This qualitative dissertation explores the perceptions of how and why teachers might integrate technology to support their goals of equity and inclusion with a group of teachers who identify as culturally responsive in their pedagogy and describe themselves as fluent in the use of technology in school. Teachers working with students of diverse backgrounds were chosen purposively using an "extreme case sampling" method in order to interview experienced and pedagogically aligned participants. Drawing on in-depth interviews, a review of class artifacts and documents, and a focus group, this study provides critical insights into how self-identified culturally relevant teachers use technology. Discussion of the findings focused on two areas. The first examined how the unique affordances of technology lend themselves as a critical resource for teachers engaged in culturally responsive pedagogy. The second looked at how the self-directed approach of participant teachers led them to seek learning opportunities through informal means, in particular with peers they saw as aligned with their own thoughtful practice in service of their beliefs and values for equity and inclusion. Participants provided evidence that technology can be an active dimension of their work toward equity and inclusion. Thus, this research expands upon existing literature on pedagogical practice in both technology in education and diverse classrooms.

In this dissertation, I focused on education equity for Indigenous communities in Ecuador and Peru and the policy implications of intercultural bilingual education in the countries’ primary schools. The goals of the study were to (a) measure the extent to which intercultural bilingual education led to increased education outcomes for Indigenous students in Ecuador and Peru and (b) analyze how intercultural bilingual education was implemented in Ecuador by interest groups and how this affected its interpretation and success. Using a sequential mixed methods design, the study began with a longitudinal analysis of education outcomes among Indigenous and non-Indigenous students from 2006-2013 using standardized tests from the Second and Third Regional Comparative and Explanatory Studies. Indigenous students increased their test scores in Spanish language over time; however, these findings were not solely attributed to intercultural bilingual education schools. Improvements among Indigenous students did not necessarily reflect increased equity, as low-income children and those from rural areas continued to underperform. In Ecuador, intercultural bilingual education reform from 2006-2016 resulted in divergent perspectives on the purposes and outcomes of this type of education between the government and Indigenous groups. Opposing interpretations of this education reform as a realization of Indigenous rights and equity as outlined in the 2008 constitution, and its subsequent implementation in Indigenous communities, led to differences in how to measure the success of the reform. Government adherence to a state-level system of evaluation and testing for all students and teachers in 2012 predisposed intercultural bilingual education schools to standardized testing that undermined the theoretical underpinnings of intercultural education.

