Education Policy Commons^™

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.

Long-Term Impact Of Child-Centered Play Therapy On Academic Achievement: A Longitudinal Examination Of Academic Success In At-Risk Elementary School Students, Brittany D. Massengale

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the long-term impact of child-centered play therapy (CCPT) implemented through Primary Project on at-risk second-grade elementary school students. The qualifying group received ten 30-minute play therapy sessions during one academic semester during their second-grade year. In a longitudinal analysis for academic growth, MAP testing was used to determine if there was a long-term impact on both the third grade and fourth-grade years for the original qualifying students. The findings reveal implications for identification of and interventions for at-risk elementary students and CCPT as an intervention for academic achievement; specifically, reading and mathematics scores. Recommendations for future research …

Is Qualitative Research In Education Being Lost In Spain? Analysis And Reflections On The Problems Arising From Generating Knowledge Hegemonically, Manuel Fernández-Navas, Noelia Alcaraz-Salarirche, Laura Pérez-Granados, Ana Yara Postigo-Fuentes

The Qualitative Report

In this paper we reflect on how qualitative research in education in Spain has become invisible, by asking a series of questions. What are the effects of this? What are the keys to understand this marginalisation of qualitative research? What are the implications for researchers and students? What challenges does qualitative research face in order to overcome this lack of visibility? To discuss these issues, we present a series of structured reflections in the form of an essay based on the preliminary impressions that have emerged in the course of a broader investigation that we are conducting and that focuses …

Material Hardship Among Lower-Income Households: The Role Of Liquid Assets And Place, Mathieu Despard, Valerie Taing, Addie Weaver, Stephen Roll, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

Lower income households are at risk for material hardship, particularly amidst the economic fallout of COVID-19. Where one lives (e.g. suburb, small town) may affect this risk due to variable access to resources, yet the evidence is mixed concerning the influence of place. We used a pooled, national cross-sectional sample of 66,046 lower-income tax filers to examine differences in material hardship in rural, small town, micropolitan, and urban areas. Controlling only for standard demographic variables, hardship risk appears higher in non-urban areas, yet these differences disappear after controlling for financial characteristics such as liquid assets and home ownership.

Critically And Creatively Engaging With Trauma-Informed Mental Health Research And Treatment Of Lgbtqia+ Communities As Expressive Arts Therapists: A Literature Review, Kelli Lavallee

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Expressive Arts Therapists are uniquely situated as both artists and mental health counselors working in psychological pedagogy rooted in systems of oppression. Given the arts-based approaches to the therapeutic relationship, it can be unethical to offer these approaches without acknowledgement of the ways in which the arts intersect with social justice, and justice is only viable if practitioners critically review the clinical mental health education they are consuming from the institutions they learn in, specifically trauma-informed mental health research assimilation and treatment approaches for Expressive Arts Therapists in training, practice, and education. A review of the literature in this paper …

Employee Financial Wellness Programs: Tips For Employers, Sloane Wolter, Jenna Hampton Bsw, Sophia Fox-Dichter, Ellen Frank-Miller

Social Policy Institute Research

There are several types of Employee Financial Wellness Programs (EFWPs), such as workplace financial counseling, workplace credit building, and employer-sponsored small dollar loans. Each program benefits the company and its employees in different ways.

The Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis, with generous support from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, studied the implementation of EFWPs at several diverse organizations, including a nonprofit in the Midwest and several supply chain locations of a national retailer, to understand the impact. As a result, we’ve identified four ways in which organizations can maximize the benefits of EFWPs and avoid pitfalls …

Tax-Time Saving And The Earned Income Tax Credit: Results From Online Field And Survey Experiments, Mathieu Despard, Michal Grinstein-Weiss, Stephen Roll, Bradley Hardy, Dana Perantie, Jane Oliphant

Social Policy Institute Research

Tax refunds are an opportunity for Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) recipients to build emergency savings. Randomly assigned behavioral interventions in 2015 and 2016 have statistically significant impacts on refund saving take-up and amounts among EITC recipients who filed their taxes online. From a survey experiment, we also find that EITC recipients have a 49 percent and 59 percent increased likelihood of deferring 20 percent of their refunds for six months when hypothetically offered 25 and 50 percent savings matches (p < .001), respectively. These findings can inform policy development related to encouraging emergency saving at tax time.

