Students with behavioral challenges and mental health concerns have unique academic, behavioral, and emotional needs. Due to high student to teacher ratio and lack of mental health and behavioral resources, some students may not have their needs met in a public school general education setting. An option that can be a better solution for these…

The CLASS-PreK instrument is widely used to evaluate early childhood classrooms, but how classrooms using Montessori, the world's most common alternative education system, fare on CLASS is understudied. Because CLASS focuses largely on teacher-child interactions as the situs of learning, but in Montessori theory, child-environment interactions are…

The expansion of early childhood education and care (ECEC) programs has generated increasing interest in establishing appropriate structural standards that can optimize child outcomes. To contribute to this discourse, this study aims to investigate the characteristics and influencing factors of classroom quality. Ninety-six classrooms (202…

We study the effects of giving poor females the right to vote in local elections on education spending and teacher-student ratios. To estimate causal effects, we exploit a national voting reform in Norwegian local elections that removed socioeconomic restrictions on female voting rights. The identification strategy exploits heterogeneous changes…

Botswana will need to invest in human capital and strengthen its skills base to transition into a knowledge-based economy. However, low foundational learning levels remain a key challenge for the education sector. While Botswana has invested heavily in teacher supply, teacher deployment has not always reflected school-level teacher needs. The…

Paraeducators are critically important members of school communities, but there is little statewide research on the characteristics of paraeducators. We therefore use over 25 years of longitudinal data from Washington state to provide a descriptive portrait of the paraeducator workforce. Paraeducators are more racially and ethnically diverse than…

Following a high-quality early care and pre-K experience, the kindergarten-through-third-grade years set the foundation upon which future learning builds; and strengthening this continuum creates opportunities for later success. Key components of a quality experience in K-3 include school readiness and transitions, kindergarten requirements,…

The increasing number of part time instructors in the community college professorate combined with low student retention and graduation rates makes research into part time faculty and student success highly germane. My dissertation investigated if higher ratios of adjunct faculty were related to student retention, certificate/degree attainment,…

Background: Physical education is a key component to improve youth health, but there is limited information on physical education delivery in different formats. Purpose: We compared PE formats (in-person versus remote) across evaluation aspects: weekly minutes; perceived effectiveness; and student-to-teacher ratio. Methods: We distributed…

This article presents autoethnographic short stories that describe an early childhood education and care (ECEC) centre director's work for one year in a municipality in Finland. The purpose of this article is to provide a glimpse into what it is like to enter into an ECEC director position and live everyday ECEC life with economic data that are…

Worldwide, a large number of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers are enroled in formal non-parental early childhood education or care (ECEC). Theoretically, lower adult/child ratios (fewer children per adult) and smaller group sizes are hypothesised to be associated with positive child outcomes in ECEC. A lower adult/child ratio and a smaller…

What guidance does research provide school districts about how to improve system performance and increase equity? Despite over 30 years of inquiry on the topic of effective districts, existing frameworks are relatively narrow in terms of disciplinary focus (primarily educational leadership perspectives) and research design (primarily qualitative…

Quality in early care and education (ECE) has been widely studied across several decades. There is not one standard definition of quality across ECE contexts. However, classroom quality often encompasses both structural features of quality, such as teacher-child ratios and teachers' qualifications, and process features of quality, such as…

The COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupted schooling, not only in South Africa, but globally. In the study reported on here we investigated the perceived psychosocial effects of the pandemic on the teaching realities of Foundation Phase (FP) educators in rural quintiles 1 to 3 schools in the North West province, South Africa. A qualitative, case…

Although several factors influence Hispanic Latina/o/x degree attainment, less is known regarding student-to-faculty ratio at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) in Florida. We examined publicly available data for HSI (n = 14) and non-HSI (n = 88) degree attainment among Hispanic Latina/o/x students in Florida. Pearson correlations and regression…