Education Policy Commons^™

School Related Criminal Acts, Interpersonal Problems, And Classroom Behaviors As A Function Of The Proportion Of Black Students And Black Teachers, Leanne Zaire

Clinical Psychology Dissertations

This study’s purpose was to investigate school-level behavioral outcomes in relation to the proportion of Black teachers and students in U.S. schools. Negative school outcome and academic achievement gaps are well-documented. However, many of these studies utilized small, localized populations; my research used national data and focused on the problem behaviors in school. Drawing from Critical Race Theory, I hypothesized that a greater proportion of Black teachers would reduce school student problems and negative behaviors (e.g., student verbal abuse of teachers, widespread disorder in classrooms). After receiving a restricted-use license, I utilized data from 25,818 schools from the National Teacher …

Addressing Teacher Attrition Through Trauma-Informed Practices In The Workplace, Amy Pahl, Amy L. Pahl

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

Teacher attrition and turnover have been widely studied to understand the reason for the number of teachers moving each year or leaving the profession altogether. Researchers have attempted to understand the contributing factors that lead to teacher movement and attrition, yet a knowledge gap exists between understanding the problem and finding solutions. The aim of this study was to investigate how implementing trauma-informed practices in the workplace impacts teacher mobility and attrition. A grounded theory approach was taken, which data from interviews to investigate the problem. Teachers who have left the profession or have moved from a position were interviewed …

Experimental Evidence On Consumption, Saving, And Family Formation Responses To Student Debt Forgiveness, Jason Jabarri, Stephen Roll, Mathieu Despard, Leah Hamilton

Social Policy Institute Research

As policy-makers grapple with whether or not to forgive student debt, for who, and how much, it is important to explore how student debt forgiveness would relate to intended household decisions and behaviors. We conducted a survey experiment that asked participants with student debt to imagine a scenario in which the federal government forgave a certain amount of student debt. We then had these participants report on how this would affect their decisions and behaviors. 1,053 participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions that offered $5,000, $10,000, $20,000, and complete debt forgiveness. Our results indicate that student debt …

All The Way Up: A Qualitative Examination Of African American Male Educational Resilience In Higher Education, Junae Diamond Weathersby

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

The educational resilience of African American males has been extensively studied from elementary, high school, and undergraduate perspectives. Topics such as the “School to Prison Pipeline,” which characterizes the educational and life trajectories of African American males in America with regards to criminalization and mass incarceration, dominant resilience data. However, there are not nearly as many studies that specifically focus on the educational resilience of African American males who persist to earn doctoral degrees. Research continues to substantiate the fact that African American men earn doctoral degrees at exceptionally disproportionate rates in comparison to Caucasian men. The purpose of this …

A Convenient Rhetoric Or Substantial Change Of Teacher Racial Diversity? A Text Mining Analysis Of Federal, State, And District Documents, Sing Hui Lee, Briana Keith, Yasmine Bey, Yinying Wang, Xiulong Yang, Xiang Li, Jonathan Shihao Ji

Educational Policy Studies Faculty Publications

Teacher racial diversity has been widely considered important in education. However, it remains unclear to what extent and how teacher racial diversity has been addressed at the federal, state, and district levels. In this study, we employed text mining to collect and analyze over three million documents at the federal, state, and district levels. We found that while students of color had disproportionately less access to racially diverse teachers, the documents under our analysis insufficiently discussed the recruitment and retention of racially diverse teachers. Our findings also reveal that education agencies at the federal, state, and district levels paid scant …

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.

When The Elite Control Public Education: A Critical Inquiry On Charter Schools, Marisela Palafox

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis takes a critical look into charter schools in New York City. Through this thesis, I want to answer questions regarding who benefits from the current charter school model in NYC and why this current state of schooling is detrimental to marginalized children. As a former NYC public school student, I know first-hand that good intentions by white educators (and thus white systems) do not always result in beneficial outcomes for the most vulnerable.

Substantially Silent: Exploring The Variability Of “Voice” At The Intersection Of Race And Dis/Ability In A Restrictive Special Education Placement, Christopher N. Hall

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

The overrepresentation of Black students in special education, particularly in the most restrictive educational placements, is well documented in the literature. In addition, Black students are disproportionately placed into far more segregated educational spaces than their same-aged White peers with similar dis/ability labels. With limited qualitative studies that center the voices of students of color labelled as severely disabled in restrictive educational settings, informed by the tenets of Disability Studies in Education (DSE), this study adds to the growing body of research foregrounding the voices of individuals with dis/abilities in telling their own story from their perspective through narrative portraiture. …

Student Achievement Growth During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Fall 2021 Update, Tim Sass, Thomas Goldring

Georgia Policy Labs Reports

Two years into the pandemic, little information has been available about how students in the metro-Atlanta area are performing academically. Metro districts have adopted different strategies to help students navigate and recover from the pandemic, including small-group tutoring, expanded summer school programs, and additional supports for technology use and student health and wellness. This report continues the Metro Atlanta Policy Lab for Education’s research agenda analyzing how the pandemic has affected student achievement in math and reading in metro-Atlanta districts.

