The Great Mountain High School (GMHS) started a program to help support students at risk for not graduating high school. The focus of this study was to provide a formative program evaluation of the created program that (a) investigated the fidelity of implementation of the activities and processes of the program, (b) gathered an understanding of…

Clinically appropriated and procedurally correct hand hygiene is performed less than 50% of the time by health professionals resulting in suboptimal patient care. The use of serious simulation games has been suggested to provide emerging health professional students the opportunity to practice proper hand hygiene behaviors to individualized,…

A wide body of literature has documented the disproportionality in exclusionary discipline rates (Gregory et al., 2010; Losen et al., 2015; Office of Special Education Programs, 2020; Skiba, 2014; Welsh & Little, 2018). Students with disabilities or other minority backgrounds are removed from their classrooms at higher rates than their peers…

A K-12 public school district in the northeastern United States implemented its own clinical in-school counseling program (CISCP) to help at-risk students in Grades 7-12 who were experiencing a crisis. The problem was that the district was unaware of whether the CISCP is helping its students through their crises. The study was important as it…

This qualitative study analyzes the effects that RENEW, a person-centered goal planning model, has on students with disabilities that are in an alternative school setting. Students in sixth through twelfth grade participated in this study to determine if RENEW can affect students' awareness of post-secondary options and assist with post-high…

Students classified as English learners (EL) are a protected class of students with core legal rights. There are clear opportunities to strengthen education policies and practices to improve opportunities and outcomes for EL-classified students. This dissertation is comprised of three studies examining key issues in EL education with the goal of…

A traditional mode of Earth Science instruction in public day high schools for students with severe emotional behavioral disorders (EBD) is teacher-delivered lectures supported with paper-based laboratory exercises. These laboratory experiences are often presented through worksheet problems that students are asked to solve and return to the…

Postsecondary access and degree completion are increasingly important concerns for individuals and policymakers. This dissertation presents evidence on three distinct strategies for increasing students' level of preparedness for higher education, rates of postsecondary enrollment, and rates of postsecondary degree completion. The first is an…

This Executive Position Paper is a one-to-one laptop implementation plan for Pittsgrove Township Schools that can be used as a template for other districts with similar interests. Each of the three chapters fulfills a major purpose. In Chapter One the paper is designed to substantiate the need for the Pittsgrove Township School District to…

Transition is a concern for children moving from the eighth grade into high school. Students experience difficulty with grades, behavior, and emotional transitions at that juncture in their education. The trend can be observed both across the nation and locally in western Pennsylvania. This paper gives evidence of the national issues that students…

The purpose of this study is to identify the important constructs and their key indicators that are to be included on an instrument developed to measure the engineering design process and outcome of students in high schools that use the Project Lead the Way and Engineering by Design curriculums. Several pre-engineering curriculums are used in high…

The purpose of this study was two-fold in nature. First, this study sought to identify whether extracurricular participation for students in a rural, Grades 7-12 building created significant differences when examining academic performance, attendance, gender, lunch status, and student discipline compared to their non-participant peers. Secondly,…

Researchers, policymakers, business, and industry have indicated that the United States will experience a shortage of professionals in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. Several strategies have been suggested to address this shortage, one of which includes increasing the representation of girls and women in the…

This qualitative study explores large, urban, mid-western principal perspectives about cyberbullying and the policy components and practices that they have found effective and ineffective at reducing its occurrence and/or negative effect on their schools' learning environments. More specifically, the researcher was interested in learning more…

This study gathered from former students during grades 6th through 12th who had actively participated in the Business Professionals of America (BPA) program, sought to build on existing research on the benefits of participating in extra-curricular activities. The purpose of the research was to examine the extent to which participation in the BPA…