The purpose of this study was to identify the perceptions that central Florida public high school principals had regarding the Florida School Indicators Report (FSIR) and its usefulness. The FSIR, published by the Florida Education, was designed to be a comprehensive, single source document for parents, lawmakers, and school administrators to compare key performance indicators to similar schools or districts state wide. It provided information on 74 different indicators of school or district performance. A total of 70 public high school principals from 13 central Florida school districts responded to a postal survey and provided their perceptions regarding the importance of indicators in the FSIR, how they used the FSIR at their schools, and what barriers they felt affected the ability of their administrative staffs to collect and analyze data on the FSIR indicators. Eighteen of the 70 principals participated in follow-up telephone interviews. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the postal surveys and interviews revealed the principals perceived FSIR indicators related to Florida's mandated Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) as the most important indictors in the FSIR. The indicators FCAT Results and FCAT Writes were ranked first and second respectively in priority by the participating principals. This finding demonstrated the importance that principals placed on the state's high-stakes test. Other categories of FSIR indicators are were also ranked in the findings reported in this study, along with how the principals used the FSIR at their schools. The data collected from the postal survey revealed there was a statistically significant relationship between the priority principals assigned to the FSIR indicators and their ability to collect and analyze data related to them. In addition, survey data allowed development of multiple regression models that could be used to predict the priority principals assigned to several FSIR categories of indicators based on the ability to collect and analyze data. The study findings indicated that principals perceived lack of time for data analysis as the biggest barrier they faced when evaluating the FSIR indicators. After the lack of time, principals rated lack of administrator training in data analysis as the second biggest obstacle to using the FSIR. The findings indicated that principals felt the availability of data and technology were not significant barriers to their staff's ability to conduct data analysis on the FSIR. The conclusions drawn from the study were that central Florida high school principals perceived the results on the state's mandated Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) to be the most important indicators in the FSIR. In addition, the research identified that the lack of time was the single greatest barrier principals encountered when it came to collecting and analyzing data on the FSIR. A lack of training programs in data collection and analysis for administrators was also noted in the findings.

The present study was conducted to investigate two English Language Learner programs in one Florida county and their implications for student achievement. The literature review showed that, as students progress through the educational system, the academic content becomes more and more abstract, forcing students to rely more heavily on their oral and written communication skills in English. Significant achievement gaps, sometimes extremely large, were also identified between English-only students and English Language Learner students. One study highlighted a 46% gap on the 2005 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). The present study was designed to investigate 23 middle schools in one Florida county. The focus of the study was on two English Language Learner programs: Language Arts/ESOL and One-Way Developmental Bilingual Education. A total of 13 schools were identified that had implemented the Language Arts/ESOL program, and 10 middle schools were identified that had implemented the One-Way Developmental Bilingual Education program. The 2007 FCAT reading mean scale scores for the schools' 7th-grade English Language Learners were compared to those of standard curriculum students. For both English Language Learner programs, a statistical significance was found using t-tests. In addition, FCAT reading Levels 1-5 were investigated. At FCAT Levels 1-3, the Language Arts/ESOL program out-performed the One-Way Developmental Bilingual Education program. At FCAT Levels 4 and 5, the One-Way Developmental Bilingual Education program out-performed the Language Arts/ESOL program.

