Other Educational Administration and Supervision Commons^™

Understanding How Covid-19 Has Changed Teachers’ Chances Of Remaining In The Classroom, Gema Zamarro, Andrew Camp, Dillon Fuchsman, Josh B. Mcgee

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

The 2020-2021 academic year was a year like no other. After nationwide school closures during the spring of 2020, schools reopened in the fall of 2020 using combinations of in-person, hybrid, and remote learning models. Teachers had to adapt to unexpected conditions, teaching in unprecedented ways, using synchronous and asynchronous instruction, while also being challenged to establish connections with students, families, and colleagues. Health concerns added to the mix as some teachers went back to in-person education during the height of the pandemic. As a result, teachers' levels of stress and burnout have been high throughout these unusual pandemic times …

Homeschooling, Social Isolation, And Life Trajectories: An Analysis Of Formerly Homeschooled Adults, Daniel Hamlin, Albert Cheng

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

A longstanding critique of homeschooling is that it isolates children from mainstream society, depriving them of social experiences needed to thrive as adults. Although a small number of empirical studies challenge this criticism, this research tends to be derived from self-reports of homeschooling parents about their children. In this study, analyses of qualitative interviews (n = 31) and survey data (n = 140) of adults who were homeschooled as children are performed. Most interview participants described conventional and unconventional social experiences that they felt had satisfied their social needs while being homeschooled. Participants who were homeschooled for all or most …

The Novice Assistant Principal: Support Needs In The Transition To The Administrative Role, Alyssa Nicole Maestas

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Novice assistant principals are expected to be ready to serve as key leaders in a school from the first day of their appointment as a school administrator. Research has shown that the role of assistant principal is multi-faceted, the pace of the job is unrelenting, the level of responsibility is overwhelming, and the number of new tasks encountered is daunting (Barnett, et al., 2012; Craft et al., 2016). This study examined how novice assistant principals experienced support as they transitioned into the administrative role. The researcher used a phenomenological research design for the collection of data. The results indicated that …

Principals’ Management Of Library Resources And Teachers’ Lesson Preparation Practices In Secondary Schools: A Predictive Evaluation, Valentine Joseph Owan, Rosemary O. Osim Ph.D., Emanghe E. Emanghe Ph.D., Eyiene Ameh Ph.D., John Asuquo Ekpenyong

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The literature is predominated by studies seeking to clarify the extent of the availability, functionality, accessibility and/or utilisation of library materials in schools at various levels. The extent of principals' management of library resources and their contribution to the lesson preparation activities of teachers seems to have been under-researched. In bridging the gap, the current study was designed to assess the extent and contribution of principals’ management of library resources to teachers’ lesson preparation practices. Six specific objectives were of interest to the researchers. The quantitative research method, following the ex-post facto research design, was adopted. The stratified proportional random …

Volunteering And Charitable Giving Among Australian Young Adults And The Mediating Role Of Community Service Emphasis In Secondary Schools, Albert Cheng, Rian R. Djita

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Schools play a vital role in sustaining civil society by tending to the civic formation of their students. Prior research has focused on assessing students on a variety of civic outcomes including volunteering and charitable giving, and often compares students in Government, religious Independent, and non-religious Independent schools. However, this work has mostly been conducted in North American contexts. Nor has much attention been given to developing theory and then empirically testing mediating variables that explain any observed differences across these schooling sectors. We fill these gaps in this study. Using a nationally representative sample of 4,000 Australian adults, we …

The Value Of College Athletics In The Labor Market: Results From A Resume Audit Field Experiment, James D. Paul, Albert Cheng, Jay P. Greene, Josh B. Mcgee

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Employers may favor applicants who played college sports if athletics participation contributes to leadership, conscientiousness, discipline, and other traits that are desirable for labor-market productivity. We conduct a resume audit to estimate the causal effect of listing collegiate athletics on employer callbacks and test for subgroup effects by ethnicity, gender, and sport type. We applied to more than 450 jobs on a large, well-known job board. For each job listing we submitted two fictitious resumes, one of which was randomly assigned to include collegiate varsity athletics. Overall, listing a college sport does not produce a statistically significant change in the …

Charter School Closing Inequities: Do Automatic Closure Laws Target Black Charter Entrepreneurs And Black Students?, Ian Kingbury, Martha Bradley-Dorsey, Robert Maranto

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Charter schools can have their charters rescinded if they fail to meet performance metrics, which are often specified in the charter. In some states, however, charters must meet inflexible, standardized performance standards to survive. Through the lens of public choice theory, we hypothesize that charters that were established by African Americans and those which serve more African American students are more likely to close, and that state-imposed standardized closure rules exacerbate these inequities. Analyses using charter petitions (n=925) and National Center for Education Statistics data since 2010 (n=5,548), tend to confirm hypotheses: The percentage of African American students and having …

