Advocates of privatizing education suggest that traditional public schools are not adequately preparing students for college, career readiness, and global citizenship (Lobosco, 2019; Schneider and Berkshire, 2020; Tienken and Mullen, 2016). Charter school supporters believe charter school students perform better than public school children on state standardized tests (Lubienski and Lubienski, 2014). Advocates for traditional public schools promote the idea that there are no significant differences between public and charter schools in academic achievement (Chen, 2020b; Fischler, 2021). This study compares public and charter elementary school students in terms of their reading and math assessment scores, both as measured by the Virginia Standard of Learning (SOL) for the 2018-2019 school year. Data were collected and analyzed on 642 students enrolled in three of Virginia's elementary charter schools and three traditional public schools in Loudoun County and Richmond City. SOL assessment data for the public and charter schools were compared for the overall student population per grade level to determine if there is a significant difference for the 2018-2019 school year. A two-way ANOVA was utilized in this study. Results indicated no significant differences in the reading mean SOL assessment scores between traditional public elementary and public charter school students: F (1, 636) = .119, p = .730. Additionally, results showed no significant interaction between school type and grade level between traditional public elementary and public charter schools: F (2, 636) = 1.076, p = .342. However, findings revealed a significant difference in the reading SOL assessment scores between grade levels of traditional public elementary schools and public charter schools: F (2, 636) = 4.473, p = .012. Furthermore, results from the math analysis indicated no statistical differences in math SOL scores between traditional public elementary schools and public charter schools: F (1, 636) = .000, p = .997. Also, findings indicated no significant difference in the math SOL scores between the grade levels of traditional public elementary and public charter schools: F (2, 636) = .520, p = .595. / Doctor of Education / Advocates of privatizing education suggest that traditional public "brick-and-mortar" schools are not adequately preparing students for college, career readiness, and global citizenship (Lobosco, 2019; Tienken and Mullen, 2016; Schneider and Berkshire, 2020). Charter school supporters believe charter school students perform better than public school children on state standardized tests (Lubienski and Lubienski, 2014). Advocates for traditional public schools promote the idea that there are no significant differences between public and charter schools in academic achievement (Chen, 2020b; Fischler, 2021). This study compares public and charter elementary school students in terms of their reading and math assessment scores, both as measured by the Virginia Standard of Learning (SOL) for the 2018-2019 school year. Data were collected and analyzed on 642 students enrolled in three of Virginia's elementary charter schools and three traditional public schools in Loudoun County and Richmond City. SOL assessment data for the public and charter schools were compared for the overall student population per grade level to determine if there is a significant difference for the 2018-2019 school year. This study did not reveal any significant differences in reading and math SOL scores between traditional elementary public schools and public elementary charter schools. However, findings in this study revealed significant differences in reading SOL scores on average among grade levels. Conversely, findings did not reveal any differences in math SOL assessment scores on average between grade levels of traditional public elementary school and public elementary charter school students.

In variety testing as well as in psychological assessment, the situation occurs that in a two-way ANOVA-type model with only one replication per cell, analysis is done under the assumption of no interaction between the two factors. Tests for this situation are known only for fixed factors and normally distributed outcomes. In the following we will present five additivity tests and apply them to fixed and mixed models and to quantitative as well as to Bernoulli distributed data. We consider their performance via simulation studies with respect to the type-I-risk and power. Furthermore, two new approaches will be presented, one being a modification of Tukey's test and the other being a new experimental design to test for interactions.

Research has shown that goal orientation has a direct relationship with academic achievement for students. This relationship varies for South African students from different backgrounds. This mini dissertation investigated the relationship between academic achievement and goal orientation but moreover explored the mediating variables at play in this relationship. A quantitative correlational research study was employed with a sample size of 545 South African students ranging in age from 18 to 48 with a mean of 20.77 (SD = 2.94). Students completed an online survey, through Qualtrics. T tests yielded results suggesting that there was a significant difference (p = <.05) in the performance avoidance scores for historically advantaged students (M = 7.24, SD = 2.03) and historically disadvantaged students (M= 7.83, SD = 2.15), suggesting that historically disadvantaged students are more performance avoidant compared to historical advantaged students. Two way between groups ANOVA showed that the historical advantaged students (M = 65.39, SD= 14.30) scored higher academically compared to the historical disadvantaged students (M=54.42, SD=15.17). Structural equation modelling (SEM) produced results showing that Goal achievement (GAQ) related positively, with a large direct, significance effect with Culture (R^2=0.0, ᵝ = 0.71, C.R.= 4.91, p<.001), proposing that students who are individualistic (or traditional) perform better academically. / Mini Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2016. / Psychology / MA / Unrestricted

