This study considered the school effects of college going behavior for rural students. Of interest were the effects of location and college-going culture within a given school. The research questions asked, included: 1. What are the effects of rural school location and college-going culture on public high school graduation? 2. What are the effects of rural school location and college-going culture on college enrollment? 3. For the public high school graduates who enrolled in college, what are the effects of rural school location and college-going culture on the control structure of the college program enrolled? 4. For the public high school graduates who enrolled in college, what are the effects of rural school location and college-going culture on type of college program enrolled (two-year vs. four-year)?> 5. For the public high school graduates who enrolled in college, what are the effects of rural school location and college-going culture on full-time vs. part-time enrollment? The study used data from the HSLS:09 survey. The data was analyzed using Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling. This study found that the odds of attending college decreased 18.7% for rural students. There was also a 4.8% decrease in the odds of college enrollment by students from majority White high schools. School's with high mean GPA's were more likely to have students graduate from high school, enroll in college, and attend 4-year institutions. High rates of school problems negatively affected students and demonstrated decreased odds of high school graduation and college enrollment. The role of counselors had demonstrated effects on students. Schools with counseling offices that focused a high number of hours on college counseling increase the odds their students graduate would from high school and attend a 4-year institution. Students attending high schools with a college counselor dedicated to college applications were 4.30 times more likely to attend a not-for-profit institution than a for-profit institution. / Ph. D.

Teachers and schools both play important roles in students' education. Yet, the unique contribution of each to students' growth has rarely been explored. In this dissertation, a Bayesian multilevel model was applied in each of Grades 3 to 5, with students' growth estimated across three seasonal (fall, winter, spring) administrations of a mathematics assessment. Variance in students' within-year growth was then partitioned into student-, classroom-, and school-level components. The expected differences in students' growth between classrooms and schools were treated as indicators of the teacher or school "effect" on students' mathematics growth. Results provided evidence that meaningful differences in students' growth lies both between classrooms within schools, and between schools. The distribution of teacher effects between schools was also examined through the lens of access and equity with systematic sorting of teachers to schools leading to disproportional student access to classrooms where the average growth was above the norm. Further, previous research has documented persistent and compounding teacher effects over time. Systematic teacher sorting results in students' having differential probabilities of being enrolled in multiple "high" or "low" growth classrooms in a row. While clear evidence of teacher sorting was found, the demographic composition of schools did not relate to the sorting, contrary to previous research. The persistence of teacher and school effects was also examined from a previously unexplored angle by examining the effect of students' previous teacher(s) on their subsequent rate of within-year growth during the school year. These effects were found to be small and teacher effects overall were found to decay quite rapidly.

