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Urban school districts are beleaguered with the high attrition rate of teachers. This results in a staff that is largely inexperienced, and a large cost to the district in training and induction programs. Mentoring programs have been linked to new teacher retention, and one particular mentoring program, Peer Assistance and Review (PAR), is widely used by districts to create a structured support system for teachers. This mixed-methods study examined key players from the School District of Philadelphia’s PAR program, regarding their successes and failures within the program. By examining the PAR program in depth, we can identify the key components participants perceive to be important to the program, and make recommendations for PAR to meet optimal success. / Educational Leadership

The cornerstone of transformational leadership is vision. For our school leaders to act as more than middle managers, they have to foster a school community's vision - cultivate the school community's direction and purpose. This qualitative study uses semi-structured interviews with school leaders and following focus groups with their teachers to understand better how principals develop and instantiate their vision and how this vision is perceived to have manifested by the school community. This study was designed to answer the questions of (1) do principals have a clearly defined personal vision for the schools they serve, and in what ways do they enact their vision?, (2) what professional and training experiences contribute to how a principal develops a vision for a school?, (3) what the relationship between the articulated vision and the culture of the school? The four themes that emerged from this study were that ( 1 ) principals have guiding statements that serve the same purpose as a formal vision that gives them and their school communities direction for the work, (2) principals primarily invest their teams in a shared vision through a visioning process, (3) principals most cited avenue for vision development was through working with others, and (4) principals whose articulated vision most aligned with the culture of the school were successfully able to operationalize the vision. The recommendations and implications for all stakeholders from this research are that (1) principals are trained taught how to develop guiding statements, (2) principals are taught how to invest others in a shared vision, (3) the importance of mentor matching and principal reflection in the principal training and development process, and (4) principals are taught how to operationalize their vision through ongoing coaching and support. / Educational Administration

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted all sectors of society including medical education. Medical schools are faced with an ethical dilemma pitting quality of medical education against student safety and delivering quality patient care. This paper identifies the different participants affected by a medical school’s decision on how to educate their students, discusses the current context of the pandemic, and analyzes the different options medical schools have. This paper defines two phases of the pandemic whereby phase two is defined as the time period the scientific community has an adequate understanding of the risks associated with COVID-19 and hospitals have adequate personal protective equipment. Phase one is simply the time before both of those criteria are met, and is the time when medical students should not be allowed on in-person clinical rotations. During phase two, students should be granted agency to make the decision for themselves. Using the analysis of the current pandemic, the paper outlines how medical schools’ decisions should change for future hypothetical pandemics. / Urban Bioethics

The official stance of the Association America of Medical Colleges (AAMC) regarding the undergraduate major of applicants for admission to medical school is that there are no required or preferred majors. While the AAMC is the body that governs admission to allopathic medical schools in the United States, this statement does not provide clarity to prospective medical school applicants as to what undergraduate major to select; it only encourages students from a variety of educational backgrounds to apply. Furthermore, a broad statement about undergraduate major flexibility does not indicate how choice of major will eventually impact admission to medical school. While the AAMC encourages applicants to choose any undergraduate major they wish, there is minimal peer-reviewed research or empirical evidence of the relationship between applicants' undergraduate major and their likelihood of admission to medical school. Through the lens of the student-choice construct, this dissertation sought to determine if applicants' undergraduate major is a statistically significant predictor of successful admission to medical school. This model accommodates decisions such as the intent to pursue post-secondary education, which institution to attend, what major to choose, and whether to persist to degree completion. The student-choice construct also contends that these decisions are influenced by the amount of human, financial, social, and cultural capital available to the student throughout the decision-making process. To study how choice of major impacts admission to medical school, I conducted a quantitative study using a hierarchical binary logistic regression. Secondary data were collected using the formal data request procedure outlined by the AAMC. Application-level data were received from the AAMC, and personally identifiable information including applicants’ names, identification numbers, and addresses were removed by the AAMC before the data were delivered. Additionally, given that the study involves the analysis of de-identified extant data, this study received exemption from the Institutional Review Board at Temple University. The dataset included 53,371 applicants to allopathic medical school for the 2019 application cycle. These applicants attended undergraduate institutions primarily located in the United States and Canada. The study revealed that undergraduate major does not serve as a statistically significant predictor of admission to medical school over and above applicants' demographic characteristics, MCAT scores, and undergraduate grade point average. Applicants who chose a Biology, Chemistry, Physics, or Mathematics (BCPM) major did not have a greater chance of being admitted to medical school than an applicant who chose a non-BCPM major. These findings are consistent with previous studies that sought to predict variables that contribute to medical school admission. Future research should investigate the predictive ability of admissions variables such as applicant characteristics captured from medical school interviews; letters of recommendation; personal statements and community service, leadership, and healthcare experiences. A combined or comparative study similarly analyzing applicants to different health profession programs might also be useful. In addition, a non-binary categorization of specific undergraduate majors would provide an even more nuanced analysis of how different majors predict admission to medical school. / Educational Administration

