Education Policy Commons^™

Crossing Schools, Language, And Migration Borders: The Experiences Of Latinx And Caribbean Emergent Multilingual Mothers In K-12 Public Schools, Michelle Angelo-Rocha

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Anti-immigrant sentiment and "English-only" ideologies have a significant impact on educational policies, practices, and processes. This includes parental engagement, the quality of education and life opportunities offered to immigrant children, and families’ well-being. The purpose of this study was to examine how Latinx and Caribbean mothers in Florida with various immigration statuses (i.e., undocumented, asylum seekers, refugees, international students, and mixed-status) and often with limited financial resources attempt to steward their children through the U.S. educational system. The research question was: How did emergent multilingual immigrant mothers experience the K-12 education system in Florida? The sub-question was: How did schools …

A Bathroom Break For Teachers: An Institutional Ethnotheatrical Inquiry, Jonathan M. Coker

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the teacher bathroom dilemma, a term I coined to describe teachers not having adequate access to the bathroom during their workdays. While this issue is widely known by those in the profession, only a handful of articles have been written on this topic. The teacher bathroom dilemma is part of a litany of working conditions that have intensified due to the neoliberal turn in education, forcing teachers to perform precarious actions that endanger their physical and psychological health. This dissertation explored how the teacher bathroom dilemma impacted teachers’ work and personal lives. …

The Experiences Of Black And Hispanic Males Retained Through Florida’S Mandatory Third Grade Retention Law, Sophia Mcmorris

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There has been a constant argument that if students cannot read by third grad, then they will have an uphill struggle for the rest of their educational journey. Researchers have provided evidence signaling some truth to this claim and efforts have been established to ensure that all students receive high-quality instruction (Tweed, 2001). Many states have struggled with policies on how to correct this problem, and they have been challenged to answer whether students who cannot read proficiently by the third grade should be promoted, or if they should be pertained and provided with intensive interventions before moving on to …

Implementing Global Citizenship Education Policy: The Bargaining Process Of Ngos In Some European Countries, Massimiliano Tarozzi

Journal of Global Education and Research

This research looked at the growing space that Global Citizenship Education (GCE) is gaining in educational policy worldwide, and at the role Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) played in GCE agenda setting and policy implementation. Based on a comparative policy analysis carried out in 10 European countries, the political agency of NGOs was explored, underlining opportunities, tensions, and challenges, especially in their contribution to national strategies to integrate GCE into national educational systems.

Passion To Purpose: An Autobiographical Narrative Inquiry Into The Development Of The Summer Ace Program, Owen Hooper

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Students transitioning from high school to college are met with many challenges beyond academics including social acclimation, campus culture integration, and holistic wellness. Researchers agree that a successful and purposeful transition for incoming college students requires involvement and engagement with peers to help students adapt and increase their likelihood to graduate (Astin, 1999; Kuh, 2009; Tinto, 1998). This autobiographical narrative inquiry reflects on past experiences in assessing the needs of transitioning students at the University of South Florida and developing a purposeful programming model to support students. I aim to help the reader understand my personal commitment to these programs …

Covid-19: A Developing Crisis For Quantitative Reasoning, Nathan D. Grawe

Numeracy

Assessment data show substantial learning losses resulting from pandemic-era teaching and learning. While all learning domains have been affected, mathematics performance shows particularly large losses among elementary and secondary school students. Advocates for quantitative reasoning in high schools and colleges should anticipate weaker levels of basic numeracy among entering cohorts for a decade to come. As a consequence, the urgency to reform curricula and student support has never been greater.

Charter School Management: Mo Interaction With Educational Inputs And Outcomes, Joseph C. Simmons

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study seeks to understand if the utilization of a management company has any interaction with the socioeconomic status (SES) of students served, the school’s academic performance, the percentage English Language Learners served, the percentage of highly qualified teachers per school site, the amount of student attrition/mobility, or the amount of disciplinary events. Ultimately this study seeks to determine the efficacy and utility of management organization utilization by studying inputs and outputs of Florida charter schools and disaggregating them based on utilization of Charter Management Organizations, Education Management Organizations, or their decision not to utilize a Management Organization. This study …

Waive It Away: Systemic Injustices Against Black And Brown Faculty And Staff Professionals, Past And Present, Marquis B. Holley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates perceptions and experiences of systemic injustices/racism, which is reflected in policy misuse and/or abuse at a large Research One (R1) university located in the Southeastern United States. In particular, the study will provide a lens for viewing the shortcomings regarding hiring practices, with the misuse of the Waiver of Advertisement, which was an initiative aimed at addressing the underrepresentation of Black and Brown professionals in faculty and staff/administrative positions. It is critical to note that the assumption of this project is that white faculty and staff/administrators are the beneficiaries of the waiver. The study will assess this …

