Transparency is a fundamental trait that teachers must exhibit in their district and on their campus in order to understand the mission and goals of the district and campus. Educators need proper training and guidance from district and campus leaders to establish a collective efficacy for the benefit of student success. As school districts find…

The purpose of this study was to explore the alternative education placement characteristics in the state of Arkansas and the demographics of the students placed in ALE. There are eleven characteristics of which two are required to be present in a student profile in order for a student to be placed in alternative education in Arkansas. This…

This study analyzed the vision, operations, and governance structure of state legislature on the College and Career Readiness (CCR) education policy to identify the decision-making process and opportunities and gaps for an equitable K-12 education pathway that challenges a more inclusive implementation of readiness at the state level. I endeavored…

Florida's 2009 Excess Credit legislation created a tuition penalty structure for undergraduate college students who attempted credit hours above a determined threshold to incentivize efficient graduation. Due to the structure of the law, there are advantages for students who complete collegiate credit via acceleration during high school. As such,…

In this autoethnographically-infused natural history of discourse (NHD) (Silverstein and Urban, 1996; Slembrouck, 2001), I use methods from critical discourse studies (CDS) to trace 10 years of changes in "remediation" discourses within a corpus of texts associated with Missouri HB 1042, a piece of legislation passed in 2012 that…

State governments are regularly reexamining the statewide board governance arrangements over public higher education, enacting governance reforms that change the structure or authority granted to boards by state legislatures. While previous research has studied governance reforms, there is a lack of recent studies on such reforms and what…

This study aimed to explore how University Liaisons respond to homelessness on their campus. With new federal and state laws being enacted, little research focuses on the policies, programs, and services at universities. Community Colleges tend to be a more attractive option for homeless youth due to the low cost; however, universities are also…

Between the decades of 1970 through 1999, there were major shifts in higher education in New Jersey. Utilizing a grounded theory approach this dissertation created a database of legislation, hearings transcripts, and education reports. Searching this database for commonly used terminology, this dissertation was seeking a pattern in language use…

Polarization in the United States and controversy over the teaching of content some deem "divisive" has resulted in the enactment of restrictive legislation in many states. Such constraints contribute to a fraught environment in schools today and significantly impact the work of teaching. Utilizing frameworks of "ambitious…

How do literacy coaches function as policy actors? Using a case study of literacy coaches in a small, rural South Carolina school district, this dissertation explored the ways coaches act as policy actors, the policies coaches create, and how they institutionalize policy. This study focused on literacy coaches as policy actors. The South Carolina…

Adequacy of funding for public institutions of higher education in the United States is significantly important to an array of stakeholders, including, state legislative bodies, decision-makers in the arena of higher education, and notably, consumers of higher education. State allocation of resources for higher education demonstrates variability,…

The COVID-19 pandemic has immeasurably impacted nearly every aspect of schools from day-to-day operating procedures to the way students attend classes to curricular and instructional matters. In the early stages of the pandemic, while COVID-19 spread across the country, the large-scale, nationwide closure of schools in March 2020 forced educators,…

This qualitative dissertation critically analyzes proposed and enacted state-level, tuition-free college legislative documents. Taking a three-article approach to the research, this study adds to the recent literature of tuition-free programs focusing on program design characteristics and the inequitable outcomes for students. The first article…

This study applies Clark and Estes's (2008) gap analysis model to understand how a state education agency's decision making, during reform policy implementation, impacts the success of the initiative. Specifically, the purpose of this study was to assess the effect of the Texas Education Agency's (TEA) decision making, during the policy design and…

This study investigates the policy sensemaking of urban educators on the "Read by Grade Three" (RBG3) Law and their sensemaking impacts on English Learners' (ELs') learning experiences. Applying a critical cultural policy sensemaking framework, I conducted an urban district case study to highlight educators' perceptions and behaviors in…