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Charter schools are increasingly being heralded as a solution to the dismal education condition of many schools and school districts across the United States. Despite the proliferation of charter schools and their supporters, the school choice debate remains contentious. This paper seeks to advance the school choice debate by shifting the discussion away from whether charter schools are positive or negative, to explaining why research has found evidence that supports both claims. I ask: what explains the variance in student achievement in different charter schools? To answer this question I analyzed data from all Texas open enrollment charter schools. The empirical analysis suggests that school expenditure has a moderating effect of student achievement. Increased expenditure predicts increased student performance on Texas Academic Achievement Tests. The model also helps explain variance in school expenditure. Private revenue, such as grants and donations, is shown to be highly correlated with educational expenditure. The data suggest that Texas charter schools with higher private revenue will be able to spend more on education expenses and, as a result, student achievement will be expected to increase. The paper concludes that Texas charter schools may indeed respond to competitive pressures, as the school choice advocates predict. However, funding appears to have a major impact on schools’ abilities to respond to pressures to increase student achievement. If schools are not properly funded, no amount of competitive market-like pressures can produce sufficient academic achievement. This finding has important implications for the school choice debate, as well as for state and local government. The model suggests that Texas school funding levels (when not supplemented by large grants or donations) are not sufficient to allow schools to respond to competitive market-like pressures for increased student achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The No Child Left Bahind Act of 2001 impacts most school districts. Many of the regulations require changes to existing programs and practices, thus there is confusion among administrators. For Texas school districts, implementing NCLB is problematic considering a 12 percent cut in appropriations needed to balance the state budget. This paper focuses on the the provisions to help low-achieving children in challenging achievement academic standards. The measure is difficult to achieve for several reasons. 1) it is difficult for districts to indentify and reach under-served children because of legal restrictions on privacy;. 2) Changing state accountability measures many confound assessments required by NCLB. Texas changed its accountability instrument in FY2002-2003. 3) Provisions to expand programs are fiscally problematic. And 4) A highly quaified work force is problematic for Texas which has a shortage of certified teachers (U.S. Department of Education 2002). These concerns show the importance of this paper. In many cases, school administrators will be the agents of organizational change in order to implement NCLB. This paper should identify innovative change mechanisms that can transform schools and increase student achievement. The researcher will examine Texas budget records from the 2003 legislative session to assess cutbacks in educational spending and will interview a select group of school administrators to assess difficulties implementing NCLB in their districts. The interviewees will be doctoral students in the Educational Leadership program at San Houston State University that hold administrative posts. The research should give audiences an understanding of the difficulties of implementing programs that are conceived and passed into law by politicians It should also identify the creativity that school administrators need to achieve the required results of NCLB within their budgets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Impact of Welfare Reform on Academic Outcomes Parental Workforce Participation, Welfare Receipt, and Children’s Academic Outcomes In this paper, we will examine how changes in the welfare system brought about by the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) have affected parental report of children’s academic outcomes. PRWORA put into place the Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) program, which was intended to increase welfare recipients’ workforce participation and decrease their welfare receipt. These TANF policies, including the 30-hour-per-week work requirement and 60-month time limit, have led to a nationwide decrease in the welfare rolls of 56 percent between 1993 and 2000 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2000). Thus, the 1996 welfare reform has generally been heralded as a great success. In spite of the overwhelming public support for welfare reform, many of its consequences remain as of yet unknown. For example, we have yet to find out the kinds of effects that the reform will have on the children of current and former welfare recipients. Applying the life-course perspective to the families, the principle of “linked lives” states that the lives of the parents and children “are lived interdependently, and social and historical influences are expressed through this network of shared relationships” (Elder, 1998, p. 4). Thus, policies aimed at recipients’ workforce participation and welfare receipt will inevitably affect the recipients’ children as well. We hypothesize that a number of TANF policies, including the 30-hour-per-week work requirement, may affect children’s academic and behavioral outcomes through their impact on parents’ workforce participation and welfare receipt. We also theorize that parents’ workforce participation and welfare receipt will have differential affects on children according to their age, with younger children being more impacted by changes in family income due to parent’s workforce participation and welfare receipt and adolescents being more impacted by the amount of time parents spend at work. Sample, Method, and Findings The data to be used in this study are taken from the first two waves of the Illinois Families Study (IFS), a longitudinal study of 1362 respondents who were receiving TANF in the State of Illinois during September, October, and November of 1998. Our findings show that children whose parents transitioned from not working in Wave 1 to working in Wave 2 were significantly more likely to be achieving academically – receiving A’s and