This paper proposes to give a comprehensive picture of certain administrative aspects of the Leon County School System. It is felt that a study of this nature might produce material which will serve a three-fold purpose. (1) Stimulate interest in the public school system among lay citizens, (2) Make the public more conscious of the need for higher educational standards and, (3) Foster better public relations for the schools in the communities. / Typescript. / "August, 1952." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: H. W. Dean, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 52).

The purpose of the study was to describe and examine how the constraints on urban school districts led to the establishment in 2010 of a consortium of California’s largest urban school districts that included structures of mutual accountability in response to neoliberal school reforms and top-down accountability since the implementation of No Child Left Behind. Using a qualitative case study research design and critical policy analysis as an analytical framework, this study examined how California’s CORE districts (i.e., Fresno Unified School District, Long Beach Unified School District, Los Angeles Unified School District, Oakland Unified School District, San Francisco Unified School District, and Santa Ana Unified School District) experienced, negotiated, and responded to the shifting landscape of education policy resulting from the expansion of privatization and neoliberal school reform. The expansion of the top-down high-stakes accountability and neoliberal school reform policies since No Child Left Behind has impeded the work of districts, by narrowly focusing their work on accountability and limiting their flexibility in determining how to allocate resources to support improvement. These top-down reform policies have also limited opportunities for collaboration and diminished ownership and responsibility at the district level. Urban district leaders not only in California, but in urban districts across the United States, have felt the impact of competing social, political, and economic forces, such as the high-stakes, top-down federal accountability of No Child Left Behind, neoliberalism, and privatization. To better understand the conditions that led to the creation of the CORE districts and their subsequent impact on urban school district leaders in California, the following research questions guided the study: 1. What social, political, and economic forces led to the creation of California’s CORE districts? 2. What are the governance and leadership models that characterize the CORE districts? 3. What impact have the CORE districts had on the urban education policy landscape in California? An examination of these questions not only helps us understand the circumstances that led to the establish of the CORE districts, but how their work impacted the policy landscape in California and supports the learning of other district leaders.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and examine some of the factors affecting pupil-parent evaluation of a Florida high school system for white children in a conservative county. The problem will be handled in such manner that it is expected that a group of valid findings and conclusions will emerge. It is hoped that the findings and conclusions will be of such nature that they will prove helpful to administrators and officials in this school system, and systems in other conservative counties, in formulating future plans and policy. In addition, it is expected that data will emerge that will indicate to some extent the degree to which the parents and pupils agree with the findings and recommendations of the latest evaluation of their school by an Evaluating Committee representing the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. / Advisor: Virgil E. Strickland, Professor Directing Paper. / "June, 1953." / Typescript. / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 81).

This study examined the effectiveness of an educational service district's programs and services as perceived by various educator groups. The population of the study included certificated public school employees and school board members. A sixty-two item survey instrument was used to obtain information from the study population. Of the 1507 survey instruments distributed, 769 instruments were returned for a response rate of 51%. Four main research questions were posed: (a) Is Educational Service District 112 perceived as an effective educational component of the Southwest Washington public education system? (b) Are the programs and services provided by Educational Service District 112 perceived as effective by the educational community the regional office is designed to serve? (c) Are Educational Service District 112's services and programs perceived as effective by different characteristic, or demographic, groups? (d) What characteristics, both personal and professional, might influence differences in perceived program effectiveness? Data were reported in terms of frequency distributions and means and were statistically analyzed using ANOVAs, ANCOVAs, multiple comparisons, and the Chi square test of significance. The findings show that: (a) Educational Service District 112 is perceived overall as an effective organization. (b) Individual Instructional and Curriculum and Special Services programs and services are perceived as effective. (c) The vast majority of ESD 112's patrons do not have enough knowledge of individual programs and services to rate their effectiveness. (d) When grouping the respondents by different demographic characteristics, all characteristic groupings perceive ESD 112 as effective. (e) When the mean responses of position groups were found to differ significantly, the teacher group always rated ESD 112 as less effective than the group with which they differed, while the board member group always rated ESD 112 as more effective than the group with which they differed. (f) When various county location groups were found to differ significantly, Pacific County always rated ESD 112 as less effective than the group with which they differed. (g) Position appears to be the most influential characteristic affecting the patron's effectiveness rating of ESD 112's programs and services.

The word evaluation, according to the definition given in the dictionary means "to appraise carefully". The Fletcherville School faculty has found, in the course of its study to date, that the word implies much more. It means now, among other things: finding a direction, testing to learn whether the school is moving with such purposes in mind, and planning ways to improve the situation. When emphasis is placed more on positive things, teachers lose their fear and no longer hesitate to take the first steps necessary for success. This school has found that in evaluation, as in teaching, it is necessary first to set the stage properly. / Typescript. / "August, 1953." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / Advisor: W. Edwards, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 22).

As a local education agency, school districts play an important role in providing instructional support for teachers and school leaders, making instructional goals, and allocating financial and human capital resources in a rational way to promote overall students’ learning outcomes. Studies on school districts that look to find reasons or characteristics related to school district success are known as district effectiveness research (DER). Previous quantitative research in DER using longitudinal dataset has assumed that all school district effectiveness (SDE) changes in a common pattern through a traditional ordinary linear regression or a hierarchal linear model while ignoring the probability that there might exist distinct subgroups of school district effectiveness trajectories. Thus, the purpose of the present study was to examine the existence of different SDE trajectories and how school district demographic variables and financial expenditures affect classification of SDE groups using a growth mixture model (GMM) with a national longitudinal dataset containing all public school districts in all 50 states and Washington D.C. from 2009 to 2015 (n = 11,185). The results indicated that (a) there are three different classes of school district effectiveness growth trajectories, which can be named as a constant SDE group (3.66%), a decreasing SDE group (34.16%), and an increasing SDE group (62.18%); (b) school district demographic characteristics such as a percentage of free lunch students and general administration expenditure per pupil are significantly associated with the probability of a school district being classified to a specific group; and (c) the longitudinal effects of school district demographic covariates and financial expenditures within each class such as school district locations (e.g., urban, suburban, etc.) are associated with the growth factors (intercept and slopes) in different ways.

