Education Commons^™

Minority Middle And High School Students' Interest In Science: An Exploration Of Teachers' Perceptions, Caroline Makere

Dissertations

A high school teacher conducted a study about minority middle and high school students’ interest in science. The problem was to find out why African American and Hispanic students were showing very little interest in science. The researcher used four middle school science teachers and nine high school science teachers, all from inner city schools in a big city of the Midwest United States except for one middle school teacher from a nearby suburb. The participants answered a survey questionnaire followed with a face-to-face recorded interview. The findings of the study confirmed that students showed little interest in science due …

The Story In The Standards: Creating Counter-Narratives In The Common Core State Standards, Jarret Alexander Smith

Dissertations

The research question guiding this study is: How might educators create counter-narratives, particularly related to the diversity of texts, experiences and knowledge bases represented in the CCSS? The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy on the engagement in literacy acquisition of African American students in middle and high school. The basic framework for this study is situated within and informed by Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP). The study focuses on creating counter-narratives for African American students in spite of the silence of the Common Core State Standards on cultural …

Trends In Mathematics Enrollment And Achievement Gap In St. Louis Area Public High Schools, 2000 - 2014., Victoria V. Shearing

Dissertations

Long before the “No Child Left Behind”, Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, or Brown vs. Board of Education, students of color have dreamed and struggled for equity in education. The issue of equal access to high quality of education highlighted in the NCLB focused public attention on the racial achievement gap. The present study examined mathematics enrollment and achievement trends among St. Louis area public high school students from 2000 to 2014 The study compared the results among racial groups and by gender rather than using a traditional Black-White comparison. Several frameworks contributed to the development of the …

A Phenomenological Approach Examining The Completion Of Latino High School Students Through The Lenses Of Critical Race Theory, Anna M. Rangel-Clawson

Dissertations

Latino students represent 24% of the American student population (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2002, 2013). Dropout rates for Latino students living in severe poverty are twice the dropout rate of other Americans at the same income level (National Center Educational Statistics, 2002, 2013). The strongest factor that influenced those who choose to drop out seems to be related to a family’s socioeconomic status (Fry & Taylor, 2013; Rumberger & Lim, 2008; Swanson, 2004).

This study sought to elicit the voices of Latino students who successfully completed high school in a school district with significantly lower graduation rates for Latinos …