Determinants Of Ethnic Differences In School Modality Choices During The Covid-19 Crisis, Andrew Camp, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

A growing body of research and popular reporting shows racial differences in school modality choices during the COVID-19 crisis, with white students more likely to attend school in person. This in-person learning gap raises serious equity concerns. We use unique panel survey data to explore possible explanations. We find that a combination of factors may explain these differences. School districts’ offerings, political partisanship, and local COVID-19 outbreaks are all meaningfully associated with and plausibly explain the in-person learning racial gap. As schools start offering more in-person learning, significant efforts may be necessary to ensure that families and students attend those …

Understanding Performance In Test Taking: The Role Of Question Difficulty Order, Lina Anaya, Nagore Iriberri, Pedro Rey-Biel, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Standardized assessments are widely used to determine access to educational resources with important consequences for later economic outcomes in life. However, many design features of the tests themselves may lead to psychological reactions influencing performance. In particular, the level of difficulty of the earlier questions in a test may affect performance in later questions. How should we order test questions according to their level of difficulty such that test performance offers an accurate assessment of the test taker's aptitudes and knowledge? We conduct a field experiment with about 19,000 participants in collaboration with an online teaching platform where we randomly …

Did Spending Cuts During The Great Recession Really Cause Student Outcomes To Decline?, Jessica Goldstein, Josh B. Mcgee

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Jackson, Wigger, and Xiong (2020a, JWX) provide evidence that education spending reductions following the Great Recession had widespread negative impacts on student achievement and attainment. This paper describes our process of duplicating JWX and highlights a variety of tests we employ to investigate the nature and robustness of the relationship between school spending reductions and student outcomes. Though per-pupil expenditures undoubtedly shifted downward due to the Great Recession, contrary to JWX, our findings indicate there is not a clear and compelling story about the impact of those reductions on student achievement. Moreover, we find that the relationship between K-12 spending …

Education And Anti-Semitism, Jay. P. Greene, Albert Cheng, Ian Kingsbury

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Many people believe that intolerance, in general, and anti-Semitism, in particular, are a function of ignorance, and the solution is education. We see evidence of this whenever concerns about intolerance or anti-Semitism become more salient. Proposed solutions frequently feature improved Holocaust education or expanded diversity, equity, and inclusion training. As two religious leaders recently urged, “The only thing that will truly halt the rise of anti-Semitism in America is education” (Stanton & Marcus, 2019). Profiles of anti-Semites tend to feature rural whites or urban minorities, but they are almost always from low-educational backgrounds. Well-educated people tend to feel secure in …

The Effect Of School District Consolidation On Student Achievement: Evidence From Arkansas, Josh B. Mcgee, Jonathan N. Mills, Jessica S. Goldstein

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

School district consolidation is one of the most widespread education reforms of the last century, but surprisingly little research has directly investigated its effectiveness. To examine the impact of consolidation on student achievement, this study takes advantage of a policy that requires the consolidation of all Arkansas school districts with enrollment of fewer than 350 students for two consecutive school years. Using a regression discontinuity model, we find that consolidation has either null or small positive impacts on student achievement in math and English Language Arts (ELA). We do not find evidence that consolidation in Arkansas results in positive economies …

Inclusive Access For All, Marcia Dority Baker, Jaci Lindburg

Information Technology Services: Publications

Inclusive Access provides a framework for digital course material delivered via the learning management system (LMS) day-one to students. This platform assists instructors with selecting current, quality, affordable material, and supports learning analytics by providing engagement data in Canvas. The University of Nebraska Provost office has funded an initial series of grants to support open educational resources (OER) initiatives at the Lincoln, Kearney, and Omaha campuses for several years. The vast majority of these dollars went to incentivize faculty in the adoption of OER. The OER and Inclusive Access pilots are ready to mature into a service supported by Academic …

A Comprehensive Audit Of Professional Development For K-12 School Leaders In The Commonwealth Of Virginia, Melissa Davis Hill, Melisa J. Naumann, Timothy M. Tillman, Major R. Warner Jr.

Doctor of Education Capstones

The intent of this paper is to provide a mixed-methods audit of professional development provided to K-12 school leadership in Virginia's diverse landscape to include identification of providers, funding, effectiveness, and expectations.

