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The research study investigated the history of the curriculum standards movement in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the context of the national standards movement in order to explain how and why the Commonwealth of Virginia arrived at the decision not to adopt the Common Core State Standards based on descriptive evidence. The study utilized a qualitative methodology with a two-phase data collection process. First, documents from the Virginia Board of Education and the Virginia Department of Education were collected and analyzed using the constant comparative method (Maykut and Morehouse, 1994). Second, data were collected from major figures in the history of Virginia public education over the last 20 years, including former Superintendents of Public Instruction, through in-person interviews. Data from the interviews were analyzed using the constant comparative method (Maykut and Morehouse, 1994). An interview protocol was developed, tested for content validity, and piloted prior to conducting the interviews. Categories that emerged from the data analysis for both research questions were identified and descriptive evidence was presented related to both research questions. Three major conclusions from the study were identified and discussed that appeared to influence Virginia's decision not to participate in the Common Core State Standards: the Virginia Standards of Learning are an institutionalized system; the Virginia Standards of Learning had bipartisan political support; and confidence in the Standards of Learning outweighed confidence in the Common Core State Standards. / Ed. D.

The purpose of this study was to investigate turnaround reform by identifying student factors from the perspective of successful turnaround leaders in Virginia that hinder or aid the process and the supports in place to address learning issues. It was determined, through a literature review, that research focused on the school culture, leadership, teacher and parent factors concerning turnaround reform efforts, but there was little mention of students beyond the scores they produce on end-of-the-year standardized tests. The central research question investigated the student-related factors that impact a school's ability to increase academic achievement within the turnaround process. Interviews were conducted with four successful turnaround principals in Virginia. The results of the study indicated the student factors thought to impact learning were reading issues, teacher competency issues, students' personal needs, attendance issues, and discipline issues. While the first inclination of school leaders in a failing school may be to find the 'quick fix' to turn scores around, the principals in this study focused on three fundamental goals: get the students to read more, keep students in the classroom, and meet students' needs. Research in the area of turnaround strategies and implementation is useful for school boards and principals as they endeavor to raise the achievement of their students. This study of successful turnaround organizations focusing on how student-related factors impact academic performance would be beneficial in determining whether the organizational structure supports or hinders Priority School reform. This examination of how student-related factors contribute to an organization's capability to turn around low performance informs administrators and policy makers on strategies to overcome the learning barriers that may exist. / Ed. D.

The purpose of this study was to describe the needs and concerns regarding the Virginia Credentialing Initiative (VCI) of career and technical education (CTE) stakeholders in rural southwestern Virginia. These stakeholders included central office CTE administrators, high school principals, guidance counselors, and high school CTE teachers. The Stages of Concern Questionnaire (George, Hall, & Stiegelbauer, 2008) was sent to 355 participants with 260 responding for a return rate of 73%. All of the respondents were employed in Superintendents' Region Seven. There are seven Stages of Concern: 0 Unconcerned, 1 Informational, 2 Personal, 3 Management, 4 Consequence, 5 Collaboration, and 6 Refocusing. Results revealed that when categorized by occupational areas, central office CTE administrators and teachers had primary concerns that ranged from Unconcerned to Personal. Guidance counselors had primary concerns that ranged from Unconcerned to Informational. High school principals had primary concerns that ranged from Unconcerned to Personal. All groups had lowest concern levels at the Consequence and Refocusing stages. Results for each group varied slightly when the number of years of experience was used as a reporting category. The primary level of concern was at the Unconcerned stage for each group when the respondents had 5 or fewer years of experience. CTE teacher groups were also categorized by subject area as those with long-standing licensing history (cosmetology, nursing, welding) and those newer to credentialing (agriculture, business, family and consumer sciences, marketing). The fields of nursing and welding had primary concerns at the Unconcerned level, while those in the agriculture, business, cosmetology, family and consumer sciences, and marketing subject areas peaked at the Personal level. Further research is recommended in relation to CTE stakeholder concerns and the implementation and use of the VCI. The implementation of new state legislation will affect CTE stakeholders as they adapt to the new graduation requirements for students pursuing a standard diploma. It is also recommended that qualitative research be conducted to ascertain specific avenues for addressing stakeholder needs and concerns, such as professional development. / Ed. D.

