The Literacy Footprints Digital Reader provides elementary grade students and teachers with online access to books and resources from the Literacy Footprints Complete System of Guided Reading. Teachers can create a bookshelf of appropriate books for students to read independently and can create assignments for individuals or groups of students.…

The job of the school principal has become much more complex and demanding over the past several decades. Many university-based principal preparation programs--which prepare the majority of school principals--have struggled with how to make the fundamental changes needed to prepare principals for today's schools. To test a path forward, The…

This project sought to equip churches to disciple college students who participate at the Baptist Collegiate Ministry in Tallahassee, Florida. Chapter 1 provides the context and background of college ministry in Tallahassee, Florida, as well the rationale, purpose, goals, and research methodology. Chapter 2 provides exegesis of four passages of…

The University of Central Florida's First-Year Composition Program has sustained its commitment to values-based sustainable development despite a series of significant changes from 2020-2025. In this program profile, we offer four elements of sustainability--social justice, collective action, sociocultural empiricism, and strategic planning--that…

This report responds to the requirement of PL 110-246 to assess the effectiveness of state and local efforts to directly certify children for free school meals. Direct certification is a process conducted by the states and by local educational agencies (LEAs) to certify eligible children for free meals without the need for household applications.…

Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) is a transformative, learner-centered institution dedicated to student success that strategically serves Southwest Florida and beyond. The Accountability Plan is an annual report that is closely aligned with the Board of Governors' 2025 System Strategic Plan. This report enhances the System's commitment to…

The increasing shift for higher education institutions to recognize career readiness as an institutional priority (Cruzvergara et al., 2018) is leading the need to identify ways to scale student engagement in at least one high-impact practice (HIP), such as experiential learning opportunities, prior to graduation (Huang et al., 2018).…

As the complexity of school and district contexts continue to evolve, there is a need to prepare leaders at various points along the leadership continuum. Through this survey research, we analyzed student perceptions of program effectiveness (N = 408) from 2013 to 2020 in one educational leadership program through the lens of student professional…

For many years schools located within concentrated areas of poverty in an urban school county in south Florida have experienced alarmingly high teacher turnover rates and alarmingly low academic performance scores. In 2015, in a lauded expose printed by the "Tampa Bay Times," five schools, all of which would go on to become part of the…

Florida Senate Bill 1720 drastically changed developmental education, beginning in fall 2014. This paper considers affected faculty members' perceptions and experiences with the passage and implementation of reform, according to focus group data provided by 294 participants at 21 Florida College System institutions between 2014 and 2019. We found…

Developmental education reform has shown promising evidence toward improving short-term outcomes, yet questions remain about whether these early gains contribute momentum toward mid-term and longer-term postsecondary success. In 2014, Florida implemented one of the nation's most comprehensive developmental education reforms. Many students became…

This dissertation examines the role of reflective practice in the development of teacher candidates during their final internship in a teacher preparation program at a state college in Southwest Florida. Grounded in Dewey's and Schon's theories on reflective practice as well as Vygotsky's social learning theories, this mixed methods explanatory…

Funded through a federal Education Innovation and Research grant, Rural Connect is a regional model of collaborative professional learning (PL) and practice-connected support for rural educators. Through a network of cross-district learning communities that integrate literacy into content-area curriculum, the intervention provides a platform for…

Volunteer engagement is critical to achieving the mission of volunteer organizations (Boone et al., 2002). Fogarty et al. (2009) found that 4-H volunteers are a mediating factor in achieving positive youth development outcomes and are responsible for teaching at least 50% of the life skills youth gain from participation in the organization. For…

Florida's developmental education reform has benefitted most students directly impacted by the reform and has helped to reduce existing achievement gaps by race/ethnicity, English Language Learner status, and academic preparation in short-term outcomes like college course-taking and credit accumulation. Even though the reform was not specifically…