Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / An important component of President Johnson's War on Poverty, Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 represented government's first legislative acknowledgement of the educational challenges that children who live in poverty face. The original and abiding goal of Title I is to meet the special educational needs of disadvantaged students by providing supplementary funding to the schools that serve them; this funding purchases additional programming and resources that should, in theory, enable disadvantaged students to achieve at levels comparable to their more privileged peers. Despite its noble intent, more than forty years of research on the effects of Title I shows that it has had, at best, little effect on the achievement of disadvantaged students and, at worst, no effect at all.
In an effort to determine why Title I has not measurably impacted the achievement of disadvantaged students, this research turns to the international community to understand similar policies employed in other countries. After classifying and describing the most common international policies for targeting financial and other resources to disadvantaged youth, the author attempts to link, via regression analysis, three different models of targeting funding and resources to student outcomes on the 2003 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) examination. Citing a lack of sufficient data to establish a relationship between prevalent models and student level outcomes on PISA, the author goes on to present case studies of the policies in place in three different countries, each of which represents a particular model of targeting funding and resources to disadvantaged students. The three case studies focus on The Netherlands, England, and Spain.
Drawing from an analysis of policy documents and survey and interview data, each case study describes 1) how a particular international model of targeting resources looks in implementation and 2) the extent to which policies employed within each model align with documented best practices for the education of disadvantaged students. The research concludes with an assessment of what the United States can learn from each of the countries studied and with a comprehensive set of recommendations for the reauthorization of Title I. / 2031-01-02
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/31963 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Candal, Cara Stillings |
| Publisher | Boston University |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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