Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' (CMS) Parent University is an innovative, collaborative initiative designed to engage parents in their children's education. Working with community partners, Parent University offers unique courses and workshops such as Parenting Awareness, Helping Your Child Learn in the 21st Century, Health and Wellness, and…

This study uses three cohorts of first-time, full-time undergraduate students (N = 8,652) at a large, metropolitan, public research university to examine the impact of student use of three library resources (workstations, study rooms, and research clinics) on academic performance. To deal with self-selection bias and estimate this impact more…

Building Assets Reducing Risks (BARR) is a social emotional model that achieves academic outcomes through combining use of real-time student data with proven relationship-building strategies and intensive teacher collaboration to prevent course failure. BARR is a recipient of US Department of Education "Investing in Innovation (i3)"…

The demands and expectations placed on all schools in the United States to meet the needs of a growing and diverse population continue to raise the questions, what needs to be done in order for all students to achieve success, and how can this success be measured? This study, researched and reported in the form of a dissertation, was performed on…

Information-rich environments are created to promote data use in schools for the purpose of self-evaluation and quality assurance. However, providing feedback does not guarantee that schools will actually put it to use. One of the main stumbling blocks relates to the interpretation and diagnosis of the information. This study examines the…

Districts expend a considerable amount of time, effort, and resources providing student performance data to teachers to inform instruction, and examining those data for organizational decision-making. Yet rarely, if ever, are these outcome data connected to what goes on in classrooms. In this experimental study, the author reports on the…

Spurred on by the Obama administration, and supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Lumina Foundation, the United States has embarked on a "college completion agenda" to increase the number of American adults with postsecondary degrees. While the push to improve consumer information in the higher education market has…

Previous studies on the impact of perceived threat on confirmatory information search (selective exposure) in the context of decision making have yielded mixed results. Some studies have suggested that confirmatory information search is reduced, yet others have found contradictory effects. The present series of 5 studies consistently found that…

This two-stage, quantitative study with purposive sampling and random assignment measured whether managerial participants perceived a sense of accountability for goal setting and participating in professional development as a result of data received from a 360-degree feedback appraisal. There were no significant correlations among the demographic…