The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the use of discursive practice in the media public sphere as part of the educational policymaking process. The theory of definitional advantage suggests that powerful policy players have preferred access to media accounts of educational issues. Links between educational policy research and media research suggest that this definitional advantage translates into educational policy settlement. My research begins from the premise that this theory requires further clarification as recent evidence suggests definitional advantage and links to settlement are context specific and more complex than initially envisioned. This study focuses on policy player representations in newspaper accounts of educational choice issues in Edmonton and Calgary, Alberta from 1990 to 2005, with attention to who was saying what, when, and with what authority. A fifteen year timeline was chosen in order to illuminate periods of policy crisis and settlement, and contrasting case study sites were chosen due to key differences in school board resistance and local policy implementation. While newspaper accounts shifted overtime in response to local conditions, main narrative issue themes focused on charter approval challenges, administrative issues, and monitoring and support needs. Policy players also weighed in on the school choice debate by articulating claims related to equity, quality, and the need for diversity of educational opportunities. Charter school, school board, and government players were best able to articulate their positions in the public sphere as evidenced by measures of access, recognition, responsiveness, and intertextuality. Teachers’ union representations were surprisingly limited in both newspapers. Differences across local sites reveal strategies for effective counter-hegemonic work in the public sphere. By reinforcing their position of accommodation, connecting to local conditions, and limiting their assertions, the Edmonton board stopped the spread of charter schools early in the policymaking process. In contrast, the Calgary school board took an aggressive position of resistance that reinforced public perceptions of self-interest and mediocrity. Educational policy players should be encouraged that power is not a prerequisite for definitional advantage. Rather, connecting to local conditions, avoiding blame, and targeting assertions are effective policymaking strategies to be used in the public sphere.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 98-104). Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the use of discursive practice in the media public sphere as part of the educational policymaking process. The theory of definitional advantage suggests that powerful policy players have preferred access to media accounts of educational issues. Links between educational policy research and media research suggest that this definitional advantage translates into educational policy settlement. My research begins from the premise that this theory requires further clarification as recent evidence suggests definitional advantage and links to settlement are context specific and more complex than initially envisioned. This study focuses on policy player representations in newspaper accounts of educational choice issues in Edmonton and Calgary, Alberta from 1990 to 2005, with attention to who was saying what, when, and with what authority. A fifteen year timeline was chosen in order to illuminate periods of policy crisis and settlement, and contrasting case study sites were chosen due to key differences in school board resistance and local policy implementation. While newspaper accounts shifted overtime in response to local conditions, main narrative issue themes focused on charter approval challenges, administrative issues, and monitoring and support needs. Policy players also weighed in on the school choice debate by articulating claims related to equity, quality, and the need for diversity of educational opportunities. Charter school, school board, and government players were best able to articulate their positions in the public sphere as evidenced by measures of access, recognition, responsiveness, and intertextuality. Teachers’ union representations were surprisingly limited in both newspapers. Differences across local sites reveal strategies for effective counter-hegemonic work in the public sphere. By reinforcing their position of accommodation, connecting to local conditions, and limiting their assertions, the Edmonton board stopped the spread of charter schools early in the policymaking process. In contrast, the Calgary school board took an aggressive position of resistance that reinforced public perceptions of self-interest and mediocrity. Educational policy players should be encouraged that power is not a prerequisite for definitional advantage. Rather, connecting to local conditions, avoiding blame, and targeting assertions are effective policymaking strategies to be used in the public sphere. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

As an avenue of educational reform and organizational restructuring within public education, school choice has gained in popularity over the last twenty years. The charter school movement, in particular, has enjoyed a high growth rate since its introduction in 1992. Advocates of charter schools claim the schools' regulatory freedom and unique structure foster improved academic performance and educational success. However, the literature shows charter school students' performance is typically below and, at best, on par with that of neighboring public school peers. Given this mismatch of purported academic advantage and observed performance, this study aims to add to the literature by explaining why parents choose charter schools and remain in charter schools. Using the Texas Education Agency's 2006 Survey of Charter School and Traditional School Parents this study will examine why parents consider different aspects of schooling more important than others. Survey responses will be analyzed to explain possible relationships between factors affecting charter school enrollment, race, and socioeconomic status. / Master of Science

No description available.

