This study sought to explore the lived experience of parents concerning school voucher programs and determine whether parental knowledge of funding discrepancies between income-eligible voucher programs and traditional public schools drives parents' advocacy for vouchers. This research is rooted in the interest convergence theory to explore and…

The purpose of this study is to investigate teacher perceptions of Value-Added Models specifically as they relate to students with disabilities. Value-Added Models are designed to reward teachers for student growth while taking into account factors such as socioeconomic status and disabilities (Weigert, 2012). The study also examines the alignment…

In 2012, New Jersey implemented a broad change to the teacher evaluation system with the Teacher Effectiveness and Accountability for the Children of New Jersey (TEACHNJ) Act which identified the Marzano Causal Teacher evaluation system as one of the prescribe models for districts to adopt. This system provides a more differentiated teacher…

Educational reforms have occurred throughout the history of public education. In 2009, the federal Race to the Top initiative was born and included many educational reform models. To have these reform models gain traction at the state level, a call was made by the U.S. Department of Education (Race to the Top Program Executive Summary, 2009) for…

This paper uses a novel data on both students' and teachers' online participation with students' administrative academic records and characteristics. The first chapter provides evidence that pre-pandemic lower-achieving students benefitted of the extra time they got during the Spring 2020 lockdown by doing more homework and completing the work…

This is a mixed methods study that explored instructional reading strategies that were used by kindergarten, first-, and second-grade teachers who met and/or exceeded expected growth in EVAAS from 2017-2019. Research by John Hattie, Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Robert Marzano are included in the literature review of this study. Data were…

For decades, school districts across the Nation have been pressured to close the achievement gap among students and have been held accountable for student outcomes. According to past researchers, there is a need to revise completely the teacher evaluation practices used in the 1980s and 1990s to better measure teacher effectiveness. More recently,…

Since the inception of the guided pathways model in 2015, most related research has focused on the interconnecting processes and practices that lead to student persistence and completion. While the processes and practices are the basis of the model, scholars acknowledge that the model's human capital and change management components are just as…

This dissertation is comprised of three essays, each examining a different topic in labor economics. In Chapter 1, I examine the productivity and selection effects of K-12 teacher tenure by leveraging variation from New Jersey's TEACHNJ Act. This law extended the pre-tenure period from three to four years and allowed districts to dismiss…

As students' reading proficiency gaps persist across the United States, educational leaders have turned to alternative methods to foster effective instructional literacy practices. One approach to combat this dilemma is the implementation of scripted reading programs. The purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of scripted reading…

Value-added assessment is designed to measure teacher contributions to student achievement in order to promote effective teaching (Battelle for Kids, 2011b; Darling-Hammond et al., 2012; Lee, 2011). When value-added assessment is used, research indicates that in some cases effective teaching is promoted, but in other cases it is not…

The academic library's contribution to the institutional mission and goals is something library administrators have been striving to communicate to administrators since 2010 when the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) released their report entitled "The Value of Academic Libraries." The purpose of this study was to…

Mattering involves feeling as though oneself belongs in a community and tends to influence one's college experience. The issue of mattering has been explored in social psychology and education literature. Such research has sought to understand the transitions and necessary role changes of college students. Unfortunately, there has been a lack of…

This mixed methods study explores how principals are managing and leading their school sites in ways that retain effective teachers, in the context of the value-added approach to teacher evaluation. There is a great deal of research that identifies reasons for teachers leaving the profession. However, there is little research that reviews…

The accountability movement in education since the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 has produced value-added evaluation policies in the United States that have resulted in discord and undesirable responses among many teachers. Despite investigations into the validity of value-added evaluation policies and descriptive reports of teachers' responses…