Effective school leadership is at the center of educational reform in urban environments. Constituents expect school leaders to transform under-performing schools. However, the educational leadership field relies on traditional ideologies that largely ignore Black principals’ experiences and exclude their voices from politically engaged conversations on leadership. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore four contemporary Black school leaders’ perspectives of their practices in urban environments. Cultural Historical Activity Theory and Distributed Leadership Theory informed the multiple case study. I employed ethnographic data collection methods of prolonged engagement, interviews (formal and informal), shadowing, documents and artifacts, on-line discussions, field and reflexive journals, and memos, which allowed for crystallization of the data. I adopted and adapted grounded theory and analytic induction to interpret and re-present the Black school leaders’ educational philosophical beliefs, perspectives of traditional preparation, and conceptualizations of leadership that influenced their practices. The findings revealed that the four contemporary Black school leaders from middle and high schools held belief systems that challenged traditional structures and differed from White majority leaders’ beliefs, which aligned with white supremacy and deficit ideologies. The participants thought differently about the purpose of education for all students, especially marginalized groups. These thoughts helped shape their conceptualizations of effective school leadership as an alternative to traditional canons. Their leadership ‘model’ afforded them the ethical latitude to challenge the political sociocultural structure of ‘minimum competency’ standards to afford their students ‘high performance’ school communities. The findings also highlighted traditional leadership programs as ineffective and irrelevant for preparing aspirants to affect substantive changes in contextualized school environments, particularly when the classroom discourse obfuscates issues of equity, race, class, and cultural diversity. Furthermore, the findings revealed participants’ practices, undergirded with moral imperative, humanism, and social justice perspectives, were strategically implemented to dismantle unjust structures. In so doing, they were able to provide students equitable school conditions that allowed them to learn to their highest capacities. Indeed there is the urgent need to include race, ethnic, class, and culturally diverse perspectives in program preparations, policies, and theoretical paradigms to help shape how we think and thus practice school leadership.

The diploma thesis focuses on the experimental and educational reform schools, that have been developed and operated in the 20th and 30th of the 20th century in Czechoslovakia. It shows the political situation in the newly formed Czechoslovakia, as weel as monitors the development of education after 1918. The core of this diploma thesis is in the reform efforts of selected experimental schools. It presents experimental work school in Holešovice, "Dům dětství" in Horní Krnsko and "Dětská farma" of Eduard Štroch. In this part of thesis were the educational devices and objectives of these experimental schools, the organization and progress of teaching described. It also focuses on the selected individuals who were participated in their creation. The thesis analyzes the reform effort, which was followed by reform educators in the 30th, mainly the reform attempt of Václav Příhoda and his unitary educational model.

This thesis is of a theoretical nature: it does not include any field research. It includes a proposal for an elementary school brochure-guide for parents in Czech Republic, created by the author of this thesis. The thesis summarizes findings on the educational curriculum reform in the Czech Republic, which took place in 2007, and analyses ways in which parents were informed. The text focuses first on the reform itself, its objectives and its basic features. It then analyses the relationship between family and school, stating that parents as a group are of major importance for the successful implementation of the reform. It is therefore crucial to properly understand this group. In connection with the reform and its importance for parents, the text deals with how the informational campaign was conceived in the Czech Republic and in the UK. The 'Guide for Parents of English pupils aged 5 to 7 years' is then described as a source of ideas. Based on this, a proposal for a brochure-guide was created to be used as informational material for parents in the Czech Republic.

This study examines the privatization movement in the post-Katrina New Orleans education system. Less than a month after Katrina, a well-financed charter school movement was moving swiftly through the ravaged city. Nationally, a network of right-wing think tanks and school choice advocates descended on New Orleans shortly after the storm. Locally, state legislators and local leaders pushed from the inside for reform in the way of charter schools. Aided by a state takeover of schools and federal and corporate financing, the "great experiment" had begun. This study strives to cut through the façade of the charter school movement, and to investigate and explain the real motivations of the expected outcomes of the privatizers. Finally, the current injustices caused by the experiment being conducted in New Orleans are reviewed as an extension of the historical racial inequities of the school system.

