The purpose of this research study was to examine underlying issues related to poor performance by Haitian students in Boston Public Schools on standardized testing mandated under the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS). Performance on these tests determines students’ eligibility to graduate high school and receive their diploma. A descriptive ethnographic approach was used in the study, focusing on students in one high school in the Greater Boston area. This approach is considered appropriate for qualitative research in the context of “cross-cultural comparison,” and it was useful in this case because of the depth of investigation and analysis it allows, especially when studying the culture of a particular ethnic group. In this study, it helped to reveal the attitudes of Haitian youth toward high-stakes testing in the United States. The study was designed to explore Haitian students’ attitudes toward the MCAS testing process and its potential effects on their future academic and career success. In order to investigate and analyze these perspectives, a sample group of 13 students was interviewed over a period of 10 weeks. All of the students were Haitian, and many of them had only been in the US for approximately one year. Most of the students were in the 10th grade, which is the scholastic level at which all students are required to take the MCAS tests under Massachusetts law. Based on the oral interviews collected, it was clear that the majority of the students in the study group believed they had difficulty passing the MCAS tests due to their limited English proficiency and their lack of cultural understanding in the new environment. They clearly expressed their fears that the testing process would negatively affect their academic standing in school, and indeed their career prospects in the long term. Key findings from the study suggest that Haitian youth studying in the US are motivated to realize their academic potential, but that factors such as limited English proficiency, lack of literacy and numeracy in their native language, and cultural discontinuity may prevent them from passing mandated standardized tests and achieving their academic goals.

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) and the Governor of Massachusetts have identified the need to strengthen the state’s education system through the development of regional centers of support. In 2007, DESE drafted a proposal for a Massachusetts system of support to improve student performance. The proposal called for the establishment of educational service cooperatives to provide targeted assistance to schools and districts and to serve as intermediaries between the Department and school districts. In 2008, the Governor’s office assembled the Readiness Finance Commission and charged it with presenting a variety of alternative means to achieve sustainable education funding for current and future needs. The Commission recommended strategies that include significant restructuring measures to realize cost savings and efficiencies. These measures specifically delineate the enhanced use of educational collaboratives. This study examines the perceptions of education leaders at the state and local level regarding the current performance of educational collaboratives in Massachusetts and the potential role educational collaboratives could play in state and district efforts to improve educational effectiveness and increase efficiencies. Interviews and the Collaborative Evaluation Survey were used to analyze the programs and services that school districts purchase from educational collaboratives and the perceived quality and cost-effectiveness of collaborative programs. In addition to interviews with school superintendents, data from interviews with collaborative directors, state education agency leaders, and a state legislator were analyzed to explore the potential role that educational collaboratives could play in state and district education improvement efforts. The study found: (1) school districts in Massachusetts continue to use educational collaboratives for the same purposes as they did when collaboratives were first created; (2) the majority of school district leaders have positive perceptions of collaborative programs and services; (3) school district input, perceived cost-effectiveness, and collaborative responsiveness are major factors that influence school district utilization of educational collaboratives; and (4) unstable funding and the absence of a structured statewide network constrain the capacity of educational collaboratives. The study also identified the need for more research on the cost-effectiveness and impact of programs educational collaboratives offer. Without additional research, policy makers in Massachusetts risk creating duplicative regional systems of support. State leaders also risk assuming that collaboratives have the capacity to address problems when evidence may indicate otherwise.