Employee Financial Wellness Programs: Promising New Benefit For Frontline Workers?, Mathieu Despard, Ellen Frank-Miller, Yingying Zeng, Sophia Fox-Dichter, Geraldine Germain, Michal Grinstein-Weiss, Meredith Covington

Social Policy Institute Research

Interest among employers is growing in Employee financial wellness programs (EFWPs), a new type of benefit to address financial stress among employees. EFWPs benefits include financial counseling, small-dollar loans, and savings programs that address employees' non-retirement financial needs. Little evidence exists concerning the availability and use of and outcomes associated with EFWPs, especially among low- and moderate-income (LMI) workers who may be in greatest need of these benefits. We present findings concerning awareness and use of EFWPs from a national survey of LMI workers (N=16,650). Availability of different EFWP benefits ranged from 11 to 15% and over a third of …

The Impact Of Tax Refund Delays On The Experience Of Hardship And Unsecured Debt, Olga Kondratjeva, Stephen Roll, Mathieu Despard, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) provides substantial financial support to low-income workers, yet around a quarter of EITC payments are estimated to be erroneous or fraudulent. Beginning in 2017, the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act of 2015 requires the Internal Revenue Service to spend additional time processing early EITC claims, delaying the issuance of tax refunds. Leveraging unique data, we investigate how delayed tax refunds affected the experience of hardship and unsecured debt among EITC recipients. We find that early filers experienced increased food insecurity relative to later filers after the implementation of the refund delay.

Financial Counseling For Front-Line Workers: A Pilot Study Of Engagement And Outcomes, Mathieu Despard, Yingying Zeng, Sophia Fox-Dichter, Ellen Frank-Miller, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

Although financial counseling has been studied in community-based settings, programs offered in the workplace are understudied and yet may aid low- to moderate income employees in improving their financial situations. This study examines workers’ engagement in and associated credit outcomes from an employer-based financial counseling program in the New York City area. Findings suggest that participants engaged equally in services except for older and non-English speaking workers, who had lower levels of digital engagement. In-person engagement in services was minimal. Credit score improvements were modest, but greater for workers who had

scores in the lowest quartile at baseline. These credit …

Promoting Public Retirement Savings Accounts During Tax Filing: Evidence From A Field Experiment, Stephen Roll, Michal Grinstein-Weiss, Olga Kondratjeva, Sam Bufe

Social Policy Institute Research

Many U.S. households—especially those with low- to moderate-incomes (LMI)—struggle to save for retirement. To address this issue, the Department of the Treasury launched myRA, a no-fee retirement account designed primarily to help people who lacked access to employer-sponsored plans build retirement savings. In this paper, we report findings from two myRA-focused field experiments, both of which were administered to well over 100,000 LMI online tax filers before and during the 2016 tax season. The first experiment involved sending one of three different myRA-focused email messages to tax filers immediately prior to tax season, and the second experiment …

Employee Financial Wellness Programs: Tips For Providers, Jenna Hampton Bsw, Sloane Wolter, Sophia Fox-Dichter, Ellen Frank-Miller

Social Policy Institute Research

There are several types of Employee Financial Wellness Programs (EFWPs), such as workplace financial counseling, workplace credit building, and employer-sponsored small dollar loans. Each program benefits the company and its employees in different ways.

The Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis, with generous support from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, studied the implementation of EFWPs at several diverse organizations, including a nonprofit in the Midwest and several supply chain locations of a national retailer, to understand the impact. As a result, we’ve identified five ways in which providers can maximize the benefits of EFWPs and avoid pitfalls …

Using Financial Tips To Guide Debt Repayment: Experimental Evidence From Low-And Moderate-Income Tax Filers, Olga Kondratjeva, Stephen Roll, Sam Bufe, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

Much of the literature on household finances tends to focus on discrete or relatively objective measures like savings, debt, economic mobility, and there has been a lack of research on holistic measures of financial well-being. This gap is due in part to the absence of a common understanding of how to define and measure financial well-being; a gap that was recently addressed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s development of a financial well-being scale. However, the research on this scale is still scarce and little is known about how financial well-being evolves over time. To that end, this paper uses …