Esta pesquisa trata de questões de natureza teórica e tem como objetivo conhecer o trabalho do filósofo Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), como professor primário, realizado de 1920 a 1926 junto a crianças em idade de alfabetização. Esta atividade no magistério ocorreu em escolas primárias da zona rural austríaca e resultou na publicação, em 1926, da obra Dicionário para Escolas Primárias (Wörterbuch für Volksschulen). Nossa hipótese, ao longo desta investigação, é de que este período como docente de crianças contribuiu significativamente para a mudança do pensamento de Wittgenstein, colocando em questão as afirmativas referentes às relações entre linguagem, pensamento, mundo e a forma lógica existentes no Tractatus, sua grande primeira obra filosófica, o que levou o filósofo a formular posteriormente as noções de uso e formas de vida, presentes nas obras da segunda fase do seu pensamento. Consideramos pertinente levantar aspectos históricos da vida do filósofo e compreender o que o levou a atividade do ensino escolar. Além disso, buscamos compreender as diretrizes da Reforma Escolar austríaca dirigida por Otto Glöckel, movimento de transformação escolar no qual Wittgenstein esteve envolvido e que julgamos ter influenciado sua antiga forma de pensar. / This research analyses theoretical matters and aims at understanding the work of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), as a primary education teacher, developed between 1920-1926 with children who were being alphabetized. This educational work was developed in primary schools in the Austrian countryside. As a result of the experience Dictionary for Primary School (Wörterbuch für Volksschulen) was published in 1926. Our hypothesis in this research is that the period Wittgenstein worked as a primary teacher contributed, to a large extend, to a change in his beliefs, putting into question the statements concerning the relationship between language, thought and the world; as well as the logic form present in the Tractatus, his first great philosophical work. Later on, this experience lead the philosopher to formulate the notions about the use and forms of life, present in the works of the second period of his thought. We considered it was pertinent to discuss historical facts about the philosophers life and understand the circumstances that lead him to work in the primary education. Besides that, we aimed at understanding the guidelines of the Austrian School Reform under Otto Glöckel, a school transformation process in which Wittgenstein was involved and that we believe to have influenced his previous thought.

Denna uppsats undersöker effekter av högskolereformen år 1977 på Sveriges inrikes migrationsströmmar för perioden 1968–1996. Reformen innebar att 12 nya högskolor upprättades i 16 kommuner i landet som tidigare haft 6 verksamma universitet. Identifikationsstrategin drar nytta av att endast ett par svenska kommuner omfattades av reformen vilket gör det möjligt att jämföra migrationsflöden i dessa kommuner med resterande delar av landet. Detta för att komma närmare en kausal tolkning av resultaten. Resultaten visar att inflyttning till kommuner som upprättade en högskola ökade med totalt 7,74 procent under perioden jämfört med resterande delar av Sverige. Inflyttningen för åldersgrupp 15–29 år ökade med 15,56 procent och inflyttningen för individer över 65 år minskade med 10,97 procent. Utflyttningsandelen ökade med 7,5 procent i den yngsta åldersgruppen men ingen signifikant effekt kunde säkerställas för resterande befolkning. Slutligen ökade rörligheten relativt sett mer för män än kvinnor. / This paper investigates the effects of a higher education reform that took place in Sweden in 1977 on within country migration for the time period 1968-1996. 12 new universities were established in 16 municipalities in the country which up until this point had housed only 6 operative universities. The identification strategy takes advantage of the fact that the reform was implemented exclusively in some municipalities making it possible to compare these with remaining parts of the country to get closer to interpreting a causal effect. The results show that within country migration to municipalities who established new universities increased by 7.74 percent compared to the rest of Sweden. Migration to university cities in age group 15- 29 increased with 15.56 percent and migration for individuals over the age of 65 decreased with 10.97 percent. Migration out of university municipalities increased with 7.5 percent in the youngest age group but no significant effects were found for the rest of the population. Furthermore, mobility increased relatively more for men than women.