Esol Educational Programs For Secondary Slife: Planning For Educational Equity, Terri L. Mossgrove

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education (SLIFE) are a sub-group of English Learners (ELs). Policies related to the language education programming for secondary SLIFE in United States public brick and mortar schools were examined through applied policy research using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) for document analysis. Documents for this analysis included the 1990 Florida Consent Decree, District English Language Learner (ELL) Plans, as well as district English Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) Programs, and a sampling of school based ESOL program information shared on public facing websites. The study focused on current practices in one state related to secondary …

Educational Experiences Of Congolese Refugees In West-Central Florida High Schools, Michaela J. Inks

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since 2016, refugees from the Congo Wars (RFCWs) have been one of the largestpopulations of refugees resettled in the United States. High-school aged RFCW students are, however, dropping out of Florida public high schools are alarmingly high rates. This study uses ethnographic methods such as interviews and participant observation to investigate educational challenges experienced by RFCW youth. This study has three objectives: to learn more about refugees with discontinuous education and the barriers to graduating from public high schools after resettlement; to better understand Tampa bay area programs that serve culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students; and to use ethnographic …

Success And Sustainability Of Sponsored International Development Programs In Education: A Narrative Inquiry, Sara Beth Leikin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In a 2008 working paper published by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the authors lamented that, despite billions of dollars in investment in global education initiatives, access to education had been improved in targeted areas, but the return on investment with regards to learning outcomes was “much less impressive” (Gillies & Jester Quijada, 2008). From 2012-2017, USAID engaged in the Egypt STEM Schools Project (ESSP) along with four partner organizations with the goal of building model science and mathematics public schools that would challenge the educational status quo by providing students with hands-on, constructivist learning and providing an alternative …

Problematizing Florida’S Extended Reading Time Policy: A Critical Investigation Of Place, Demographics, And Curricula, Carrie L. Gentner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate Florida’s extended reading time (ERT) policy as enacted during the 2016-2017 school year. This policy requires elementary schools ranking among the 300 lowest performing in the state, as measured by state assessments, to provide an additional hour of reading instruction beyond the regular school day. Extending upon the work of a pilot study suggesting an overrepresentation of minoritized students within low 300 schools, this study presents the geographic, demographic, and socioeconomic distributions of the ERT mandate for a criterion sample of seven districts. Further, the pilot study indicated an underrepresentation of minoritized …

Making Meaning Of A Whole School Transformation Model: A Policy Ethnography Of A Schools Of Hope Legislation Implementation, Adam Charles Rea

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cheryl High School (CHS) is a geographically large county in Florida that received funding through the state of Florida's "Schools of Hope” grant. The grant’s parameters called on Carter County Schools (CCS) to partner with an external consultant and a research university to help improve teacher and school administrative capacity. The district chose Scientific Pedagogy Services (SPS) and to continue their existing relationship with Tampa Bay State University (TBS). The consultant’s mission was to improve school performance through a unique form of professional development. TBS was charged with developing an on-site program that funded staff efforts to obtain advanced degrees …

Educators' Perceptions Of Students' Academic And Social Growth In A Collegiate High School Program., John Matthew Legg

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to examine educators’ perceptions of high school students’ academic and social growth in a collegiate college program. Collegiate high school programs afford opportunities to minorities and the economically disadvantaged, as well as first-generation college students (Aviles-Reyes, 2007). This research used a qualitative case study framework to collect information about educators’ perceptions of the academic and social integration of students in a collegiate college program. Data were collected in phases—educator focus group interviews and individual interviews—and subsequently coded and reviewed using thematic comparative analysis. The guiding question was as follows: What are educators’ perceptions of …

Disciplinary D/Discourses: Navigating And Negotiating Disciplinary Paradigms, Michael R. P. Bailey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the past twenty-five years, in the United States, zero-tolerance policies that were initially implemented to deter gun violence and drugs in schools have expanded to include a wide range of discretionary offenses such as disrespect and defiance. As a result, many students have been denied access to educational opportunities, been excluded from their peers, and had their lives irrevocably changed due to systemic sanctioning of exclusionary practices. Educators, who are caught between competing societal demands, job expectations, and ethical beliefs about their profession are tasked with balancing the instructional and interactional components of their work in an attempt to …

Reducing Underrepresentation: Promising Practices In Florida, Catherine A. Mullins

