<p> The researcher conducted a study focused on the suspension/expulsion and graduation rates of Missouri public high school special education students. The goal was to determine if these areas of focus influenced one another. Analysis occurred through the use of secondary data from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education within the following school years: 2012-2013, 2013-2014, and 2014-2015. Additionally, public school personnel received online surveys via SurveyMonkey.</p><p> The four hypotheses targeted the following: a difference between public high school special education students and graduation rates, the number of students with disabilities suspended/expelled, the graduation rates of non-suspended/expelled special education students, and the suspension/expulsion rates of special education students compared to general education students. Analysis revealed during all three school years studied, differences existed. This was especially important for hypothesis three which was about the graduation rates of non-suspended/expelled special education students to suspended/expelled special education students. Results proved to be significantly different. </p><p> School personnel responded to four research survey questions. The first and second survey questions focused on the perceptions of staff and the suspension/expulsion rates of public high school students with and without disabilities. Survey question three asked staff who worked with students with disabilities what their viewpoints were about their graduation rates. The fourth survey question requested that public school employees write about interventions for high school special education students that would be more successful than suspension/expulsion. The last survey question asked public school personnel what the necessary supports were in order to be successful when working with special education students. The results revealed a range of staff perceptions. Staff responses included minimal concerns on the research topics to desiring the research topics become a major area of focus. </p><p> As an outcome of all results, the researcher suggested conducting additional data analyses, both quantitative and qualitative, distributing surveys during a different or extended time period, and adding interviews to the process. The researcher believed additional information would provide greater insights on suspension/expulsion and graduation rates and help public school employees determine ways to decrease one, while increasing the other.</p>

<p> Despite the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects equal employment opportunity for all, and other California legislation to increase faculty diversity, the disparity between the demographics of California&rsquo;s community college student population and the makeup of the faculty is striking. Specifically, underrepresented minority (URM) students who represent the largest student population at 49%, yet only 22% of faculty are URM. In 1992 the California legislature adopted regulations that allow community colleges to establish Faculty Diversity Internship Programs (FDIP), to &ldquo;promote inclusive efforts to locate and attract qualified graduate students who are members of monitored groups identified by gender, ethnicity, and disability.&rdquo; Despite being passed over 20 years ago, less than half of community colleges have implemented FDIPs. This study used a program evaluation to examine two FDIPs sites. The program evaluation revealed four benefits of participating in FDIP 1) mentorship, 2) teaching experience, 3) professional development, and 3) networking and collaboration opportunities. Barriers and challenges included 1) mentor matching, 2) mentor training, 3) class assignment, and 4) FDIP Coordinator transition. Finally, the program evaluation revealed that although the FDIP does not have a significant impact on increasing faculty diversity, it does have a significant impact on preparing faculty to serve in a diverse community college. The study provides evidence and recommendations for implementing FDIPs as a strategy to increase faculty diversity.</p>

<p> Research in the area of 21st century learning suggested the American public education system lacked educational preparation for students to compete in a global/connection economy. The United States performed lower than other nations on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 reading performance. However, the United States had a higher number of 21st century skills and knowledge embedded in the curriculum. The 21st century skills, referred to as the 4Cs (collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking) served as the foundation of this research. Moreover, while the United Sates performance on the PISA was no match to other developed nations; the country ranked above competitors in other international indexes such as the Global Competitiveness Index and the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. </p><p> The researcher analyzed data using an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (PPMCC), and Chi-Square tests for independence and goodness of fit, to seek a possible relationship between the number of 21st century skills included within the 2012 reading curriculums in the countries of Finland, Singapore, and the United States and compared to reading scores measured by the 2012 PISA. For the null hypotheses numbers one through five the researcher applied a PPMCC to the data by comparing a single 4C to the score of each researched country for reading PISA results. With exception to null hypothesis three, a significant inverse relationship existed between the number of 21st century skills included within the 2012 reading curriculums and the 2012 PISA reading scores of the researched countries. Although null hypothesis three was not significant, an observable inverse relationship did exist. This study revealed when a country scored higher on the PISA 2012, the total number of 21st century skills included in the reading curriculums were lower. Additionally, students within the American educational system may benefit from increased focus on academic performance and instructional design to harness creativity and develop an entrepreneurial spirit.</p>

