No description available.

No description available.

As the first city with a majority African American population and a school system that has long served majority low-income African American children, DC offers a compelling case study about public education and school choice in an increasingly affluent city. Using The Washington Post archive, this dissertation considers how discourse about one of the most vital public goods evolved between 2007 and 2012, a period of rapid economic, political, and social change in the city. DC is a civically engaged and diverse city and, The Washington Post has one of the most diverse newsrooms in the country. Post leadership and most writers and contributors were critical of policy and rulings that might cause greater racial segregation in American public schools. Yet, there was no discourse in this archive to suggest that encouraging greater racial or economic integration would be a successful campaign. Instead, The Post advocated for school reform and choice for the neediest students while seemingly absolving families with means who chose to opt out of the public school system. Failing to interrogate the school choices made by middle-class families represents a silence in the archive and illustrates how silence can be productive because it contributes toward the maintenance of a segregated public school system. / Geography

<p> This study conducted an international comparative study between Japan and the United States to examine both problems and possibilities in the use of the term &lsquo;sustainable development&rsquo; (SD) among environmental educators. In so doing, this study applied a multilevel analysis&mdash;national, state/prefecture, and individual levels&mdash;to assess SD&rsquo;s overall influences. Such a comparative elaboration of the individual perceptions, as well as the policy contexts, helps in comprehending both the conceptual and practical obstacles, and their possibilities, when using an internationally-promoted term. I found that respondents of both countries tend to have a firm grounding in the field of EE, and make only supplementary use of the notions of sustainable development and ESD, primarily for emphasizing social and economic dimensions of environmental issues. </p><p> Some of the notable results are as follows: 1. Environmental educators of both countries are still hesitant to embrace ESD or Education for Sustainability in their teachings; 2. Environmental educators of both countries, while not rejecting the concepts of sustainable development and ESD, are instead operationalizing them to punctuate social and economic issues; and 3. Most environmental educators perceive EE as being larger and more comprehensive than ESD. This is demonstrated in the survey results in which none of the American environmental educators perceived EE as being smaller than ESD. </p><p> Implications from the results are as follows: 1. The &lsquo;shift&rsquo; in discourse from EE to ESD appears to be incomplete, contrary to some recent observations. I believe that this is because the field of EE, while showing some differences at the national level, has been affirming the incorporation of social and economic processes into teaching practice through attention to laws, literacy plans, guidelines, and conferences. The individual educators appear to be influenced by these shifting emphases, professional networks and policy contexts.</p>

<p> This multimethod, multiphase study was designed to determine the impact of charter school reform on achievement in North Carolina. The study was designed to be an analysis of the relationship between classroom climate, interactions, and student achievement, through a complexity systems context. This methodology allowed for combined qualitative, quantitative, network analysis, and agent-based modeling to capture the simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic interactions in classrooms. The data for the study were drawn from eighth-grade mathematics teachers and students at four charter schools in a North Carolina urban area (<i>n</i> = 300). Through the analysis of data, a more detailed and nuanced picture of the relationship between classroom climate, interactions, and charter school achievement emerged. The findings suggest that teacher control and second-semester math grades are statistically significant; the higher the level of control teachers exercise, the higher students score on common core achievement. According to the findings of this study, North Carolina charter schools have served as a successful reform strategy to address the achievement gap problem in North Carolina, with school-specific strategies including high teacher support, students&rsquo; teaching students, IAP/tutoring/online supplemental program, and small classrooms. All schools, on average, scored 30.9% to 56.8% higher on grade-level proficiency (GLP) than the North Carolina 2014&ndash;2015 average. The network analysis showed how classrooms can be more or less complex in different ways with instructional, emotional support, and behavior management interactions that fit into network structures of teacher to one-student, teacher to whole class, whole class to teacher, and student to student or students. The predictive ABM, based on achievement scores over time, school achievement strategy, classroom climate, high teacher control, and second-semester math grades, demonstrated accuracy. The ABM captured macroclassroom and microstudent outcomes, along with climate changes based on interactions that either increased or reduced positive climate. This is important because a teacher has limited resources and must deal with uncontrollable influences from outside the classroom. Teachers have the power to create a positive or negative climate by their verbal and nonverbal interactions. Teachers&rsquo; interactions have consequences that impact students&rsquo; achievement and students&rsquo; lives. Consequently, every interaction matters.</p>

