Education Policy Commons^™

Reforming Illinois K-12 Public Education Through A Four-Pronged Approach, Seth Brooks

Senior Honors Theses

Public education in the United States has produced lackluster results in the past decades. Various forms of school choice have emerged in recent years to combat the poor results seen in the public education system, but these private schools are financially unattainable for many Americans. Bureaucratic overload, city corruption, inequities in funding, and frequent teachers’ strikes have certainly contributed to the destitute state of Illinois’ public education. In this thesis, the attainability of fiscal relief for Illinois families who choose alternative education and the necessity of the state in permitting such alternatives is discussed.

Current school choice policies in the …

An Examination Of Urban School Governance Reform In Detroit Public Schools, 1999-2014, Shaun Michael Black

Wayne State University Dissertations

In 1983, the A Nation at Risk report stated that our educational institutions in the United States and especially in urban areas were not meeting the educational needs of our students. Since A Nation at Risk, elected school boards in urban areas were under fire from the media, parents, other civic and community leaders, and voters due to fiscal irresponsibility and poor student achievement. In selected urban cities across the nation, elected school boards were replaced in favor of mayoral control (e.g., Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington DC) and appointed school boards (Wong et al., …

Construction And Validation Of A Holistic Education School Evaluation Tool Using Montessori Erdkinder Principles, Anthony Philip Setari

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

The purpose of this study was to construct a holistic education school evaluation tool using Montessori Erdkinder principles, and begin the validation process of examining the proposed tool. This study addresses a vital need in the holistic education community for a school evaluation tool. The tool construction process included using Erdkinder literature to justify the development of each item through the use of an item matrix, ultimately leading to the development of the 23 item formative Montessori Erdkinder School Evaluation Survey. The validation process included a series of three Rasch Rating Scale Model analyses with data from a sample school. …