The purpose of this study was to determine factors that impact the final grades of full admission and developmental students who were enrolled in selected 22 undergraduate business courses during the fall 2015 and spring 2016 semesters. Also, this study examined the interaction of students’ ethnicity, gender, age, and classification on their final course grades in selected business courses at a rural public HBCU. The research design for this study was casual-comparative research. A 2X2 and a 2X4 factorial ANOVA was used to determine whether there was a main effect on students’ final grades considering each independent variable. Out of a population of 393 students enrolled, 320 students participated in this study. After the data were collected and analyzed, the researcher determined that there was a statistically significant relationship between student’s final grade and course delivery, ethnicity, and classification. There was no statistically significant interaction on student’s final grades between course delivery and student admission status, gender, age, ethnicity, and classification. Conclusion and recommendations based on the findings in this study indicated that students attending the rural public HBCU and enrolled in business courses that offered the same courses in both face-toace and online formats performed better in face-toace courses than in the online courses.

The eco-friendly alternatives use is increasing momentum in a conscious effort towards sustainability. In this regards, the relevance and the economic value of using copper slag as a concrete aggregate are explored in this study in order to contribute towards metallurgical waste recycling. Emphasis is placed on the evaluation of the concretes strengthening prepared with copper slag contents and produced under four curing methods: water immersion, water spraying, plastic sheet covering and air-drying. In each curing case excluding for water immersion, was duplicated in indoors (i.e. in the laboratory) and outdoor exposure (so was prone to varying environmental conditions). This was specifically aimed at capturing the effects of tropical weather conditions typical of the Lualaba province in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The control mix was designed to reach 25 MPa of compressive strength. Copper slag was successively incorporated as sand replacement at the following mass fractions: 20 %, 40 % and 60 %. Freshly mixed concrete samples were evaluated for workability. Cube specimens were cast accordingly, cured for 28 days and then tested for density and compressive strength. Results indicated an increase in strength up to 20 % of replacement rate for all the curing methods. Further additions resulted in reduction in the strength, but the rate of reduction depended on curing conditions. The increase in strength was mainly credited to the physical properties of copper slag that could have contributed to the cohesion of the concrete matrix. It has been found that appropriate ways of curing can still achieve greater results than that of the control mix since 80 % of humidity is ensure. The two-way ANOVA test performed on the 28-days compressive strength values confirmed the significant influence of the curing methods, of copper slag content and the interaction between them. It has been found that considerable influence is attributed to copper slag content and that warm environmental conditions further extend the concrete strengthening. / College of Engineering, Science and Technology / M. Tech. (Chemical Engineering)

This paper investigates correlation between energy consumption 24 hours ahead and features used for predicting energy consumption. The features originate from three categories: weather, time and previous energy. The correlations are calculated using Pearson correlation and mutual information. This resulted in the highest correlated features being those representing previous energy consumption, followed by temperature and month. Two identical feature sets containing all attributes1 were obtained by ranking the features according to correlation. Three feature sets were created manually. The first set contained seven attributes representing previous energy consumption over the course of seven days prior to the day of prediction. The second set consisted of weather and time attributes. The third set consisted of all attributes from the first and second set. These sets were then compared on different machine learning models. It was found the set containing all attributes and the set containing previous energy attributes yielded the best performance for each machine learning model. 1In this report, the words ”attribute” and ”feature” are used interchangeably. / I denna rapport undersöks korrelation och betydelsen av olika attribut för att förutspå energiförbrukning 24 timmar framåt. Attributen härstammar från tre kategorier: väder, tid och tidigare energiförbrukning. Korrelationerna tas fram genom att utföra Pearson Correlation och Mutual Information. Detta resulterade i att de högst korrelerade attributen var de som representerar tidigare energiförbrukning, följt av temperatur och månad. Två identiska attributmängder erhölls genom att ranka attributen över korrelation. Tre attributmängder skapades manuellt. Den första mängden innehåll sju attribut som representerade tidigare energiförbrukning, en för varje dag, sju dagar innan datumet för prognosen av energiförbrukning. Den andra mängden bestod av väderoch tidsattribut. Den tredje mängden bestod av alla attribut från den första och andra mängden. Dessa mängder jämfördes sedan med hjälp av olika maskininlärningsmodeller. Resultaten visade att mängden med alla attribut och den med tidigare energiförbrukning gav bäst resultat för samtliga modeller.