The primary goal of this study was to explore how educational interpreter supervisors defined, experienced and approached their work in K-12 schools in the United States of America. A secondary goal was to examine how they interpreted, navigated and enacted educational and interpreting policy in their jobs as supervisors. A comparative case study…

Understanding how Illinois school district leaders craft acceleration policy and procedures in compliance with the Accelerated Placement Act has not been studied yet. The Accelerated Placement Act was adopted into law by former Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner on August 25, 2017. The Accelerated Placement Act had a mandatory implementation date for…

This dissertation consists of three independent chapters in applied microeconomics. In the first chapter, I study the causal effect impact of early life circumstances on adult psychological well-being using the property reform in China as a positive and policy driven change in economic resources in early life. Exploiting the staggered adoption of…

Unequal access to information has significant social and political consequences, and is itself a consequence of sociotechnical systems born of social, cultural, economic, and institutional context. Information is unequally distributed both within and between communities. While many factors that shape information inequality shift subtly over time,…

The purpose of this qualitative document analysis research study was to explore how public high schools in California create local unexcused absence and truancy policies in similar and different ways. The study used Lipsky's "street-level bureaucracy" and the American Psychological Association Zero Tolerance Task Force's definition of…

Community colleges in the United States have long been known as institutions of equal opportunity and affordable education. One facet of student life appearing at more and more community colleges is the addition of residence halls. Still, the number of community colleges with on-campus living is relatively small, and for the campuses with…

This policy analysis of teacher evaluations focuses specifically on teacher practices related to student performance. Due to the relationship between teacher practices and student performance, and the need for evaluation policy to include these practices, the policy analysis of teacher evaluation policies was conducted. The focus of the project…

There are two major issues that will be addressed in this study to determine if they influence the selection of an appropriate policing strategy. The first is citizen perception of whether crime has decreased or increased in their community. The second is whether the length of time a citizen has lived in the community has an effect on their…

In this study I argue that educational practitioners and policy makers cannot solve the problem of increasing student learning and growth by organizationally isolating the work of schools from communities. The purpose of this study was to explore which organizational conditions have enabled and which have hindered schools and communities from…

The purpose of this policy analysis was to examine the Missouri Public School Retirement System (PSRS). The team investigated the under-funding of PSRS, relating to sustainability and the feasibility of the system's use of one lever, contribution rate, to stabilize the retirement system, and to meet actuary needs and governmental requirements. The…

This study explores No Child Left Behind's required timetable for English language learners (ELLs) to reach English language proficiency within five years, as outlined in the Annual Measurable Achievement Outcomes (AMAOs), despite the lack of research evidence to support this as a reasonable expectation. Analysis was conducted on the archived data…

The objective of this dissertation is to explore the socio-cultural contextualization of the digital divide in Japanese society. I undertake this task by developing a theoretical and methodological framework based on the notion of "culture as models," while explicating the cultural dimensions of the digital divide and the dynamics of…

The purpose of this study was to provide insight regarding the impact that the alternative to suspension program Achievement Character Excellence (ACE) has on the students who are placed there. The study utilized four achievement indicators to track the level of improvement of students after they were placed in the ACE program and after they were…

The purpose of this study is to explore education policies formation during two administrations (1983-1998) in the province of Cordoba, Argentina through the comparison of policy documents. The profound connections of the social, cultural, economic, and educational processes impact of Argentina's educational reforms during the last two decades of…

Despite the precedent established in the "University of California Board of Regents v. Bakke," that race may be used as a factor in admissions policies at state institutions of higher education, state and federal court decisions were divided over whether the use of race in admissions decisions was a violation of the Equal Protection…