Education Commons^™

Life Beyond The Classroom: The Transition To Retirement By Long-Serving Educators, Catherine Renaud

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Using a qualitative, multiple case study research approach, the personal stories of eight K-12 educators who retired within the past six years were gathered and analyzed. The goal of the study was to understand how educators struggle, or do not struggle, with the life changing event of bringing closure to a career after spending decades in the classroom.

Upon analysis of the data, three key themes were identified:

1. The individuals had control over the timing of their retirement; all participants knew it was the right time to make the transition out of the classroom.

2. Each person is happy …

A Case Study Of The Interactions Amongst The Elements Of An Elementary Teacher's Educational Belief System, Goals, Enactment, And Reflection, Phillip Pittman

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Contemporary educational reform has attempted to improve teaching quality and raise student achievement through high-stakes teacher evaluation and through the introduction of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). However, to advance teaching and learning, instructional leaders must shift their focus from teacher evaluation and the CCSS themselves to how teachers attempt to meet the CCSS in their classrooms through decisions about curriculum, instruction, and assessment and why they make those decisions. Therefore, the purpose of this qualitative study is to develop a deep understanding about the elements of, and interactions between, a fifth grade teacher’s educational belief system (consisting of …

A Study Of The Factors Involved And The Strategies Employed By Michigan School Districts In Developing Deficit Elimination Plans, Sue C. Carnell

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to study the factors that contribute to financial deficits, examine the strategies used to reduce deficits, and explore the barriers that may prohibit the reduction of financial deficits. As part of legislative mandates, school superintendents are faced with creating a deficit elimination plan to reduce the financial deficits facing their districts. In 2013, the State of Michigan began to shut down financially challenged districts for the first time. School districts labeled as “deficit districts” struggled to remove the designation assigned to them. Fifty-eight traditional Michigan public school districts with financial deficits between school years …

Assessing Technical Inefficiency In Private, Not-For-Profit, Bachelor's And Master's Universities In The United States Using Stochastic Frontier Estimation, James L. Refenes

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This research explored the technical inefficiency of 813 private, not-for-profit, four-year, bachelor’s and master’s colleges and universities in the U.S. using data from 2006 to 2011. The goal of the study was to describe and explain the level of technical inefficiency in this group of institutions that can be identified using a stochastic frontier estimation (SFE) method and to evaluate the applicability of SFE to higher education. Categories of expenditures were utilized to create a production frontier against which the inefficiency of individual institutions to produce degreed students was measured. The analysis using panel data showed this sector of higher …

A Case Study Of The Design And Implementation Of A New Teacher Evaluation System In A Northern Michigan School District, Scott Moore

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to identify how one district attempted to meet the need for greater accountability in the teacher evaluation process as mandated by law and to describe strategies that were employed by the district to ensure the integration of student achievement data. This research highlighted how a teacher evaluation instrument evolved over a 5-year period from 2011 to the end of the 2014–2015 school year. This qualitative, single-case study comprised examination of interview responses of 17 stakeholders including a former superintendent, technology director, two board of education members, three former principals, and ten teacher-leaders. Open-ended interview …