This qualitative study examined the impact of parental engagement on academically high-performing high school students and the perceptions administrators and parents have on the school-parent partnership. Participants were parents and administrators of students in four large urban, Title I high schools within a large independent school district in…

The purpose of my phenomenological qualitative study was to understand the impact of family involvement and engagement on the persistence of first-generation Latinx students at a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) designated university. Grounded in Yosso's (2005) community cultural wealth (CCW) model, I explored the ways CCW assets learned from…

This study examined how a structured voluntary reading intervention supports students in becoming better readers. A one-group pretest/posttest design was used to measure changes in elementary student's reading fluency, reading comprehension, and attitude towards reading in response to receiving an 8-week structured reading intervention. The 8-week…

Students with disabilities face challenges with low parental engagement and low student achievement in a rural Georgia school district. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine educators' perceptions of parental engagement and student achievement for students with special needs. The problem addressed the low parental engagement…

This study used a propensity score approach to estimate treatment effects in a multilevel setting. The propensity score approach involves the estimation of propensity scores for covariate balancing and the estimation of treatment effects. This study aimed at understanding how propensity scores estimated through a simple logistic regression compare…

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by challenges in socialization and communication, and restricted, repetitive behaviors or interests across development (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013). Youth with ASD have an increased risk for developing anxiety disorders (Mattila et al., 2010). Anxiety…

Background/Context: Future Forward (FF) is an early elementary literacy program, administered by Education Analytics (EA), that combines one-on-one tutoring with parent engagement to promote student literacy development both at school and at home. In 2011 FF was funded by an i3 grant to develop the program and test its impact in Milwaukee. Two…

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine how children's book format influences parent-child book reading engagement. The extant literature suggests that there are at least two potential mechanisms that might moderate children's engagement with and learning from books: (1) the format and features of the book itself and (2) how parents and…

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted the delivery of specially designed instruction for students with disabilities. Educators had to quickly shift their instruction without support from training and knowledge of best practices for virtual teaching. This study sought to understand how teachers were providing specially designed instruction during the…

Research related to the engagement of parents in education continues to perpetuate critical misconceptions in the education of English Learners (ELs), as ideological mind-sets and mislabeling of Latinx families intentionally diminish their roles, importance, participation, and histories. The effects of COVID-19 pandemic on mitigating online…

In online virtual-based learning, combining more adaptive personal student characteristics with risk factors, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between student at-risk factors and mathematics achievement. Further, the study examined how personal student characteristics, which are sometimes amenable to change and…

Children's early skills are strong predictors of later learning outcomes. Research aiming to disentangle the causal effects of early skills from unmeasured, stable characteristics related to learning throughout development demonstrates that unmeasured confounders explain a large portion of the effects of early skills previously identified. To…

The allocation of students to ability tracks is often based on teacher recommendations. These recommendations tend to be biased in favor of students from higher socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. While tracking procedures and criteria have been proposed to play a role herein, empirical research is lacking. Using a survey experiment and…

As primary career influencers, parents must support adolescent children in navigating evolving and increasingly challenging employment landscapes. Using a capitals lens, this study explores secondary school parents' capacity to provide informed career advice and their perceptions on factors known to enhance youth employability and employment…

Social Scientists, educators, and parents have often thought of parental engagement as being a major force affecting school outcomes. Over the last more than two decades, there have been some very noteworthy advancements in the understanding of the workings of parental engagement in urban settings. A lot of this progress is due to the growth of:…