nÃo hà / O presente estudo teve como objetivo avaliar as contribuiÃÃes do Programa de Apoio PedagÃgico do ColÃgio Militar de Fortaleza (CMF), implementado no ano de 2014, para a melhoria do aprendizado dos alunos com dificuldades de aprendizagem. Especificamente, buscou-se verificar numa populaÃÃo de 202 alunos do 6 e 7 anos, se houve melhorias significativas no aprendizado em LÃngua Portuguesa e MatemÃtica dos alunos com dificuldades de aprendizagem apÃs dois meses de intervenÃÃes do Programa. A verificaÃÃo da aprendizagem dos alunos foi realizada por meio da aplicaÃÃo de um prÃ-teste e um pÃs-teste em um grupo experimental (apoio pedagÃgico) e dois grupos de controle (nÃo concursados e concursados nÃo participantes do Programa) para cada ano escolar investigado. A diferenÃa entre o prÃ-teste e pÃs-teste dentro de cada grupo de pesquisa foi avaliada por meio do teste t pareado em cada ano escolar. As diferenÃas na melhoria do aprendizado entre os grupos de pesquisa foram avaliadas por meio do teste t para amostras independentes. O software utilizado para as anÃlises dos dados foi o SPSS 16.0 for Windows. Considerando que a aprendizagem està diretamente relacionada aos percentuais de alunos em recuperaÃÃo, recuperados e reprovados, buscou-se ainda verificar estes percentuais em 2014 e comparÃ-los à mÃdia dos cinco anos letivos anteriores. Os resultados demonstraram que o Apoio PedagÃgico contribuiu para a melhoria do aprendizado dos alunos do 6 ano participantes do Programa, tanto em LÃngua Portuguesa quanto em MatemÃtica, apÃs os dois primeiros meses de atividades. Jà no 7 ano, a melhora dos alunos do Apoio PedagÃgico sà foi significativa em MatemÃtica e apenas quando comparada ao grupo dos alunos concursados. A pesquisa revelou ainda que o Programa de Apoio PedagÃgico contribuiu para que, no 6 e 7 anos em 2014, os percentuais de alunos nas recuperaÃÃes bimestrais e final fossem menores, e que os percentuais de alunos recuperados fossem maiores, quando comparados à mÃdia desses percentuais nos Ãltimos cinco anos. O percentual de alunos nÃo concursados reprovados do 6 ano em 2014 foi praticamente o mesmo que a mÃdia desses percentuais nos Ãltimos cinco anos. Jà no 7 ano este percentual foi quase cinco vezes menor. Portanto, de maneira geral o Programa de Apoio PedagÃgico do CMF em 2014 foi bem-sucedido na melhoria do aprendizado dos alunos com dificuldades de aprendizagem. As experiÃncias vivenciadas nesta pesquisa confirmaram os achados da literatura de que as dificuldades de aprendizagem nÃo se restringem aos aspectos cognitivos, mas abrangem um amplo espectro de possibilidades fisiolÃgicas, psicolÃgicas, sociolÃgicas, pedagÃgicas, etc. que dificultam ou impedem o aluno de aprender. Tal constataÃÃo exige uma ampliaÃÃo do conceito de apoio pedagÃgico para alÃm das aulas de reforÃo. Apesar das melhorias obtidas, o Programa precisa de aperfeiÃoamentos para alcanÃar resultados ainda mais expressivos. AlÃm disso, um Programa de Apoio PedagÃgico sà estarà definitivamente consolidado quando houver uma polÃtica de apoio pedagÃgico que permeie todas as esferas do ensino, onde o olhar diferenciado sobre aqueles que mais precisam estiver presente em todos os agentes educacionais, em particular dos gestores e professores do turno regular. / The aim of this paper is to evaluate the contributions of the Pedagogical Support Program that was implemented in 2014 in the Brazilian Military School of Fortaleza (CMF) to improve learning outcomes in students with learning difficulties. More specifically, drawing on a population of 202 students in the 6th and 7th grades at CMF, we have tried to determine if there was a significant improvement in the understanding of Portuguese and Mathematics by students with learning difficulties after two months of the Programâs intervention. The verification of the learning by the students was carried out through the application of a pre-test and a post-test in an experimental group (pedagogical support) and two control groups students who automatically entered CMF without an admission exam due to military regulations and students who entered by means of an admission exam. Neither of the control groups was part of the Program. The difference between the pre-test and the post-test from each of the groups was evaluated by means of the t test paired in each school year. The differences in the improvement of the learning outcomes between the groups were evaluated by means of the t test for independent samples. The software used for the data analysis was the SPSS 16.0 for Windows. To determine the success or failure of the learning outcome, we have also made a comparison between 2014 and the five preceding years of the proportion of students that needed to take remedial classes because they did not obtain passing marks; students that successfully took these remedial classes and improved their marks so that they passed; and students that failed these classes and did not go onto the next grade. The results revealed that the Pedagogical Support Program contributed to the improvement of the learning outcome of the students from 6th grade that were a part of the Program, in both Portuguese and Mathematics after the two first months of activities. On the other hand, the improvement of the 7th grade students who were a part of the Pedagogical Support was only significant in Mathematics and only when compared to the group of the students who entered by means of the admission exam. The research has also revealed that in the 6th and 7th grades in 2014, the Pedagogical Support Program contributed to a lower percentage of students that needed to take remedial classes on a bimonthly basis or at the end of the year, and a higher percentage of students who were able to improve their marks, when compared to the average of these percentages over the previous five years. The percentage of students that entered without an entrance exam (due to military regulation) and who failed the 6th grade in 2014 was practically the same as the average of these percentages in the last five years. In contrast, in the 7th grade this percentage was almost five times lower. Therefore, in general, the Pedagogical Support Program at CMF in 2014 succeeded in improving the learning outcomes of the students with learning difficulties. The outcome of this survey confirmed the findings in literature that state that learning difficulties not only restrict themselves to the cognitive aspects, but that they also cover a wide spectrum of factors that are philosophical, psychological, sociological, pedagogical, etc. that make it harder for the student to learn and may even keep them from learning altogether. This requires an extension of the concept of pedagogical support beyond the remedial classes. Despite the improvement achieved by this Program, the Program needs to be improved so that it obtains even better outcomes. In addition, the Pedagogical Support Program will only be completely matured when there is a policy of pedagogical support that permeates every area of education and where a different perspective is taken by all involved in the educational process, in particular the teachers and administration.

