The problem of this study was to determine if at-risk students who were enrolled in an educational support class for one hour a day would have an improvement on the four at-risk indicators being measured over students not enrolled in the academic support program. The four at-risk indicators are grade point average, self-concept, days absent from school, and discipline referrals. The hypothesis formulated for this study predicted no significant difference in mean scores of the four measured indicators between groups. These indicators were measured by the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale, official school attendance records, official school transcripts, and the school's discipline records book. The at-risk population was identified from the use of an at-risk indicator scale. After random placement into either the control or experimental groups the samples were divided and analyzed according to grade and gender. The study was conducted over a 12 week period and included students from the Memphis, Michigan School District in grades six through nine. Data were analyzed by the independent means t test at the .05 level. The experimental group means were further analyzed for practical significance and for directional improvement. A series of tables provides a comparison of scores for all students participating in the study. For students participating in the experimental group three of the four indicators, self-esteem, days absent from school, and grade point average had a statistically significant difference in mean scores. The majority of mean scores moved in a direction of improvement indicating enrollment in the treatment had a positive influence on the at-risk indicators. Most scores that did not show a statistically significant difference in means did report a high level of practical significance that was a result of being enrolled in the academic support program.

Racial inequality in education remains an enduring facet of American society. Scholars often point to disparate home, neighborhood, and school environments as the primary drivers of educational inequality. This dissertation contributes to the body of work focused on schools, with an emphasis on examining the racial dynamics of students’ trust in their educators (“student–teacher trust”). Drawing on longitudinal education data from New York City and a yearlong interview study of two high schools, I analyze racial disparities in student–teacher trust, examine the role of trust in student performance, investigate the trust experiences of Black youth, and identify practices designed to enhance relational trust in schools. This dissertation is comprised of three empirical studies on the topic of student–teacher trust. Chapter 1 examines racial differences in student–teacher trust and analyzes how school context shapes the racial dynamics of trust. Findings from ordinary least squares regression models point to explicit racial gaps—with Asian students reporting the most trust in their educators and Black students reporting the least trust. However, my results point to noteworthy intra-racial heterogeneity at the intersections of gender and nativity. Findings from multilevel linear regression models also demonstrate that school racial composition matters for the trust of Black and Latino youth. Chapter 2 analyzes the impact of student–teacher trust on student performance. Results from ordinary least squares and individual fixed effects regressions show that students’ trust in their educators is a positive predictor of standardized tests scores and attendance, and a negative predictor of suspensions. The academic benefits of trust are experienced across all racial groups. Building on the results from the first two chapters, Chapter 3 examines the trust beliefs of Black students and the organizational trust practices of majority-minority schools. This dissertation makes several contributions to the race, trust, and education literatures. First, this research provides new evidence that racial disparities in trust are cemented by early adolescence and identifies trust as a relevant dimension of racial inequality in education. Second, this study connects student–teacher trust with tangible academic outcomes and offers trust as a new measure of teacher effectiveness. Third, by examining the trust perspectives of Black youth, this work elucidates the sensemaking processes of students with the lowest average levels of trust in their educators. Finally, this study provides insight into the contextual school factors that contribute to the racial dynamics of student–teacher trust formation and highlights strategies for enhancing interpersonal and institutional trust in urban schools.

While the need for knowledge utilization in policy development has become greater than ever in an era of evidence-based policymaking, there has been considerable disagreement over what and whose knowledge have an actual impact on agenda setting and policy decisions. Contributing to this ongoing debate, this study investigates what counts as policy knowledge in education and explores how and why particular bodies of knowledge are selected and utilized in the policy process. The study examined the most recent school reforms in three countries with distinctive political and institutional arrangements: the Every Student Succeeds Act in the US, the 2015 Curriculum Reform in South Korea, and the Renewal and Improvement Reform in Norway. In total, 3,873 texts cited in expert reports prepared for the reforms were used as data for the bibliometric network analysis, and interviews with 45 policy experts in three countries, cued by network findings, were analyzed. The results showed differences in the institutionalized expertise-seeking arrangements, reflecting each country’s political contexts. The so-called “pluralist US model” sought expertise predominantly from interest group members, and both the expert and reference networks were fairly decentralized. In particular, think tanks and advocacy groups such as the Education Trust, the Center for American Progress, and the Brookings Institution served as important sources of knowledge in policymaking. By contrast, knowledge production and utilization in the “state corporatist system” of South Korea were mainly centralized in and steered by government actors and institutions. The “societal corporatist system” of Norway placed a greater emphasis on consensus building among diverse yet organized interests. Nevertheless, this study also found that the actual practice of expertise-seeking in the policy process did not always align with institutionalized norms due to local political contexts with regard to who has more access, resources, and power. In addition, the norms are changing along with two seemingly contradictory trends in today’s policymaking: the academization of expertise and increased demands for application-driven mode 2 knowledge. Overall, this study highlights the transferability of knowledge and the role of intermediary actors and organizations that bridge different systems and facilitate the transfer process. Furthermore, it makes a methodological contribution by employing bibliometric network analysis and network-cued interviews to understand policy knowledge utilization networks and coalitions within and across boundaries. The former demonstrates the structural position of policy actors and bodies of knowledge in a network, and the latter explains why particular actors or bodies of knowledge have greater influence, power, or prominence than others.

