Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Educational Benefits Of Cultural Institutions, Brian Kisida

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A significant portion of the education children receive occurs outside of the traditional classroom and produces outcomes not typically captured by standardized achievement tests. This dissertation is part of an effort to expand the educational venues and outcomes educational researchers rigorously examine. In particular, I present the key results from experimental studies of the effects of school tours to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR., and to the Museum of Discovery in Little Rock, AR.

Chapter 1 focuses on arts exposure and critical thinking outcomes. A problem for the arts’ role in education has been a …

The Effectiveness Of Cash Transfers As A Policy Instrument In K-16 Education, Jonathan Norman Mills

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cash transfers, defined as direct transfers of purchasing power from an institution or individual to another individual, are an increasingly popular policy instrument both abroad and in the United States. This dissertation investigates how two educational interventions utilizing cash transfers affect participating students. The first, the Louisiana Scholarship Program, is a statewide program offering publicly financed scholarships for low income students attending poorly performing public schools to attend K-12 private schools. The second program, the Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship, is a state financed broad-based merit-aid scholarship for students in college within the state of Arkansas. In general, the results presented …

Comparing Schools: From Value Added To Sound Policy, Jeffery Richmond Dean

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the last twenty years, value added measures (VAMs) have proliferated in education research and policy. Whether applied to teachers, schools, or districts, VAMs have attempted to measure the contribution made by a unit of interest toward observed student outcomes, typically test scores in literacy and math. At the same time, a small number of states have developed methods to formally compare schools on those outcomes, and such methods may be used and intended in ways that qualify them as a kind of VAM. My primary interest is to evaluate the properties of a similar schools model I develop in …

The Impact Of Latino Growth On Educational Institutions In Northwest Arkansas From 1990- 2010: Two Decades Of Change In Curriculum Design, Educational Resources And Services For Latino Students, Aíxa García Mont

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the changing demographics nationwide of Latinos moving from urban traditional

settlements sites to non-traditional settlement sites such as Arkansas (Pew Hispanic Research Group, 2013; Smith, 2014; Smith and Furuseth, 2005) Arkansas is now part of the new south or El Nuevo South (Smith and Furuseth, 2005). Although Arkansas is a non-traditional receiving state it is one of the states with the largest growing Latino population (Pew Hispanic Research Group, 2013). Northwest Arkansas in particular has the largest concentration of Latinos to date with the area being host to some of the largest companies in the United States, such as …