Each year in New York state, tens of thousands of student-athletes participate in interscholastic athletics on over 15,000 public school teams. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on interscholastic athletic participation rates in New York state public schools and their relationship to school districts'…

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the integration of technology in classrooms. This has highlighted the need for a deeper understanding of how students experience these learning environments. In response, this case study explored how students experience blended learning in post emergency learning through a digital equity lens. The analysis of…

Members of school learning communities and researchers recognize that partnerships between families and schools are critical to the success of student learning (Epstein et al., 2018; Galindo & Sheldon, 2012). This qualitative descriptive multiple case study aimed to understand how five school superintendents from culturally and linguistically…

This qualitative phenomenological study addresses the pressing issue of remote learning challenges faced by low-income students during the COVID-19 pandemic. As of March 29, 2021, the pandemic had led to 126,890,643 confirmed cases and 2,778,619 deaths globally, while exacerbating existing educational disparities. The pandemic prompted widespread…

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, in March of 2020, education in the United States changed dramatically. Science teachers began to look at the implementation of ambitious and equitable science teaching practices differently. Employing the hermeneutic phenomenological framework, the purpose of this study was to investigate the lived…

The COVID-19 pandemic unveiled significant inequities within our social, economic, and educational infrastructures, prompting reconsideration of conventional approaches to education. Drawing from national trends and experiences at a four-year regional institution in East Texas, the current study delves into student departure rates and disparities…

As schools shift towards online and hybrid educational models, they increasingly rely on existing and emerging technologies to facilitate their operations. The COVID-19 pandemic required elementary schools to shift to online and virtual instruction. Current literature frequently has examined these issues from a technical perspective and at the…

Emergency online learning policies were created and implemented at higher education institutions across the United States as the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a transition to fully online learning modalities to mitigate the dangers of the virus late in 2019. A new paradigm of education emerged as emergency online learning became the standard method…

Professors in higher education are responsible for teaching diverse student populations complex material. Further, many instructors have yet to have specific pedagogical training on how to build and deliver equity-minded courses using a technology-enhanced curriculum. Consequently, the COVID-19 global pandemic has caused disruptions to educational…

This case study explored how the digital divide in educational technology access and usage evolved due to the instructional shifts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The digital divide has been researched for decades, yet inequities continue to exist in the technological experiences of varying school settings. Some scholars suggested that the…

K-12 educational outcomes are a powerful reflection of social opportunity, both by meaningfully predicting adult wellbeing across measures like health and income, and by encapsulating the breadth of factors that contribute to a child's preparedness, ability, and opportunity to learn and persist in school. In this light, the persistent deficits in…

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 led to unprecedented shifts in American education. Prior to the onset of the pandemic, children across the United States were primarily educated in brick-and-mortar school buildings, with only 0.6% of the over 50 million students in the country attending fully virtual schools (National Center…

School choice is a tool used to fight inequality and is important to consider how students are assigned to schools. The essays in this dissertation study mechanisms designed to improve and understand students' attendance at schools. Chapter 1 examines the inequality caused by the COVID-19 pandemic with respect to schools switching to a hybrid…

Disasters can cause school closures for an extended duration, causing equity and engagement gaps for students. Children and adolescents also suffer social, emotional and health problems associated with remote schooling and lack of physical and interpersonal activities. School leaders and teachers are well-practiced in traditional emergency…

This study aimed to explore and analyze the experiences and perceptions of K-12 public school principals who served predominately Latinx students in southern California as technology leaders during the COVID-19 global pandemic. The research sought to investigate school principals' awareness, beliefs, and attitudes as school community technology…