Rangel, Beulah S. J., At Risk, Punished, and Pushed out of School: Leadership Practices Utilized by School Administrators for Discipline Consequences in South Texas Schools. Doctor of Education (Ed. D.), May 2024The purpose of this study was to examine leadership practices utilized by school administrators for discretionary discipline consequences…

This study examined the effect of dual enrollment (DE) on college enrollment and degree completion for students with lower prior academic achievement who attended public high schools in Texas. We employed a propensity score matching method to reduce selection bias arising from DE participation and supplemented the analysis with a bounds test. The…

Stemmed from zero-tolerance policies, Disciplinary Alternative Education Programs/Classrooms (DAEPs) in Texas are disciplinary spaces designed to house students deemed at risk, while schools continue to serve students' educational needs of (Aron 2006, Tajalli & Garba, 2014). Once there, students are stereotyped with analogous carceral-framed…

The COVID-19 pandemic led to notable disruptions in student learning, particularly in mathematics, impacting students from marginalized backgrounds. This quasi-experimental quantitative study examines whether the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) Mathematics results from 2019 to 2024 indicate that students have recovered…

School nurses represent cost-effective investments in students' health and educational success. Alternative high schools (AHSs) serve an understudied population of youth who are at risk for school dropout and face numerous social inequities, heightening their risk for poor health outcomes. In this two-phase explanatory sequential mixed methods…

Establishing validated science programs for students with or at risk for learning disabilities requires testing treatment effects and exploring differential response patterns. This study explored whether students' initial mathematics and reading skills influenced their treatment response to a whole-class, second-grade science program called…

The number of emergent bilingual students in the United States increased by over half a million students between 2010 and 2020, and Texas' school counselor ratios do not reflect the minimum ratio recommended nationally, nor do they reflect the recommended ratio by The Texas Counseling Association, Texas Association of Secondary School Principals,…

Organic Chemistry I presents challenges to many students pursuing diverse fields of study, oftentimes curtailing further progress in those fields. The ability to identify students at risk of unsuccessful course outcomes may lead to improved success rates by offering tailored resources to those students. Previously identified predictors include…

School-based mental health screening has been identified as a major component of social, emotional, and behavioral multitiered systems of support models, and a promising practice that can be used to address unmet mental health needs of children and adolescents. However, there are frequently noted concerns about the feasibility of implementing…

The role of the principal in high-needs schools is vital to the success of the organization. Middle school principals play a critical role in fostering a safe learning environment as middle schoolers navigate socioemotional development alongside academic demands. High-need schools are defined as those presenting a context that challenges the…

The academic and economic benefits of school spending are well-established, but focusing on these outcomes may underestimate the full social benefits of school spending. Recent increases in U.S. child mortality are driven by injuries and raise questions about what types of social investments could reduce child deaths. We use close school district…

Teachers and counselors are the gatekeepers or people closest to students in the schools who can make a difference in student suicide prevalence rates. Although suicide is the leading cause of death among youths between 15 and 24 years old, half the high schools in Texas do not have suicide prevention plans in place. The purpose of this…

The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between at-risk indicators including socioeconomic status, English language learners (ELL), and gender to student performance in the Algebra I End of Course assessment. The research questions presented in the non-experimental quantitative research design were: (1) What is the impact of…

Federal legislation requires every student, upon completion of their secondary education, be considered college and career ready. Many states have developed and implemented career and technical education (CTE) programs of study (POS) to answer these mandates. Some stakeholders, familiar with historical vocational education programs, see current…

Nearly half of students who enter college do not graduate. The majority of efforts to increase college completion have focused on supporting students before or soon after they enter college, yet many students drop out after making significant progress towards their degree. In this paper, we report results from a multi-year, large-scale…