Education Policy Commons^™

Systematic Barriers To Success: The Impact Of Redlining On Modern Educational Outcomes In Omaha Public Schools, Sarah Sedivy

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

The systemic denial of mortgages, loans, and other financial services to specific neighborhoods on the basis of race, a practice known as redlining, has continued to have a disproportionately negative effect on communities of color since its inception in the 1930s. The contemporary impacts of redlining can be seen in ongoing disparities in household income, property values, generational wealth, and more. This paper uses a three-pronged approach to extensively examine the history, application, and implications of redlining, with an emphasis on how the practice affects modern educational outcomes in Omaha public schools. The paper analyzes statistical data from the Nebraska …

Charter School Funding Inequities: Rochester, New York, Josh B. Mcgee, Patrick J. Wolf, Larry D. Maloney

School Choice Demonstration Project

Public charter schools are increasingly becoming part of both the broader national conversation about education policy as well as the local urban scene in the United States. The latter is certainly true in Rochester, New York, where charter schools serve more than 18 percent of the students who attend school in the city. Given the important role that charter schools play in educating Rochester’s students, we sought to learn if students who attend the city’s charter schools are funded equitably when compared to students in Rochester City School District (RCSD) schools.

School Choice Options Amid Coronavirus Pandemic In The United States, Austin Armentrout

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

The Coronavirus has changed every aspect of life in the United States and around the world. Although the pandemic’s effects can easily be seen in the fields of healthcare and business, the lasting effects on the field of education are not as clearly visible. The Covid-19 pandemic restrictions have placed an enormous burden on both k-12 public and private educational establishments. The ability of the different types of schools to adapt to these restrictions has contributed to students transferring to private schools.

Education Inequality In The United States: A Wicked Problem With A Wicked Solution, Lincoln Bernard

CMC Senior Theses

A problem wicked in its complexity and detriment; the United States has failed most of its students in its inability to address the unashamedly rampant inequality throughout its public education system. The inequality in American public schools appears evident and boundless, but the causes of that inequality, and especially its solutions, are not as obvious. It is easy to explain away the system’s failures as a product of the United States’ ultra-varied environment, but further investigation reveals much of the systems problems are self-caused, resulting from the United States’ uniquely local approach to supporting its schools. A misguided fear of …

Mccleary V. State And The Washington State Supreme Court's Retention Of Jurisdiction—A Success Story For Washington Public Schools?, Jessica R. Burns

Seattle University Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

Wearing Policy: Uniform Foolishness In The Public School, Jeremy T. Murphy

Education Department Faculty Scholarship

In this personal account, the author recounts navigating a school uniform policy as a new teacher in a large public high school in Baltimore. He loosely situates this telling in the recent history of the public school uniform movement, of which Baltimore was central. Writing in an urgent present tense, the author details the many complexities posed by a rigid policy regulating students’ bodies. Unfolding over the course of a single school year, this article charts a system newcomer’s evolving understanding of the uniform policy, a school, and his students. The article additionally raises broader considerations about policy enforcement in …

Social Traps And Social Trust In A Devastated Urban Community, Michael A. Cowan

New England Journal of Public Policy

The last national survey of adult literacy prior to Hurricane Katrina found 40 percent of New Orleans adults reading at or below the sixth-grade level and another 30 percent at or below the eighth-grade level. During the three years before the hurricane, New Orleanians watched as public meetings of its elected school board became models of incivility, where the politically connected struggled for control of contracts and patronage and self-appointed activists ridiculed school officials, board members, and fellow citizens who were attempting to raise the performance of the city’s public schools out of the ranks of the nation’s worst. During …

Reinventing The New Orleans Public Education System, David Osborne

New England Journal of Public Policy

If we were creating a public education system from scratch, would we organize it as most of our public systems are now organized? Would our classrooms look just as they did before the advent of personal computers and the internet? Would we give teachers lifetime jobs after their second or third years? Would we let schools survive if, year after year, half their students dropped out? Would we send children to school for only eight and a half months a year and six hours a day? Would we assign them to schools by neighborhood, reinforcing racial and economic segregation?

Few …

Promoting Resilience In Economically Disadvantaged Adolescents Through School-Based Expressive Arts Groups, Bailey Knox

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Since 2013, the majority of students served by the public school system in the United States have been considered “low-income” by the federal government. The stressors associated with low socioeconomic status significantly increase risk for social, emotional and behavioral challenges at all age levels, but can be particularly damaging to adolescents coping with heightened stress levels related to the intense multi-dimensional changes that define this developmental period. As the correlation between economic disadvantage and negative socio-emotional and academic outcomes is increasingly evidenced, schools have begun to recognize their responsibility for providing preventative mental health care to high-risk students. Over the …

Measuring The Black-White Dissimilarity Index In Williamsburg And James City County Public High Schools, Sylvia Greer

Undergraduate Economic Review

In 2007, the Williamsburg-James City County (WJCC) School Board chose to open a third high school and redistrict the attendance of their public high schools.