B’s – at Wave 2. Parental employment at Wave 2 was not found to be a positive factor in all cases, however. We found that children whose parents were employed in both waves were significantly less likely to receive A’s and B’s at Wave 2 than were children whose parents transitioned from not working to working. We also found that receiving welfare during Wave 2 had a positive relationship with receiving A’s and B’s at Wave 2, which suggests that welfare payments may be a protective factor for families. We argue that parental employment may be beneficial for children’s academic achievement, particularly if families are able to continue receiving welfare benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For-profit schooling is one of the most hotly debated issues in education policy discussions. Proponents argue that for-profit schools have incentives to reduce costs and to innovate, leading to both higher quality and greater efficiency in education. Critics maintain that for-profit schools cannot be trusted to place the interest of children over profitability. Buried in this position is the belief that for-profits would cut quality in the process of cutting costs. Researchers can gain insight into this debate by examining school systems where vouchers have been implemented on a large scale. In 1981, Chile began financing public and most private schools with vouchers. This paper uses 2005 data on over 250,000 fourth-graders to compare achievement across sectors. Initial results indicate that non-profits have a small advantage over for-profit and public schools, once student and peer attributes and selection bias are controlled for. There is no significant difference in achievement between for-profit and public schools. When for-profits and non-profits are subdivided by ownership, for-profit chains and Catholic schools have a large advantage over other sectors. In some cases, evangelical schools produce the lowest achievement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiential learning offers students opportunities to learn in real-world settings outside the classroom. In political science, such experiences have been found to enhance knowledge of the political process, positively impact subsequent academic performance, and develop more robust understandings of civic values. While these research findings have led universities to increasingly mandate service-learning courses, many experiential learning opportunities such as internships and study abroad programs are voluntary and demand student initiative. The purpose of this paper is to explore why students choose to engage in such voluntary experiential opportunities in order to identify how more students might be persuaded to take the initiative as well. The two-part research question that guides this study asks: Why do students take the initiative to participate in voluntary experiential learning and what do they hope to gain through their participation? This question is addressed through a grounded theory analysis of the application essays of sixteen Bryant University students who participated in a ten-day experiential learning program on the 2009 Presidential Inauguration at The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will argue against the implementation of public policies which require or encourage individual teacher bonuses based on student test scores. Teacher incentive programs as they are now conceived and implemented in Public Education Policy are unable to produce higher levels of student success. Student achievement is often characterized as job skills learned in comparison to other students worldwide. Success and failure in student achievement should no longer be measured in terms of standardized test scores. Due to outsourcing, an increasing number of jobs in the United States require applicants to acquire advanced degrees. The traditional basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic are no longer sufficient to keep American students competitive with advanced international students. Standardized testing, because it evaluates only basic skills, is not an adequate measure of student success. In order to better account for worldwide competition, measures of student achievement should compare job skills between American and international students in terms of human capital. Programs which link teacher pay to test scores will only stagnate the intellectual development of students. Public policy and education literature argues that incentive-based pay for teachers encourages instructors to focus on test-taking skills and basics without developing the critical and analytical skills of students. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an analysis of the power of political images and policy narratives. I argue that the debate over desegregation policies in Los Angeles, California in the 1970s established two dominant policy images about the purposes of public schools: They are meant to promote both academic achievement and racial equality. Each of these images included several policy narratives to support it. Over the next two decades, these images remained. Eventually, however, one became more dominant over the other. As the district moved away from desegregation, the image of schools as promoters of equality diminished, and the academic achievement image took precedence. This was true for several district policies, including policies that originated as part of the desegregation plan. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Program success is influenced by a great many factors. This paper investigates how institutional and community characteristics can affect the success of Upward Bound which is a program administred by the U.S. Department of Education. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explain the role of diversity on student performances in higher education. Surveying students in various public colleges and universities, this paper asks whether the increased number of women and minority faculty members in academic institutions influence scholastic performances of students, especially female and minority students. The dependent variable is students’ assessment of their performances. The key independent variables in this research include gender, race, percentage of minority populations on campus, economy, diversity, and region. Ultimately, this paper asks whether representative bureaucracy can reconcile bureaucracy with democracy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of racial/ethnic representation on minority student outcomes in Georgia schools. I test the impact of representation at the school district and individual school levels. I use a series of performance indicators as dependent variables, including pass rates on standardized exams, average ACT/SAT scores, and graduation rates..x000d..x000d.The paper goes beyond traditional representative bureaucracy theory in two important ways. First, I use Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) to examine how variables at the district and school levels affect outcomes. For example, I am able to test whether school board race/ethnicity affects outcomes differently than teacher race/ethnicity. Few studies have tested both school board and teacher effects in the same analysis, and fewer still have used multilevel modeling..x000d..x000d.Second, I use Substantively Weighted Analytical Techniques (SWAT) to examine the factors that predict performance in schools where minority students perform particularly well. By overweighting schools where students of color perform well, I am able to examine how factors like representation, student socioeconomic status, and funding differences gain or lose relevance when high performers are given more weight. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kalamazoo Promise, announced in 2005, is an innovative college-scholarship program available to every graduate of the Kalamazoo Public Schools. It is also the centerpiece of an economic development strategy to revitalize an urban community that has lost jobs and population over the past decades. Programs such as the Kalamazoo Promise, which is being emulated by communities across the United States, open new avenues for the accumulation of human capital regardless of income level or academic achievement, while facilitating the creation of new economic assets and social capital for the community overall..x000d..x000d.This paper documents the diffusion of the Kalamazoo Promise idea and its usefulness as a tool for urban revitalization. The paper will analyze the program’s unique melding of educational opportunity and economic development goals, explore the ways in which this model has been disseminated nationally, and examine how diverse communities are adapting it to their own needs and assets. Drawing on literature about policy diffusion, as well as an in-depth understanding of the Kalamazoo Promise and programs modeled on it, the paper will assess the potential and limitations of Promise-type programs as an asset-building tool. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faculty have long used peer review and student self-assessment and tried things like distributing paper rubrics in advance to help students learn to match their own performance to instructor expectations. By and large, most users agree that it works, and that it is even usually worth the time and effort it takes. But what part of the feedback cycle improves students’ performance? Students might learn from applying the rubric themselves to others’ work, or they could learn not from *doing* the assessments but from receiving others’ feedback on their work. This paper uses an innovative in-class experiment in which students practice self assessment and peer assessment over multiple papers. Each student self-assesses on four papers, and over the course of the 4 assignments s/he will evaluate 6 peer papers. With random distribution into groups over the first three papers, the experiment varies the number of peer evaluations done and the number of peer evaluations received to allow us to separate the two effects. Comparing average deviations of instructor evaluations from student self-assessments, peer assessments given, and peer assessments received over four assignments will give important insights into the student learning process. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the determinants of education attainment in advanced industrial welfare states from 1960 to 2000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether or not the increase of ethnic minority students translates into the growth of the same minority teacher representation and the students’ performance. School-level data come from over 1,000 public schools in Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Houston, and Chicago. The analysis points to the presence of representative democracy, showing that there is a positive relationship between the ratios of ethnic minority students and teachers. The increased minority teacher representation, however, does not improve the same minority students’ academic achievement. The sole, but important, exception to this generalization lies in low-achieving Hispanic student schools. The increase of Hispanic teacher representation leads to the increase of low-achieving Hispanic students’ performance, yet this finding does not apply to high-achieving Hispanic student schools. Overall, the teacher-race factor is not as critical to the prediction of test scores as previously asserted, and its effect varies depending on ethnic groups and the degree of school performance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the evolution of the discourse on educational disparity in the United States, specifically looking at the black-white achievement gap. I contend that the continuing debate on the achievement gap, will turn precisely on the question of whether the achievement gap is framed as a problem that is primarily systemic (e.g. school funding, teacher preparation) or primarily individualizing in nature (e.g. acting white, cultural dysfunction). In the case of the achievement gap, what I term “individualizing frames” or cultural explanations limits the cause of the problem to particular individuals, often black students themselves, whereas “systemic” or structural frames broaden the focus, assigning responsibility to government, business, and larger societal forces. To be clear, I am not arguing that there is only one “right” explanation for the achievement gapâ€"as with any policy problem, explanations and solutions are both numerous and elusive. Nevertheless, I do argue that the way in which the problem is framed and defined does have significant consequences for which policies are even discussed, and subsequently adopted ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various studies have addressed the dismal state of minority education, but few offer solutions to correct for this phenomenon. Using HLM, this paper assesses this issue arguing that culturally competent teachers mitigate minority underperformance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is trying to examine the relationship between the public educational spending and the student achievement at secondary school level. