Background: As pregnant mothers increasingly engage in shared decision making regarding prenatal decisions, such as induction of labor, the patient's level of activation may influence pregnancy outcomes. One potential tool to increase patient activation in the clinical setting is mobile applications. However, research is limited in comparing…

School gardens have been an active part of United States schools since 1890, when the first school garden was established in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Since the turn of the 20th century school gardens have greatly expanded to include inner city schools in some of the largest metropolitan areas of the country. Since the early 1990s, school gardens…

School-based mentoring continues to attract both attention and criticism among school leaders and researchers. This practitioner-university collaboration examined mentees' reported levels of school connectedness after a nine-week cross-age mentoring intervention. This study of 47 mentees attending a rural, low socioeconomic status (100% FRL)…

The Department of Justice has a responsibility to ensure that all programs serving students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) abide by laws, as do state governments. This study took a close look at a Department of Justice's investigation of the appropriateness of a behavior intervention program (that is, the Georgia Network for…

The basic components of apprenticeships are the same today as in 1937, when the National Apprenticeship Act set the foundation for apprenticeships in the United States. Apprentices enter into a structured training program of classroom and paid on-the-job training under the guidance of a mentor. As their skills increase, so do their wages. Upon…

Through Focus on Change in Understanding Staff and Staffing Systems in Georgia Public Schools (FOCUS), over 500 teachers of record were recruited, selected, and placed in Georgia's high-need schools. Teachers in the first three cohorts were retained at very high levels as well as achieving full certification. Project outcomes also included the…

The purpose of this casual-comparative study was to assess the effectiveness of Academy of READING® (AOR) on eighth grade Response to Intervention students using third nine-week benchmark scaled score and Criterion Reference Competency Test scaled score. The data collected from a public middle-school in rural Georgia revealed how student…

Contemporary state math standards emphasize that students must demonstrate an understanding of the mathematical ideas underlying the computations that have typically been the core of the elementary school math curriculum. The standards have put an increased emphasis on the study of fractions in upper elementary grades, which are the years during…

Principal turnover, especially in the most challenging schools, continues be a major problem within the reform movement to improve student performance in public education (Béteille, Kalogrides, & Loeb, 2012; Conley & Cooper, 2011; Hull, 2012). Dwindling financial resources, increased accountability measures, and the increased complexity of…

Because the relationship between school disciplinary models and truancy outcomes is unknown, it is difficult for school leaders to understand the costs and benefits of punitive versus nonpunitive discipline. To achieve the State of Georgia's stated policy objectives of lowering truancy and its negative outcomes, this knowledge gap needs to be…

Although the development of digital competencies has become increasingly important in higher education, integrating digital literacies in the college classroom has occurred at a slow pace. Honors programs and colleges represent one area of the academy that typically values a more traditional approach to skill development while resisting…

States, programs, and schools have long focused on the inputs of teacher preparation--the rules for candidates and the preparation programs they attend--because inputs were thought to predict teacher effectiveness, and because they were often the best option available. But in the early 2000s, policymakers began trying to evaluate preparation…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to improve the academic success of students through the utilization of differentiated teaching within a specialized Learning Resource Center. The research study site is a private coeducational K-11 school located in Northern Georgia. The school provides motivated and disciplined students with a rigorous…

Scope and Method of Study: The researcher's evaluation of the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance's (WAWA) programs highlighted that few if any of the offered educational programs included a program evaluation, especially the most promising, the Enviroscape® Watershed learning module. The education programs that were customized and developed by the…

Mathematics achievement has become vitally important in public education, obligating students to meet and exceed higher standards in spite of ability and knowledge level. This causal-comparative study sought to establish the achievement of the Classworks® supplemental math program with seventh grade students from two public schools in Georgia. The…