Includes bibliographical references / Given the low levels of educational standards in the developing world, the World Education Forum adopted the Dakar Framework for Action (DFA) in 2000, calling for quality 'Education for All' children of school-going age. Heeding to this call, many sub-Saharan African countries instituted Free Primary Education (FPE) policies. Lesotho instituted the FPE programme in 2000 on a grade-by-grade basis; first abolishing school fees in grade one, and then in successive higher grades each following year. This thesis consists of a short introductory chapter, three self-contained analytical chapters which empirically evaluate the importance of the FPE policy and family factors on education in Lesotho, and the summary chapter. It first examines the effect of the FPE policy on primary school enrolment in Chapter 2 using household level data for before and after the policy. A difference-in-differences strategy is employed to tease out the FPE effect. This exploits the variations in enrolment rates over time and across grade-groups (i.e. grades covered versus those not-yet covered) created by the implementation strategy of the programme. The findings demonstrate that the policy significantly increased enrolment of primary school-age children by at least 9.3 percentage points (or 13.2 percent). There is also evidence that this policy disproportionately raised enrolment levels of children from poor households and that of boys (the historically disadvantaged group), thereby bridging the gender- and wealth-related educational (enrolment) inequalities. In Chapter 3, the thesis draws on grade six pupils' standardised maths and (English) reading test scores from 2000 and 2007 to analyse changes in educational achievement and educational inequality, and the determinants of such changes. The analysis of the data shows that educational achievement increased significantly for both low- and high-ability pupils over the period of analysis. Nonetheless, this increase in achievement was accompanied by a significant rise in educational inequality, especially in reading test scores. The analysis further shows that these changes are statistically related to policy measures taken under the FPE programme. In particular, the results show that pupil-teacher ratio is negatively correlated with changes in reading performance of low-ability pupils, while teacher effort (i.e. subject-testing frequency and teaching hours per week) and grade repetition have a positive influence on changes in educational achievement. These results suggest that the fall in pupil teacher ratio between 2000 and 2007 has helped increase educational achievement. The analysis, however, reveals that much of the increase in educational achievement and educational inequality is unexplained by both school and pupils' family characteristics, which suggests that there could be other unobserved family and school factors that influence achievement and inequality. Therefore, in Chapter 4 of the thesis I shift focus from FPE policy effects and look at the impact of family factors on human capital accumulation. Specifically, Chapter 4 examines the effect of a child's order of birth on human capital development (i.e. enrolment, educational attainment, and schooling progression) using family-fixed effects models. Birth order has received much attention in the economics and psychology literature. Contrary to much of the evidence from developing countries, I find that birth order has a strong negative effect on human capital development. These birth order effects are pronounced in large families, and families with first-born girls, thereby revealing the strong girls' education preferences in Lesotho. Turning to potential pathways of these effects, I find that birth order effects are not propagated through family wealth, but mainly though birth- (or child-) spacing. These results suggest that there are some intra-household inefficiencies that could explain the changes in educational achievement and inequality.

This dissertation examines the impact of various modes of transport on Grade 3 primary school learners' well-being in a rural school in the Cape Winelands district of the Western Cape, South Africa. The study moves beyond this narrow frame of physical transport to include the physiological, emotional, and educational domains of learners' lives. The individuals' physiological, emotional and educational well-being are utilised as analytical categories. The research used a mixed-methods design in a case-study approach. The qualitative data was derived from learner focus groups, open-ended interviews, and learner and teacher questionnaires. The quantitative data was derived from school records of learner attendance, Western Cape Education Department (WCED) term schedules and the WCED Systemic test results for the school. The main findings were as follows: (1) On a physiological level, irrespective of the mode of transport, access to school was found to be difficult but not impossible due to dangers and similar safety issues for all learners including pedestrians (2) On an emotional level, again all learners faced similar fears and trauma possibilities, and lacked the support of professional counsellors (3) Educationally, the bus passengers performed worse than other MoTs, whereas the pedestrians were the highest performing group. Also, seasonal change influenced learner absenteeism and similar attendance patterns were found for all MoTs in summer but in winter the pedestrians came to school more often than the bus passengers.