Grounded in Bronfenbrenner's (1979) Ecological Systems Theory and through the application of cross-classified random effects models, the goal of this study was to examine simultaneously neighborhood and school influences on adolescent academic achievement and risk of obesity, as well as the moderating effects of schools on these outcomes. By examining concurrently neighborhood and school influences on achievement and risk of obesity, this study aimed to fill gaps in the social determinants literature. For example, it is unclear if where an adolescent lives or where she/he attends school has a stronger influence on academic achievement. We also do not know if schools can moderate neighborhood influences on adolescent achievement, nor do we know much about the relationships among schools, neighborhoods, and adolescent risk for obesity. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement study, four research questions were investigated: (1) To what extent are neighborhood influences on U.S. middle and high school students' academic achievement moderated by school environments? (2) What are the relative influences of neighborhood and school environments on U.S. middle and high school students' academic achievement? (3) To what extent are neighborhood influences on U.S. middle and high school students' risk of obesity moderated by school environments? (4) What are the relative influences of neighborhood and school environments on U.S. middle and high school students' risk of obesity? Findings did not suggest a moderating relationship between neighborhood and school factors examined in this study. In terms of relative relationships with academic achievement, three neighborhood factors (affluence, racial composition, and urbanicity) and two school characteristics (student body racial composition and school socioeconomic status) appeared to have the strongest relationships with adolescent achievement after controlling for individual and other neighborhood and school characteristics. For adolescent risk of obesity, neighborhood affluence and racial composition had statistically significant unique associations, whereas no school factors evidenced statistically significantly relationships with risk of obesity after controlling for other factors. Results of the study were interpreted in terms of contributions to the social determinants literature, as well as recommendations for the improvement of future large-scale surveys.

The University of Texas Elementary School (UTES) is a charter school operated by The University of Texas at Austin that practices innovative research-based teaching methods. The school is in need of a system to track the educational achievements of its alumni and compare them to peers to determine the effects of attending UTES. This report provides an overview of existing studies on school effects and research design methods, offers advice and insight from other charter school administrators who have alumni-tracking experience, recommends data to collect, and outlines a plan of action including the necessary steps to gather such information. / text

