Education 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 …

A Search For Understanding Why Male, Long Term High School Dropouts Resist Returning To Complete A Secondary Credential, Robert S. Mcgowan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Much of the resistance for returning to education seems to be related to the same reasons students left school to begin with. The reason for dropping out and resisting to return to school may be a result of too much emphasis on academic preparation and too little emphasis on satisfying the perceived needs for preparing a youth for adulthood. Four themes emerged from the field-note based interviews: (1) all students do not learn the same way, (2) there is a need for more participatory learning, (3) learning should be relevant to life as perceived by the student, and (4) there …

A Random Assignment Evaluation Of A College And Career Coaching Program, Sarah Burks Moore

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Razor C.O.A.C.H. (Creating Opportunities for Arkansan’s Career Hopes) is a college and career coaching program for at-risk students in 15 Northwest Arkansas high schools. To perform a random assignment evaluation, at-risk students were targeted to apply to the program, and applicant students were randomly assigned to the program. Academic coaches from the University of Arkansas College of Education and Health Professions utilized a needs-based intervention focusing on pro-academic behaviors, college or technical school preparation, and post-secondary and career exploration. The evaluation included two cohorts of students. Cohort One treatment students received the full intervention throughout the 2012-13 school year, and …

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 …

A Promise Kept In El Dorado? An Evaluation Of The Impact Of A Universal, Place-Based College Scholarship On K-12 Achievement And High School Graduation, Jennifer W. Ash

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The El Dorado Promise is a scholarship program that provides approximately $7,818 per year toward college tuition - for up to five years - to public high school graduates in El Dorado, Arkansas who have attended El Dorado schools since at least the ninth grade. The program was announced in January 2007, and students were able to use the college scholarships in the fall of 2007. School leaders in El Dorado hoped that the enhanced access to college would increase student interest, engagement, and achievement throughout the school district. In this study, I use one-to-one student-level matching to estimate the …