Education Policy Commons^™

Richmond Handbook: The Future Of Youth Engagement In The Planning & Design Sector Of Richmond, Virginia, Chanté C. Holt

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

Storefront for Community Design is a non-profit organization in Richmond, Virginia that works to make design programs and resources accessible to all. While honoring this commitment, the organization also devotes resources to educating K-12 students on urban planning processes in the City of Richmond. Using this as a framework, the research creates parameters that guide the best practices for stakeholders such as the client Storefront for Community Design who are invested in producing urban planning educational material and programming. To effectively create recommendations for this client, the professional plan establishes the current state of urban planning education in the Richmond, …

Challenges In Financial Prosperity: Cutback Management And Bounded Rationality In New York State School Districts, Moontae Hwang

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The Great Recession posed unexpected fiscal challenges for public sector entities, particularly small and mid-sized organizations such as school districts, which operate with limited revenue flexibility and constrained managerial capacity. While the recession was a macroeconomic event, which could be an exogenous shock to state and local governments beyond their control, state and local policy responses played a critical role in shaping its long-term effects on local public services. Scholars have emphasized the importance of long-term perspectives among policymakers and public managers to sustain the quality of public services during crises. However, the heightened uncertainty of the recession also constrained …

What Makes A Teacher A Teacher: A Philosophical Approach Aligned With Plato, Sojung Kim Hinterkopf

Dissertations

This thesis investigates how contemporary U.S. educational accountability policies—namely No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top (RttT)—redefine the role of teachers through a compliance-oriented lens. Moving beyond logistical and emotional impacts, this study applies Plato’s Allegory of the Cave as a philosophical framework to uncover the intellectual and ethical constraints imposed on educators. Through qualitative document analysis of federal policy texts, three metaphorical themes—shackles, shadows, and enlightenment—emerged to represent how teachers are bound by data-driven mandates, compelled to perform surface-level success, and yet still retain the potential to guide students toward deeper intellectual engagement. The findings reveal …

Policy Paper On Incorporating Migrant Children In A Strengthened Public Education System, Amira Abdelaziz, Dina Ibrahim, Dunia Zaatar

Papers, Posters, and Presentations

A transit, destination, and sending country, Egypt generously hosts more than one million refugees and asylum seekers (UNHCR, 2025), in addition to several migrants estimated at nine million in 2022 (IOM, 2022). Against this backdrop, the country is currently facing growing challenges in ensuring access to quality, inclusive, and equitable primary education for migrant and refugee children, particularly following the arrival of Sudanese nationals since April 2023, when the conflict in Sudan erupted. Egypt’s new Asylum Law No. 164 of 2024 grants de jure access to basic education for all refugee children until the age of 14, yet the law …

Effects Of Actualized Language Policy On Ukrainian Stability, 1989-2022, Dawn Hersey

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This dissertation seeks to generate a new perspective of the complicated relationship between actualized policy and stability through looking at Ukraine’s language policies and stability in a mixed manner approach that includes both primary and secondary sources. Russia justified its irridentist activities through claiming to protect Russian nationals within Ukraine’s borders: language policies within Ukraine appear to be a trigger for Russian antagonism. Neither Russian irridentism nor Ukrainian nationalism are being considered as right or wrong in this dissertation: the intent is to highlight trends, patterns, and perceptions in alignment with Ukrainian language policy. This dissertation does not present a …

Nh Ece Research Consortium 2024 Activity Timeline, Jess Carson, Evan England

New Hampshire Early Care and Education Research Consortium

The New Hampshire Early Care and Education (NH ECE) Research Consortium is a network of researchers and research users committed to strengthening the state's ECE landscape through the use of data. Discover what the Consortium accomplished during its first full year in this 2024 Activity Timeline.