SANTOS, Cleber Borges dos. Dificuldades de aprendizagem: contribuições do Programa de Apoio Pedagógico do CMF para a melhoria do aprendizado dos alunos não concursados. 2016. 468f. Tese (Doutorado) – Universidade Federal do Ceará, Programa de Pós-graduação em Educação Brasileira, Fortaleza (CE), 2016. / Submitted by Gustavo Daher (gdaherufc@hotmail.com) on 2017-01-06T15:41:58Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2016_tese_cbsantos.pdf: 6231437 bytes, checksum: 63bf84c4e723d7729961f7deaa1d4e57 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Márcia Araújo (marcia_m_bezerra@yahoo.com.br) on 2017-01-25T12:05:01Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2016_tese_cbsantos.pdf: 6231437 bytes, checksum: 63bf84c4e723d7729961f7deaa1d4e57 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-01-25T12:05:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2016_tese_cbsantos.pdf: 6231437 bytes, checksum: 63bf84c4e723d7729961f7deaa1d4e57 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016 / The aim of this paper is to evaluate the contributions of the Pedagogical Support Program that was implemented in 2014 in the Brazilian Military School of Fortaleza (CMF) to improve learning outcomes in students with learning difficulties. More specifically, drawing on a population of 202 students in the 6th and 7th grades at CMF, we have tried to determine if there was a significant improvement in the understanding of Portuguese and Mathematics by students with learning difficulties after two months of the Program’s intervention. The verification of the learning by the students was carried out through the application of a pre-test and a post-test in an experimental group (pedagogical support) and two control groups students who automatically entered CMF without an admission exam due to military regulations and students who entered by means of an admission exam. Neither of the control groups was part of the Program. The difference between the pre-test and the post-test from each of the groups was evaluated by means of the t test paired in each school year. The differences in the improvement of the learning outcomes between the groups were evaluated by means of the t test for independent samples. The software used for the data analysis was the SPSS 16.0 for Windows. To determine the success or failure of the learning outcome, we have also made a comparison between 2014 and the five preceding years of the proportion of students that needed to take remedial classes because they did not obtain passing marks; students that successfully took these remedial classes and improved their marks so that they passed; and students that failed these classes and did not go onto the next grade. The results revealed that the Pedagogical Support Program contributed to the improvement of the learning outcome of the students from 6th grade that were a part of the Program, in both Portuguese and Mathematics after the two first months of activities. On the other hand, the improvement of the 7th grade students who were a part of the Pedagogical Support was only significant in Mathematics and only when compared to the group of the students who entered by means of the admission exam. The research has also revealed that in the 6th and 7th grades in 2014, the Pedagogical Support Program contributed to a lower percentage of students that needed to take remedial classes on a bimonthly basis or at the end of the year, and a higher percentage of students who were able to improve their marks, when compared to the average of these percentages over the previous five years. The percentage of students that entered without an entrance exam (due to military regulation) and who failed the 6th grade in 2014 was practically the same as the average of these percentages in the last five years. In contrast, in the 7th grade this percentage was almost five times lower. Therefore, in general, the Pedagogical Support Program at CMF in 2014 succeeded in improving the learning outcomes of the students with learning difficulties. The outcome of this survey confirmed the findings in literature that state that learning difficulties not only restrict themselves to the cognitive aspects, but that they also cover a wide spectrum of factors that are philosophical, psychological, sociological, pedagogical, etc. that make it harder for the student to learn and may even keep them from learning altogether. This requires an extension of the concept of pedagogical support beyond the remedial classes. Despite the improvement achieved by this Program, the Program needs to be improved so that it obtains even better outcomes. In addition, the Pedagogical Support Program will only be completely matured when there is a policy of pedagogical support that permeates every area of education and where a different perspective is taken by all involved in the educational process, in particular the teachers and administration. / O presente estudo teve como objetivo avaliar as contribuições do Programa de Apoio Pedagógico do Colégio Militar de Fortaleza (CMF), implementado no ano de 2014, para a melhoria do aprendizado dos alunos com dificuldades de aprendizagem. Especificamente, buscou-se verificar numa população de 202 alunos do 6º e 7º anos, se houve melhorias significativas no aprendizado em Língua Portuguesa e Matemática dos alunos com dificuldades de aprendizagem após dois meses de intervenções do Programa. A verificação da aprendizagem dos alunos foi realizada por meio da aplicação de um pré-teste e um pós-teste em um grupo experimental (apoio pedagógico) e dois grupos de controle (não concursados e concursados não participantes do Programa) para cada ano escolar investigado. A diferença entre o pré-teste e pós-teste dentro de cada grupo de pesquisa foi avaliada por meio do teste t pareado em cada ano escolar. As diferenças na melhoria do aprendizado entre os grupos de pesquisa foram avaliadas por meio do teste t para amostras independentes. O software utilizado para as análises dos dados foi o SPSS 16.0 for Windows. Considerando que a aprendizagem está diretamente relacionada aos percentuais de alunos em recuperação, recuperados e reprovados, buscou-se ainda verificar estes percentuais em 2014 e compará-los à média dos cinco anos letivos anteriores. Os resultados demonstraram que o Apoio Pedagógico contribuiu para a melhoria do aprendizado dos alunos do 6º ano participantes do Programa, tanto em Língua Portuguesa quanto em Matemática, após os dois primeiros meses de atividades. Já no 7º ano, a melhora dos alunos do Apoio Pedagógico só foi significativa em Matemática e apenas quando comparada ao grupo dos alunos concursados. A pesquisa revelou ainda que o Programa de Apoio Pedagógico contribuiu para que, no 6º e 7º anos em 2014, os percentuais de alunos nas recuperações bimestrais e final fossem menores, e que os percentuais de alunos recuperados fossem maiores, quando comparados à média desses percentuais nos últimos cinco anos. O percentual de alunos não concursados reprovados do 6º ano em 2014 foi praticamente o mesmo que a média desses percentuais nos últimos cinco anos. Já no 7º ano este percentual foi quase cinco vezes menor. Portanto, de maneira geral o Programa de Apoio Pedagógico do CMF em 2014 foi bem-sucedido na melhoria do aprendizado dos alunos com dificuldades de aprendizagem. As experiências vivenciadas nesta pesquisa confirmaram os achados da literatura de que as dificuldades de aprendizagem não se restringem aos aspectos cognitivos, mas abrangem um amplo espectro de possibilidades fisiológicas, psicológicas, sociológicas, pedagógicas, etc. que dificultam ou impedem o aluno de aprender. Tal constatação exige uma ampliação do conceito de apoio pedagógico para além das aulas de reforço. Apesar das melhorias obtidas, o Programa precisa de aperfeiçoamentos para alcançar resultados ainda mais expressivos. Além disso, um Programa de Apoio Pedagógico só estará definitivamente consolidado quando houver uma política de apoio pedagógico que permeie todas as esferas do ensino, onde o olhar diferenciado sobre aqueles que mais precisam estiver presente em todos os agentes educacionais, em particular dos gestores e professores do turno regular.

