M.Ed. (Educational Management) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

"The writer has attempted to emphasize the point that the principal should be the key leader in developing a curriculum for the school that will meet the needs of all the children and the entire community which it serves. The writer selected this subject for research and study because it is his desire to become a school principal, and he would like to know the duties of the principal in developing a desirable instructional program. It is also a contribution toward consolidating information and facts which apply to the role of the principal in developing such a program. The material for this paper was obtained from a study of professional and related literature and from talks with leaders in education"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "February, 1950." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science under Plan II." / Advisor: Mode L. Stone, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 35-37).

"The purpose of this study is to survey articles on administration and supervision of business education that have appeared in professional literature between January 1, 1942, and December 31, 1952"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "August, 1953." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Science." / Advisor: Glen E. Murphy, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 40-51).

This dissertation examines the complexity involved in teachers’ perceptions and experience of time on school-related activities. The Intensification Theory explains that test-based accountability has caused a time crunch for teachers, increasing their stress level and burnout rate. Research literature has shown that teachers experiencing high levels of stress and burnout correlated with lower student achievement. Teachers, like all professionals, have a finite amount of time, and as the workload increases, less time is left for replenishment and personal family time. Time is a critical resource in schools, and how teachers navigate its use can determine the ultimate success or failure of students. In a variety of ways, researchers have shown an understanding of the relationship between time in school and student achievement. I studied three important aspects of time in a charter school in Florida: (1) How do 3rd grade teachers use their school-related time? (2) How do 3rd grade teachers and their principals perceive school time? and (3) How is high stakes accountability perceived to be shaping teacher time? Using observations and interviews, my goal was to give a voice to teachers and administrators regarding how they perceived school time. This was a phenomenological qualitative research study involving five third-grade teachers and two administrators in one K-12 charter school in Florida. It was a high achieving school with exemplary teachers, who fully experienced the time crunch brought on by test-based accountability. Third-grade was chosen because it was the first grade level at which students experienced repercussions due to achievement scores. With each teacher participant, I conducted semi-structured pre- and post-interviews, completed five full days of observations as a nonparticipant observer, and requested seven full days of time-use diaries for after work hours school-related activities. Two administrators were interviewed to obtain their perspectives on teacher time in order to compare teacher and administrator perceptions. After all data was collected, interviews were transcribed, and subsequently coded using NVivo software. During a preliminary exploratory analysis of the data, I developed themes and patterns relating to teacher time. Details of what occurred in the classrooms during a school week were used to cross-analyze the thematic data and to triangulate time perceptions. After the final analysis of the data, member checking was used to substantiate the accuracy of the findings. Findings related to time as a resource indicated that this third-grade team of teachers spent an average of 54 hours per week working on school-related activities, compared to their contracted workweek of 40 hours. Most often during school hours, teachers were engaged in several activities at once, or rapidly moving from one activity to the next, called context switching. Teachers did most of their instructional planning and professional learning outside paid schoolwork hours. Findings on teacher perceptions of time showed that teachers did not believe that theirs were finite, 9-5 type of jobs, as they spent many hours after contracted work hours completing tasks. Teachers felt they had enough time for instruction if they planned carefully, and left out creative activities. They described the three months before testing as “crunch time”, meaning they had to review, re-teach, and squeeze in any standards that were missed, and they shared how stressful this time period was. Administrators perceived that third-grade teachers used time effectively and produced outstanding results, but felt that teachers should have had enough time during paid work hours to complete all their work except grading papers. Responses from administrators on comparing their time with teachers’ time were mixed. One administrator thought that teachers had much more control over their own time than did administrators, and one thought exactly the opposite. In the third set of findings, teachers shared their perspectives on the precise pacing required by testing, and how instructional time was lost to time spent using pre-packaged test preparation materials during crunch time. Administrators noticed that teachers were allowed less leeway for creative activities in their instruction due to the time crunch. I found support in my data for six of the eight assertions of the Intensification Theory, suggesting that teachers’ time has become “intensified” due to test-based accountability. My findings regarding the pace of the school day for teachers and interrupted, fragmented time in the classroom confirmed what researchers have learned in the extant literature. Unlike the findings in the research though, Irvin School teachers in my study, were paid for a longer, contracted day than teachers in most schools in the surrounding areas of Florida, and they reported using that extra time to benefit students through greater teacher collaboration, increasing interest in lessons, and reflecting on student mastery of skills. Implications of this research include the need for further studies on teachers’ context switching during the school day and the contrast between teacher and administrator perceptions of teacher time. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester 2017. / August 14, 2017. / intensification theory, subjective time, teacher stress, teacher time, test-based accountability, time / Includes bibliographical references. / Stacey A. Rutledge, Professor Directing Dissertation; Alysia D. Roehrig, University Representative; Courtney Preston, Committee Member; Robert A. Schwartz, Committee Member.

