In 2008, the federal government allotted $7 billion in child care subsidies to low-income families through the state-administered Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), now the government's largest child care program (US DHHS, 2008). Although subsidies reduce costs for families and facilitate parental employment, it is unclear how they impact the…

The Early College High School (ECHS) initiative developed in response to calls to significantly decrease the number of first-generation college and underserved students of color and from poverty who are high school dropouts or marginally graduates (i.e., ill prepared for college). The ECHS model is different from other educational reforms in that…

One chronic challenge facing professional development providers is the need to convene and support groups of role-alike K-12 teachers who require similar kinds of discipline-and grade-level-specific training. Online courses have become an increasingly common way to meet this challenge. This article reports on a randomized control trial that tested…

Eight different variable selection techniques for model-based and non-model-based clustering are evaluated across a wide range of cluster structures. It is shown that several methods have difficulties when non-informative variables (i.e., random noise) are included in the model. Furthermore, the distribution of the random noise greatly impacts the…

Compared to other professions in recent years, architecture has lagged woefully behind in attracting and retaining a diverse population, as typically defined by class, race and gender. This dissertation investigates the extent to which architecture culturally reproduces itself, specifically examining the socialization process of students into the…

American community colleges have become important in the pursuit of a four-year degree. The state of Missouri established an Associates of Arts degree and the 42-hour general education block option to assist students with transfer and degree completion in the shortest time possible (Coordinating Board for Higher Education, 2000). If articulation…

The importance of college completion has risen high on the U.S. policy agenda in recent years. An obvious strategy for increasing college completion is improving graduation rates, which for public universities have hovered around 50% for decades. Higher education scholars previously have revealed many student and institutional characteristics…

In its report "To Err is Human", The Institute of Medicine recommended the implementation of internal and external voluntary and mandatory automatic reporting systems to increase detection of adverse events. Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) allows the detection of patterns and trends that would be hidden or less detectable if analyzed by…

This dissertation analyzes the nearly 100,000 foreign students who attained science and engineering (S&E) doctorates in the five fields of physical sciences, life sciences, engineering, mathematics and computer sciences, and social and behavioral sciences at American universities from 1994 to 2005. Two models are presented. In the first model…

The potentially serious adverse impacts of behavior problems during adolescence on employment outcomes in adulthood provide a key economic rationale for early intervention programs. However, the extent to which lower educational attainment accounts for the total impact of adolescent behavior problems on later employment remains unclear. As an…

The purpose of this study was to determine if client-counselor ethnic/racial matches were associated with successful vocational rehabilitation (VR) outcomes. There was no significant difference in acceptance rates for VR services. Client-counselor ethnic/racial matches had a significantly higher rehabilitation rate than client-counselor…

This article examines marital patterns and use of mother tongue at home among native-born Asian Americans using the 2005-2007 American Community Survey 3-Year Public Use Microdata Sample. There are variations in mother-tongue use across Asian ethnic groups, but variations among different types of marriage are even greater. Those who marry within…

We investigated whether phonological deficits are a consequence of magnocellular processing deficits in dyslexic and control children. In Experiment 1, children were tested for reading ability, phonological awareness, visuo-magnocellular motion perception, and attention shifting (sometimes considered as magnocellular function). A two-step cluster…

Numerous studies have indicated racial and ethnic disparities in the vocational rehabilitation (VR) system, including differences in acceptance, services provided, closure types, and employment outcomes. Few of these studies, however, have used advanced multivariate techniques or latent constructs to measure quality of employment outcomes (QEO) or…

African American adolescent females possess higher self-esteem than any other racial or ethnic adolescent female group. This article tests two popular empirically supported explanations for Black high self-esteem: "contingency of self-esteem theory" and the "locus of control model". This article builds on past research to illustrate the specific…