Uruguay’s public education system is at the center of a complex web of contradictory forces concerning contemporary migration to the country and migrant students. The country’s educators are part of a system that has historically interpellated them to assimilate migrant students around a problematic national imagination of homogeneity, modernity, and European heritage. These educators are also members of the larger Uruguayan society where discriminatory bias against recent migration to the country prevails, especially against migrants from the Global South. While Uruguay’s rights-based migration legislation and policy aim to promote the sociocultural integration of migrants, the measures taken thus far have overwhelmingly focused on migration management. In effect, the State has placed the responsibility for the sociocultural integration of migrants on the public education system. Specifically, the Council of Early Childhood and Primary Education created the Migrations Commission to promote inclusive education for the growing number of migrant children and youth arriving in the country’s public schools. The Migrations Commission implemented a professional development course to train educators on inclusion and interculturalidad to adequately serve migrant students and their families. However, limited data are available regarding the creation and implementation of this professional development and the impact it had on educators and their work with migrant students. To address these gaps, this study employed a qualitative methodology to examine the State’s efforts, through the Migrations Commission, to support inclusive education for migrant students and the impact of these efforts on educators. Data collection included the following: interviews with eight Migrations Commission members and affiliates, 17 educators who participated in the commission’s professional development, 10 educators from a school in which the principal had completed the professional development, and eight educators at another school who had no experience with the professional development; 15 instances of participant observation with educators in the aforementioned schools who had migrant students in their classrooms; and analysis of documents produced by and about the Migrations Commission. An analysis of the Migrations Commission’s discourse reveals the continued persistence of assimilation as a competing theoretical model for understanding the incorporation of migrant students and their families both in the country’s public education system and the larger social context. The presence of contradictory perspectives (inclusive education/interculturalidad versus assimilation) was also found among educators, both at the discursive level of pedagogical understanding and the pragmatic level of school practices. Therefore, this inquiry concludes that the State’s efforts to date have not been enough to effect significant and lasting change in the country’s education system. In addition, the study’s findings indicate that Uruguay’s educators, including those who participated in the Migrations Commission’s professional development that specifically focused on inclusion and interculturalidad, remain uncertain about how to implement inclusive and intercultural practices in their schools and classrooms and continue to be influenced by the education system’s historical mandate to assimilate migrant students into the national hegemonic culture as well as by stereotypes and prejudicial assumptions embraced by the larger society regarding migrants. Based on these findings, the study proposes policy recommendations to inform the Migrations Commission’s work to advance inclusive education for migrant students in Uruguay’s early childhood and primary education public schools and outlines future lines of research to contribute to the academic production on inclusion in education beyond the specific case of Uruguay.

The author has made this study of the actual receipts and expenditures in public education for Escambia County, Florida for two main reasons. First, to gain a clearer insight into the financing of education in this county, and to learn more about the sources of income that are used for the operation of the public schools in the county and to see what portion of these incomes are actually spent for each of the services rendered by the school system. Second, to compare the amounts contributed by the State of Florida to the schools of the county before and after the adoption of the Minimum Foundation Program for Education in Florida, and to study some of the services rendered by the county school system before and after the program was instituted. / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / "August 1952." / Typescript. / Advisor: H. W. Dean, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Neoliberalism is a pro-capitalist ideology that cycles money and power to the elite class by deregulating or privatizing the public sphere and is fueled by economic exploitation and oppression. This dissertation examines the neoliberal construct at work in the privatization of Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) from an ethnographic lens using the vantage point of an elected IPS board member. The literature surrounding the privatization of public schools offers stories from all over the U.S., however the conditions surrounding the privatization of public education systems are similar irrespective of geographical location. Common themes across the country include the de-professionalization of teachers, the circulation of the narrative myth of failing public schools and charter schools as a positive alternative, and overarching patterns of continued school segregation, gentrification of inner cities, and racial migratory patterns of residents affecting school enrollment. Theoretical framing employed in this study includes Punctuated Equilibrium at the macro level; sociopolitics and logics of action at the meso level, and critical theory and politics of resistance at the micro level of analysis. The analysis of data was conducted thematically and data sources encompass a self-authored blog as well as personal communications and reflections, news articles, and board documents. Results of this study illustrate that IPS as an organization underwent a fulcrum point of change, or ‘Punctuated Equilibrium’ in which it ceased to be an exclusively public institution and began to establish partnerships with private charter school companies with inherent profit motives, via the ‘Innovation School Network’. There were many political players involved in orchestrating this change, and those interest groups and their logics of action are detailed. Implications of this study include identifying the future spread of school privatization and possibilities for disrupting the furthering of this neoliberal agenda.