This study considers the contested meaning of public education through a qualitative investigation of Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts, a charter elementary school in Richmond, Virginia. The central research question that guides this study is “How do parents construct the idea of public schools as they explain their choice of Patrick Henry Charter School?” To answer this question I conducted a constructivist inquiry that involved a series of 16 semi-structured interviews with a maximum variation sample of Patrick Henry parents concerning their ideas about the school and about public education. The analysis of these interviews led to a grounded theory of the parents’ ideas as well as a case report constructed from the categorized units of data that explores the core themes of the theory. This study also addresses two sub-questions: (1) “How do the parents’ ideas about public schools reflect the logics embedded in the larger policy discourses concerning charters and the reinvention of public education?” and (2) “How do the parents’ ideas about public schools reflect the local public discourse around the public-ness of the school?” To answer the first sub-question I use my review of literature to develop an understanding of the reform debates around charter schools and their relationship to the contested ideas of public education. To answer sub question two, I present an adapted constructivist qualitative analysis of the public discourse that surrounded the school from April 2007 – when the idea of the school was first proposed at a school board meeting – until December 2011 – a year and a half after the school opened its doors. To capture the public discourse I collected and analyzed articles, editorials and letters from six local print publications (newspapers, weekly magazines) as well as the public comment portion of the minutes from Richmond School Board meetings. This analysis resulted in the construction of two competing narratives about the school, the juxtaposition of which shed light on the how idea of public-ness was constructed in the public discourse.

Thesis advisor: Utku Unver / This dissertation consists of two chapters. The first chapter: Dynamic reserves in matching markets with contracts. In this paper we study a matching problem where agents care not only about the institution they are assigned to but also about the contractual terms of their assignment so that they have preferences over institution-contractual term pairs. Each institution has a target distribution of its slots reserved for different contractual terms. If there is less demand for some groups of slots, then the institution is given opportunity to redistribute unassigned slots over other groups. The choice function we construct takes the capacity of each group of seats to be a function of number of vacant seats of groups considered earlier. We advocate the use of a cumulative offer mechanism (COM) with overall choice functions designed for institutions that allow capacity transfer across different groups of seats as an allocation rule. In applications such as engineering school admissions in India, cadet-branch matching problems at the USMA and ROTC where students are ranked according to test scores (and for each group of seats, corresponding choice functions are induced by them), we show that the COM with a monotonic capacity transfer scheme produces stable outcomes, is strategy proof, and respect improvements in test scores. Allowing capacity redistribution increases efficiency. The outcome of the COM with monotone capacity transfer scheme Pareto dominates the outcome of the COM with no capacity transfer. The second chapter: On relationships between substitutes conditions. In the matching with contracts literature, three well-known conditions on choice functions (from stronger to weaker)- substitutability, unilateral substitutability (US) and bilateral substitutability (BS) have proven to be critical. This paper aims to deepen our understanding of them by separately axiomatizing the gap between the BS and the other two. We first introduce a new “doctor separability” (DS) condition and show that BS, DS and irrelevance of rejected contracts (IRC) are equivalent to IRC and US. Due to Hatfield and Kojima (2010) and Aygün and Sönmez (2012), it is known that US, “Pareto separability” (PS), and IRC are equivalent to substitutability and IRC. This, along with our result, implies that BS, DS, PS, and IRC are equivalent to substitutability and IRC. All of these results are given without IRC whenever hospital choices are induced from preferences. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

This study offers a better understanding of the reasons why parents from six different countries across the Western hemisphere chose private, non-denominational schools for their children’s education. The findings deepen the knowledge in what is currently an underdeveloped field of research in education. The overarching research question was: What are the primary reasons why parents chose a private nondenominational school in Mexico, Spain, Costa Rica, United States, United Kingdom, and South Africa for their children’s education? To explore this question in depth, the researcher considered five sub-questions and employed a grounded theory qualitative research design. Data were collected twofold through focus groups and individual interviews and analyzed iteratively to develop a fresh theoretical perspective on the topic of parent school choice. Extant literature explains that the most frequent reasons to choose a private school include quality of education, location, participation of parents and being able to be heard, financial resources, and parents’ prior educational experiences. Contributing to the literature, this study revealed four major reasons for private school selection: consideration of private education as an investment for the future, smaller class size, the opportunity for students and their families to establish social contacts, and the academic quality of the school. In addition, three reasons specific to certain countries were identified: importance of learning the English language, quality of the facilities, and extended school day. Finally, eight additional secondary reasons were found including: international character of the school, happiness of the students in the school, distance from parents’ home, quality of the environment, prestige or tradition of the school, private management and organization, values and ethos of the school, and the non-denominational nature of the school. These findings can help private—and public—school administrators make better decisions to improve the quality of their educational offerings in knowing what parents most value. Parents may also find value in understanding the factors for consideration when evaluating public versus private school options. Finally, recommendations for practice and research for the field of education are offered. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2019. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Wyoming, 2006. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Dec. 21, 2007). Includes bibliographical references (p. 90-112).