This study explores the challenges and barriers involved in implementing successful alternative education programs within rural Missouri school districts. Using a qualitative narrative approach based around the theoretical framework of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, this study focused on the differences between the recognized measures for success in…

While previous approaches to students? Problematic behavior focused on punishment and rehabilitation through the judicial system, traditional schools implementing Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support (PBIS) implementation report positive student outcomes. However, fewer studies provide insight to PBIS implementation in non-traditional…

With the continual decline of high school graduation rates in South Carolina, there is a need for high schools to look at alternative pathways to graduation. Many of the current alternatives offered to students remove them from the high school setting or interactions with the student body. This study focused on an alternative pathway to…

Educators develop and implement various academic/behavioral intervention programs designed to specifically address academic shortcomings or aimed at disrupting behavioral cycles that impede success in the classroom. The purpose of this research was to identify gaps in behavioral Response to Intervention (RtI) programs and to design a RtI program…

Blended learning is defined by its combination of traditional face-to-face and online educational resources. It requires that students have some control over some element of time, place, path, or pace of their own learning. In their efforts to improve student outcomes, schools adopt instructional models such as blended learning in their efforts to…

This case study focused on the understandings of the administration and teaching staff with regard to the implementation and student academic growth of the B-L Upward program. The understandings were formed from data collected through structured, face-to-face interviews. The questioning of the staff members assisted in determining an understanding…

The purpose of this meta-analysis was to determine whether alternative school interventions were effective in reducing the incidences of violence in schools and improving attendance and graduation rates, whether positive behavior intervention supports were effective intervention strategies in school violence prevention initiatives, and whether…

This qualitative study analyzes the effects that RENEW, a person-centered goal planning model, has on students with disabilities that are in an alternative school setting. Students in sixth through twelfth grade participated in this study to determine if RENEW can affect students' awareness of post-secondary options and assist with post-high…

Positive behavior support (PBS) is a preventative and proactive system of managing behavior that is being used in the United States and other countries. Positive behavior support has been successfully implemented in typical school settings for students with and without disabilities. However, research documenting the implementation and effects of…

Each day, in schools across America, teachers willingly embrace the often daunting task of educating the nation's youth. Students who share little more than a common birth year are placed together with a teacher who is expected to take them from wherever they happen to be academically at the beginning of the year to where they simply must be by…

In response to the main federal K-12 law, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and the teacher education program standards, teacher education programs have tried to address social and emotional learning (SEL) content in their curricula. Adding information on SEL alone may not be enough to overcome the shortenings of many existing early childhood…

This research is a qualitative, reflective case study regarding a cohort in the form of a district-university partnership between the Oak Park Schools in Oak Park, Michigan and the College of Education at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The initiators of the program envisioned a more successful urban school district by offering…

Schools in the United States have struggled with graduation rates for nearly 140 years. School divisions are continuously searching for new and creative curriculums to address changing student needs. From the U.S. Department of Education to local school board members, educators are working to discover creative and accountable alternatives to…

This study is a case study of the diffusion of a successful middle college program to an early college high school in a densely populated county in the upper Midwest. The data from interviews with 17 respondents who had been designers or implementers of either the first or the diffused model defined the essential elements of success of the first…

Contracting out public schools to private institutions is an instrument for reforming public education as it may facilitate academic innovation and improve student academic performance through higher school accountability and autonomy. The degree of autonomy that different providers have may vary substantially depending on the contractual and…