Education is at the center of upskilling human capital in developing countries, thereby positively influencing economic growth and development. For decades, many education policies targeted at developing countries have been narrowly focused on improving access to basic education (Barrett et al., 2015). However, access to education does not always translate into educational attainment. Thus, beyond the initial goal of expanding access to education in developing countries, there has been a growing focus on delivering quality education on the development agenda for developing countries in recent years. One popular policy instrument in enhancing education quality has been school choice. Analysis of school choice and the subsequent academic performance outcomes can provide new insight on the economics of education to policymakers, schools, parents and students alike. This dissertation consists of three essays, which focus on understanding the demand for public schools and the returns to school quality in a merit-based competitive school assignment system. In particular, these papers investigate how positive recognition of ability through awards can affect the students’ decision-making process; what the students might gain from attending a more selective school; and how students balance between their preferences for school characteristics and maximizing their chances of admission in a competitive school choice market. Altogether, this dissertation highlights the role of information as well as educational background in explaining differences in school choice decisions and achievement outcomes. In chapter 1, I examine the role of positive recognition on students’ school choice decisions and achievement outcomes in the context of academic competitions. Academic competitions are an essential aspect of education. Given the prevalence and the amount of resources spent organizing them, a natural question that arises is the extent of the impact on winners’ education outcomes when their talent is recognized. I exploit the award structure in Vietnam’s annual regional academic competitions to answer this question. By leveraging the pre-determined share of awards, I apply a regression discontinuity design to assess the effects of receiving a Prize and receiving an Honorable Mention. I find that both types of awards lead to improvements in educational outcomes, and the results are persistent after three years. I also find some evidence of specialization associated with receiving a Prize Award. I hypothesize that long-term effects can be partially explained by school choice: winners are significantly more likely to apply to and consequently enroll in higher-quality schools. There are also prominent differences in educational choices and outcomes along gender lines: female students are more sensitive to award receipts than male students. These findings underscore the positive motivational effects of awards, even among the top performers in a highly competitive schooling market. In chapter 2, I explore the impacts of attending a selective school on students’ educational outcomes. Students in Vietnam are assigned to public high schools based on their performance in a placement exam as well as their ranked choice of schools. Public schools are often oversubscribed, which contributes to exogeneous admission score cutoffs below which students are not considered for admission. By applying a regression discontinuity research design to these admission score cutoffs, I find that students who are marginally admitted to their top-choice public schools are exposed to significantly higher-achieving peers while finding themselves at the bottom of the ability distribution. They experience some improvements in standardized test scores at the end of their high school, but fare worse in school-based achievements and graduation outcomes. These findings highlight the importance of the potential trade-offs between attending more selective schools with better peer quality while receiving a lower ordinal rank in the ability distribution in the assigned school. In addition, the impacts of selective schools on students vary along the lines of the students’ own attitude towards studying as well as their middle school educational background. This substantial heterogeneity collectively highlights the importance of considering the students’ past educational background in interpreting how selective schools might impact students’ outcomes. In chapter 3, I investigate students’ preferences, strategic behaviors and welfare outcomes under a competitive school choice market by conducting a survey on school choice participants in two school districts in Vietnam. The original survey data on school choice participants, coupled with administrative data, afford me the opportunity to understand true preferences and strategies without involving strong assumptions on the students’ beliefs. In order to balance out their own preferences and chance of admission in such a competitive setting, the majority of students exhibit strategic behaviors. However, students from less advanced educational backgrounds tend to have large belief errors and are more likely to make strategic mistakes. Consequently, these students are at a disadvantage, as they find themselves among lower-achieving peers in their new schools. With preference data from the survey, I estimate the students’ preferences for school characteristics and find evidence of heterogeneity in students’ preferences for school characteristics: students from more advanced educational backgrounds value school selectivity and teacher qualification more than their peers. Using these estimates to evaluate students’ welfare under the current assignment mechanism as well as a counterfactual strategy-proof deferred acceptance algorithm, I find that switching to deferred acceptance algorithm can be welfare-improving, particularly for high-performing students. Overall, this paper provides a starting point to directly study the drawbacks of manipulable assignment mechanisms by using survey data and highlight the potential disparity in preferences and application strategies that can further widen the gap in educational mobility.

