Education Commons^™

Teacher Turnover And Teacher Retirement, Dillon Fuchsman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Teachers have an important impact on students in the short- and long-term, but only teachers’ experience consistently predicts high teacher quality. This dissertation, divided into three chapters, investigates two topics that are related to teachers’ experience levels: turnover and retirement.

The first chapter studies the relationship between voluntary beginning teacher turnover and teachers’ levels of conscientiousness. It uses the data from the Beginning Teacher Longitudinal Study and the effort that teachers put on a survey taken during their first year in the profession as a proxy for teachers’ levels of conscientiousness. The results of this chapter indicate that teachers putting …

Evaluating An Academic Bridge Program Using A Mixed Methods Approach, Leslie May Yingling

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As the demand for college degrees has increased, college enrollment has grown significantly, and economic forces have applied greater pressure on the higher education environment to produce more degrees and better post-graduation outcomes. Many public colleges and universities have felt these pressures distinctly because of their state funding environments and the specific expectations that exist within them. While college aspirations and attendance have broadly improved, achievement gaps persist along cultural, generational, and socioeconomic lines. In an effort to navigate and negotiate institutional goals, public expectations, economic needs, and educational ideals, institutions engage in diverse approaches to recruitment and retention. Academic …

An Evaluation Study: Does The Workforce Investment Act Impact Secondary Student Retention In Selected Mississippi Delta Communities?, Tyrone Price Dooley

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study used a quasi-experimental cross-sectional quantitative model to evaluate the Youth Development Program, a component of the federal Workforce Investment Program. This evaluation study determines whether participation in the Youth Development Program reduced dropout rates among youth in secondary schools in seven school districts in the southeast Arkansas Delta. The impact of the Youth Development Program was examined in the following school districts: Dollarway, Pine Bluff, Watson Chapel, White Hall, Stuttgart, Dewitt, and Star City. The cross-sectional analysis covered the 2006 through 2008 program years. The evaluation model consisted of a comparison group that included 437 youth randomly drawn …