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this study, I examined representation rates of gifted students from diverse backgrounds in Florida county school districts. Florida state legislation governing gifted student education allows for alternative identification methods to be used for students from underrepresented groups if plans for such identification are approved by the Florida Department of Education; however, this option, informally referred to as “Plan B” after subsection B of the legislation governing gifted services, is not a requirement that districts must follow. Consequently, there are large differences in the ways districts identify underrepresented students for gifted services. State legislation identifies underrepresented populations as students with …

Inside The Work Of A Rookie Principal Coach: Tackling Equity In Disciplinary Practices, Olayinka A. Alege

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Hillsborough County Public Schools embarked on an ambitious goal to improve the highest-need schools by restructuring how the district supports schools and their leaders in July 2018. As part of this effort, the superintendent reduced the span of control and assigned principal coaches to support principals in a more intentional way. The purpose of this study was to explore how a principal coach engages a principal in examining inequities in disciplinary practices and how the principal coach provides the supports to prompt and sustain the principal’s efforts to reduce the disproportionate number of students of color being suspended from school. …

Leadership Advocacy, Ethical Negotiations, And Resignations To High-Stakes Assessment: A Pilgrimage, Jennifer Galbraith Canady

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of my study is to explore the stories of the ethical tensions K-12 educational administrators navigate when implementing high-stakes assessment policy in a culture of measurement during testing season. Some educational leaders, in particular K-12 school and district administrators, struggle with the tensions existing between their own personal belief systems, organizational dilemmas, and the requirements of enacting high-stakes assessment policies. Using narrative inquiry as method, I collected and analyzed four school administrators selected who expressed frustration with enacting high-stakes assessment policies. The participants include a middle principal, a middle school assistant principal, a high school assistant principal, and …

One University’S Response To Sections 504 And 508 Of The Rehabilitation Act: A Descriptive Case Study Of Policy Design, Kimberly F. Carter

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pioneering legislation such as Sections 504 and 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1997, and the Assistive Technology Act of 1998 have increased attention to the needs of individuals with disabilities. These regulations require that public programs and services are accessible to people with disabilities (Griffin, 2004).

This descriptive case study examines policy design to conform with Sections 504 and 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 at a public research university through the lens of Bolman and Deal’s four frames of organizational analysis. These …

Money Matters: An Examination Of Special Education Characteristics In Efficient And Inefficient Texas School Districts, Pakethia Harris

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study veers from the traditional perspective of examining school efficiency or productivity as a cost minimizing process, in which educational inputs are minimized to achieve maximum outputs (student performance). Instead, it provides a critical examination of the dominant, cost minimizing assumption associated with efficiency models and suggest schools instead behave similarly to budget maximizers as presented in Niskanen’s (1971) seminal budget maximizing framework. The study examines the relationship between total student expenditures and subsequent student outcomes, establishing the relative efficiency of Texas school districts using stochastic frontier analysis within a budget-maximizing framework. Additionally, the study investigates how special education …

Review Of Demographics And The Demand For Higher Education, By Nathan Grawe (2018), Michael T. Catalano

Numeracy

Nathan D. Grawe. 2018. Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press). 175 pp. ISBN 9781421424132.

Grawe introduces the Higher Education Demand Index (HEDI), a new probabilistic model designed to produce more nuanced forecasts of college attendance in the US than one-dimensional predictions based on the declining number of 18 year-olds. Using HEDI, Grawe confirms that nationwide attendance at both 2-year and 4-year schools is likely to decline over the next decade, but that the nature of this decline will vary by type of institution, geography, race and ethnicity, and parental income and education levels; some …

White Teachers’ Experiences Of Working With Black Students Within A Response To Intervention Framework: The Role Of Racialized Deficit Thinking, Sujay Sabnis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Response to Intervention (RTI) is a data-based decision-making framework of service delivery that has the potential to improve educational outcomes for all students. Preliminary data appear to bolster this claim. However, it is as yet unclear whether RTI will be able to close the gap in educational outcomes that exists between students of different racial groups. Drawing on theories such as culture of policy (Stein, 2004) and deficit thinking (Valencia, 2010), this study explored the experiences of six White elementary teachers using RTI while working with Black students receiving Tier 2 or Tier 3 instructional supports. Using theoretically driven constant-comparative …

What's In A Name? A Critical Review Of Definitions Of Quantitative Literacy, Numeracy, And Quantitative Reasoning, Gizem Karaali, Edwin H. Villafane Hernandez, Jeremy A. Taylor

Numeracy

This article aims to bring together various threads in the eclectic literature that make up the scholarship around the theme of Quantitative Literacy. In investigating the meanings of terms like "quantitative literacy," "quantitative reasoning," and "numeracy," we seek common ground, common themes, common goals and aspirations of a community of practitioners. A decade ago, these terms were relatively new in the public sphere; today policy makers and accrediting agencies are routinely inserting them into general education conversations. Having good, representative, and perhaps even compact and easily digestible definitions of these terms might come in handy in public relations contexts as …