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the impact of private funding on teacher turnover and student performance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past three decades, education policymaking has become focused on three major issues: student achievement, educational standards, and accountability for performance. This focus has provided the impetus for a new development in which central governments (state governments and the federal government) have intervened more and more intensely into the details of substantive school policy. In this paper, I show that the emergence of this new agenda has been the product not merely of changes in economic or social conditions, but of political entrepreneurship. A powerful, if heterogeneous, coalition of business elites, economists, governors, and dissident educational intellectuals worked to establish a new agenda in education focusing on achievement by linking this theme to economic rejuvenation, equality of opportunity, and democracy. They charged that low academic achievement in the United States was primarily a function of poor school performance, thereby setting the stage for a new policy agenda centered on school improvement. This successful issue definition profoundly shaped educational policy during the 1980s, and provided the intellectual foundation for even greater expansions of centralized authority in education in the 1990s and 2000s. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do local politics influence student outcomes in public education? This paper derives amodel of resource allocation for public education in municipal contexts and assesses howinformal institutions between local politicians and bureaucrats influence studentachievement in public education. Using original survey data collected in schools across12 wards of Bangalore, India in the fall of 2007, I present and test a model of decisionmakingfor allocating resources to public education that accounts specifically for howinformal institutions between locally elected politicians and bureaucratic officialsinfluence student outcomes in public education. Results suggest that positiverelationships between bureaucrats and politicians have a positive and significantinfluence on student achievement in math and language scores. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the effect of NPM on educational achievement. Existing evidence is weak and shows no effect, but a new survey coupled to detailed data on more than 40,000 students indicates that NPM increases the effect of social background. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Retaining low performing students in grade has become a central though disputed component of current standards-based reforms. This paper examines the political and organizational determinants of school district retention rates across racial groups. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses macro-level structural factors and agent characteristics behind the OECD's student achievement scores (PISA) of more than 40 countries. Germany is used to show how measuring human capital connects education and the economy. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a contentious debate over the relationship between institutional design and student academic achievement (Smith 2005). We further the school choice debate by considering the relationship between different types of school institutions, parental and community variables and third grade student test scores using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K) data. Though it has been infrequently used by political scientists (Cox and Witko 2008), this panel data set allows us to overcome problems that plague many school choice studies by examining the academic performance of the same students over time, holding unobserved child-level variables constant. It is also unique in that it follows younger children. Since it is large and nationally representative, this data set also allows us to make generalizable conclusions. We demonstrate that academic performance is unlikely to be improved by simply attending a school of choice, public or private, and instead argue that parental variables and other aspects of a school's institutional environment and community are more important, though still modest, determinants of academic achievement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the effects of teacher-pupil racial composition in school on the minority students’ academic achievement. The data point to the importance of the composition but its effects vary across different racial groups. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Testing the Limits of Culture What accounts for variation in the academic achievement of public school students? Conventional wisdom currently maintains that environmental factors such as race and household income as well as structural factors such as student-teacher ratio and class size explain student success. I argue that the importance of race and ethnicity has been underestimated because of the failure to consider the impact of the cultural context within which teaching is delivered and perceived/understood. In particular, I expect that “dyadic” data on the coincidence between faculty and student ethnicity should outperform “monadic” data on the ethnicity of students or teachers. I test this argument by analyzing dropout rates and standardized test scores for high school students in the 1036 regular school districts in Texas, 1995 – 2000. I find a strong correlation between the existence of a shared cultural context and improved performance. My findings have important implications for policy makers seeking to address the needs of minority students without jeopardizing the current and future academic success of non-minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I investigate whether Florida's public school districts enjoy economies of size - as the school districts increase in size, does student success rise? I build upon literature of two fields of social science concerning organizational size. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a database of 104 cities and school districts, covering 40 states and over 70,000 schools, we find that in the time period 1999-2003, mayoral appointed school boards are positively related to elementary school student achievement. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]