For decades, Catholic schools, particularly inner-city Catholic schools, have seen declines in enrollment and an increasing need for subsidies from their dioceses. Many dioceses, however, have been unable to shoulder that burden, forcing schools to close. In response to difficult financial circumstances, the archdioceses of Indianapolis, Miami,…

For almost 20 years the Community College Futures Assembly (CCFA) has met annually in Orlando, Florida to serve as a showcase of best practices in community college administration and to serve as a think-tank for research and policy. Through the years the research methodology has evolved. The 2011 CCFA used a mixed-methods approach: qualitative…

School districts are required to provide special education students with the same education benefits available to other students at their grade level, but meeting the needs of special education students continues to be challenging as most programs provide only one teacher rather than seeking the expertise of content area specialists. Co-teaching…

School librarian guidelines encourage active leadership in schools. Two ways school librarian educators can encourage school librarians to be leaders are to embed the standards into the certification curriculum and to assess the leadership potential of pre-service school librarians in order to adapt the curriculum to their needs. This mixed-method…

Prior research on Troops to Teachers (TTT) affirms that TTTs are effective instructors likely to work in high-poverty, high-minority schools, teach high-demand subjects, use research-based instructional and classroom management practices linked with student achievement, and plan to stay in the profession. A nonexperimental, mixed method design…

The purpose of this study was to measure the motivation for academic and recreational reading of 6th grade students in a middle school located in southwest Florida using the Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (ERAS). In this mixed methods study, motivation for both types of reading were measured, individual demographics of the population, such as…

The purpose of this study was to determine the continued impact of a short-term international student teaching experience on participants during the first five years following graduation from their teacher preparation program. We investigated the sustainability of pedagogical skills and personal growth through a comparison of alumni initial…

In this mixed method research, we examined the effects of reading and singing software program (RSSP) as a reading intervention on struggling readers' reading achievement as measured by the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, the high stakes state test administered in the state of Florida, at one elementary school. Our team defined struggling…

This empirical mixed methods study examines educators' understandings of student risk factors. The research was conducted in a Title 1 combination middle high school in the Florida panhandle that had been open for three years and had received a grade of F school in each of these years. In Florida, schools are graded according to the Florida…

This study employed quantitative and qualitative research approaches to investigate what constitutes success in adult basic education (ABE) programs from the perspectives of multiple educational stakeholders: the state funding agency, the teachers, and the students. Success was defined in multiple ways. In the quantitative section of the study, we…

This applied dissertation was designed to determine the level of satisfaction with the current academic advising approaches used for foreign-born Latino adult learners enrolled in a master's degree program designed specifically for Spanish-speaking immigrants in two Hispanic-serving institutions in Florida. The data collected through this study…

Researchers have well documented how campus climate has affected students. The campus climate has affected a student's ability to persist through college and ultimately has impacted his or her entire life. Many campus climate studies have been conducted at universities, and most of these studies have focused on racial climate implications. The…

When combining the increasing use of online educational environments, the push to use serious video games and the lack of research on the effectiveness of online learning environments and video games, there is a clear need for further investigation into the use of serious video games in an online format. A mix methods model was used to triangulate…

The 2010 "Deepwater Horizon" oil spill greatly affected the Gulf Coast, and the news media reported information to wide audiences. Students enrolled in an online Environmental Geoscience course in fall 2010 voluntarily participated in a Gulf oil spill survey. More than 92% of the students (N = 77; 83 total enrollment), who were primarily…

When children leave school for the very last time without receiving a high school diploma, they do so quietly. For them there is no fanfare, no bells, no pomp and circumstances--it is a "shameful walk" of despair and of dreams lost. For them it is, "the end of the line on a train to nowhere." The purpose of this sequential…