<p> In this quantitative study, the perceptions of safety and preparedness of Missouri&rsquo;s high school administrators after participating in active shooter training as mandated by Missouri&rsquo;s Senate Bill No. 75 were analyzed. As school shootings continue, states have passed legislation to prepare schools to provide safety for students and faculty members (Shah, 2013b). There are currently limited data about the perceived effectiveness of Missouri&rsquo;s Senate Bill No. 75 and its ability to help administrators feel safe and prepared in the event of an active shooter. This study involved examination of what schools can do to prepare for a school shooting before one occurs and what schools can do during a school shooting. It also included information on what schools can expect after a shooting has occurred. Fifty-two Missouri high school administrators were surveyed, then data were aggregated by gender, years of educational experience, years of administrative experience, district size, and district location (urban or rural) as reported by the administrators. The majority, or 86.6%, of Missouri high school administrators felt more safe and prepared after participating in active shooter training. Differences did exist between rural and urban administrators in the perception of safety and preparedness with three of the smallest districts indicating feeling the least amount of safety and preparedness. When parsing data by gender only two of the 26 females did not feel prepared after training, while 10 males indicated they did not feel prepared after training. A slight majority, or 53.8%, of the administrators, were not in favor of arming selective school personnel after proper training.</p>

Purpose The purpose of this study was to identify and explain the selective responses that dropout students felt contributed to their leaving school before graduation. Procedures The researcher collected three sets of data which included the review of the literature, the student records in the Southwest School District and the interviews of two hundred participants using McDowell's questionnaire. The questions were conceived of as functioning primarily in the context of justification. Thus, the researcher did not begin with previously identified reasons; rather, the researcher examined the responses to determine reasons which seem to be fruitful. The Sophia McDowell questionnaire was used to collect demographic information on each student to further explain their reasons for dropping out of school in four areas: personal data, family information, career information and school achievement. The results of data findings were described collectively and individually and summarized in tables. Conclusions 1. The literature on early school leavers depicts a profile which identifies them as suffering from personal problems, lack of parental support, economic condition and poor student/teacher relationships. However, these statements represent social and administrative judgments rather than functional terminology. 2. The student personnel records are of little value in gaining insight into early school leaving. The records seem to classify the students' departure as the result of "lack of interest" which offers little insight into the students' real circumstance. 3. The superficial responses for early school leaving as offered by students on a questionnaire varies little from the causes as reported in the literature. When the total sample is viewed, one finds that there were more Black Americans and more males who dropped out of school and at an earlier age than Caucasians and females. The marital status of the participants' parents indicates that more of the dropouts come from homes with married parents. The majority of these students, however, did return to some kind of basic education or to a job training program. On the other hand, more of the permanent dropouts come from single-parent or broken homes and did not return to school. Before one can justify that parental marital status does influence students to either remain in school or to drop out of school, however, more research is needed in this area. The majority of the participants studied were preparing for their future occupations by going back to school. From a sample of two hundred participants, there were 144 attending extended day school, vocational school, on-the-job training and apprenticeship training.

No description available.

No description available.

<p> Beginning teacher attrition is a problem that exacerbates the inequity of opportunities for all students, especially for those in schools that are already challenged by poverty. This study makes use of the <i>Beginning Teacher Longitudinal Survey</i> (covering the period between 2008 and 2012) and U.S. Census data to identify which teachers leave and to explain why. Beyond that, it also offers a look into the characteristics of those teachers who stay at the same school for five years. The empirical investigation is embedded in a conceptual framework that draws from motivation and identity theories and brings in insights about the importance of geography and of neighborhood effects from works on poverty and education.</p><p> The study utilizes a dataset with survey responses from approximately 1,800 full-time teachers from a sample designed to represent the overall population of beginning teachers in the United States. By combining individual-level longitudinal data with information about communities, it makes an important contribution to the study of new teacher placement, attrition, and retention. The evidence is presented using a variety of descriptive and inferential statistics, and the analysis includes factor analysis and logistic regression models. </p><p> The results show that indicators of leaving the profession before the fifth year become apparent early on, as factors measured at the end of year one have significant effects on early career outcomes. Most prominently, higher degrees of burnout reported by teachers, which includes factors such as decreased enthusiasm and increased fatigue, are associated with increased risks for leaving the profession without the prospect to return to it and with transferring to a different school district. Several other factors on the individual and school-level emerge as relevant to career outcomes. Teachers who have Highly Qualified Teacher credentials and report a supportive school climate are at less risk to leave the profession. On the other hand, teachers with alternative certification and master&rsquo;s degrees are more likely to move to a different school or districts in the first five years.</p><p> In terms of socio-geographic factors that help explain teacher retention and attrition, the only significant variable in the regression models used in the analysis is the percentage of White residents at the Census tract of the Year 1 school. When everything else is held constant, decreasing this percentage from 100 to 0 increases the predicted probability of leaving the profession by approximately 20%. Considering that a vast majority of beginning teachers both in the sample and in the overall population are White, this findings fits in with theories about &ldquo;the pull of home&rdquo; and cultural habitus. The magnitude and significance of this finding suggest that it warrants further exploration, as racial composition of the communities is likely a measurement proxy for complex processes of inequality.</p>