In the Commonwealth of Virginia, geographical, political, and socio-economical differences across 132 school divisions cause variability in leaders' experiences with professional development. A mixed-methods approach was used, including a review of current literature, an online survey, virtual interviews, and virtual focus group discussions. This data collection results in a comprehensive audit of professional development provided to school leaders in Virginia's diverse landscape. The study defines effective professional development …

Exploring Equity Through The Perspective Of White Equity-Trained Suburban Educators And Minoritized Parents, David E. Lawrence

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

The intent of this qualitative critical incident study was to explore the interpretation of equity by White equity-trained suburban educators (WETSE) and minoritized parents (MP) in a Midwestern suburban school district to address and change inequitable student outcomes. WETSE and MP participated independently in focus groups. The research design used critical incident technique (CIT) as the methodology; focus groups as the data collection tool; and thematic analysis (TA) as the analytical tool. Zones of Mediation (ZONE) and Transformative Leadership Theory (TLT) were used to distill and categorize the research findings. WETSE and MP established an agreement on four themes thought …

Raw And Pure Education In The Society, Iwasan D. Kejawa Ed.D

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

What does education mean to individuals in the world today? Education is a way one can attain or improve his or her ability to lead and survive in the society of ours. Without educational training of the mind, it may be impossible to realize the importance of adaptability of living in the environment. Without education, It may also be difficult to embellish the use of both the mental and physical attributes possessed by individual beings.

What really is education? Education is the training of the mind to perform desire functions or to perpetuate the modality of obtaining an end or …

Teachers' Willingness To Pay For Retirement Benefits: A National Stated Preferences Experiment, Dillon Fuchsman, Josh B. Mcgee, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Many states have recently made or are considering changes to their teacher retirement systems. However, little is known about how teachers value various elements of their retirement benefits versus other aspects of their jobs and compensation. To help alleviate this gap, we use a discrete choice stated preferences experiment embedded in a nationally representative survey of teachers to estimate their willingness-to-pay for various retirement plan characteristics and other non-salary job components. We find that teachers would be indifferent between a traditional pension and alternative retirement plan designs if the alternatives were paired with 2 to 3 percent salary increases. Our …

2020-2021 Campus Life Handbook, Otterbein Student Affairs Office

Student Affairs

The Campus Life Handbook is the official guide for all students of Otterbein University. It is updated annually by the Student Affairs Office. The handbook provides information you need now and throughout the academic year.

An Experimental Evaluation Of Arts Field Trips, Heidi H. Erickson, Angela R. Watson, Jay P. Greene

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

This paper presents results of a multi-visit, longitudinal experiment on the academic and social-emotional effects of arts-based field trips. We randomly assign fourth and fifth grade students to receive arts-based field trips throughout the school year or to serve as a control. Treatment students express greater tolerance for people with different opinions and a desire to consume arts. Additionally, treatment students have fewer behavioral infractions, attend school more frequently, score higher on their end-of-grade exams, and receive higher course grades. Effects are strongest when students enter middle school. We find no effect on students’ desire to participate in the arts, …

The Role Of Student Effort On Performance In Pisa: Revisiting The Gender Gap In Achievement, Lina Anaya, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

International assessments are important to benchmark the quality of education across countries. However, on low-stakes tests, students’ incentives to invest their maximum effort may be minimal. Research stresses that ignoring students’ effort when interpreting results from low-stakes assessments can lead to biased interpretations of test performance across groups of examinees. We use data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a low-stakes test, to analyze the extent to which student effort helps to explain test scores heterogeneity across countries and by gender groups. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for differences in student effort to understand cross-country heterogeneity …

Reasons For The Theory-Practice Gap In Education Administration, Gary Houchens, Ysuf Badavan, Nuray Kisa

Educational Administration, Leadership, and Research Faculty Publications

The theory-practice gap can be defined as "a failure to apply or to relate the concepts, ideas and theories to professional conditions". The aim of this research was to explore the reasons for the theory-practice gap in the field of educational administration. Participants included 380 school administrators working in primary, secondary and high schools and 57 researchers working in different higher education institutions in Ankara. The views are collected through the questionnaire with two different forms, namely Reasons of Theory-Practice Gap in the Field of Educational Administration developed by the researchers. Data were interpreted by percentages, frequency distributions and chi-square …

Measuring The Relationship Between Educational Administrators' And Teacher Leaders' Leadership Styles And School Culture, Kristina K. Garcia

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of my study was to examine the relationship between educational administrators’ and teacher leaders’ leadership styles, and school culture and sought to measure the correlation between the perceived leadership styles of formalized leaders and school culture. The theoretical framework of the study was derived from the Bass and Avolio (1985) Full Range Leadership Model describing the transactional to transformational leadership continuum.

