The purpose of this quantitative comparative study was to explore kindergarten teachers' perceptions of student readiness. The factors that impacted readiness when students entered kindergarten had not been clearly and consistently identified. The study extended research on factors associated with kindergarten student readiness and included…

College choice is one of the most significant decisions a family will make. Families with high socioeconomic status often hire independent educational consultants (IEC) to assist their family in college search activities. A review of the literature indicated a gap in the literature regarding IECs' understanding of the factors which influence their…

The purported purpose of school choice policies is to increase students' access to "good schools." There is little discussion, however, of where those good schools are located, nor of the ways in which the distribution of good schools mirrors broader patterns of uneven development in the United States. Given that schools are neighborhood…

Pennsylvania responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by closing schools and moving to online instruction in March 2020. We surveyed Pennsylvania school nurses (N = 350) in May 2020 to assess the impact of COVID-19 on nurses' concerns about returning to school and impact on practice. Data were analyzed using X[superscript 2] tests and regression…

A substantial share of students studying in a face-to-face setting supplement their coursework with online courses, yet we have a limited understanding of online course-taking behavior. This study advances knowledge in this domain by examining an administrative dataset from the Pennsylvania State University. The detailed nature of our data allows…

Background: The purpose of this study was to estimate the prevalence, identify risk factors, and assess the impact of nonphysical workplace violence (WPV) events among education workers (teachers, professionals, and support personnel). Methods: A cross-sectional survey was mailed to a random sample of 6450 education workers, stratified by sex,…

This executive summary highlights the value of making chronic absence data transparent and available to families, community partners, and other stakeholders outside school systems. Aimed at motivating action, this report: (1) shares key findings from the analysis of the scale, scope, and concentration of chronic absence in schools throughout the…

Over the past decade, chronic absence has gone from being a virtually unknown concept to a national education metric that provides every school in the nation with critical data on how many students are missing so many days of school it jeopardizes their academic success. The inclusion of chronic absence in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was…

The role of teacher assistants has paralleled the changes in education over the years. The teacher assistants, who numbered 1.3 million in 2008 and are projected to increase by 10 percent by 2018 (Office of Labor Statistics, 2012) are valuable members of our educational communities providing support to students with special needs. These teacher…

Penn State Hazleton sits at the very edge of town, on the top of a large hill, literally, as far removed from Hazleton as it possibly can be. Only a handful of professors actually live in Hazleton, and nearly all students return home for the weekend. Compared with the main campus, the student population at Penn State Hazleton is quite diverse.…

As physical evidence of institutional aspiration and achievement, ambition and accomplishment, campus heritage (broadly defined) has emerged as a major component in comprehensive campus planning and in devising a site-specific sense of place. Physical actions related to campus heritage include the renewal and/or repurposing of landmark…

Throughout the 1980's, the notion of standards came to the forefront throughout the education world. Groups questioned how to define quality teaching. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards was developed to meet this need providing a voluntary national certification to identify accomplished teachers. Since its inception,…

In this keynote address presentation, Ray Suarez, senior correspondent for public television's "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," makes a compelling case for saving America's urban neighborhoods from decline. Suarez discusses the role that higher education must play in this effort. [Keynote Address presented at the Outreach Scholarship 2003…

Examines old schools and new, inside and outside, in the historic city center and its developing suburban rings, for the "respectable classes" and the "struggling masses," as a municipal investment and as a design problem, in order to understand the material culture of vital urban places, not as facade, but as environment.…

This study attempted to determine the factors and procedures used by school administrators and school boards in Bucks and Montgomery Counties, Pennsylvania, when school sites were selected and developed; as well as to find the extent to which these sites were being utilized by school and community groups. Specifically, the study strove to…