The Effects Of Chronic Absenteeism On Average Daily Attendance Funding In Humboldt County Elementary Schools, Corabelle A. Esmailian

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Chronic absenteeism is linked to poor academic performance and lower social-emotional skills, both of which can have long-term effects on students and their communities. The California Department of Education uses average daily attendance (ADA) to determine most of the funding that public schools receive. When a student is absent, their school loses a portion of potential funding for that day. This study explores chronic absenteeism’s impact on the funding of Humboldt County’s elementary schools with a sequential exploratory research strategy and critical systems lens. Interviews with elementary administrators were conducted using a phenomenological approach to understand how this affects their …

The Continuing, Resistance Popularity Of Critical Race Theory- Informed Pedagogy, Kaavonia Hinton, Karen Chandler

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

The article focuses on the ongoing commitment of educators to incorporate critical race theory (CRT)–informed pedagogy in English classrooms despite legislative efforts to suppress it. Topics include the historical and political context of anti-CRT policies, the personal and professional responses of educators to these restrictions, and student-centered strategies used to navigate and resist such limitations in meaningful and legally cautious ways.

Techno-Pedagogic Discourse And The Online Learning Assetization Regime, David F. Ayers

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

Research on academic capitalism has critiqued the commodification of knowledge, but it has not critiqued assetization. The difference between commodification and assetization is more than a technical distinction. Extracting value from assets requires a different regime of coordination than what is required for extracting value from commodities. Through an analysis of 132 texts related to the online course review process at 16 research universities in the USA, I propose and problematize an online learning assetization regime which transforms discipline-based knowledge into digital content that can be owned, controlled, and managed as a university asset. This process potentially alienates faculty from …

Debt Decisions: The Effects Of Paying For College In The United States With Student Loans, Kim E. Bullington, David J. Thomas, Minghui Hou, William L. Nuckols, Dennis E. Gregory, Joshua L. Howell, Kaycee L. Bills, Amy-Leah Joaquim

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

Student loans have increasingly become a burden on individuals. This qualitative analysis explores how structural inequities and financial literacy gaps influence U.S. student loan borrowers’ decisions to finance postsecondary education. The study highlights racial and economic disparities examining participants’ reflections on debt aversion and systemic barriers to equitable access. We asked why participants took out Federal student loans, asked about their decision processes when taking on debt, whether participants took any action to reduce accumulated debt, and if they’d made any discoveries about their decisions to take on student loan debt. After coding and a thematic analysis, five themes and …

A Case Of Interpretive Assistance And School Choice Counseling, Jason E. Saltmarsh

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

Drawing on notions of social capital, insider knowledge embedded in "the grapevine", and the "labor of choice", this study examines interpretive assistance in the context of families' K-12 school decisions. It uses a qualitative case study of NGO navigator services, which provide school choice counselling primarily to low-income families of colour, to develop theoretical propositions related to the characteristics and potential benefits of interpretive assistance. As some researchers and conservative-leaning think tanks call for investing in navigator services, it is important to deepen our understanding of "high-touch" informational supports aimed at mitigating demand-side inequities in school choice.

Knowledge Diffusion In Networks Of Artificial Learners, Ehsan Beikihassan

Dissertations

The dissertation draws inspiration from the topic of peer learning in the social sciences and the study of information dissemination and knowledge diffusion in network science. In particular, it introduces and studies a setting involving a population or network of artificial learners, with the objective of optimizing aggregate performance measures under constraints on training resources. In this context, natural knowledge diffusion processes in networks of interacting artificial learners are studied. The term "natural" refers to processes that emulate human peer learning, where the internal state and learning processes of students remain largely opaque, and the main degree of freedom lies …

Develop New Quality Science-Communicative Forces To Support New Quality Productive Forces, Jiarui Wu

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

The importance of science communication has been elevated to an unprecedented height in China, as an important part of the national innovation system, and as important as scientific and technological innovation. Scientific and technological innovation is the core driving force for the development of new quality productive forces, and it is obvious that science communication plays an equally important role in promoting the development of new quality productive forces. This kind of role of science communication is named as new quality science-communication forces, which is mainly reflected in four aspects: creating an ecological environment conducive to innovation; advancing cutting-edge new …

Impact Of Safety Training On Employee's Perceptions Of Organizational Safety Culture, Brooke Reid-Graves

Dissertations

Workplace safety and well-being are vital for all workers, regardless of their profession (Young et al., 2022). Studies show that providing employees with training focused on recognizing hazards and implementing safety practices is essential for reducing occupational risks (Namian et al., 2020; Rose & Rae, 2017). Research underscores the importance of fostering a positive organizational safety culture for risk reduction (Berry et al., 2020; Downey, 2019). Understanding the impact of safety training on shaping an organization’s safety culture is key to promoting safe working environments (Mahjoub, 2013).

