School learning environments play important roles in students' lives. But when do these relationships form? Previous research on middle school students has identified a strong association between student socio-demographics, school characteristics, and achievement. Yet, few studies have investigated the origins of these associations. This study…

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…

A person-centered approach identified five empirically unobserved student profiles of first-time full-time university students who shared similar academic patterns, performance measures, and demographic characteristics. "Honors" and "Flourishing" classes tended to graduate within 6 years of attempting their first-college…

This dissertation contributes to the discussion of what contributes to school district rankings in the state of Ohio. It uses Latent Profile Analysis to explore different variables at the contextual and district level as they correspond to Ohio's Performance Index academic measure and Value-Added academic measure. Results show that contextual…

In England, students apply to universities using teacher-predicted grades instead of their final end-of-school A-level examination results. Predicted rather than achieved grades therefore determine how ambitiously students apply to and receive offers from the most selective courses. The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS)…

Adaptive survey design refers to using targeted procedures to recruit different sampled cases. This technique strives to reduce bias and variance of survey estimates by trying to recruit a larger and more balanced set of respondents. However, it is not well understood how adaptive design can improve data and survey estimates beyond the…

To help students cope with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education institutions offered students flexible grading policies that blended traditional letter grades with alternative grading options such as the pass--fail or credit--no credit options. This study conducted an in-depth analysis of the flexible grading policy at a…

Predictive analytics methods in education are seeing widespread use and are producing increasingly accurate predictions of students' outcomes. With the increased use of predictive analytics comes increasing concern about fairness for specific subgroups of the population. One approach that has been proposed to increase fairness is using demographic…

Access to primary education, implemented in many nations as a fundamental right, is enshrined in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26(1). However, higher education requires enhanced levels of financial, institutional, and infrastructural commitment from the governments and the student, and sometimes neither has the…

Creativity involves generating novel and valuable ideas. While the importance of creative thinking is widely acknowledged, its cognitive basis is poorly understood, particularly in older adults. This study aimed to develop and test an explanatory model of creative thinking to elucidate its underlying cognitive functions in an elderly sample. The…

Mentoring is a dynamic and multifaceted process that plays a pivotal role in personal and professional development. This paper explores critical variables related to mentoring, including historical context, demographics of mentors (age and sex), mentor training, mentor readiness, mentor benefits, and concerns mentors may have with the process.…

We analyze the relationship between residential populations, school attendance zone boundaries (AZBs), and school enrollments in two large, countywide suburban districts, Fairfax County, Virginia, and Montgomery County, Maryland, from 1990 to 2010. A steep decline in white, school-age children and an increase in black, Hispanic, and Asian children…

For the past quarter century, federal law has required states to measure school performance, identify the lowest performing schools, and provide support to identified schools. Earlier accountability systems were criticized for overemphasizing student achievement in reading and mathematics, excluding nonacademic features of school performance, and…

Charter schools are public schools governed by an independent board of directors that come into existence through a contract with an authorized public chartering agency. This report, known as the Illinois Charter School Biennial Report, provides legislators, policymakers, educators, and the general public with information regarding the state of…

The meteoric rise in charter schools has several implications for traditional public schools and their students. One understudied implication is the geographic competition for students. Given traditional public school boundaries are often fixed while charter school boundaries are more flexible, charter schools can draw students away from existing…