This research focuses on the social pressures experienced by parents at schools identified as middle class across southern California. The literature review of school finances, the LCFF, funding levels, and studies stretches all the way back to the Coleman report. Within this vast body of prior research remained a void in the data. This missing…

The current sociopolitical context of the United States has created a divide among the nation which has transpired into Kindergarten-12th grade public school settings. Throughout the United States school boards of education have banned books and Critical Race Theory while attacking social justice teaching pedagogies. Presently, there is growing…

In California, Filipina/x/os continue to be overrepresented in the nursing workforce, with the percentage of nurses identifying as Filipino increasing from 13.4% in 1993 to 20.6% in 2018 (Spetz et al., 2018). While a particular ethnic group being overrepresented in a certain industry is not problematic on its own, certain careers come with greater…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how charter school administrators describe their leadership preparation in the areas of moral, instructional, managerial, social and political dimensions during their first five years in an independent charter school administrative position in Southern California. Greenfield's (1995)…

Elementary students' literacy skills are decreasing nationwide ("The Nation's Report Card," 2019). This is concerning because as literacy skills slip, the literacy demands for American workers are steadily increasing (OECD, 2013). Unfortunately, adding to the situation is the fact that students' attitudes towards reading are worsening…

This qualitative study assesses the influence of a college-level intervention program on its student participants' self-efficacy. Self-efficacy theory provides an essential foundational lens for this study as it provides the necessary sources to broaden an intervention program's plans from students' individualized experiences. Study participants…

This qualitative descriptive study aimed to explore how higher education leaders within Educational Opportunity Programs (EOP) and services describe the integration and marginalization of immigrant or refugee students in California Universities. The theoretical foundation utilized in this study was based on Barry's (1997) acculturation theory. The…

This dissertation study was guided by two research questions: (1) What shapes community college mathematics faculty members' set of racialized ideologies, beliefs, and attitudes that inform their behaviors and teaching practices in the virtual classroom?; and (2) How do the racial and virtual classroom dynamics shape the ways mathematics faculty…

A qualitative phenomenological study examining the learning activities that take place at a college radio station. The research objective is to understand the social practices that make possible or hinder the construction of learning experiences at KCSS, the campus radio station at California State University, Stanislaus. Document analysis,…

California is in an educational drought and is facing a "college deficit" of college graduates. By 2030, it is anticipated that California will have a 1.1 million shortage of college-educated workers (Diaz, 2015). The struggle is real for people who want to get into college and for those who are in college trying to complete their higher…

Background/Context: The demands of military family life are great, especially within the context of war. Yet, because less than 1 percent of the population serves, the unique needs and circumstances facing the more than two million children from military families are often absent from our collective consciousness. In the past decade, public…

Southern Pomo is a moribund indigenous language, one of seven closely related Pomoan languages once spoken in Northern California in the vicinity of the Russian River drainage, Clear Lake, and the adjacent Pacific coast. This work is the first full-length grammar of the language. It is divided into three parts. Part I introduces the sociocultural…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to describe and determine the degree to which elementary school, middle school, and high school principals perceive their political skill, as measured by the Political Skill Inventory (PSI). A second purpose of the study was to determine if there was a difference for the perceived political skill of…

Increasingly more service members are separating from the military as the United States draws down the force and moves towards a post-war era. Tens of thousands of these veterans will leverage their GI Bill tuition and housing benefits in an attempt to access Southern California community colleges and bolster their transition into mainstream…

This mixed-method research study sought to investigate the relationship between middle school configuration and the academic achievement of eighth grade students in English Language Arts (ELA) and Algebra 1. The California Content Standards exam scores of 646 elementary middle schools (K-8) and 1,282 traditional middle schools (6-8, 7-8) in…