This qualitative research study was conducted to ascertain how urban school leaders conceptualized school discipline policies in ways that supported the education of students of color as well as how their values and beliefs informed the implementation of school discipline policies in ways that supported the education of students of color. Urban school leadership participants’ experience was primarily in the nation’s largest school district, New York City. Two research questions guided the framework of this study: (a) How do urban school leaders conceptualize school discipline policies in ways that change the way students of color are disciplined? and (b) How do the values and beliefs of urban school leaders inform their implementation of school discipline policies in ways that support the education of students of color? Qualitative research methodology was used for this study. Data were collected through individual interviews with participants and expert participants. The findings and data analysis constructed a road map for culturally relevant school leaders to conceptualize and implement school discipline policies to support students of color in schools and change the way they were disciplined.

The 13,000 school districts in the United States are important institutional sites where consequential educational policy decisions – from school zoning to local funding initiatives– are contested and implemented. Despite their importance as institutions, there is very little quantitative research on school district leadership and governance. We do not currently know if the identity of school district leaders has any effect on the academic performance of school districts, or if school district leaders from different backgrounds tend to advance different educational policies for their districts. In this dissertation, I leverage new longitudinal datasets on superintendent and school board tenures, matched to data on district-level achievement and policy variation, to examine how school district leadership may matter for students’ educational experiences. This dissertation consists of three empirical papers that examine different aspects of school district leadership and governance. Chapter 1 uses a novel dataset of superintendent employment histories in 26 states, matched to student achievement data, to estimate variation in superintendent effectiveness. I use data on superintendents who move between multiple school districts as an estimation strategy to separate superintendent effects from other district-level factors that affect student achievement. To estimate superintendent effectiveness, I adapt value-added modeling strategies from the principal and teacher effects literature, and use simulation analyses to further justify my modeling approaches. Across model specifications, I find that the standard deviation of superintendent effects ranges from 0.03-0.10 SD on student achievement. These are moderate effect sizes, and indicate the importance of studying school district leadership as a factor that can have important implications for student-level outcomes. Chapter 2 examines the superintendent appointment process using mixed methods data from California and Florida over the past decade from 2009-2019. Given that superintendents serve important political functions within school districts, I examine whether school board members tend to appoint superintendents who share their own partisan political affiliations. During this period, I do not find any evidence that school boards prefer to hire co-partisan superintendents. Instead, school boards prioritize superintendent candidates who show strong social-emotional intelligence, and who demonstrate the capacity to develop relationships with a broad range of community stakeholders. I conclude the chapter by examining how these results may be shifting in light of an emergent conservative movement to polarize school board politics. Chapter 3 examines whether the partisan political characteristics of school districts affects the likelihood that school districts hold tax and bond elections, or vote to approve these local educational funding increases, conditional on elections being held. It also uses data from California and Florida over the past decade from 2009-2019. With appropriate statistical controls, I find no evidence that school board or voter partisanship affects the probability of districts holding or passing tax or bond measures. Taken together, the three papers make important contributions to our understanding of how school districts function as organizations, and how the attributes of school district leaders shape students’ educational environments.

The impetus of this paper is a survey conducted in Taylor County, Florida, by the writer. The survey was more extensive than intensive; for example, fifty people were submitted a questionnaire containing five questions; and were chosen at random to represent a cross section of the people of the county. Several professional people, laborers, housewives, filling station operators are typical examples of people applying to the survey. The five questions or statements submitted pertained to Taylor County schools. / Typescript. / "May 1955." / "A Paper." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: Harris W. Dean, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references.

This study investigated performance based accountability in Florida's system of workforce education in Florida's state colleges and school districts. In Florida, workforce education is governed by Florida State Statute (K-20 Education Code Chapter 1004). The purpose of this study was to determine the cost-effectiveness of Florida's performance accountability policy as applied to workforce education. Additionally, it analyzed the impact of performance accountability on performance by the providers of workforce education - state colleges and school districts, and the value for investment achieved by the policy over the time period. The study was guided by three questions: (a) What is the relationship between effectiveness and year? (b) Is the relationship between effectiveness and year moderated by each of the contextual variables? (c) To what extent does each of the contextual variables predict performance and effectiveness? This study utilized a non-experimental quantitative research design and a costeffectiveness analysis framework. The unit of analysis was the providers of workforce education in the State of Florida. This study was framed by the outputs and outcomes the workforce education service providers achieve and the alterable and unalterable variables which might influence the provision of workforce education. Performance was measured through two measures: quantity of outputs, and quality of outcomes. The alterable and unalterable variables included: the type of institution delivering the service, either state college or school district; the delivery model used in each delivery area, either single or dual-delivery; and population characteristics, the percentage of students economically disadvantaged, the percentage of minorities, and the percentage of males. The study used correlation and regression techniques to analyze the longitudinal impact of the performance accountability system. / by Richard G. Cunningham. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.