The purpose of this study is to examine the school choice process of Gentry Parents --white, middle and upper-middle class, highly-educated parents living in gentrifying neighborhoods -- to determine how, through the compounding effect of their many individual choices, a segregated urban school in a gentrifying neighborhood is able to transform into an integrated school, a process I call "tipping in." This study uses data from 52 formal interviews of Gentry Parents in three different gentrifying/gentrified neighborhoods in New York City, and data from dozens of informal interviews and observations of Gentry Parents on playgrounds, school tours, and in pre-school cubby rooms. This study found that tipping in happens through the actions and reactions of different types of Gentry Parents: Innovator and Early Adopter Gentry Parents who are willing to be the first of their peer group to enroll their child in a segregated school, and Early Majority and Late Majority Gentry Parents who will only enroll their children in a school once their peers have gone in and done the hard work of changing the culture of the school to feel "middle class." After the Innovators, each subsequent wave of Gentry Parents will only enroll their children in a school if the prior wave keeps their children enrolled. This study suggests that Gentry Parents often take their children out of a school during the tipping in process, making retention of gentry children as important to tipping in as attracting them in the first place. Attracting gentry children appears to be difficult because Gentry Parents primarily prefer schools that are diverse and progressive, attributes not typically found in segregated urban schools. Retaining gentry children appears to be difficult primarily because Gentry Parent school expectations often do not match the reality of an integrating school, and principals are described as struggling to manage the culture gap that reportedly exists between Gentry Parents and non-Gentry Parents.

This dissertation examines the relationship between the use of student-centered instructional methods in teaching mathematics and science, and achievement of fourth graders in these subjects. The context for analyzing this relationship is the post-Soviet region, with Kazakhstan selected as the main focus of the study, and the object of its in-depth qualitative case analysis. The measures of student-centered instructional methods are drawn from student surveys administered as part of the 2007 TIMSS study, while the TIMSS test scores serve as measures of student achievement. The quantitative analysis finds that student-centered instructional methods generally show no statistically significant relationship with student achievement across all country datasets included in this analysis. The qualitative case study follows up on these results in the context of Kazakhstan, and finds that while student-centered instruction is hailed as the pathway to reform of education in this post-Soviet country, the state lacks the capacity to engage in instructional reform and improvement of teacher quality, while the teachers look to the state to guide them in choosing the right instructional methods. As a result, instructional transformations take place in highly haphazard, heterogeneous ways, while teachers require direction, guidance, and support from the central state to effectively implement student-centered methods in their lessons.