This quantitative study examined secondary schools across a south Florida school district to determine the relationship between school characteristics and measures of teacher quality with the aim of ascertaining the equitable distribution of the educational resource, teacher quality. Data regarding student population, staff climate survey responses, school points, and measures of teacher quality were requested from the school district; however, the requested teacher quality data was not available from the district. The researcher accessed publicly available teacher quality data from the Florida Department of Education regarding advanced degree completion, out-of-field teachers, and highly qualified teachers to serve as measures of teacher quality at secondary schools. Data were collected and analyzed using quantitative methods for 119 schools that served as the unit of analysis. Using multiple regressions, the study found a significant negative relationship between the percentage of students participating in the free and reduced-price lunch program and the percentage of teachers who possessed an advanced degree. The study also found a significant positive relationship between the percentages of Black students, English language learners, students with disabilities, students participating in the free and reduced-price lunch program and the percentage of out-offield teachers. Additionally, the study found a significant positive relationship between the percentages of Hispanic students, students with disabilities, students participating in the free and reduced-price lunch program, and the percentage of not highly qualified teachers at schools. The investigation also discovered predictive relationships between some of these school characteristics and the measures of teacher quality examined in the study. All of the findings provided evidence of structural inequality regarding the distribution of teacher quality and were analyzed by the study’s theoretical framework, which drew on critical race theory, critical multiculturalism, and other critical studies. These works underscore the inequitable distribution of teacher quality. Implications and suggestions for future research are offered for further examination of the equitable distribution of teacher quality and the role of policy to inform the equitable distribution of teacher quality across schools in order to address the most urgent problem facing U.S. education: the unequal distribution of quality teachers. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Essay 1: Determinants of NCLEX-RN Success Beyond the HESI Exit Exam: Performance in Nursing Courses and Academic Readiness Abstract: Every year, nursing students are not allowed to receive their degrees or sit for NCLEX-RN (national licensure exam) because of their performance in standardized exit exams like the HESI (Health Education Systems, Inc) or ATI (Assessment Technologies Institute). These exits exam have been found to be highly predictive of NCLEX-RN success but not failure. Consequently, some have argued that progression rules in nursing programs should not be based on a single metric but on a broader assessment of student readiness to pass the NCLEX-RN. In this study, I examine whether demographics, pre-college academic readiness measures, and performance in nursing courses improve the correct identification of students who will pass/fail above and beyond the HESI exit exam. I find that their inclusion can improve the identification of those who will fail but not those who will pass. Essay 2: The Impact of Remediation on NCLEX-RN Success: Positive, Neutral, or Negative? Abstract: Nursing programs assign students to NCLEX-RN remediation - based on the results of the HESI exit exam- to improve their probability of passing the NCLEX-RN on the first attempt. Previous correlational studies have found NCLEX-RN remediation based on HESI exit exam scores to be effective. In this study, I use two nationally representative samples to explore the impact of required remediation on passing the NCLEX-RN on the first attempt using regression discontinuity design both as local randomization and as continuity at the cutoff using. As the former, I find some evidence that remediation has a negative impact on passing the NCLEX-RN on the first attempt. As the latter, I find limited evidence of positive treatment effects. Both sets of statistically significant findings, however, are sensitive to bandwidth, kernel functional assumptions and/or sample trimming. Overall, RD evidence suggests that remediation may not have an impact on NCLEX-RN outcomes. Essay 3: Testing a Rule of Thumb: For STEM degree attainment, More Selective is Better Abstract: The supply of STEM workers depends to some degree on the ability of post-secondary institutions to keep those students already interested in STEM engaged and, to a much lesser extent, to generate interest among those initially not interested. The institutional attributes which may exert positive or negative influences on STEM degree attainment are many and students and parents may not be able to assess the status of each factor or a bundle of factors for specific institutions in their college choice sets which may maximize the probability of STEM degree attainment. In this essay, I test the rule of thumb that, for STEM students, attending a highly selective institution instead of a moderately selective institution improves the probability of obtaining a STEM degree at the first attended institution among those interested in STEM among and among those who are not initially interested. Overall, I find that highly selective institutions have a comparative advantage in producing STEM graduates among those already interested in STEM but not among those initially not interested in STEM. These findings hold true also for female students but to a different degree.

My dissertation examines the distrust and trust that New York City African-American parents place in schools at a moment when market-based education policies and gentrification are transforming the landscape of public schools in many historically Black urban communities. In my study, I tease apart how the nature of parent trust in local public schools might be different from the nature of trust in the institution of public schooling or faith in public education, as Black parents may expect different things from the local school and the school system. I also explore how trust or distrust in parent-school relationships develops, by treating trusting as a dynamic process, shaped by past socialization and experiences, as well as current experiences with schools. I examine parents’ accounts of critical moments in their relationship with their child’s schools; such as finding and enrolling their children in a new school, impressions of teaching and classroom management and to what extent schools respected their parent involvement. I find that the parent-school relationship develops different for Black parents who send their children to traditional public schools and charter schools, but that in general, the parent perceptions of schools’ lack of care for Black children and lack of respect for Black parents are what drives distrust. By examining how trust in public schools might develop uniquely for Black Americans, my study develops treatments of trust in education research and theory by challenging the functionalist and power-neutral assumption that trust in schools is inherently constructive. By centering the perspectives of Black parents to better understand how legacies of institutional racism impede the development of trust in schools, I highlight how these normative assumptions about parent trust in schools often elide the role of socio-cultural exclusion, power asymmetries, discrimination, and a legacy of institutional racism and neglect—across many institutional contexts—that foreground orientations of parents of color toward educators and schools. Indeed, it is often prudent for Black parents to distrust schools and educators in order to protect their children because they have not been trustworthy. In addition, my study also illuminates whether changing urban school systems are deemed legitimate in the eyes of the public, and what kinds of parent-school relationships can foster greater trust.