I used a measure of racial unevenness to assess what this decision did to racial segregation in the school district. Using the black-white dissimilarity index, I found that the high schools have had increasing racial segregation from 2000 to 2015, with a significant increase due to the new school.

As the WJCC school board, students, and families move forward, they should be careful to measure and address the levels of segregation in the district.

Inclusive Classrooms: From Access To Engagement

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Challenging The Politics Of The Teacher Accountability Movement: Toward A More Hopeful Educational Future

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

School-Wide Factors In New York State High School Counseling Program Readiness, Dianah Cantres

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

While current accountability regimes in U.S. public education focus on the job performance of individual school professionals, research in industrial/organizational psychology has established the importance of system-wide factors for organizational outcomes. The purpose of this study was to identify school-wide factors that predict guidance program readiness in New York State high schools. This nonexperimental, quantitative study was based on a survey sample of 97 guidance counselors in New York State. Multivariariate analyses of variance showed that two school-wide independent variables-urbanization of school location and counselor-student ratio-predict scores on guidance program readiness, measured using the American School Counselor Association Readiness Survey. …

Practitioner Perceptions Of School Library Advocacy, Elizabeth Burns

STEMPS Faculty Publications

School library advocacy is increasingly important due to decreases in funding and staff. National organizations attempt to engage school librarians in advocacy and have developed resources and tools to assist with this task. However, there is little research examining how practicing school librarians engage in advocacy and how their advocacy efforts impact their library programs. This study explored school librarians’ perceptions of advocacy within the context of their school library setting. Findings suggest school librarians must continue to build relationships with stakeholders and create awareness for the school library position as they define the activities of advocacy unique to their …

What Can Pisa Tell Us About U.S. Education Policy?, Linda Darling-Hammond

New England Journal of Public Policy

Despite years of attention to “reform” in the United States, overall achievement on international assessments such as PISA has not improved during the period from 2000 to 2012. Reforms focused on high-stakes testing attached to sanctions, expansions of charter schools, and a market-based approach to teaching have been unsuccessful in changing outcomes. Meanwhile, growing childhood poverty, along with increasing segregation, income inequality, and disparities in school spending, have expanded the opportunity gap. Lessons from other nations and successful states indicate that systematic government investments in high-need schools along with capacity-building that improves the knowledge and skills of educators and the …

Last Of The Bronx Giants: Mayoral Control, School Reform, And The Fate Of Bronx High Schools, Ben Delikat

African & African American Studies Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Cyberbullying Policy In Public Schools, Alison Humphries

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Many schools and school districts have had direct experience with the negative psychological effects of cyberbullying in their schools, ranging from high profile suicides to lower profile incidents that affect the ability of students to receive an education. Federal, state, and local regulations, as well as mandates from state educational agencies, require schools and school districts to address cyberbullying. Experts advocate that schools play a major role in addressing cyberbullying with anti-bullying policies in general and anti-cyberbullying policies in particular. This study presents case study portraits of two exemplary school districts, with a comparison to similar school districts, suggesting that …

Has The Emergence Of Charter Schools Affected Student Performance In Traditional Public Schools In Shared Markets? Recent Evidence From Public Schools In Ohio, Robert Akers

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

This paper addresses a key issue in the charter school debate, which is whether or not the existence of charter schools in a specific locality causes neighboring traditional public schools to improve their effectiveness. Measuring four student outcomes in Ohio counties where charter school enrollment represents at least five percent of the total public school-age population yielded mixed results. Standardized test scores in math and reading failed to keep pace with state averages but progress was made closing the gap in graduation rates and Performance Index Scores (the PIS is a weighted score given by the Ohio Department of Education …

Pay-For-Performance For Missouri Public Schools: Are We Ready Yet?, Dustin K. Procter

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects

Reform strategies in education have been administered far and wide all throughout history. Ideas such as longer school days, school choice, standardized testing, and changes to teachers’ salaries have all been studied and incorporated. Reform directives in education have been implemented from the national level all the way down to the individual teacher. The goal of these actions has been to improve the success of children in public education by way of increasing student test scores on standardized tests. However, these measures have all exhibited inconsistent results.

