The purpose of this Action Research project was to understand the educational needs of the underserved communities in rural Appalachia and to significantly enhance the fairness of currently limited access to Mountain Institute STEM Academy (MISA) STEM seminar programs. Cycle 1 research was conducted with STEM faculty from two rural Appalachian…

Despite ongoing debates over the adequacy of evidence regarding the positive impact of costs for instruction on student success, alternative teacher compensation systems, such as merit-based pay or performance-based pay, have already been implemented in numerous school districts across the nation. If increases in teachers' motivation are due to…

This study illuminated the experiences and perceptions of high school counselors in low-performing schools. The study specifically explored the impact of the role of high school counselors on student engagement and outcomes (i.e., chronic absenteeism, dropout rate, and graduation and completion). A literature review revealed a need for research to…

Declining student engagement has been an ongoing concern for educators, education researchers, school administration, and policymakers for the last 40 years (Axelson & Flick, 2011), with socioeconomically disadvantaged students being the most susceptible to disengagement (Finn, 1993; Jensen, 2013). The discourse surrounding declining student…

Background: The underrepresentation of Black and Latinx students in STEM is highlighted due to structural impediments. Although AP mathematics classes are being introduced as a solution, students from underprivileged schools continue to confront challenges. The study project seeks to investigate the obstacles associated with teaching AP…

This asset-framing semi-ethnographic case study examined how school leaders in a successful, economically disadvantaged New York State high school--Evergreen High School--cultivated student belonging through a culture of dignity for low-income students. The dignity framework for educational equity (Cobb & Krownapple, 2019) was used as an…

Since the passage of early federal K-12 school legislation such as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965 and its many evolutionary successors including the No Child Left Behind Act (2002) and the Every Student Succeeds Act (2015) there has been increased scrutiny on low-performing schools and particularly their leaders. These…

The purpose of this program evaluation was to evaluate the impact of CORE District's Breakthrough Success Community (BTSC) Program at an urban Title I high school located in Southern California. BTSC aims to improve the ninth-grade experience through a focus on five key change drivers and the implementation of improvement science. Through teacher…

While Black students have experienced significant growth in college enrollment since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Higher Education Act of 1965, they are still less likely than their white counterparts to attend and graduate from a post-secondary institution (Ryan & Bauman, 2016). There have been previous studies on college…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive case study was to describe the perceptions of high school principals and teachers related to how inequitable distribution of federal and state educational funds between low- and high-income schools resulted in disparities in educational outcomes in two low socioeconomic status high schools in the…

COVID-19 ushered in a new era in education. Overnight, schools were forced into online learning, dependent entirely upon digital learning tools to educate students. Dubbed by some as a great online learning experiment, teachers experimented with various tools to provide students with the same quality of education they had delivered in the…

This study is a qualitative analysis of guided reflections on the educational experiences of five former students who attended schools in the poorest congressional district in the United States. While the students did not all know each other or attend the same secondary schools, they all had the same high school social studies teacher, the…

This dissertation is a quantitative study which presents a conceptual framework which views schools as learning communities. The study focuses on relationships among professional learning communities, teacher self-efficacy, and collective efficacy. The researcher also explored teacher perceptions of these three constructs. The specific purpose of…

This quantitative research project identifies if a performance gap exists between student performance and student expected performance on the last two administrations of the FCAT 2.0 in Reading and the first two administrations of the FSA ELA for 9th and 10th grade students using descriptive statistics to identify the mean and distribution of the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between Title I school performance and effective district leadership and reform strategies. This study focused on the successful attributes and characteristics of principals whose high-performing (the percentage of students that meet or exceed on the AzMERIT assessment) high-poverty schools…