Retaining teachers is a pressing issue facing many urban middle schools in the southern US. Urban middle schools continually face increased teacher turnover rates in spite of state mandated induction and mentoring programs. Drawing from Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory, the purpose of the qualitative case study was to examine urban middle…

College completion is an issue of great concern in the United States, where only 50% of students who start college as freshmen complete a bachelor's degree at that institution within six years. Researchers have studied a variety of factors to understand their relationship to student persistence. Not surprisingly, student characteristics,…

This dissertation presents an analysis of the effectiveness of a Research I University's College of Education FYE seminar program's influence on the key factors of social and academic integration of freshmen students in the program. This project provides significant analysis of one of the most recent trends in First-Year Experience programs--the…

Research affirms the Double Deficit Hypothesis, which posits that there are three primary dyslexic subtypes, Phonological Deficit, Naming Speed Deficit, and Double Deficit (Wolfe & Bowers 1999; Feller 2008; Katzir et al. 2008). These subtypes differ in terms of core cognitive deficits. There has not been research, to-date, examining the…

This ex post facto, participatory action research study investigated the relationship between a criterion-referenced, inventory-based reading assessment and the standardized Third Grade Reading Ohio Achievement Assessment (OAA). The study, conducted in a suburban Ohio district where the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) has been used since…

As public school accountability for student achievement has continued to increase, prior to and as a result of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, schools have sought ways of bringing new instructional services to their students to raise their levels of achievement. Some Pennsylvania public high schools have attempted to improve student…

Nationwide, about 40 percent of college students take at least one remedial course to prepare for college-level coursework. One cause of this high rate of remedial enrollment is the misalignment of high school graduation standards and college academic expectations. College readiness partnership programs attempt to address this problem by…

New products continue to launch quickly but many of them are converged products. The "new product" is not a completely new thing to consumers and the basic features stay the same. As a result, the added functions or fancy design can't explain why consumers adopt the new media. Past studies have examined perceptions of innovations or user…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify and describe the perceptions of urban superintendents and the influence of executive coaching on their leadership practices, to identify which phases of the executive coaching process urban superintendents perceive as influential in their leadership practice, to determine which coaching strategies…

Career and technical education (CTE) is increasingly seen as a major potential contributor to the recovery of the U.S. economy. However, the effectiveness and impact of the current Carl D. Perkins Act (otherwise known as Perkins IV) that governs CTE are unclear. Is the federal investment in CTE paying off? To answer this, we need to establish the…

As California competes for jobs in an increasingly competitive global economy, the state faces a looming shortage of highly educated workers (PPIC, 2012). For a variety of reasons, the need for individuals with degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is of particular concern. Nowhere is this more true than in the…

Congress first called for the Advisory Committee on Head Start Research and Evaluation (the "Committee") in its 1998 reauthorization of the Head Start program, with a requirement that the Secretary of Health and Human Services convene a panel of experts to inform the Department about the design of a newly required national evaluation of…

"Free To Grow"--a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF)--supported efforts by Head Start agencies and their community partners to strengthen the families and neighborhood environments of high-risk preschool children living in low-income communities. The goal was to reduce the children's vulnerability to substance…

The purpose of this statewide study is to assess the perceived improvements made to programs that are offered at Career and Technical Education Centers from the perspective of vocational administrators and teachers following the Bureau of Career and Technical Education conduction of an Approved Program Evaluation. The Pennsylvania Bureau of Career…

Navigating the complicated path through college can be a difficult task. The report analyses the problems students have on graduating on time--such as earning unnecessary credits--which costs them collectively billions of dollars and millions of hours each year. It also proposes a possible solution--Guided Pathways to Success (GPS), which can…