In this study, the researcher used the quantitative descriptive methodology to explore and more clearly describe teachers' knowledge of dyslexia to improve dyslexia referral and evaluation practices for students on at-risk campuses. The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine what English-language arts teachers who teach kindergarten,…

Over the past two decades, U.S. states have widely adopted early literacy policies. These policies have shown short-term success in enhancing K-3 literacy skills. However, the reasons behind their widespread adoption and the factors driving their success are poorly understood. This three-paper dissertation focuses on Michigan's Read by Grade Three…

Over the past 40 years, a variety of school improvement initiatives have been designed and implemented in low-performing schools across the country, mostly with disappointing results. One potential explanation for the poor track record is that school leaders have too often designed improvement strategies without taking the time to understand the…

Lexical semantics provide many important resources in natural language processing, despite the recent preferences for distributional methods. In this dissertation we investigate an under-represented lexical relationship, that of scalarity. We define scalarity as it relates to adjectives and introduce novel methods to identify words belonging to a…

Executive functioning abilities have been associated with important behaviors such as adaptive skills and cognitive abilities in children with and without disabilities. Executive functioning has primarily been measured as a strong predictor of later abilities in children with neurodevelopmental disabilities, such as attention-deficit/…

Authorship attribution of source code is the task of deciding who wrote a program, given its source code. Applications include software forensics, plagiarism detection, and determining software ownership. A number of methods for the authorship attribution of source code have been presented in the past. A review of those existing methods is…

The current research examined the relationship between two non-academic factors associated with retention: emotional intelligence (EI) and spiritual formation. The primary goal of this research was to determine whether using a combination of academic and non-academic factors could increase the researcher's ability to identify students most at risk…

Considerable government-funded efforts in school districts to train veteran teachers in the science of reading have been formed in response to the continuing difficulties and failure of nearly 40 percent of all American children (Walsh, Glaser, & Wilcox, 2006). A high percentage of the population of poor readers in this country is comprised of…

Social-emotional development, psychosocial functioning, and relational experiences have been shown to impact academic achievement and psychological well-being. Social skills have been identified as being particularly critical in promoting mental health and life-long success. Children with well-developed social skills (e.g., sharing, being…

Teachers are leaving their profession at alarming rates. As a result, retaining novice teachers has become a major concern for policy makers, school districts, administrators, and teaching staff throughout the United States. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of novice teacher induction support structures in a southwestern…

This dissertation studies clouds over the polar regions using the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) on-board EOS-Terra. Historically, low thin clouds have been problematic for satellite detection, because these clouds have similar brightness and temperature properties to the surface they overlay. However, the oblique angles of MISR…

The objective of this research was to explore the possibilities of identifying knowledge style factors that could be used as central elements of a professional business analyst's (PBA) performance attributes at work for those decision makers that use advanced analytical technologies on decision making tasks. Indicators of knowledge style were…

One of the objectives of any government is the establishment of an effective solution to significantly control crime. Identity fraud in Nigeria has generated global attention and negative publicity toward its citizens. The research problem addressed in this study was the lack of understanding of the dynamics that influenced the adoption and…

Apparently fraud is a growth industry. The monetary losses from Internet fraud have increased every year since first officially reported by the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) in 2000. Prior research studies and third-party reports of fraud show rates substantially higher than eBay's reported negative feedback rate of less than 1%. The…

This research project focuses on a freshman class in a suburban high school where incoming ninth graders were identified as being at-risk or not at-risk; students' scores on eighth grade standardized tests were critical in determining a student's placement in one of the two categories. The researcher established the predictive value of this…