The study data was collected during the fall of 2008, while Congress continued to debate the reauthorization of NCLB and just prior to the U.S. presidential election. The study gives voice a traditionally under-researched group of teachers, elementary school foreign language teachers. Inner-city public FLES teachers at Murray Language Academy, a Chicago (Illinois, U.S.A.) Public School (CPS), shared their beliefs about working under NCLB in order to document the perceived impact of NCLB on their early foreign language curriculum and their own behavior. The study also provides a review of current literature illuminating NCLB's impact on FLES programs and FLES teacher behavior in the U.S. As a case study, the research included structured interviews and classroom observations which were designed and analyzed with the following research questions in mind: 1. What do CPS elementary school foreign language teachers believe about No Child Left Behind's impact on their curriculum? 2. What do CPS elementary school foreign language teachers believe about No Child Left Behind's impact on their own behavior? The interviews were analyzed using the constant comparative method (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) to methodically identify patterns in the ways in which FLES teachers are influenced by NCLB. To further enrich the study, classroom observations were conducted. The study participants did not note any reduction in FLES programming due to NCLB, however, the study uncovered two recurring critical issues for Murray FLES teachers in the climate of NCLB. The two recurring critical issues revealed by the study's participants are: (a) FLES teachers in CPS believe they face increased challenges in integrating students from NCLB failed schools into their language curriculum and (b) FLES teachers in CPS perceive increased workloads and increased use of school resources, including greater interaction with the school's special education staff, as a result of mainstreaming students with cognitive and behavioral disabilities into FLES programs under NCLB.

This study veers from the traditional perspective of examining school efficiency or productivity as a cost minimizing process, in which educational inputs are minimized to achieve maximum outputs (student performance). Instead, it provides a critical examination of the dominant, cost minimizing assumption associated with efficiency models and suggest schools instead behave similarly to budget maximizers as presented in Niskanen’s (1971) seminal budget maximizing framework. The study examines the relationship between total student expenditures and subsequent student outcomes, establishing the relative efficiency of Texas school districts using stochastic frontier analysis within a budget-maximizing framework. Additionally, the study investigates how special education populations are structured within those districts deemed efficient or inefficient. The results of the study concluded that district efficient type did not result in different educational outcomes for students with disabilities. While analysis revealed that inefficient districts spend almost twice as much as efficient districts, no other significant differences were identified among districts type based on the percentage of students receiving special education or student performance. This study contributes to the growing need to identify more appropriate estimation techniques for measuring school productivity and how students with special needs should be included in the education productivity conversation.

School is one of the most important institutions society has for fostering its future citizens. Education policy can be seen as an important arena for the discursive struggle over the meaning of education, not only what it is for, its goals and purposes, but also its deficiencies. Education policies are not mirrors of reality but include a power dimension in describing the problems to be solved. Thus, a specific question or a particular phenomenon is given a certain value and meaning. The different articulations involved in represen­tations of problems construct certain subject positions of citizenship which are not open for everyone. This makes it essential to deconstruct these gendered, racialized and classed subject positions. In the same way as in the beginning of the 1990s, the Swedish school system is currently facing changes. The most recent reform of upper secondary education, implemented in 2011, needs to be viewed in a historical perspective. This thesis analyses discursive continuity and change with regard to representations of the problems, goals and purposes of upper secondary education during the period 1971-2011. Focus is also placed on changes and continuities in how the good future citizen is constructed and in what ways gender, class and ethnicity are produced in these constructions. The theoretical framework is inspired and informed by discourse theory, feminist theory and theories on citizenship. Adopting this approach, I analyse government policy documents concerning upper secondary education reforms. The analysis shows not only changes, but also the importance of continuities in the dominating discourses of a school for all (1971-1989); a school for lifelong learning (1990-2005); and a school for the labour market (2006-2011). A shift from integration to differentiation is revealed in which the silencing of signifiers, such as democracy, equality and multiculturalism, lead to a risk of unequal opportunities for people to politicize their experience and situation. The previous demands for retraining and flexibility, for emancipation and lifelong learning are marginalised in favour of employability, skill supply and entrepreneurship. The constructions of good future citizens as consumers become instead constructions of citizens as products for business and growth. A male productive worker and male entrepreneur are constructed, privileging a white middle class. Neo-liberal and neo-conservative influences, reinforce the individual’s responsibility to become included in what is constructed as a desired citizenship.