<p> Research has identified evidenced-based practices and programs that are successful for increasing the learning outcomes of students with disabilities which in turn helps narrow the achievement gap between the student subgroup and non-disabled peers. Employing the identified practices has produced inconsistent results and led to a closer examination of the fidelity of implementation in current research. This study explored the decision-making process regarding the selection and evaluation of evidenced-based practices to improve learning for students with disabilities as well as the methods employed to improve the fidelity of implementation and sustain or replace the practice in two schools with different levels of achievement for educating students with disabilities. Findings included the use of student data and absence of a process for making decisions related to educating the student subgroup. Evaluating the fidelity of implementation was more likely for evidenced-based programs that were accompanied by a tool to use for the assessment of practice. Evidenced-based practices were not evaluated for the fidelity of implementation at either site. A suggestion for resolution of this finding is the use of an instrument designed in the form of a rubric to measure the evidenced-based practices of inclusion, collaborative teaching, intervention systems and school organization. School teams can use the rubric to evaluate practices and identify areas in need of improvement from the results. Suggestions for further research are in the areas of administrative decision-making for students with disabilities and a mixed methods study to test the use of a special education performance rubric.</p>

<p> While many factors have been identified as influencing student academic performance, previous studies consistently determined effective teaching as the most significant factor, within the control of educators, leading to improved student achievement. Nonetheless, educational experts, statisticians, and policy-makers alike acknowledged the complexity of isolating the contributions of individual teachers on their students&rsquo; achievement. Converging with these changing beliefs about teaching and learning, the landscape of education faced an additional challenge&mdash;marked by an increased demand for schools and individual teachers to be held accountable for the academic growth of his/her students. Local districts have been empowered to create and implement teacher evaluation systems, with the caveat they maintain student achievement data as one measure of teacher effectiveness. </p><p> While there has been research conducted investigating a relationship between performance-based teacher evaluation systems and student achievement, studies have been limited to the most common large-scale models. This study was unique because the research focused on a specific teacher evaluation system, created by and for, a rural Missouri school district during its first two years of implementation. The purpose of this mixed-methods research study was two-fold: (1) to investigate the relationship between teachers&rsquo; annual evaluation ratings (as measured by the researched district&rsquo;s teacher evaluation tool) and their students&rsquo; academic performance (as measured by the MAP and i-Ready assessments), and (2) to analyze teacher and administrator perceptions of the impact of the new teacher evaluation system on improving student achievement and the teachers&rsquo; instructional performance. </p><p> This study&rsquo;s analysis took both math and reading achievement scores into account, considering two different standardized assessments, the state-mandated Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) and a locally-administered i-Ready Benchmark Assessment. The student achievement data yielded an increase in student achievement over the two years of the study. However, the results of the study did not establish a correlation between the two variables: teacher quality and student achievement. More sensitive evaluation methods are needed to isolate the variable of teacher evaluation ratings on student achievement.</p>

<p> Existing research on peer-to-peer mentoring has focused mainly on cross-age peer mentoring with several years&rsquo; difference between mentor and mentees (Karcher, 2005, 2007; Lawon, 2014; Willis, Bland, Manka, &amp; Craft, 2012) and the impact of peer mentoring on the mentee. I aimed to examine the relationship of participating in a high school based peer-to-peer mentoring program and the impact on the high school upperclassmen mentors in this study. School is a social organization where peers can develop school connectedness and expand their prosocial skills and through their social networks increase social capital. The impact of peer mentoring programs on high school peer mentors is an area that has not been sufficiently investigated. The current exploratory case study used data from surveys, interviews, and field notes to understand the experiences of mentors and the impact of peer mentoring in a high school mentoring program on these mentors in terms of their school connectedness, social capital, and prosocial skill development. Researchers have identified increases in mentees who are involved in peer mentoring programs (Karcher, 2005, 2007). Further research is needed to investigate the impact of these social connections on high school peer mentors. In this study, data was collected from the Hemingway Survey, mentor interviews, and field notes. Findings of this study support the conclusion that the peer mentors&rsquo; prosocial skills of school involvement, school connection, and social capital increased as a result of participating in a peer-to-peer mentoring program. Additionally, mentors did not report identifiable differences between matches that were same gender or different genders. Results from this study demonstrate the impact of increases in the development of prosocial skills and social capital in peer mentors.</p>

<p> This study examines college entry experiences (enrollment, orientation, assessment, and support services) and their contribution to the persistence of nontraditional students enrolled in community colleges. By reviewing the current retention research and models on academic integration, social integration, involvement, engagement and the construct of resilience, college entry experiences were identified and correlated to the work of Tinto, Astin, Kuh, and other researchers. Based on the findings of each of the four college entry experiences, this study provides insights and offers recommendations to community college presidents, deans, community college leaders, professors, student advisors, and enrollment specialists to establish innovative and highly effective intrusive advising support structures, nontraditional retention framework considerations, and cohort learning models to increase student engagement, reach optimal student persistence term to term, and produce cutting-edge degree completion rates. </p>