Due to the variety of factors that may affect student achievement, individual students often come to schools with different levels of academic preparation. These students from diverse academic background come with different learning needs. So, to better serve them, schools have adopted a variety of strategies, including increasing instructional time, reducing class sizes, providing differentiated curriculum and improving teacher quality through professional development trainings. My dissertation consists of three papers that examine several education interventions targeting at students with different academic abilities. These studies examine the design and current uses of several popular education interventions, and provide actionable insights on improving these interventions to enhance learning experiences for students at different points of the achievement spectrum. Chapter one evaluates a multi-subject remedial program that provided additional instruction on math and reading to under-performing students in a large metropolitan school district. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design and school administrative records, I find that double-dose remedial math courses improve math test scores by 0.21 standard deviations at the end of the school year. Yet, the effect of double-dose reading courses on reading achievement is small and statistically insignificant. In addition, the required extra classes in math or reading do not have crowd-out impact on instruction time and student performances on non-targeted core subjects. Finally, the study shows that students who receive treatments in multiple subjects do not necessarily have larger gains. While double-dose math courses may improve students’ math skills, the effect disappears for students who were taking double-dose reading courses at the same time. This finding suggests that two separate double-dose courses in different subjects may be ineffective in improving student achievements. To support students who struggle with more than one subject, schools should consider redesigning the double-dose courses with alternative curriculum and instructional strategies to integrate content of different courses and to increase student engagement. Chapter two examines effects of taking accelerated math courses under a subject-based acceleration program for middle school students. Students assigned to accelerated courses were exposed to more advanced curriculum and higher-performing peers. Using school administrative records and fuzzy regression discontinuity approach, the study finds null effects of taking accelerated math courses on students’ end-of-grade math test scores. Specifically, the effects are insignificant for students who took accelerated courses in both math and English Language Arts, and for those who took accelerated courses only in math. Also, the effects are insignificant for low-income and minority students. These findings are unexpected given the treatments provided by accelerated courses. The study provides possible explanations to the findings, and suggests directions for future research. Chapter three examines the sustainability of teacher knowledge gains from teacher professional development (PD) programs. Teacher PD is seen as a promising intervention to improve teacher knowledge, instructional practice, and ultimately student learning. While research finds many instances of significant program effects on teacher knowledge, little is known about how long these effects last. If teachers forget what is learned from the professional development program, the contribution of the intervention will be diminished. Using a large-scale dataset with 3,340 in-service teachers from 161 programs, this study examines the sustainability of gains in teachers’ content knowledge for teaching mathematics (CKT-M). Results show that there is a negative rate of change in CKT after teachers complete the training and that this estimated rate is relatively stable over time, suggesting that the average gain in test scores before and after the program is lost in just 37 days. There is, however, variation in how quickly knowledge is lost, with teachers participating in summer programs losing more rapidly than those who attend programs that occur during school years. The implications of these findings for designing and evaluating professional development programs are discussed.

Currently, in the United States, there is an urgency to address the perceived failure of contemporary public schools to educate diverse populations. This sense of failure is propped up by performance discrepancies between White, middle-class youth and low-income, including most often, youth of color. This disparity, frequently referred to as "the achievement gap," drives mandatory school improvement policies and practices designed to improve outcomes for underperforming, sub-categorically, school populations. Amid these interrelated policies and practices, all of which are dependent upon assumptions requiring predictability, generalizability, and stability as characteristics of sub-populations and their constituent subjects, the racial divide and the economic gap have been re-coded in terms of differences in exam scores (Taubman, 2009, p. 154). One significant implication of populational reasoning as recently deployed in contemporary U.S. public schools is that teachers-frequently White, middle-class women-are increasingly attributed with a categorical bias that "has increasingly served as a possible explanation [emphasis added] for the 'achievement gap,'" rather than as a contributing factor embedded in "demographic factors … far more complex than [previously] indicated" in education research (Farkas 2004, as cited in Takei & Shouse, 2007, p. 368; Ferguson, 1998; Perry, 2003). In this way, the frequent failures and non-proficiencies of both teachers and students, key components of crisis discourses, are often attributed to simplistically applied and unexamined "racial asymmetry" (p. 368) and undesirably framed within a "cultural and demographic mismatch" (Grant & Gibson, 2011, p. 25). In order to trouble commonsensical conceptualizations of this mismatch, this conceptual study works toward re-theorizing the mismatch as both a concept and as a subject-glomming "hub" in schools and society in ways that articulate difference differently. By diffracting feminist, new materialist and poststructural theories of subjectivity through the material discursive fields surrounding a contemporary work of art and a post-industrial city, notions of diffraction, as both a methodological tool and as a concept, are developed. Experimenting with the notion of concept as method, "mismatched" subjects are re-presented as non-individuated subjectivities that emerge within ever-changing material/discursive fields.