The explicit teaching of reading comprehension strategies has been proposed as a means to better prepare secondary school-aged students for today's information-dense, fast-paced, fast-changing global society, and to improve the academic performance of struggling adolescent readers. This proposition of a direct and positive impact of reading comprehension strategies on reading achievement for all students has not been investigated with English language learners (ELLs) who, by definition, do not possess the same level of English language skills as their native-English speaking peers. This mixed-method study investigated linguistic, cognitive, as well as affective factors that impact adolescent ELLs' performance on a standardized state reading achievement test. The quantitative portion examined the relative contributions of second language proficiency and reading comprehension strategies to a prediction model of reading achievement in 110 ninth and tenth grade ELLs. The qualitative portion of the study involved individual interviews and was aimed at deepening the understanding of ELLs' use of strategies during the standardized reading test, while also investigating affective factors that may impact their performance on this measure of academic achievement. Quantitative findings include two statistically significant prediction models of reading achievement with reading comprehension strategies and English language proficiency as predictor variables. However, only language proficiency made a significant unique contribution to the prediction variable. Qualitative findings suggest that the participants had relatively little metacognitive awareness of their comprehension during the standardized test, had overestimated their use of reading strategies as reported on a 30-item strategy survey instrument, had concentrated on sentence-level comprehension due to unknown vocabulary, and may have been hindered by testing anxiety in being able to wholly concentrate on the task. Recommendations made for the instruction of comprehension strategies consist of the raising of metacognitive awareness through the explicit modeling of the thought processes involved in reading comprehension, including determining the meaning of unknown words.

Latin American countries have shifted from a model of education governance based on hierarchical rules and centralized authority to a results-driven model with shared responsibility among state and non-state actors. Yet, adopted governance models show remarkable cross-national variation. This dissertation aims at explaining this variation amid convergence through the qualitative comparative analysis of education governance in Chile, Argentina, and Colombia during three distinct periods of development, namely centralized education planning from the standpoint of manpower needs (1960s-1970s), market-oriented governance mechanisms (1980s-1990s), and accountability-oriented education for all (2000s-2010s). This analysis demonstrates that while diffusion of widely recognized policy ideas about education governance produces convergence, political contestation of domestic organized actors produces variation that ranges from full adoption to outright rejection of foreign recommendations. My study qualifies insights from institutional and diffusion theories by specifying the conditions in which domestic actors are able to modify both, domestic institutions and powerful foreign ideas. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Education reforms in several Latin American countries follow a global trend characterized by at least three changes: 1) from selective student recruitment towards the universalization of secondary education and school choice for families; 2) from a centralized curriculum towards curricular autonomy; and 3) from student evaluation exclusively delegated to teachers towards national standardized tests. Yet, adopted governance models show remarkable cross-national variation. Chile has traditionally emulated global ideas and become a quasi-market of education. Argentina was more reluctant to global norms and made only moderate changes to the state-run governance model. Finally, Colombia left the education of the wealthy to the market, while centralized the authority over the education of the poor. Through a comparative historical analysis of these three countries, this study explains the way in which global ideas are domestically translated through the interaction between diffusion mechanisms, domestic policy legacies, and the ability of domestic actors to negotiate the implementation of foreign recommendations. The evidence provided by this dissertation suggests that the level of organization, the closeness to the decision-making process, and the impact of the power resources of supporters and opponents of global ideas define the extent to what these ideas are adopted. If global ideas favor the interests of powerful actors and opposition is weak the more likely result is the emulation of foreign recommendations. Yet, the more the opposition obtains resources to force powerful actors to bargain, the more the chances for global norms to be resisted or rejected. This analysis explains how the encounter between global norms and domestic institutions shapes processes of domestic institutional entrepreneurship and uncovers paths through which this entrepreneurship is more likely to produce emulation or rejection of global ideas. This dissertation qualifies insights of historical and sociological institutionalisms and contributes to the literature on education policy globalization.