In recent years knowledge has been brought forward as an important political issue both in the EU and in Sweden. It is said to be of the uttermost importance not just for education but for society as a whole. As a result of increased globalization and a European striving for economic growth, knowledge has come to be associated with both individual and national competitiveness, and education and learning in schools and workplaces have become a political priority. In this global competition the EU has become an important policy actor in the educational field trying to create a common European education policy field. Despite this development, only a limited number of reports relating the European arena to Swedish educational reforms have been published. Against this background the aim of this thesis is to deepen the understanding of the knowledge discourses which struggle for legitimacy in Swedish and European education policy and how these discourses relate to each other and change over time. The empirical material consists of a number of fundamental official policy texts produced by the EU and the Swedish state. The study takes its theoretical point of departure in critical discourse analysis using an analytical grid where production, content and communication are seen as three aspects constituting every knowledge discourse. The result shows a process of silent Europeanization in Swedish school reform where European knowledge discourse is being re-contextualised and in many cases re-interpreted without any declaration in terms of explicit references. It also confirms the general trend towards increased focus on learning outcomes and demands for measurability. Furthermore, the result shows how competition rhetoric dominating the EU contributes to an increased sense of crisis in both European and Swedish educational reforms. As a result of this crisis rhetoric the study shows how the proactive reform-perspective is being replaced by a retrospective where solving already existing problems replaces the planning of an uncertain future.

In recent decades a growing number of individuals in preschool, middle childhood and adolescence have been diagnosed with ADHD. Accompanying increasing rates of diagnoses is an increase in the use of stimulant medication in preschool populations, a practice not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. This paper reviews the current literature pertaining the social and developmental consequences of ADHD, its effect on the child and family, treatment strategies with and without the use of stimulants, and cultural and diagnostic trends which may be contributing to the rising number of diagnoses. A review of the literature suggests that there is a dire need for further empirical research into the use of stimulant medications in preschoolers, and a number of cultural factors unique to the United States have contributed to increasing rates of ADHD diagnosis.

Mayoral control of public schools as a solution for failing schools and low student achievement. This thesis analyzes different models of governance, the types of students served in districts with mayoral control, and the types of solutions implemented by mayors (charter schools, voucher programs, and the tools of NCLB) and whether there has been any success to mayoral control than mere anecdotal evidence.

This thesis will examine Washington, D.C. as a test case for effective education reform with a focus on the leadership of Michelle Rhee, former Chancellor of D.C. Public Schools. Rhee’s leadership is of particular interest because she served in an unusual political and institutional setting in which D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty gained mayoral control of the school district. This paper examines Rhee's reform efforts with respect to the bureaucratic limitations and institutional confines she faced, as well as the resources she had at her disposal. The results of this test case strengthen the arguments of scholars like Rick Hess and Terry Moe, who assert that the foundational structures of the American public school system are not only outdated but broken. Additionally, Michelle Rhee's struggles as Chancellor legitimize elements of the arguments of education policy expert and historian Diane Ravitch, a strong defender of the traditional structures of the nation’s public school system and their contributions to the country's fundamental democratic principles. This analysis of education reform in Washington, D.C. acknowledges that Rhee achieved numerous small victories over the course of her tenure, but she lacked the capacity to fix larger systemic obstacles on her own.

<p>This dissertation examines the political determinants of government spending across different levels of education. What are the political motivations that drive budgetary decisions on primary, secondary, and tertiary education? Who are the beneficiaries of these appropriations? Why are they capable of influencing the decisions over appropriations?</p><p>I argue that the distribution of education spending across education levels depends on the capacity of organized groups active in this sector to make their demands heard and served by governments. Better organized groups have stronger capacity to take advantage of the electoral concerns of politicians and influence their decisions on educational budgets. I provide evidence to show that, with some exceptions, the teachers' unions in the primary and secondary schools are the most influential organized group in the education sector. By taking their demands out to the streets, by capturing key positions in the education ministries, and by using their mobilization capacity in the electoral arena, teachers have made governments cater to their economic interests, rather than direct resources in ways that would enhance access to and the quality of education.</p><p>I test the theoretical arguments using an original dataset incorporating a comprehensive account of all protests, strikes, and other disruptive actions by teachers, university workers, students, and parents in Mexico between 1992 and 2008. The statistical analysis reveals that 1) states with higher levels of teachers' protests receive larger federal education grants, and that 2) subnational authorities spend more on primary and lower secondary as a consequence of the larger disruptive behavior observed in these education levels. Complementary qualitative evidence shows how the teachers' union has captured the education ministries at the federal and the subnational levels, consolidating its influence over education policy. Finally, this study reveals the teachers' union capacity to leverage their participation in electoral politics in order to defend its economic interests.</p> / Dissertation