In this updated report, Tim Sass and Thomas Goldring used administrative data from three districts: Clayton County Public Schools, Fulton …

Ideas, Power And Agency: Policy Actors And The Formulation Of Language-In-Education Policy For Multilingualism, Susanna Nocchi, Iker Erdocia, Mary Ruane

Articles

The processes of formulation of language policies have not been researched thoroughly. This paper aims to explore the relationship between ideas, power and agency in language policy-making and specifically with reference to the formulation of language-in-education policy for multilingualism in Ireland. Through an argumentative approach to language policy and using a discursive institutionalist framework, the paper examines data from policy documents and interviews with policy actors in the Department of Education and Skills. The paper reports on the ways in which agentive discourses are constrained and enabled by institutional structures. The analysis shows how power resulting from asymmetric internal forces …

Arkansas High School Freshmen Course Failures, Sarah C. Mckenzie, Josh B. Mcgee, Charlene A. Reid, Sarah R. Morris

Policy Briefs

In this brief, we examine course failures among Arkansas high school freshmen by different student demographic and programmatic characteristics. We find economically disadvantaged students most likely to fail a course their freshman year. We suggest policies to benefit all student demographic and programmatic characteristics

Child Abuse & Neglect: Developing An Economic Understanding, Alexa Prettyman, David C. Ribar

Georgia Policy Labs Reports

Child maltreatment is a prevalent and costly problem. Millions of children worldwide experience some form of parental maltreatment, and it has lasting consequences, costing society trillions of dollars. This report from Alexa Prettyman and David C. Ribar examines child maltreatment through an economic lens, building on theoretical approaches for conceptualizing how different types of maltreatment occur. In addition, this report describes available data sources, spotlighting the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect in the United States. Finally, the report reviews the incidence of child maltreatment and the evidence on risk factors, consequences, and promising interventions. Risk factors can …

Interns And Institutions: Interactions Between Unpaid Interns And Public Policy, Hannah G. Waterman

Honors Projects

Political, and especially Congressional, internships are all but mandatory to launch a career in politics. This text examines the demographics of how these internships are dispersed, how they are paid, who is paid, and how this manifests in full-time Congressional staff demographics. Data shows that both paid and unpaid Congressional internships belong disproportionately to white students. Top staff in the House of Representatives is similarly disproportionately white. The text also examines the inherent danger of working in Congress and the broader case for paid internships.

What’S Lunch Got To Do With It?: A Case Study Of California Policy, Educational Equity, And The First Statewide Universal School Meals Program, Rebecca Murillo

Master's Projects and Capstones

In July 2021, California became the first state to pass a program which guarantees two meals a day to all K-12 students at no cost. This project examines California’s journey to pass this Universal School Meals Program (USMP) and explores how such a program can provide equity for students. I produce a legislative history which traces how school meals are funded and regulated at the federal level, California’s public education funding system, their state meal program, the policies which created changes that allowed the USMP to pass, and the legislation of the program itself. Framework presented by Tyack and Cuban …

Private Choice, Public Impact: How The Choices Of San Francisco Private School Families Impact The Public School System, Julia S. Roehl

Master's Projects and Capstones

The San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) has worked toward increasing diversity in San Francisco schools, but predominately white families are still leaving public schools. Due to the significant number of families opting out of the public school system, the public education resource is depleting as funding relies on a per-pupil model. The issue of modern-day segregation exists because of the disproportionate access white middle to upper-middle-class families have to private education in contrast to those who rely on the public resource. To address this issue, my Capstone Project asks, what are the factors that lead San Francisco families to …

Transforming Minnesota's Early Care And Education Infrastructure, Nicole Frethem

Student Scholarship

In 2021, the Minnesota legislature authorized the Great Start for All task force to present recommendations for how the state can provide “access to affordable, high-quality early care and education that enriches, nurtures, and supports children and their families,” to “all families” in Minnesota.

The early care and education landscape in Minnesota has experienced dramatic changes in programming and investments over the last twenty years. In the early 2000s, the state’s primary child care subsidy program, the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), was moved from the Department of Children, Families and Learning to the Department of Human Services in an …

Three Essays On The Economics Of Education, Rachel Jarrold-Grapes

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation is comprised of three essays on the economics of education. The first and third chapters examine marijuana legalization and its effects on students, while the second chapter examines the impact of pension incentives on teacher quality.The first chapter examines the extent to which there are negative spillovers of recreational marijuana legalization on underage marijuana use and educational outcomes. I use two complementary identification strategies that rely on plausibly exogenous spatial and temporal variation in access to marijuana in Oregon. In November of 2014, Oregon passed Measure 91, a referendum to legalize recreational marijuana. Unlike other legal states, Oregon …

Student And Faculty Diversity: University Of Nevada, Las Vegas (Unlv) And University Of Nevada, Reno (Unr), 2012-2020, Olivia K. Cheche, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Higher Education

This fact sheet highlights data on the racial and ethnic diversity of students, tenured faculty, tenure-track faculty, and non-tenured/tenure-track faculty at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). Data are presented for each year from 2012 to 2020. The UNLV Office of Decision Support and representatives at UNR assisted in the compilation of this data.

State School Finance In The Mountain West, 2019, Kristian Thymianos, Ally M. Beckwith, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

K-12 Education

This fact sheet examines K-12 school finance indicators drawing from an original report by Albert Shanker Institute and Rutgers University Graduate School of Education. These indicators show whether states are funding school districts to national standards. This fact sheet examines state-level data for the Mountain West (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah) from the State School Finance Profiles report for the 2018-2019 school year.

Strength, Beauty, And Resilience: The Impact Of Self Reflection & Exploration Of Memory On Postmodern Feminist Educators, Inside And Outside The Classroom, Maryjo M. Rosania-Harvie

Education Doctorate Dissertations

This study utilizes an autoethnographic methodology, informed by narrative inquiry, to explore the impact of memories on feminist educators. The participants in the study included two of the researcher’s former colleagues and one former student. The study's goal was to examine how the relationships between researcher and participant and the memories they shared impacted them as educators; in the process, the concept of authenticity in educators was examined in relation to the research and the participants’ feminist and postmodern approach. The researcher collected qualitative data through interviews, personal journals, timelining, and an epistolary writing exercise to define authenticity and explore …