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Currently, 30 U.S. states have enacted performance based funding policies. Performance based funding policies stipulate that higher education institutions must meet certain performance metrics, such as graduate rates in order to receive state funding. Performance based funding is largely meant to align higher education institutions in American with the market. The overall purpose of this study is to examine how performance based funding policies have the potential to shape the public good. This area of research is important to understand because the public good is a notion that, while abstract, nonetheless affects every member of a society. The public good impacts how citizens participate in their democracy and if they participate at all. Thus it is crucial to understand how higher education policy can affect the public good.;A number of areas of the literature help inform this study. The first area looks at the different components of policy and how hegemony manifests in the discourse of policy. The next section includes a brief historical examination overview of accountability and performance based funding. The third section examines the evolution, formation and lapsing of the first round of performance based funding policies in the early 2000s as well as the formation and enactment of the second round of performance based funding, which ensued from 2007. The final section looks at the various notions of the public good. My study is one of the first studies to how examine performance based funding has the potential to shape the public good.;This research study used discourse analysis. The sites for data collection included the six southern states of Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia and Mississippi. I used the discourse tools of an input-process-output-outcome heuristic, a policy hegemony analysis, a presupposition analysis, and a social actor analysis to code the data and to analyze the findings.;This study found that the policies in the six states under review relied not only on neoliberal orientations, but also neoconservative orientations as well. The three overarching themes that resulted from the policy analysis were: government oversight, market metrics, and policy silences. These themes can be thought of as technologies that work to constrict the constellation of the public good.;College leaders should heed the results of this research because higher education institutions have a unique role in shaping the public good (Pusser, 2006; Marginson, 2007). as such, college leaders must understand this role and how performance based measures may hinder their ability to do so. Policy makers must also be cognizant of how their actions may have deleterious effects on the public good. Faculty and students, who may be most impacted by performance based policies, must learn how these policies will negatively affect the public good and further so they, the faculty and student can begin to shape a more inclusive and democratic vision of the public good not just for their own society, but globally.

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No description available.

This study compared the teaching practices and efficacy beliefs of traditional middle school teachers and International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme (IBMYP) teachers in an urban school district using the framework of Stronge's Model of Effective Teaching (2007), Stronge and Tucker's (2003) Teacher Effectiveness Behavior Scale, and Tschannen-Moran & Hoy's (2001) Teacher's Sense of Efficacy Scale. Recommended practices for effective teaching were extracted from the following four categories of Stronge's (2007) Model of Teacher Effectiveness: classroom management and organization, implementing instruction, monitoring student progress, and construct of teacher's sense of efficacy.;A stratified random sample of teachers was selected from four middle schools in a large urban district. There were approximately 10 teachers selected from each school which gave a total of 40 teachers who participated in the study. There were 20 (n=20) IBMYP teachers and 20 (n=20) traditional middle school teachers who agreed to participate. A total of 18 IBMYP and 16 traditional teachers completed the online TSES questionnaire.;There was a significant difference (p<.05) in instructional differentiation, assessment for understanding, classroom management and encouragement of responsibility for International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme teachers compared to traditional middle school teachers. However, there was not a significant difference (p<.05) in efficacy for student engagement, efficacy for instructional practices, efficacy for classroom management, instructional focus on learning, instructional clarity, instructional complexity, expectations for student learning, use of technology, quality of verbal feedback to students, classroom organization, caring, fairness and respect, and enthusiasm for International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme teachers compared to traditional middle school teachers.

The focus of this study was the experience of students who had successfully achieved the transition from foster care to enrollment in Virginia Community Colleges. The following questions guided the inquiry: How do students who are emancipating from foster care describe their transition to enrollment at one of the Virginia Community Colleges? What challenges do students who are emancipating from foster care face in the transition to college? What types of support do these students require to successfully transition to college?;This study used a qualitative approach to examine the transition from care of emancipated foster youth to post-secondary education. Narrative responses from semi-structured interviews with emancipating youth now enrolled in a Virginia community college provided insight into their transition from care to enrollment in college. Twelve students aged 19 to 21, participated in this study. Ethnicity of participants included one biracial student, five Caucasian students, and six Black students. Findings from the study showed the importance of the influence of a single secondary educator in each participant's experience, the importance of financial assistance, and the importance of campus/institutional support on college choice and transition from high school to college. Participants were challenged by their lack of academic preparation, lack of family privilege, and lack of understanding of the norms of college.;Keywords: college transition, foster care, college students, community college.