The main objective of this study was to investigate the improvement of the accuracy of small sample equating, which typically occurs in teacher certification/licensure examinations due to a low volume of test takers per test administration, under the Non-Equivalent Groups with Anchor Test (NEAT) design by combining previous and current equating outcomes using a meta-analysis technique. The proposed meta-analytic score transformation procedure was called "meta-equating" throughout this study. To conduct meta-equating, the previous and current equating outcomes obtained from the chosen equating methods (ID (Identity Equating), Circle-Arc (CA) and Nominal Weights Mean (NW)) and synthetic functions (SFs) of these methods (CAS and NWS) were used, and then, empirical Bayesian (EB) and meta-equating (META) procedures were implemented to estimate the equating relationship between test forms at the population level. The SFs were created by giving equal weight to each of the chosen equating methods and the identity (ID) equating. Finally, the chosen equating methods, the SFs of each method (e.g., CAS, NWS, etc.), and also the META and EB versions (e.g., NW-EB, CA-META, NWS-META, etc.) were investigated and compared under varying testing conditions. These steps involved manipulating some of the factors that influence the accuracy of test score equating. In particular, the effect of test form difficulty levels, the group-mean ability differences, the number of previous equatings, and the sample size on the accuracy of the equating outcomes were investigated. The Chained Equipercentile (CE) equating with 6-univariate and 2-bivariate moments log-linear presmoothing was used as the criterion equating function to establish the equating relationship between the new form and the base (reference) form with 50,000 examinees per test form. To compare the performance of the equating methods, small numbers of examinee samples were randomly drawn from examinee populations with different ability levels in each simulation replication. Each pairs of the new and base test forms were randomly and independently selected from all available condition specific test form pairs. Those test forms were then used to obtain previous equating outcomes. However, purposeful selections of the examinee ability and test form difficulty distributions were made to obtain the current equating outcomes in each simulation replication. The previous equating outcomes were later used for the implementation of both the META and EB score transformation procedures. The effect of study factors and their possible interactions on each of the accuracy measures were investigated along the entire-score range and the cut (reduced)-score range using a series of mixed-factorial ANOVA (MFA) procedures. The performances of the equating methods were also compared based on post-hoc tests. Results show that the behaviors of the equating methods vary based on the each level of the group ability difference, test form difficult difference, and new group examinee sample size. Also, the use of both META and EB procedures improved the accuracy of equating results on average. The META and EB versions of the chosen equating methods therefore might be a solution to equate the test forms that are similar in their psychometric characteristics and also taken by new form examinee samples less than 50. However, since there are many factors affecting the equating results in reality, one should always expect that equating methods and score transformation procedures, or in more general terms, estimation procedures may function differently, to some degree, depending on conditions in which they are implemented. Therefore, one should consider the recommendations for the use of the proposed equating methods in this study as a piece of information, not an absolute guideline, for a rule of thumbs for practicing small sample test equating in teacher certification/licensure examinations. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester 2015. / October 28, 2015. / Collateral Information, Empirical Bayesian, Meta-Analysis, NEAT design, Small Samples, Test Equating / Includes bibliographical references. / Insu Paek, Professor Directing Dissertation; Victor Patrangenaru, University Representative; Russell Almond, Committee Member; Alysia Roehrig, Committee Member.

by Sam Chi Ah, Sylvia. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 36-40). / Chapter CHAPTER 1 --- Introduction --- p.5 / Aim of this paper --- p.5 / Quality in educaiton --- p.5 / Why rneasure quality --- p.6 / Multi-dimensional aspect of the measurement --- p.8 / Wbat are we measuring --- p.9 / Chapter CHAPTER 2 --- APPROACHES TO MEASURING EDUCATION QUALITY --- p.13 / By objectives --- p.16 / By meeting social needs --- p.18 / By satisfying student needs --- p.21 / By teacbing quality --- p.22 / Bylearning quality --- p.23 / By nternal process control --- p.26 / By input resources --- p.28 / By output resources --- p.29 / Chapter CHAPTER 3 --- Comparison of models --- p.31 / The USN model --- p.32 / Comparison between models --- p.33 / Chapter CHAPTER 4 --- Applications of the measurements --- p.35 / BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.36

<p> An increase in the property tax rate of a school district creates an increase in local revenues for the district (Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. [MODESE], 2017). The overarching question becomes: Do increases in the local tax levy compare to improved student performance? The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the difference between property tax rates of Missouri public school districts to student performance as viewed through the lens of benefit tax theory (Duff, 2004). Secondary data were obtained via the MODESE which included property tax rates and information from the Annual Performance Reports for public school districts for academic years 2014&ndash;2015, 2015&ndash;2016, and 2016&ndash;2017. The categories examined from the Annual Performance Reports were: academic achievement, subgroup achievement, career and college, attendance, and graduation. Public schools with higher tax rates were found to have the best attendance rates and the highest graduation rates. Overall, public school districts with higher tax rates realized higher Annual Performance Report scores.</p><p>