It is important to understand the contexts which lead to alternative education programming. The ways in which problem behavior is defined detrimentally impacts ethnically and racially minoritized populations and students with disabilities. Additionally, the pipeline to alternative education, with opportunities for increased supports and services,…

Purpose: There is strong evidence that year-long work placements make students more employable and produces better academic performance. Despite this, UK participation rates remain stubbornly low. The authors examine the influence of academic performance on students' willingness and ability to complete work placements. Design/methodology/approach:…

Why do inequalities in schooling persist, even in relatively egalitarian school systems? This article examines within school sorting as an explanation. We use classroom data on friendship networks in 480 European secondary schools and contrast comprehensive (England, Sweden) and tracked systems (Germany, Netherlands). Our question is to what…

How does reassigning students to create schools that are more socioeconomically and academically diverse affect the distribution of educational opportunity? What are the impacts on students who switch schools as a result of these policies? And how do changes in school assignments affect the students who don't switch schools, but who experience…

This dissertation exams the use of a weighted 5.0-scale high school grade point average (HS GPA), the South Carolina Uniform Grading Policy Grade Point Average (SC UGP GPA), as the basis for a Multiple Measures placement system in English unique to Florence-Darlington Technical College (FDTC). FDTC's service area lies in the so-called…

In response to the most recent adoption of both the Carl D. Perkins Act (Perkins) and the CAPE Act, Brevard Public Schools (BPS) was required to implement work-based learning in all secondary Career and Technology Education (CTE) programs to ensure they receive federal funding. This qualitative case study explored the experiences of eight BPS…

Extreme demand avoidance (EDA) is increasingly described as part of the autism spectrum and is sometimes diagnosed as Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA). Yet little is known, about the educational experiences of children with and without EDA behaviours. Using an online survey collecting both quantitative and qualitative data, 211 parents reported…

Students with complex support needs have intense and frequent support needs for learning and participating across multiple domains. Addressing those needs in a comprehensive manner is the purpose of special education, which is accomplished through instructional and Individualized Education Program (IEP) goals. Yet simply setting goals is…

The COVID-19 pandemic posed great risks to some disabled students, not necessarily because of health-related conditions, but due to the pre-existing entrenched inequalities that might have led to widened disparities. Hence, our aim was to critically explore the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for disabled students, focusing on equal access…

This keynote address explores the history and role of college math requirements with a focus on ensuring math courses serve to expand students' horizons, rather than serve as gatekeepers. It discusses the advent of general education math courses, which brought more students into math departments, which ultimately contributed to broadening the…

Community Colleges have an open-door policy that publicly states all are welcome but after acceptance, the student encounters the hidden locked door of placement testing. For some students, placement testing is the key that unlocks the door and provides them access to their path toward their academic journey. But for most students, placement…

California legislation (AB705, signed 2017) mandated accelerated community college writing education and implementation to begin just before the COVID-19 pandemic. This study captures faculty experiences with mandated pandemic-era acceleration via analysis of 131 open-ended faculty survey responses representing 60 of the 116 California community…

This quantitative causal-comparative study examined whether early recuperative Department of Education (DOE) Coordinated Early Intervening Services (CEIS) could significantly impact the number of underperforming general education students targeted for special education services resulting from "not meeting Math and Reading grade-level state…

African American Students with disabilities have been disproportionately represented in special education under the labels Intellectually Disabled (ID) and Emotionally Disturbed (ED) (Garwood & Carrero, 2022; Skrtic et al., 2021; Green et al., 2021; Artiles, 2019). As a result of these labels, African American students with disabilities have…

This study sought to understand the perceptions of African American males enrolled in remedial education courses within two-year institutions. The researcher gathered information by interviewing ten African American male students at community colleges in southern urban locations. This qualitative research allowed the researcher to learn directly…