This paper focuses on the public education system of the State of Missouri …

Can Allocation By Sortition Resolve The Connecticut Education-Financing Impasse?, A. E. Rodriguez, Lesley Denardis

Political Science & Global Affairs Faculty Publications

It has been over 40 years since Connecticut amended its Constitution to ensure citizens a right to a free public education. Despite the constitutionally prescribed right, dramatic inequities in educational conditions continued to characterize the state's K-12 educational system, especially between suburban/rural white and urban minority school districts. In the 1970s plaintiffs challenged the prevailing mechanism for allocating education funds with a host of court cases that tackled the thorny question of how much financial responsibility the state should assume to equalize the spending disparities between school districts. Prodded by court decisions, many formulas and approaches have been proposed by …

Time To Learn Mathematics In Public And Private Schools : Understanding Differences In Aspects Of The Implemented Curriculim In The Dominican Republic, Renzo Roncagliolo Jones

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

How do educational opportunities influence students' academic achievement in the Dominican Republic? How do students grow, in knowledge and skills, as a result of their passage through the elementary grades? This study aims to explore and understand the differences between the implemented curriculum in public and private schools in 4th, 5th, and 6th grades, specifically with respect to the instructional time allocated by teachers in Mathematics Activities and Mathematics Contents.

Educational Vouchers And Academic Performance, Nicole Kvidera

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Every time our elected representatives are looking at budget, or election time rolls around, or a family is considering moving, the topic of education is in the thoughts and on the minds of many. Over the years there have been many different education reforms and proposed ideas. This presentation will go in-depth into one such educational reform idea. Educational vouchers have been studied in various ways over the years; the data for this study comes from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and gathered over the course of years. The data gathered allows one to compare students in Milwaukee Public Schools and students that …

The Right To Learn Across The Tracks: An Analysis Of School Funding And Integration In Seattle, Houston, Philadelphia, Chicago And Washington, D.C., Erin M. Pollard

Politics Honors Papers

Through examining the levels of integration in public and private schools across the United States, it is clear that the spirit of Brown v. Board of Education was never fulfilled. Students are still learning in an overwhelmingly homogeneous environment. Even in diverse neighborhoods there is a difference: the poor and minority children attend the public schools and the wealthy children attend private school. Thus, the urban public schools remain overwhelmingly minority, while private schools are overwhelmingly white. There is a clear discrepancy between black and white students in terms of size of school and quality of education.

To determine whether …

Predicting Attitude Toward Sex Education In Public Schools, Sarah A. Gibson

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the teen pregnancy rate rose by 3% between 2005 and 2006, presenting the first increase since 1991. These findings are troubling in light of the consequences of teen pregnancy to teen mothers, their children, and society in general. Many commentators suggest that one method of reducing the rate of teen pregnancies is through sex education programs, particularly in the public school system. However, despite the fact that discussions of sex education in public school have been present since the 1920s, polls indicate that there is still a portion of the public that …

A Comparative Policy Analysis On The Effectiveness Of Implementing Student Uniforms In Public School Districts Within The United State From 1993 Through 1998, Desiree Hiestand

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study is to compare and analyze student uniform policies in public school districts within the United States and to ascertain whether or not they are effective. Available information from America's 70 largest school districts is collected and compared to determine if the policies are feasible. Findings indicate there is a broad spectrum of ways in which the districts address student attire and imply that most of the districts are not adapting uniform policies, but are leaving the decision up to individual schools and to the parents. Districts that are adapting policies boast favorable results. Although statistical …

The School Choice Issue: Remarks Made At The U.S. Department Of Education's Regional Strategy Meeting On Choice In Education, Phyllis Mcclure

Trotter Review

The term choice as it is used by the current administration with regard to education is a cosmetic, simplistic response to the failure of American schools. Choice has become a catch-all term for a whole variety of programs, plans, and theories. We should not let this meeting or the Department of Education delude us into believing that parental choice holds the promise for poor and minority children. The term is being used to describe not only what is happening in District 4 [public school district in New York City], but a plethora of ideas based on the free market. I …

The Catholic Church And The Desegregation Of Boston's Public Schools, James E. Glinski

New England Journal of Public Policy

Recent studies of Boston 's desegregation crisis, most notably J. Anthony Lukas's Common Ground, have been highly critical of the Catholic church and its local leader, Humberto Cardinal Medeiros, archbishop of Boston. Their criticisms have been that the church, guided by the ineffective leadership of Cardinal Medeiros in an effort to save its own schools, allowed its schools to become havens for those Bostonians attempting to escape busing. This article is an account of the church's effort to develop a desegregation policy that would allow it to preserve its own schools but not at the expense of court-ordered desegregation …