During the global pandemic of the 2020-21 school year, school districts rapidly transitioned from the traditional in-person structure of school to distance learning. This research study sought to understand how superintendents envisioned virtual learning as an option within their school district portfolio, exploring the barriers faced in its…

Mandatory grade retention for poor-performing readers has been a disputed practice for decades. Since the early-2000s, state-level mandatory grade retention policies have proliferated. In 18 states and Washington, D.C. mandatory grade retention exists for students in the third-grade who fail an end-of-year standardized reading exam. These policies…

This dissertation explores the issue of under-representation of women in STEM fields in high school and the early years of college. One of the major contributors to the persisting gender earnings gap is male-domination in the STEM workforce. Women are under-represented in STEM occupations since they are less likely than men to take advanced STEM…

This dissertation focuses on microeconomic topics in the fields of public, labor and education. Particularly, this dissertation evaluates state policies in higher education and develops a global measure for job quality. Chapter 1 studies how state merit aid programs affect undergraduate degrees earned in Science, Technology, Engineering and…

The 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech is one part of a decades-long increase in the frequency of gun violence on U.S. college and university campuses (Drysdale, Modzeleski, & Simons, 2010; Ferraro, 2015). The events at Virginia Tech also served as a catalyst for the spread of so-called "campus-carry" laws, or acts of state policy…

This dissertation includes three chapters focusing on policies directly related to improving college access and success. The first chapter focuses on lifetime eligibility of federal and state financial aid policies. The Pell Grant plays a critical role in helping students across the US to afford undergraduate education. In spite of its importance…

During the 2004 legislative session, the Colorado General Assembly enacted Senate Bill 189 (SB189), which established the first system of college vouchers in the United States. The supporters of SB189 hoped that the voucher system, called the College Opportunity Fund (COF), would: 1) stabilize the flow of state funding to higher education; 2)…

Due to No Child Left Behind legislation, state education officials are increasing programs and funding for early childhood interventions. Missouri's Parents as Teachers Program (PAT) is one such program that works to increase students' academic achievement in school and on standardized tests. This study explored one Missouri school district's…

Our nation's schools are faced with numerous critical challenges and problems; meeting federal and state mandates, state standards, elevating academic achievement, increasing parental involvement, and violence in the schools (Gould, 2011; Kowalski & Cangemi, 2011; Simpson, LaCava, & Graner, 2004). Violence in many U.S. schools continues to…

The purpose of this study is to answer the question: How do pilot users of the Danielson Evaluation System perceive this model in two mid-south high schools? The study describes the perceptions of teachers and administrators who implemented the Danielson Teacher Evaluation Model. The primary focus was on teachers and administrators experience with…

This study examined the initially intended outcomes of the 2001 Florida Senate Bill 1162, a Florida law that established an educational policy granting community colleges the ability to confer baccalaureate degrees in teacher education programs. The intended outcomes included teachers filling growing vacancies statewide. This study found that 69%…

Background. The state of Iowa has seen a drastic increase in the number of schools that provide one laptop for each student. These 1:1 schools have invested large amounts of time and money into becoming a 1:1 school. The current research on 1:1 schools is sparse, and policy makers are actively trying to evaluate those programs. Purpose. To…

This dissertation investigates the prevailing No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandate as an effective platform to improve schools. The data compiled for use in this study represented 426 high schools in Pennsylvania and were retrieved from publicly accessible, state-sponsored sources. The statistical methodologies from the Pennsylvania Value-Added…

Those advocating for effective management of the use of coastal areas and ecosystems have long aspired for an approach to governance that includes information systems with the capability to predict the end results of various courses of action, monitor the impacts of decisions and compare results with those predicted by computer models in order to…

The purpose of this study was to describe my experiences as a campus principal in facilitating the use of participatory formative assessment (PFA) in an environment of accountability and high-stakes testing. The methodology I employed was autoethnography (Chang, 2008; Ellis, 2004; Reed-Danahay, 1997; Stinson, 2009). I kept journals over a period…