Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Leaders' Accounts: A Study Of Transnational Ngos Leadership Views On Accountability, Paloma Raggo

Dissertations - ALL

The increased involvement of non-state actors such as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in The increased involvement of non-state actors such as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in shaping various national and global policy processes raises serious questions about the accountability, authority, and legitimacy of these important yet unelected actors. Although there is no consensus on how to define accountability, broadly the concept refers to the idea that some hold others responsible for their actions according to a set of standards defining proper behavior. However, deciding to whom and to what standards NGOs are accountable and how they are (or should be) held accountable …

What They Left Behind: A Case Study Of Teachers' Experiences With School Improvement At Evergreen Elementary School, Amy Orange

The Qualitative Report

With the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act, an unprecedented amount of pressure has been placed upon schools to increase student achievement. During the 2009-2010 school year, Evergreen Elementary School was in Year Four of school improvement for failing to make Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) in both reading and math. Drawing on observational and interview data from upper elementary school teachers, this paper will explore how striving to make AYP impacted teachers including increased workloads and stress, and how these factors led to teachers leaving the school, with a focus on a single teacher’s experiences.

Breaking The Shackled Silence: Unheard Voices Of Women From Kandhamal, Saumya Uma

Dr. Saumya Uma

Authority Migration And Accountability In Canadian Type Ii Multilevel Governance, Robert W. Waterman

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In advanced industrial democracies, including Canada, elections act as important mechanisms of democratic accountability. However, the migration of public decision-making responsibility away from elected representatives and toward new governance models may alter accountability relationships. As authority is dispersed horizontally to new governance actors that exist beyond the reach of the ballot box, questions of public input and accountability within the democratic governance process arise.

The objectives of the dissertation are: 1) to evaluate the extent to which Canadian provinces have opted to migrate decision-making authority horizontally in response to policy issues and why; and 2) to evaluate the existence and …

The Treatment Of Missing Data When Estimating Student Growth With Pre-Post Educational Accountability Data, Jason P. Kopp

Dissertations, 2014-2019

To ensure program quality and meet accountability mandates, it is becoming increasingly important for educational institutions to show “value-added” for attending students. Value-added is often evidenced by some form of pre-post assessment, where a change in scores on a construct of interest is considered indicative of student growth. Although missing data is a common problem for these pre-post designs, missingness is rarely addressed and cases with missing data are often listwise deleted. The current study examined the mechanism underlying, and bias resulting from, missingness due to posttest nonattendance in a higher-education accountability testing context. Although data were missing for some …

The Triple Bottom Line: Portable Applications And Best Practices For Sustainability In Academic Libraries, Anne M. Casey, Jon E. Cawthorne, Kathleen Delong, Irene M.H. Herold, Adriene Lim

Anne Marie Casey

Triple Bottom Line Accounting (TBLA) refers to a method of measuring the economic, environmental, and community service impacts of an organization rather than the traditional practice of measuring just the financial bottom line. This chapter explores TBLA from a historical point-of-view; offers examples in higher education and discusses the implications for academic libraries. It concludes with ideas for the implementation of TBLA in libraries.

Australian School Funding And Accountability: History Imploding Into The Present, Kathleen M. Rudkin

Kathy Rudkin

This paper examines historical origins of accountability for public funding in the Australian school education system. Understandings of accountability have developed unique to the Australian context, embedding institutions and ideas from a colonial past. It is shown that the funding arrangements used to distribute and account for public education funds are political devices to mediate enduring historic relationships between government and non-government schools, while at the same time masking these relationships in the veiled rhetoric of a broader Australian cultural imperative of egalitarianism. It concludes the current funding and accountability of school education in Australia is a simulacrum of accountability. …

Investigating The Professional Values Of Teachers: The Differential Impact Of Accountability On Teachers' Career Decisions, Cortney Rowland King

Dissertations

Education reform and policy efforts have focused a great deal on teachers over the past decade or more. Reform efforts focused on accountability have altered how teachers are paid, how they spend their time, how they are evaluated, what they are accountable for, and what sort of control they have over their daily tasks. At the same time, teacher attrition continues to rise. This study employed principal component analysis (PCA) on a subset of questions from the National Center for Education Statistics' (NCES) 2007-2008 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) and 2008-2009 Teacher Follow-up Survey (TFS) data. I examined the extent …

Outsourcing Expert Services By State Transportation Departments: A Look At Effects On Cost, Quality, And Changing Employment Levels, Juita-Elena Yusuf, Lenahan O'Connell

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

Privatization has increasingly become a policy option for government agencies struggling to meet rising demands for services but with fewer resources. In the transportation arena, many state departments of transportation (DOTs) have privatized by outsourcing highway functions to the private sector. But the outsourcing of technical and expert services such as those related to the design and construction of highway infrastructure may result in a smaller or less knowledgeable DOT workforce that is unable to perform the necessary contract management to ensure the quality of the work done by contractors. We posit an outsourcing process in which DOTs respond to …

Pursuing An Answer: Bureaucratic And Legal Accountability In Local Law Enforcement Pursuit Policies, Casey Lafrance

Ralph Bunche Journal of Public Affairs

Using qualitative and quantitative data obtained from 30 interviews with local law enforcement managers (12 county sheriffs and 18 municipal police chiefs), this study explores the decision-making processes used by these managers in the context of a pursuit-related accident involving an innocent third party. My findings suggest that: (1) managers most often conduct internal investigations to ensure that their officers’ behavior demonstrated adherence to the agency’s standard operating procedures; (2) managers use multiple mechanisms, including consultations with legal actors and professional peers, to keep their pursuit policies updated with regard to case law; (3) policy restrictiveness shares a positive, but …

The Triple Bottom Line: Portable Applications And Best Practices For Sustainability In Academic Libraries, Anne M. Casey, Jon E. Cawthorne, Kathleen Delong, Irene M.H. Herold, Adriene Lim

Staff Works - Hunt Library

Triple Bottom Line Accounting (TBLA) refers to a method of measuring the economic, environmental, and community service impacts of an organization rather than the traditional practice of measuring just the financial bottom line. This chapter explores TBLA from a historical point-of-view; offers examples in higher education and discusses the implications for academic libraries. It concludes with ideas for the implementation of TBLA in libraries.

Examining The Costs Of Providing An Adequate Education For Michigan's K-12 Public School Students, Sean Haskin Wightman

Wayne State University Dissertations

ABSTRACT

EXAMINING THE COSTS OF PROVIDING AN ADEQUATE EDUCATION

FOR MICHIGAN'S K-12 PUBLIC SCHOOL STUDENTS

by

SEAN WIGHTMAN

February 2014

Advisor: Dr. Michael F. Addonizio

Major: Educational Leadership and Policy Studies

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

Because the Federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which requires students to perform at predefined proficiency levels on state standardized testing instruments, adequate school funding has become arguably the single most important factor influencing the success of children in schools. Because State legislators are the one's primarily responsible for establishing annual budgets for K-12 public education, it is essential they are made aware …

Battered And Betrayed: A Report Of Visit To Muzaffarnagar Camps, Saumya Uma, Hasina Khan

Dr. Saumya Uma