In March 2020, COVID-19 resulted in school closures for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year across the nation. Because of the pandemic predictions regarding the 20202021 school year, concerns regarding curricular offerings and delivery surfaced quickly. A non-experimental quantitative comparative study was conducted in two neighboring…

Research shows that students who dually enroll are more likely to finish high school and succeed in postsecondary education than their peers with a similar grade point average (GPA), test scores, demographics, etc. Yet in many states, students and parents are largely--if not entirely--responsible for covering dual enrollment course costs, placing…

This paper is the second of a two-part series examining factors influencing school nurse to pupil staffing ratios. The paper reports data from a qualitative study exploring the social and political factors that potentially influence ratios. Interviews were conducted with 30 key state informants from these states. Content analysis of the data…

This paper examines the forces behind political integration through the lens of school district consolidations, which reduced the number of school districts in the United States from around 130,000 in 1930 to under 15,000 at present. Despite this large observed decline, many districts resisted consolidation before ultimately merging and others…

High turnout for the 1980 Iowa caucuses and conflicting explanations for that high turnout formed the background for an investigation of the relationship between media uses and gratifications, involvement in the local community, and caucus participation. Campaign fan gratifications--either excitement seeking or communicative utility--were…

The major purposes of this paper are to present (1) a summary of the major concepts and general hypotheses of the social power model, (2) the empirical findings from the operationalization of the social power model, and (3) some implications for change agents concerned with rural development. The social power model was empirically tested in 5…

This journal issue explores Iowa's participation in the U.S. Civil War and primarily focuses on what happened to the men, women, and children who remained at home. A number of social, political, and economic changes are examined, including: (1) the increased responsibilities of women and children; (2) the growth of abolitionism; (3) the role of…

The document describes a thesis project which focused on the development of a teacher resource guide as an aid in high school instruction of Iowa history. The objective was to increase students' awareness of Iowa through an examination of the state's current and past development. The project is presented in five chapters. Chapter I states the…

Political organization is an alternative to the so-called inevitability of losing one's rural school or one's small community; People United for Rural Education (P.U.R.E.), organized to promote the survival of rural schools and the concept of rural as a credible way of life, has been an effective political organization. The reversal of urban…