This interdisciplinary dissertation describes the pedagogy of Ignatius of Loyola (e.g., a Jesuit education is world-affirming, assists in the total formation of each individual within the human community) and examines its import for public schools. Chapter 1 establishes the research context within the historical landscape of Ignatian Pedagogy, with the dissertation question: Could the pedagogical philosophy of the Jesuit founder, Ignatius of Loyola, be used to apply and create a similar program/system of character formation in the New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) schools. Character Formation is explained as the way youth are formed as whole persons to be in relationship with self and others, as active participants in a world where their flourishing is emphasized and their ability to be critical, reflective, and self-directed is enhanced by their psycho-social-environmental well-being. Chapter 2 presents a literature review to examine Ignatius of Loyola’s ideas about character formation. Chapter 3 continues the literature review, addressing concerns about the meeting of faith and education in public schools, this is done through the lens of feminist theology and pedagogy. Chapter 4 describes the strategy of program review of the Loyola Academy Encore Program of Character Formation that I employed to develop and form students’ character at the Jesuit-sponsored Loyola Nativity School in St. Louis, Missouri. Chapter 5 examines a pilot study completed at one of my schools, 30Q151, the Mary D. Carter school, which tracked five special education students’ placement from a Most Restrictive Environment to a Least Restrictive Environment, in order to build their self-esteem and form their character. Chapter 6 discusses findings and implications for the NYC DOE if it were to consider developing a universal program of character formation based on the programs in place at Jesuit-sponsored schools. Chapter 7 presents a theological-philosophical framework grounded in literature for creating the Beloved Community (e.g., King, Gandhi, Freire), my statement for and about how human beings flourish, e.g., ascending towards a rationalization for why public and private schools need programs of character formation in the 21st century.

This research project is an attempt to determine how principals handle educator misconduct in public schools in a sample of both primary and secondary schools. Procedures on handling misconduct are still new to schools principals. The need to empower principals with knowledge and procedures to handle educator misconduct is the main concern of the study. The main aim of the study is to investigate how principals handle educator misconduct in public schools. It is revealed in the introductory orientation of this study that educator misconduct is one of major challenges in principals' management of schools. Educator misconduct is a continuous problem that principals experience in their management of schools. Principals being given legal authority to handle less serious misconduct at school level, have a mammoth task and responsibility to ensure that procedural requirements are met in such misconduct cases. The attempts to workshop train and educate principals on handling educator misconduct which all proved insufficient. Misconduct among educators is on the increase and principals seem to fall short of handling such misconduct cases properly. In this regard both the literature study and an empirical investigation through interviews are used in the study. Principals are involved because they have a duty to handle educator misconduct. Procedures handling misconduct also involve educators. These data collection methods are useful in providing insights into principals' handling of educator misconduct as well as getting educators' views on how principals handle misconduct cases. The findings and recommendations of this study are expected to improve principals' handling of educator misconduct. The findings are supposed to help principals to realise the need to follow procedural steps and to apply principles of handling misconduct fairly and consistently. Based on what the study will find, it is recommended that principals adhere to principles, rules and procedures of handling misconduct as they serve to empower principals in their management responsibilities. Principals support mechanisms in the form of workshops, seminars and training programme should be provided to ensure that principals are well trained and have clear knowledge in both theory and practice of handling educator misconduct. / Dissertation (MEd (Education Management and Policy Studies))--University of Pretoria, 2003. / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted

Skills such as identifying evidence, evaluating the credibility of information sources, analyzing complex historical and geopolitical issues from multiple perspectives, asking good questions, and forming and articulating a point of view are useful for succeeding in school and in life. Speech and debate training can help students learn and practice these skills and is widely available in many independent elementary and middle schools, yet it is generally not available in public elementary and middle schools. There has been virtually no research on this topic. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to explore the perceptions of speech and debate professionals with respect to benefits, curriculum and pedagogy, feasibility, and acceptability concerning speech and debate programs in public primary schools. Using the snowball sampling technique, 25 speech and debate professionals in different parts of the speech and debate ecosystem and in different parts of the United States were identified and interviewed using a semi-structured qualitative approach. The findings indicated that speech and debate training supports health literacy and social-emotional development in students as early as elementary school by contributing to multiple aspects of “whole child” wellness, including through the promotion of identity development, mental health, psychological strengths, and life skills at essential periods of development. The findings underscored the importance of a culturally relevant pedagogical approach wherein students critically respond to, analyze, and interrogate larger social structural issues through the lens of their own cultural experiences and identities. Despite the consensus that nearly any educator can facilitate speech and debate instruction with limited training, there are several impediments to adoption and implementation, including time and school-community support. Speech and debate training requires many hours across multiple days to implement effectively. Gaining support across the curriculum from teachers and administrators was facilitated by these stakeholders having first-hand experience and observing positive outcomes for students. Policy and practice implications are proposed along with recommendations for future research relevant to increasing speech and debate programming in public elementary schools.