Considerations For School Reopening In Ontario: Building A More Resilient Education System For Recovery, Prachi Srivastava

Education Publications

School closures in Ontario affect over 2 million elementary and secondary school students. Ontario issued the first school closure announcement on 12 March 2020 to take effect for an initial period from 14 March to 4 April 2020, compelling all publicly funded elementary and secondary schools to close during this time.On 17 March 2020, the government declared an official state of emergency under s 7.0.1 (1) of the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act. This required the immediate closure of all private schools as defined in the Education Act and of all licensed child care centres, amongst other public …

Critical Period Controversies For Second Language Acquisition: Implications For Language Teaching, Randy Lucio

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

It was proposed by Eric Lenneberg (1967) in Biological Foundations of Language that implicit first language (L1) acquisition was only possible during a critical period (CP) spanning from infancy to puberty. The critical period hypothesis (CPH) has since been a topic of controversy among L1 and second language (L2) scholars, whose studies have produced varying results that argue for and against a CP. It is suggested in this paper, however, that these often-varying results offer important insight that can serve to inform current and future L2 educational policy and instruction within K-12 education in the U.S. Thus, it is imperative …

Contemporary High-Skilled Mexican Immigrant Entrepreneurs In Texas, Elizabeth Salamanca, Jorge Alcaraz

Mission Foods Texas-Mexico Center Research

The number of Mexican entrepreneurs relocating to the United States has significantly increased during the last decade and their profile, as well as that of their businesses, have changed. This study develops a typology of Mexican migrant entrepreneurs living in the U.S., particularly in Texas, and of the business ventures that they undertake, and it determines the association between the entrepreneurs' profile and the kind of businesses they create. Through the analysis of migrant entrepreneurs' profiles, this paper identifies in what kind of transnational activities these entrepreneurs participate. The research follows both a qualitative approach based on the Gioia methodology …

Cal Poly Pier Master Plan, Troy A. Lawson

Master's Theses

The Cal Poly Pier (Pier) Master/Facility Plan (FP) document provides the vision of the future for the Pier, a marine science research facility. The Plan facilitates project development and management of the Pier while meeting university and department research goals. Specifically, the FP document establishes goals and strategies to direct long-term development of the Pier, streamlines agency approval and permit requirements, provides context for pier management, and assists the permitting process for future development as it relates to regulatory permits and programmatic growth on the Cal Poly Pier to help meet goals of the Center for Coastal Marine Sciences (CCMS). …

A Quantitative Examination Of Black And Hispanic Students’ Time-To-Graduation, Ferdinand A. Verley Ii

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What factors influence Black and Hispanic students’ time-to-graduation, and is it different for their special opportunity program peers? Using theoretical lenses including intersectionality, class struggle, justice, and sociological practice, this dissertation employs data from a large urban public university system to examine the relative impact of demography, academic preparedness, and financial background on students’ time-to-graduation performance.

Time-to-graduation, operationalized in this dissertation as the duration of years before a student earns a bachelor’s degree, for full-time students often represents an investment of time at the expense of earning a wage or salary in the job market. The economic gain that accrues …

The Objectives Of Public Higher Education In New York City Through The Lens Of Language, John-Nicholas Parker

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper displays the objectives of public higher education in New York City and their relation to changes in the city. Public higher education in New York City relies on the support of the public. This paper details adjustments to the lexicon of the school in response to changing demographics and historical events by examining statements provided by the school during different periods. Changes to the lexicon relating to class, gender, race, ethnicity, and military service are examined in relation to their historical context. Sources examined in this paper include commission reports, student newspapers, and mission statements. The paper finds …

Cracks In The Bathroom Stall: A Discourse Analysis On Transgender Bathroom Usage At Garden Spot High School, Kirsten D. Corneilson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent years, high schools across the country have seen the concern around transgender students using gendered facilities, such as bathrooms and locker rooms, come to the forefront. Often, dissenters raise worries of privacy and of “catering to a minority,” no matter what decision is reached. At Garden Spot High School in New Holland, Pennsylvania, the site of this research, one such concern has led to a district-wide decision to eliminate gendered facilities and move to single-use facilities, in the name of preserving student privacy. Through the examination of historical precedent and discourse analysis, this paper examines how transgender surveillance …