Research indicates that many students have difficulty with mathematics, which can be attributed to many factors including math anxiety. Students who experience math anxiety have poor attitudes towards mathematics and perform below grade level based on class and statewide assessments. The purpose of this quasi-experimental quantitative study was to…

Public policy and the popular press advocate for the use of data driven decision making by administrators in order to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) and avoid No Child Left Behind sanctions. Requirements such as State Senate Bill 1 and the Student Achievement Gap Elimination (SAGE) school improvement process also emphasize data driven…

Dental caries is a disease process, one that will not be eliminated by tooth repair alone. Caries is the most prevalent disease of children and the primary reason for most restorative dental visits in both adults and children. A risk-based approach to managing caries targets those in greatest jeopardy for contracting the disease and provides…

This exploratory study describes approaches to improving schools through retrospective, in-depth qualitative case studies. To select schools to be examined, the authors sought to identify Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) schools demonstrating two distinctive patterns of improved student achievement between 2000 and 2005, rapid-improvement (i.e.,…

Major stakeholders in education are focused on the high rate of teachers leaving the profession. The review of literature indicated the number of teachers leaving the profession outnumbered the number of teachers entering or staying in the profession. High teacher turnover rates weaken schools' abilities to build and sustain professional teacher…

This study explores the relationship between the length of student-teaching experiences and new teacher efficacy. Each year thousands of prospective new teachers endure the interview processes to be hired, complete induction programs, and begin their careers only to determine that the teaching profession is not what they assumed it would be. Local…

Students may avoid working on difficult tasks because it takes them longer to complete those tasks, which results in a delay to reinforcement. Research studies show that reinforcer and response dimensions can be manipulated within a concurrent operants framework to bias choice allocation toward more difficult tasks. The current study extends…

This study sought to understand the process of change elementary teachers experienced as they participated in mathematics professional development. This investigation explored the impact of mathematics professional development on teachers' content knowledge for teaching, their ability to implement innovative pedagogical practices, and the…

The Technical Institutes experienced record enrollment in 2009-2010. Nearly 6,000 students were enrolled across the system--an increase of 18 percent over the previous year. In the fall of 2010, for the first time ever, the four schools have more than 6,000 students between them. The Technical Institutes are able to provide quality education and…

This dissertation examines the school factors which support and limit efficacy in rural special education resource room teachers. To explore these factors, a qualitative case study involving interviews, observations, and data analysis was conducted during the spring of 2010. Data collection included interviews and observations of the teachers,…

This is a qualitative, multi-case study of the reported instructional leadership actions of assistant principals in four Midwestern comprehensive high schools. The study gathered assistant principals descriptions of instructional leadership behaviors they participate in and what hinders their ability to do so. The data was collected using…

This study was needed to determine if the Accelerated Reader (AR) program made a positive impact in schools, which were attempting to increase student achievement in reading. The purpose of this study was to determine if students who received reading instruction supplemented with the AR Program achieved higher reading scores as measured by the…

The study used a phenomenological approach guided by principles of the grounded theory approach to assess the impact of the Global Teenager learning circle on the educational life of students at Mucheke High School, in Zimbabwe. Since in grounded theory, theory comes from the data, the study explored, from students' point of view, how the…

Educating students with disabilities gained national attention in 1975 with the passage of Public Law 94-142 the Education of All Handicapped Children Act. This law provided students with disabilities with equal access to the same free and appropriate education as students without disabilities, and mandated that schools provide students with…

The 2010 report of the Head Start Impact Study is an important follow-up evaluation of the only national investigation that attempts to answer the question: "What are the program's impacts, as measured at the end of first grade, for children who received Head Start services when they were 3 or 4 years of age?" Overall, the study was sound…