[pt] Este artigo estuda disparidades de gênero no desempenho e na aversão ao risco sob competição. Utilizamos dados do Exame Anpec, exame de seleção nacional de candidatos aos cursos de mestrado (e doutorado) em Economia no Brasil. Este exame específico atribui pontos negativos a respostas incorretas, o que pode fazer com que os alunos mais avessos ao risco deixem mais perguntas sem resposta e possivelmente obtenham notas mais baixas. Mostramos que as mulheres tendem a omitir mais perguntas em comparação com os homens e estão consistentemente sub-representadas no topo dos rankings. Utilizando o Modelo Rasch derivamos probabilidades de cada aluno responder cada questão corretamente e mostramos que tanto homens como mulheres se desviam da estratégia ótima que maximiza a nota esperada. Investigamos também o cenário onde todos os alunos chutam as questões anteriormente deixadas em branco, após recalcular as notas esperadas e novas classificações neste cenário mostramos que em média o efeito para as mulheres que já estavam no topo da distribuição é muito pequeno, e as mulheres que estavam com classificação mais baixa se beneficiam mais. / [en] This paper studies gender disparities in performance and risk aversion under competition. We use data from the Anpec Exam, the Brazilian national exam for students applying for Graduate Programs in Economics. This particular exam assigns negative points to incorrect answers, which could lead to the more risk-averse students leaving more questions unanswered and possibly getting lower grades. We show that women tend to omit more questions compared to men and are consistently under represented at the top of the rankings. Using the Rasch Model we derive probabilities of answering each question correctly for each student and show that both men and women deviate from the optimal strategy that maximizes their expected score. We also investigate the scenario where all students guess the questions previously left unanswered, after recalculating the expected scores and new rankings in this scenario we find that on average the effect for women that were already at the top of the distribution is very small, and women that were closer to the bottom of the ranking benefit more.

Detta examensarbete har utförts på Epiroc DC Holmen som är ett globalt distributionscenterbeläget i Örebro. En hög kvalitetsnivå kan leda till kostnadsbesparingar genom att antaletavvikelser minskar. På DC Holmen, där höga kostnader uppstår på grund avkvalitetsavvikelser vid hantering av tungt gods, är detta av särskilt intresse. Syftet med arbetetär därför att undersöka och ta fram förbättringsförslag som minimerar risken för att fel artikellevereras till kund.För att skapa en nulägesbild för processerna som hanterar tungt gods genomfördes intervjueroch observationer. Utifrån den insamlade data genomfördes en nulägesanalys ochförbättringsförslags togs fram med hjälp av verktyg från lean metodiken.En av de främsta faktorer som leder till att fel artikel levereras till kund är att det saknas ettstandardiserat arbetssätt. Detta påverkar bland annat upplärningsprocessen av ny personal samtatt arbetet med ständiga förbättringar försvåras. Ytterligare faktorer som identifierades ärlagerrelaterade, exempelvis så som bristfällig platsmärkning och felaktig vikt av artiklar isystemet.Arbetet resulterade i ett antal förbättringsförslag där implementeringen av 5S är en långsiktiglösning för att skapa en väl fungerande arbetsplats med standardiserade arbetsrutiner ochutvecklandet av en god kultur. Några direktverkande lösningar som togs fram var ny märkningav lagerplatser, avskild placering av liknande artiklar och felsäkring av pallflaggorna. Iframtiden bör möjligheten till att integrera ny teknik som automatisering av plock ses över föratt få ett effektivare och säkrare flöde. / This thesis has been carried out at Epiroc DC Holmen, which is a global distribution centerlocated in Örebro. A high level of quality can lead to cost savings by reducing the number ofdeviations. At DC Holmen, where high costs arise due to quality deviations when handlingheavy goods, this is of particular interest. The purpose of the thesis is therefore to investigateand come up with improvement proposals that minimize the risk of the wrong product beingdelivered to the customer.To create an overview of the processes that handle heavy goods, interviews and observationswere carried out. Based on the collected data, a current situation analysis was performed, andimprovement proposals were developed using tools from the lean methodology.One of the main factors that leads to the wrong product being delivered to the customer is thelack of a standardized way of working. This affects, among other things, the training process ofnew staff and makes it difficult to work with continuous improvements. Additional factorsidentified are inventory-related, such as inadequate location marking and incorrect weight ofitems in the system.The work resulted in several improvement proposals where the implementation of 5S is a longterm solution to create a well-functioning workplace with standardized work routines and thedevelopment of a good culture. Some directly effective solutions that were developed were newlabeling of warehouse locations, separate placement of similar products and fail-proofing of thepallet flags. In the future, the possibility of integrating new technology such as pickingautomation should be reviewed to have a more efficient and safer flow.

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