This study utilized the perspectives of high school staff regarding safety training and …

Addressing The Cliff-Effect Problem In Massachusetts Legislation To Expand Affordable Quality Child Care And Early Education: Policy Brief #1, Randy Albelda, Alan Clayton-Matthews, Anne Douglass, Christa M. Kelleher, Songtian Zeng, Laurie Nsiah-Jefferson

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

The goal of this brief is to explain the cliff effects that currently exist in Massachusetts Senate Bill 2707 and a method for mitigating the abrupt cliffs. Senate Bill 2707 is a slightly amended version of Senate Bill 301 filed in early 2023 and expanding access to childcare financial assistance is a core aim of the legislation. The key eligibility and financial assistance parameters remain the same. It is referred to here and accompanying tables and figures by its original number—Senate Bill 301—for easy tracking. The effects analyzed in this brief are based on the Early Education Cost and Usage …

School Personnel Perceptions Of Working In A Public School District Under State Authority, Dennis Ray Felton Jr.

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study investigates the perceptions of teachers and principals within a K-12 public school district in the state of Arkansas currently operating under state authority. The Bolman and Deal's Four Frame Model is used in this study as a guiding framework. The insights of this study not only contribute to the academic discourse on state intervention in education but also offer practical implications for policymakers and school stakeholders. The research seeks to answer two primary questions: 1) How do teachers and principals perceive the working conditions in a school district under state authority? 2) What are the teachers and …

When Language Policy And Planning Is A Missed Opportunity: Lessons Learned From A Proposed But Not Implemented Dual Language Bilingual Education Program, Jessica Mitchell-Mccollough

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

When populations undergo demographic shift, as in Nebraska in recent decades, educational practices can establish or reinforce hegemonic practices through denial or legitimization of language, culture, and identity, or they can be counterhegemonic. The demographic changes in Nebraska have been defined by a growth in Latinx populations (Morales, et al., in press). As a result, there have been various efforts to explore dynamic shifts in educational programs offered to support students’ unique language acquisition needs, including growth in dual language bilingual education (DLBE). However, not all communities have responded uniformly. During a recent strategic planning process Lincoln Public Schools (LPS) …

Critical Analysis Of Archival Data: The Alvarado V. Episd Case, Mauro Alfredo Hinojosa

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This research analyses the Alvarado vs. El Paso Independent School District legal files, housed at the Sonnichsen Special Collections Department, The University of Texas at El Paso Library. This dissertation explored the following questions: Research question 1 (RQ1): What are the political and social-cultural contexts of the Alvarado case based on the Archives?; and Research Question 2 (RQ2): impact on school education, to include themes in policy and leadership. A qualitative research approach framed through Latino Critical Race Theory exposes how the U.S. education system has historically reinforced White perspectives and marginalized Latino groups, specifically focusing on Mexican-American students in …

Investigating A Study Abroad Program As A Reflective Development Of Intercultural Competence For Students In A Hispanic-Serving University, Akindele Ogunleye

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation project investigates the broad problem of evaluation and effectiveness that have diminished the opportunities that study abroad can potentially offer as part of higher education in the U.S. The research aim was to develop a reflective plan of implementing study abroad to achieve the transformation of intercultural competence of students of higher education in a Hispanic university. The research questions were deduced from a combination of views from literature since the 1920s affirming study abroad as elitist endeavor, female, liberal arts and academically weak. Using a quantitative data methodology, the study were collected data from students who participated …

How White Supremacy Travels Through Time: Anti-Literacy Laws, Dei Bans, And The Issue Of Black Self-Determination In Public Health., Nicole V. Ford

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation used a qualitative policy content analysis (PCA) of historical anti-literacy laws and modern DEI bans to answer two research questions: What is the connection between anti-literacy laws and DEI bans? How do anti-literacy laws and DEI bans create an environment that maintains white supremacy? A PCA exercise informed the analysis of historical anti-literacy laws in South Carolina (1834), Georgia (1829), North Carolina (1830), Louisiana (1830), Virginia (1831), and Alabama (1833) and modern DEI bans in Texas (2023), Alabama (2024), and Florida (2023) to find the connection between the laws. Findings from this dissertation illustrate how white supremacy operates …