Education Policy Commons^™

Honest Sex Education Advocacy, Kyleigh Richard

Senior Honors Projects

It is imperative that children and teens receive honest and well researched information when they are being taught sex education, particularly so they learn to care about their sexual health and protect their own bodies.

In order to learn where there are gaps or insufficiencies in this sex education in the state of Rhode Island, twenty superintendents from public schools across the state were contacted by email and phone and asked to share their curriculum and resources. Of the eight that supplied their school curriculums, I found three points I felt were deficient in sex education: (1) human anatomy is …

The Impact Of The Legalization Of Marijuana In Colorado On Education Funding And Car Crash Fatality Rates, Lauren Mcdonald

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

The objective of this thesis is to investigate and report the impact of the legalization of marijuana on the funding of education and car crash fatality rates in the state of Colorado. Legalization has been a controversial topic, and marijuana has already been legalized for recreational use in 11 states, and medically in 22 states across the United States. The tax revenues from marijuana are used in school funding, though the allocations of these funds have varied in different years. As we approach the impact that legalization has had on Colorado, it will be interesting to see if the newly …

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 …

The Association Of The National Assessment Of Educational Progress Scores And Variance In State Education Requirements, Patrick M. Doyle

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

Since the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution, states have the function to set policy that varies drastically from state to state. This study examines the relationship of state fiscal effort and per pupil expenditure and graduation rates over a 10-year period. Furthermore, this study will look at the relationship between NAEP scores, compulsory attendance, graduation rates, course credit requirements, and hours of instruction. Research is necessary to show a relationship between the varying policies set forth by each state. This research will help policy makers, school leaders, and school localities to assess their own states’ policies and outcomes …

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 …

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 …

Assessing The Short-Term Stability Of Financial Well-Being In Low- And Moderate-Income Households, Stephen P. Roll, Olga Kondratjeva, Michal Grinstein-Weiss, Stephanie Skees

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 …

Against The Wind: A Study On Aviation As A Female Career Choice, Bonnie Gagliardo

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this phenomenological study is to identify and describe the educational and social experiences that sparked the interest of female pilots as young women to pursue a career in aviation.

Methodology: This qualitative phenomenological study utilized semi- structured interviews to explore the lived experiences of female pilots, to understand if there were common social and educational factors which influenced them to become interested in aviation. Using convenience sampling, eleven pilots who hold a Federal Aviation Administration Commercial or Airline Transport Pilot’s License were selected to participate in this study.

Findings: The findings from this …

As Schools Close Due To The Coronavirus, Mental Health Care For Children Must Be Protected, Xiaoyan Zhang

Population Health Research Brief Series

This data slice highlights the expansive nation-wide school closings due to COVID-19 and encourages providers and government bodies to support the mental health needs of students across the country.

Interactions Between Federal Education Tax Credits And State-Based Aid Programs: An Analysis Of State Budgeting For Higher Education, Anna Castrillo Bartel

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Prior empirical analyses on federal education tax credits have concentrated on the individual and institutional unit of analysis. These outcomes indicate mostly null effects on promoting college enrollments, along with distribution to higher incomes, and mixed results on tuition and fee increases. This analysis utilized institutional and state unit of analysis over a longer timeframe, Tax Year 2001 to Tax Year 2016, using difference-in-differences estimation to analyze the effects of education tax credits. The results indicated states have decreased appropriations to public, two-year institutions (charging less than $4,000) 14% less than their higher-priced counterparts, while states provided more appropriations to …

The Importance Of Cognitive Domains And The Returns To Schooling In South Africa: Evidence From Two Labor Surveys, Plamen Nikolov, Nusrat Jimi

Economics Faculty Scholarship

Numerous studies have considered the important role of cognition in estimating the returns to schooling. How cognitive abilities affect schooling may have important policy implications, especially in developing countries during periods of increasing educational attainment. Using two longitudinal labor surveys that collect direct proxy measures of cognitive skills, we study the importance of specific cognitive domains for the returns to schooling in two samples. We instrument for schooling levels and we find that each additional year of schooling leads to an increase in earnings by approximately 18-20 percent. The estimated effect sizes—based on the two-stage least squares estimates—are above the …

Board Of Trustees Minutes, Feb 21 2020, Indiana State University Board Of Trustees

Board of Trustees

No abstract provided.