Principal Experiences In A School Consolidation, Claudius Bassey Effiom

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

Educational leaders must operate in a complex political world that places a premium on skills and strategies involving consensus building, negotiations, and reciprocity. This dissertation is about the leadership struggles and tensions inherent in a school consolidation process. The principals highlighted in this study represent the leader of a metropolitan school which is closed and consolidated with another school in the same school district. The school district employs a defined and planned process to address many issues inherent in a school consolidation like guaranteed placement of displaced teachers in schools of their choice.

I examined the experiences of three …

Assessing Competing Demands And Charting A Course: A Phenomenological Study Of Advanced Placement U.S. History Teachers' Decision Making And Course Planning, Kerry Dean Poole

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Florida has experienced some of the greatest growth of Advanced Placement (AP) programs in recent years and student scores on the AP exams have evolved into a highly significant metric in evaluating student proficiency and teacher and school effectiveness. Despite this growth, it is not well known how AP teachers make decisions about the content they teach, what learning activities they select, how much the AP exam influences their decision making, how they modify learning opportunities for diverse learners, and how they prepare their students for the College Board AP exam. This interpretive, phenomenological study examines the lived experiences of …

Medication Monitoring In The Schools: An Investigation Of Current Practices Of Florida School Psychologists, Jason Hangauer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Prevalence rates of youth prescribed psychotropic medications have risen dramatically over the past decade. Many of these medications are prescribed to treat symptoms of a disorder that occur in the school setting. Some medications have negative side effects that can inhibit academic and social performance. School psychologists have been identified as professionals who are equipped to assist in monitoring both the beneficial and negative effects of medications for youth attending school. This study investigated the practices, training, types of disorders for which medication monitoring occurs, facilitators, and barriers to school psychologists engaging in medication monitoring in the schools. Survey data …

Examining Teacher Identity And Prospective Efficacy Beliefs Among Students Enrolled In A Precollegiate Urban Teaching Academy (Uta), Marsha Simon

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Teacher recruitment and retention challenges facing urban school contexts provided the impetus for this study. High percentages of historically marginalized students, plagued by high poverty rates and low academic performance, as well as substandard facilities and inadequate material resources, serve as causative factors inhibiting recruitment and retention of credentialed teachers in urban schools (Education Commission of the States [ECS], 1999; Guarino et al., 2006; Horng, 2009; USDOE, 2003; 2004; Wirt et al, 2004). Schools and districts attempt to meet chronic teacher shortages in hard-to-staff urban schools by creating innovative teacher preparation schemes, such as the Urban Teaching Academy (UTA). This …

Sensitivity Of Value Added School Effect Estimates To Different Model Specifications And Outcome Measures, Bryce L. Pride

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) Model has been used to make many high-stakes decisions concerning schools, though it does not provide a complete assessment of student academic achievement and school effectiveness. To provide a clearer perspective, many states have implemented various Growth and Value Added Models, in addition to AYP. The purpose of this study was to examine two Value Added Model specifications, the Gain Score Model and the Layered Effects Model, to understand similarities and differences in school effect results. Specifically, this study correlated value added school effect estimates, which were derived from two model specifications and two outcome …

Resistance Meets Spirituality In Academia: "I Prayed On It!", Vonzell Agosto, Zorka Karanxha

Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Faculty Publications

We describe the lived experiences of a Black Woman educational leader who has studied and worked in the academy and in the field of K-12 education. This partial life history, excavated through the tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT), illuminates the social construction of race and the pervasiveness and permanence of racism. We determined through a series of interviews that the participant's resilient resistance is guided by critical spirituality so that circumstances and people who challenge her also confront this source of power. Her lived experience, from student to faculty member, conveys the challenges and opportunities she faces and adds …

The Relationship Between Systems-Change Coaching And Levels Of Implementation And Fidelity Of Problem-Solving/Response To Intervention (Ps/Rti), Amanda March

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the extent to which coaching facilitates the successful implementation of the Problem-Solving/Response to Intervention (PS/RtI) model in schools, as well as the extent to which coaching enhances the fidelity of implementation of PS/RtI practices in those schools. Data from 34 schools in seven districts participating in three years of a statewide initiative to implement PS/RtI practices with assistance of a PS/RtI coach were used to evaluate the relationship between coaching activities and levels of implementation and integrity outcomes. Data on various coaching-related factors (i.e., perceived coaching quality, coach continuity, frequency and duration of training and technical assistance), …