The current demographic changes in the U.S. have resulted in a national culture gap, which contributes to the achievement and opportunity disparities that persistently plague students of color. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 86% of all PreK-12 grade teachers are European Americans. Yet, the student population in urban settings continues to be overwhelming economically disadvantaged students of color. Plaguing the nation’s schools are concerns about identifying teachers capable of successfully teaching in diverse classrooms, as stakeholders continue to speculate about the efficacy of White teachers to teach students of color due to the White teachers’ lack of understanding about and sensitivity toward students of color. Consequently, educators struggle to effectively serve their culturally dissimilar students. Despite the technical fixes of school reforms over the past three decades, however, the achievement and opportunity gaps remain. Hence, an adaptive approach to closing the opportunity and achievement gaps necessitates challenging our nation’s beliefs, values, and assumptions through a series of professional learning opportunities, as engaging in a series of intensive professional learning within a 12-month period improves student achievement by as much as 21 percentile points. The purpose of this study was to develop the Cultural Competence Professional Learning Module (CCPLM, 2016), which is grounded in Adult Learning Theory, Critical Race Theory, and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and is designed to foster Cultural Competence in NYC DoE public school teachers. The researcher used the Cultural Competence Needs Assessment Survey (2016) and the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire (2000) to ascertain NYC DoE schools administrators’ level of cultural competence and their beliefs about their teachers’ cultural competence. Of the school administrators who completed the surveys and were culturally competent, 15 provided feedback on the CCPLM’s content and design in a focus group. Concurrently, four national experts on professional learning and diversity in schools also reviewed and provided feedback on the module. The results from the study support the need for a professional learning module that fosters NYC educators’ cultural competence. Delimitations and limitations of the study are discussed.

This dissertation presented research by the author in the development of a computer Decision Support System (DSS) for assisting in providing equal educational opportunity in a public school district. The research process consisted of five major phases: (1) The support of a local school district was obtained, and, with the assistance of the superintendent, a task group of concerned administrators was assembled to assist in defining the needs and goals for the DSS. (2) A list of key variables was developed for inclusion in the support system. Data were gathered and stored for a preliminary version of the DSS. (3) A thorough literature review was undertaken in order to reach an understanding of the concepts involved in Equality of Educational Opportunity (EEO) sufficient to provide a model to be included in the DSS. The literature review led to the development of four conceptual (subjective) EEO models. (4) Analytical techniques were undertaken to determine which model, if any, best represented reality (as defined by the data gathered in Phase 2.) The analytical techniques used were: correlation analysis, subgroup analysis, graphic analysis, and phenomena explanation. The results showed that one model, identified as the EEO Achievement Aspects Subjective Model, best fit the data examined. (5) The model was incorporated into a DSS in such a way that a single value, termed an EEO Accountability Index, was calculated for a given set of data. The potential uses of such an index and of such a DSS were then explained. The expected use of the DSS is in providing analyses based on a statistically-derived model of reality. The process of building the statistically-derived model is expected to add new insights into the concepts of EEO. Accordingly, this research is anticipated to be of particular use to (1) information specialists, (2) school district board members, superintendents, and decisionmakers, and (3) other academicians interested in developing a better understanding of the concepts of EEO and the implications those concepts have for educational decisionmaking.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 369-384). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.