K-2 Assessments And Later Student Outcomes, Sarah C. Mckenzie, Josh B. Mcgee

Policy Briefs

In this brief we examine the characteristics of the districts that selected the various assessments and consider student outcomes both before and after the K-2 vendor selection to see what relationship, if any, exists between which assessment vendor was selected and students academic proficiency and growth.

Enrollment Trends In Northwest Arkansas Charter Schools, Sarah C. Mckenzie, Josh B. Mcgee

Policy Briefs

Northwest Arkansas is home to nine public charter schools, with plans to open a new charter school for the 2020-21 school year. These schools, which serve unique missions, are some of the most highly ranked schools in the State of Arkansas. While critics argue that public charter schools segregate based on race or academic ability, national evidence finds that these claims are highly context specific. What conclusions can we draw about northwest Arkansas charter schools based on enrollment trends in recent years?

Adolescent And Young Adult Mental Health Is Better In States That Mandate More School Mental Health Policies, Stephanie Spera, Shannon M. Monnat

Population Health Research Brief Series

Mental health problems and suicide rates have increased among adolescents and young adults over the past several years. This research brief shows that adolescent and young adult mental health is better in states that mandate more school mental health policies, including school-based mental health centers, professional development in suicide prevention, and social-emotional curricula.

Asians Applying For Postsecondary Success: Students, Schools, And Socioeconomic Status, Avery M.D. Davis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Higher education recruitment rates are rapidly declining as schools are stymied by dynamic demographic shifts and a competitive ecosystem. Despite the constant realities of this challenge for tertiary institutions, the complexities of the interplay for demographics, student motivation, parental influences, and school environments during the postsecondary education application process is often overlooked. This thesis analyses how these four domains impact Asian American students within the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS) in terms of the number of postsecondary schools to which they apply? This study examines a sample (N = 662) of the ELS by employing multivariate regression analysis on the number …

Arkansas High School Graduation Rates: 2013/14-2017/18, Martha Bradley-Dorsey, Sarah C. Mckenzie

Arkansas Education Reports

This report examines trends in high school graduation rates for the state of Arkansas. Graduation rates are evaluated at the school level for students overall and for students who face economic disadvantages. Earlier research by the Office for Education Policy (2014) found that larger high schools and schools serving more economically-disadvantaged students have lower graduation rates. We update the report by examining graduation rate trends across the five-year period of 2013-14 through 2017-18. We consider the relationship between graduation rate and variables of interest including school-level indicators of geographic region, achievement in literacy and math, proportion of racial minority and …

La Administración Pública Desde La Perspectiva De La Prevención De Atrocidades En Las Respuestas A La Covid-19: Aprovechar La Pandemia Para Lograr Mayor Equidad Social, Nadia Rubaii, Kerry E. Whigham, Susan Appe

Gobernar: The Journal of Latin American Public Policy and Governance

The pandemic is already forcing many individuals, businesses, and governments to rethink much of what they do and how they do it. As such, it presents an opportunity for public administrators to reimagine the criteria they use when designing and implementing programs and policies, and to more actively engage in prevention of identity-based violence. In this contribution, we suggest a new analytical lens to guide public administrators’ decision making, one informed by the theory and practice of mass atrocity prevention. This perspective recognizes that the decisions and actions of public administrators in response to the pandemic will influence whether individual …

The Global Child: A Roadmap For Becoming Culturally Responsive Educators, Ana I. Berdecia Med, Caitlin Kosec Mpp, Kamili O. Leath Ms, The John S. Watson Institute For Public Policy For Thomas Edison State College

Center for the Positive Development of Urban Children

The program strategies and the assessment tools encourage early childhood teachers to adopt 26 strategies across three competency areas: 1) classroom design; 2) teachers’ rhythm and temperament; and 3) instructional strategies during the 10-month program year. Mentors are assigned to each teaching team and through supportive site visits and assessment visits help the teams change their thinking and practices to be more culturally and linguistically responsive.

A Comparative Analysis Of The Experiences Of African American Students At Eastern Michigan University During The Civil Rights Era And In The 21st Century: A Historical Case Study, Maria A. Jackson-Smith

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative dissertation examined links between Reconstruction and Civil Rights Era educational policies and practices and the impact of Eastern Michigan University’s (EMU) institutional policies and practices on black students. This historical case study delineated the experiences of black EMU students who attended the institution at the end of the Civil Rights Era and during the first two decades of the 21^st century. The study is significant because, despite landmark Civil Rights Era legislation whose objective sought to narrow the achievement gap, the retention rates of black students at EMU remain disproportionate to those of white students in the …