A major focus of charter school research has been the potential impact of increased school choice on student sorting by race/ethnicity and socio-economic status. Researchers have argued that charter schools may increase segregation by allowing families to separate into more homogeneous school communities. Yet surprisingly, little attention has been paid to the role charter schools themselves may play in determining student enrollments. Emerging evidence suggests that charter schools may frequently take into account nearby educational and demographic characteristics when choosing school locations and avoid neighborhoods with high-proportions of at-risk students who are more costly and challenging to educate. While this behavior is not incompatible with traditional notions of how education marketplaces function, such "positioning strategies" serve as important reminders that charter schools benefit most by locating in areas where they hold clear competitive advantages, not necessarily areas of greatest demand or educational need. In this dissertation, I examined the potential for New Jersey charter schools to effectively distribute educational opportunities to all students, particularly those most frequently targeted by previous approaches to school reform, across varied and often segregated landscapes. Drawing on rational choice theory and previous research into the profit maximizing behavior of firms, I argued that charter schools have strong incentives to locate in areas that allow them to effectively balance consumer demand with the potential negative effects of increased competition in high needs areas. I used geographic information systems (GIS) and logistic regression to map the location of charter schools in New Jersey and examine potential associations with supply side factors. New Jersey's charter school supply showed two distinct clustering patterns. First, charter schools tended to circle Abbott districts or low-performing school districts in a narrow five mile band characterized by greater educational need and, presumably, consumer demand. Second, charter schools in Abbott districts tended to circle, but not locate within, neighborhoods with higher levels of educational and economic disadvantage, and particularly neighborhoods with higher proportions of African American residents. Logistic regression confirmed statistically significant associations among charter school clusters and proxies for market demand, educational need, and neighborhood diversity, although estimates for race/ethnicity were less conclusive. Further analysis indicated that observed clustering patterns were primarily driven by more market savvy or entrepreneurial schools partnered with charter management organizations (CMOs).

School districts and states have increasingly abandoned traditional school reform efforts in favor of simply closing low-performing schools. This movement reflects growing frustration among policymakers with the disappointing effects of previous school improvement policies, and the view that some schools may simply lack the capacity to undertake meaningful improvements. This paper focuses on arguably the most aggressive school closure policies in the nation--those in New York City. Over the past decade, New York City has closed over 100 schools. Using a longitudinal database of students and schools, I explore the implementation and effects of closure and reconstitution of middle schools in New York City, and assess the links between school closure and student academic development and behavior. My descriptive findings indicate that schools selected for closure have significantly lower school-average state test score exams and lower attendance rates compared to other middle schools for several years prior to closure, and that students who attend these schools are almost exclusively Hispanic and Black, more likely to come from low-income families, and more mobile than other middle school students in the district. I also find that students enter these middle schools already at a significant academic disadvantage. I examine characteristics of the reconstituted schools that replace the closed schools, and find that in terms of demographics, reconstituted schools enroll students similar to those served by the closed schools that they replaced. However, the reconstituted schools serve higher performing students with fewer absences and tardies in the year prior to enrolling in middle school. To assess the impact of school closure on student academic outcomes, I use propensity-score matching within a difference-in-differences framework. I find a small, positive effect of school closure on student test scores and rates of absences. As a robustness check, I conduct a second set of analyses using student fixed-effects models that produced similar results: students learn slightly less at chronically underperforming schools, compared to what would have happened had they attended an alternate school. School closure appears to be a somewhat effective in improving student academic outcomes. It is not clear, however, whether the policy is efficient given the small effects and the considerable disruption associated with the policy. Future research should examine the fiscal costs associated with closure, compared to costs of other policies with similar effects.