No description available.

xviii, 193 p. / Learning to read and successfully decode words is complex, requiring the integration of critical component skills such as phonological awareness, alphabetic understanding, and phonological recoding. As foundational skills required for reading with automaticity, researchers recommend that explicit instruction of these skills begin early, particularly for students at risk. One commonly used measure to examine students' alphabetic understanding and phonological recoding skills is DIBELS Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF), a pseudo-word reading measure composed of vowel-consonant and consonant-vowel-consonant words. One purpose of this study was to examine the effects of school-level and individual student-level predictors on students' overall performance on NWF in the spring of grade 1 as evidenced by their total Correct Letter Sounds (CLS) and Words Read as Whole Units Correctly (WRWUC) scores. A series of hierarchical linear models were estimated to investigate the contributions of three student-level predictors (English Learner status, fall of grade 1 Phoneme Segmentation Fluency raw scores, and fall of grade 1 NWF scores) and two school-level predictors (percentage of students eligible for free and reduced lunch and percentage of incoming at-risk kindergarteners) in explaining the variance observed in NWF scores A second purpose was to estimate the item difficulties of the first 20 pseudo-words for comparability of difficulty, controlling for student-level covariates. A series of hierarchical generalized linear models were estimated to investigate the contribution of student-level predictors while controlling for school effects. Participants were 1,111 first grade students enrolled in 14 elementary schools participating in the Oregon Reading First initiative. Results indicated that fall of grade 1 NWF raw and quadratic scores were the only statistically significant student-level predictors of CLS and WRWUC scores in the fully specified Level 1 model. The relation between school-level predictors and spring of grade 1 NWF performance complicated interpretation, but both school-level predictors were also significant. Additionally, results of the item difficulty estimates reveal significant student-level effects on item difficulties, providing evidence that item parameters are not equal for the first 20 pseudo-words on DIBELS NWF. The effects were particularly strong for English Learners. Implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed. / Committee in charge: Dr. Paul Yovanoff, Chair; Dr. Gerald Tindal, Member; Dr. Akihito Kamata, Member; Dr. Elizabeth Harn, Outside Member

No description available.

The Supreme Court of the United States has recently determined that assigning students to schools and classrooms based on racial identity is unconstitutional. However, it also left the door open for further and different rulings. If researchers are able to show that lack of consideration of race has deleterious effects on federally mandated programs and initiatives, the ruling may be modified or opened up to specific circumstances. Among its many consequences, this ruling brings a focus onto the question of student-teacher matching in classrooms. Over the years, there has been a great deal of discussion in the literature about matching teacher and student by race, ethnicity, gender, and language. Some people claim that matching is crucial for student success while others dispute this claim. The current study examines the question of racial and ethnic matching empirically in the context of a large-scale randomized controlled study of an innovation for middle school mathematics learners. It extends the literature by (1) focusing on the relationship between student-teacher match and a specific, heavily documented situation with targeted learning goals, (2) adding information about Hispanic students to the discussion, and (3) helping evaluate factors that may be important in determining the validity of large-scale experiments. Alone and in conjunction with other similar empirical evidence, it will also have a significant effect on federal and state educational policy. The sample consists of the 92 teachers and 1576 7th grade students on 76 school campuses throughout 8 Texas regions who participated in the Scaling-Up SimCalc project. Teachers and students either used SimCalc Mathworlds™ curriculum and technology or a control for a two-week replacement unit. The crux of the current analysis was a match between aggregated and individual teacher and student characteristics and an inquiry into how these matches influence student math performance in the classroom within and between our experimental and control group. Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) analysis was used to investigate the differences in student mathematics performance, modeled as students nested in classrooms nested in schools. / Ph. D.