Data for the study were collected using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ-5X Short Form), a survey containing 45 questions on a Likert type scale. The purpose of the survey is to examine the degree to which leadership …

The Value Of Study Abroad Experience In The Labor Market: Findings From A Resume Audit Experiment, Albert Cheng, Laura Florick

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Conventional wisdom and some empirical research suggests that study abroad programs enhance skills and personal growth in ways that translate into success in the labor market. However, this research is limited by its inability to address sources of selection bias that may confound the positive relationship between study abroad experience and labor-market success. We conduct a field experiment to overcome these limitations. Using a resume audit, we estimate the causal relationship between participation in study abroad experience and the likelihood of receiving a callback from a potential employer. We also tested for potential heterogeneities by the location (i.e., Asia versus …

Testing, Teacher Turnover And The Distribution Of Teachers Across Grades And Schools, Dillon Fuchsman, Tim R. Sass, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

Teacher turnover has adverse consequences for student achievement and imposes large financial costs for schools. Some have argued that high-stakes testing may lower teachers’ satisfaction with their jobs and could be a major contributor to teacher attrition. In this paper, we exploit changes in the tested grades and subjects in Georgia to study the effects of eliminating high-stakes testing on teacher turnover and the distribution of teachers across grades and schools. To measure the effect of testing pressures on teacher mobility choices we use a "difference-in-differences" approach, comparing changes in mobility over time in grades/subjects that discontinue testing vis-à-vis grades/subjects …

Simulations In Educational Leadership Internship Programs, Stefanie Shames

Faculty Publications

This brief describes the state of educational leadership internships. Immersing future leaders in virtual reality simulations has the potential to standardize performance expectations and is explored as a method of harnessing the power of technology to provide practice in responding to actual situations while learning to lead.

The Assessment Of Faith And Learning, Beth Green, Albert Cheng, David Smith

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

The Practicing Faith Survey (PFS) is a new assessment tool designed to measure the extent to which schoolchildren connect their faith to learning. This paper reviews the landscape of educational assessment and argues that assessment remains a critical element in the design of Christian teaching and learning. It suggests that unease around the concept of educational measurement leads to limited attempts to assess faith formation in the context of learning. The paper discusses PFS as a way to reframe the design process consistent with distinctively Christian practices of teaching and learning.

Assessing Christian Learning: Vocation, Practices, And Investment, David Smith, Mia Kurkechian, Beth Green, Albert Cheng

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

This paper describes a new initiative co-funded by the Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning at Calvin University and Cardus. The initiative builds upon past Cardus work on assessing Christian school outcomes as well as the Kuyers Institute’s work on Christian pedagogical practices. The project has developed a new online assessment tool to help Christian secondary schools assess the Christian formation that they seek to offer their students and review their own educational practices. This tool, the Practicing Faith Survey, will be piloted in an initial cluster of schools in 2020. It asks students to self-report on their investment …

The Development And Validation Of The Practicing Faith Survey, Albert Cheng, Beth Green, David Smith

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

The Practicing Faith Survey (PFS) is a new assessment tool designed to measure the extent to which schoolchildren connect their faith to learning. PFS measures student engagement with five domains of Christian practice in connection with learning: intellectual, relational, introspective, benevolence, and formational practices. We describe the item-development process and then present evidence for the validity and reliability of the PFS based on a sample of 1,300 fifth- through twelfth-grade students who participated in a pilot of the instrument.

Can Information Widen Socioeconomic Gaps In Postsecondary Aspirations? How College Costs And Returns Affect Parents’ Preferences For Their Children, Albert Cheng, Michael Henderson, Paul E. Peterson, Martin R. West

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

To estimate whether information can close socioeconomic gaps in parents’ aspirations for their child’s postsecondary education, we administer a four-armed survey experiment to a nationally representative sample of U.S. parents. After respondents estimate costs of and returns to further education, we ask whether they prefer that their child pursue a four-year degree, a two-year degree, or no further education. Before this question is posed, the treated are first told:

(1) the net annual costs of pursuing a four-year and two-year degree in their state,

(2) the annual returns to four-year and two-year degrees as compared to no further education in …

Parental Occupational Choice And Children's Entry Into A Stem Field, Albert Cheng, Katherine Kopotic, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

We explore the intergenerational occupational transmission between parents and their children as it pertains to entry into the STEM field. Using the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, we study student’s aspirations to work in a STEM field and eventual STEM education and employment. We show how these patterns change depending on whether the student’s parents work in a STEM field. We find strong effects of parental occupation type on student’s STEM outcomes that are heterogeneous by student gender. High school boys are more likely to aspire to work in STEM if one of their parents do so. By adulthood, both …