Over the last two decades, private tutoring has emerged as an important issue in education as its demand has been growing around the world. However, the evidence of the effectiveness of private tutoring is still mixed. Using the Korean Educational Longitudinal Survey, this dissertation explores the causal impact of private tutoring in Korea on three outcomes: students' academic achievement, the quality of the learning environment in formal schooling, and educational inequality. The first set of empirical analyses explores how private tutoring in secondary schools affects students' academic achievement in both short-term and long-term aspects using Ordinary Least Squares, Instrumental Variable, and Propensity Score Matching methods. The results suggest that private tutoring in middle school, on average, has positive short-term effects on students' academic achievement in middle school, but minimal long-term effects on the university entrance examination scores. By subject area, English and math tutoring are effective in improving academic achievement in middle school, whereas verbal tutoring is not. Moreover, private tutoring in grade 7 is most beneficial for students in middle school. In terms of private tutoring in high school, only math tutoring is beneficial for high school students in improving scores on the university entrance examination. The second set of the analyses employs Ordered Logit, Propensity Score Matching, and Difference-in-Differences methods to estimate the impact of private tutoring on the quality of formal schooling. The quality of the learning environment in formal schooling is measured by students' attention to lessons in class. On average, private tutoring shows a positive influence on students' attention to lessons in grade 8, but the magnitude of its influence is not substantial. However, when differentiating the results by ability group, positive effects are detected mostly in the low-ability group, which means that low achievers pay more attention to lessons in schools if they participate in private tutoring. These results imply that private tutoring improves the overall learning environment in formal schooling, which in turn increases the overall quality of schooling. The third set of the analyses uses Quantile Regression, Two-Stage Least Absolute Deviation estimator, and Propensity Score Subclassification to estimate the heterogeneous effects of private tutoring between ability groups, which provides implications on educational inequality based on academic achievement. The overall results suggest that private tutoring in middle school exacerbates educational inequality between high and low achievers, which implies a widening of the achievement gap. In addition, enrolling in tutoring at an earlier grade level results in greater heterogeneity between high and low achievers in academic performance than enrolling in tutoring during later grade levels. However, private tutoring in high school contributes to reducing the achievement gap; low achievers benefit more from private tutoring in high school compared to high achievers. Moreover, three years of cumulative math tutoring and receiving a single year of math tutoring in grade 12 contribute to narrowing the achievement gap between low and high achievers in the university entrance examination scores.

For two decades, state financing of higher education has been on the decline and the situation has exacerbated since the onset of the economic recession, where the US state systems have resorted to a substantial cut of funding for higher education. Faced with the challenges of limited resources for financial pressure and an increasing demand, community colleges either have taken or are considering taking a series of cost-saving strategies. Some of the most prominent trends seen in the past decades include sharp expansions in distance education offerings through online coursework, an increasing reliance on part-time adjunct faculty, and a heated discussion about slashing expenditures on remedial education. Yet, many researchers argue that these strategies might be implemented at the cost of poorer educational quality and less desirable student outcomes. My dissertation assesses the impacts of several important strategies that community colleges are engaged in an era of financial constraints on student academic outcomes and educational equality. In Chapter One, Shanna Smith Jaggars and I examine the fast growth of distance education and its impacts on student outcomes relative to traditional face-to-face delivery format. Based on a large administrative data set from Washington State, we found robust negative estimates for online learning in terms of both course persistence and course grade. While all types of students in the study suffered decrements in performance in online courses, we also identified strong variations across subpopulations and academic subject areas. Chapter Two is prompted by the spiraling increase in part-time faculty hiring in open-access two-year community colleges. Based data from a large community college system, I identified a positive impact of taking one's first course in a subject area on his contemporaneous course performance but negative impacts on subsequent course outcomes and enrollment patterns. Finally, Chapter Three is inspired by the heated debate related to the effectiveness of college remediation. Exploiting discontinuities in students' probability of receiving remediation both around the college-level cut off and the cut off for short versus long sequence of remediation, I found small and insignificant impacts of remediation for students on the margin of needing remediation, but significantly negative influence on students receiving long sequence of remediation compared to those who received short sequence. These results suggest that some cost-saving strategies that colleges are recently engaged may bring negative impacts on student learning outcomes, and therefore policymakers and college administrators may need to take steps to ensure the quality of education offered to students before enacting policies that would incentivize an accelerated expansion of online enrollments, and overreliance on adjunct instructors. Additionally, the insignificant and negative impact of remediation suggests that the huge investment in remediation may not have been effectively utilized to serve its purpose and colleges will need to explore ways to improve its effectiveness.