Many contemporary policymakers and philanthropists interested in fixing problems in urban education look to business practices and market-based reforms. Venture Philanthropy (VP), draws its practices directly from the financial sector, using strategic investment to increase the capacity and achievement of funded organizations and to promote social goals. VP firms are increasingly a part of the education environment yet currently there is little empirical data on the specific meaning, ideas, and logic through which these organizations understand and investment in education, particularly urban education. This research sought to answer the research question, what is the theory of action of a venture philanthropy firm focusing on educational improvement and what new meanings and practices does it produce in one urban district? This study collected data using embedded ethnographic methods including over 200 hours of observations, 21 interviews, and document collection creating a case study of a single education VP, the Center for Educational Advancement (CEA). Using Foucauldian disciplinary theory to analyze CEA's perspective on and practice of educational investment, this study found that CEA sought to transform the instruction and culture within its portfolio of urban schools by using the disciplinary practices of observation, judgement, and examination, thereby producing for its donors a student achievement return on investment. / Policy, Organizational and Leadership Studies

In the United States, students’ schooling experiences are shaped by racial and socioeconomic segregation, which is a powerful predictor of educational inequity. School choice has been touted as a remedy to school segregation and has been used widely in desegregation plans. To understand whether and how America’s expanding system of voluntary public school choice can support diversity, this sequential explanatory mixed-methods study explores how five public school choice programs—inter-district enrollment, intra-district enrollment, magnet schools, cyber charter schools, and brick and mortar charter schools—shape the composition of public schools in Pennsylvania. The quantitative phase uses seven years of student level data from Pennsylvania to examine how school choice participation influences neighborhood and choice school diversity and how school characteristics, including diversity, choice type, and specialty theme, are related to families’ school enrollment decisions. I find that school choice slightly exacerbates racial and socioeconomic segregation in urban communities, while suburban schools of choice are much more diverse than neighborhood schools. I also explore the transfer decisions of students in choice-rich environments: those with access to schools with a variety of demographic profiles, choice types, and specialty themes, and so whose choices are less constrained by supply. I find that that higher income families’ preferences for low poverty schools and divergent racial/ethnic preferences among Black and White families put segregating pressure on school systems. At the same time, the broad appeal of zoned schools and high schools with specialty themes represent promising strategies to promote school diversity in the context of school choice. The qualitative phase extends and explains quantitative findings with a comparative case study of two choice-rich city school districts. In Albertville City Schools, choice appeared to be exacerbating segregation while in Bedford Public Schools, neighborhood schools saw increasing diversity. In these two communities, school and district leaders felt competition from school choice and changed practices in response to that pressure. Bedford competed with a robust neighborhood school recruitment program which likely produced increases in diversity because of their diverse local population. While Bedford Public Schools had success attaining numeric diversity, they relied on diversity ideology—an organizational philosophy that celebrates diversity while maintaining internal systems of oppression. Diversity ideology prevented Bedford’s leaders from overturning existing hierarchies and so internal opportunity and achievement gaps persisted. In Albertville, no robust recruitment program emerged, in large part due to capacity and financial constraints. So while choice participation leveled off in Bedford, it continued to grow in Albertville, which may have exposed Albertville zoned schools to increasing segregating pressure from school choice. Though opportunities for numeric diversity were fewer in Albertville, leaders tended to reject diversity ideology and instead, recognize that school choice participation is driven by racialized and classed opportunity gaps. Albertville school and district leaders sought to compete by closing these gaps and increasing equity. Some schools located in Albertville competed by establishing homogeneous, affirming schools and others pursued holistic integration, though the scale of these efforts was limited. These cases illustrate that while local school choice practices can shape school diversity, leaders’ philosophies are critical determinants of whether or not numeric diversity provides a foundation for equitable, integrated schools. / Policy, Organizational and Leadership Studies

Performance policies propose to enhance the quality of services provided to vulnerable citizens. However, the ability to accomplish this goal is largely unsubstantiated. In the field of education, the No Child Left Behind Act outlined performance policy guidelines that held educators accountable for disadvantaged students outcomes and provided students with the option to seek the serves of alternative providers through a student transfer provision. This dissertation assesses the quality of states’ NCLB provisions that targeted minority and vulnerable student performance as well as utilization of the NCLB transfer provision allowing students to exit underperforming schools. It indicates that teachers’ union strength, minority student population, and past performance impacted the development of vulnerable student accountability provisions. The use of the transfer provision was limited by the strength of the accountability system implemented. As a result, the transfer provision is being poorly utilized and the states have negatively affected the educational opportunities of marginalized populations.