Students transitioning from middle school to high school often experience academic difficulty in the ninth grade. The discontinuance between the two systems gives rise to the need for students to adapt to new academic environments. Academic failure or success is a predictor of high school graduation. Research reveals the personal characteristics of students influence successful adaptation to this transition and that the academic achievement of students depends upon the design of the learning environment.

This goal of this study was to examine whether the student characteristic of cognitive autonomy showed correlation to academic achievement during the ninth grade. This study also examined the relationships of non-cognitive characteristics of students to academic achievement. A sample of 458 ninth-grade students in a suburban high school participated in this study. The student participants were representative of a diverse community, allowing for the personal non-cognitive measures of students to include ethnicity, language proficiency, and gender.

Methodology included administration of a survey to the ninth-grade student population at the selected school. We entered the resulting survey data and demographic information into a statistical program, and academic information for each student was obtained from the school's student information database. Using a variety of statistical analyses, we disaggregated the data and examined for patterns giving indications of the relevance of student characteristics to their academic achievement. Specifically outlined in this study are the mean values of disaggregated data and correlations between cognitive characteristics, non-cognitive characteristics, the learning environment, and student academic achievement.

The results of the study indicated the characteristic of cognitive autonomy to have minimal influence on student academic achievement while non-cognitive characteristics of students showed stronger correlation to academic performance. The resulting implications from this study centered on improving teacher understanding of student characteristics and the resulting need to alter instructional practices. Further implications arise for district and site leaders and center on school structure, staff development, and budget considerations. While centered on the ninth-grade transition point, the implications from this study can be scaled to include further aspects of the high school system.

The purpose of this study was to identify and design standards and procedures for creating easily interpreted accountability reports cards, consistent with the requirements spelled out in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). The use of public report cards was first raised during the debate that took place immediately prior to the passage of the first precursor to NCLB, Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA). Robert F. Kennedy, then junior Senator from New York, argued that issues of programmatic integrity, instructional coherence, school performance, learner progress, and educational accountability were too important to leave exclusively to "professional schoolmen." The first stage of the study began with a representative cross-section of parents, teachers, and school and district administrators being asked to critique current public report cards and identify design elements of an effective prototypical report card. The feedback produced during these exchanges, in conjunction with the use of a variety of empirical research findings on the design of easy-to-read / easy-to-interpret graphics-rich reports, was utilized to design a prototypical report card. Focus group participants partook in two additional cycles of critique and revision to identify effective design/data elements and to make improvements to the devised report. The resulting report card generated by this prototypical design and continuous improvement process is presented, and commented upon. These comments suggest that the art and craft of designing easily interpreted public report cards continues to be a major challenge.

This study investigates the persistence of the academic achievement gap through national and state testing data. It considers this gap by discussing studies of compensatory education programs and mandates. The inconclusive findings regarding identifying effective programs led to an exploration of decision making theories and persistence to maintain ineffective programs. This information guided the purpose of this study: to explore why decision makers continue an "irrational" course of action. Through application of the decision making theories of Escalation, Sunk-cost and Prospect, this study explored the rationale of decision makers at two California schools, with ineffective programs, via interviews and scenarios. This study concludes with discussion of the applicability of the decision making theories in education, potential application, and future research.

This study examines the conceptual learning and cognitive processes of schoolchildren engaged in problem solving activities in a non-school, workplace setting known as the exploratory bicycle shop. The exploratory bike shop is a commercial bicycle shop: a) that has been adapted for combined retail and educational purposes and b) where middle-school and high-school age students participate as bicycle mechanics explorers or, more formally, as apprentices. It provides a multi-generational, economically productive and learning environment where young participants engage in culturally meaningful activities at deep levels of cognitive and affective involvement. In such a setting, students encounter, frame, and solve mechanical, mathematical, and interpersonal problem situations as an authentic part of the normal, daily operation of the shop.

To help reveal how apprentices access that intelligence through thinking and discursive practices, I employ a visual anthropology (VA) methodology. VA was designed to collect and analyze ethnographic data in ways that more effectively capture and reveal informants' true motives and practices by subordinating the verbal data stream and focusing instead on the visually available aspects of what informants do. Specifically, I videotape apprentices' actions during bike repair activity in order to create a visual record of their actions over the course of interaction with the bicycle and other bike shop participants. Through in situ dialogue and clinical interviews I then try to determine how changes in apprentices' actions relate to changes in both their conceptual development and technical competencies.

In a VA analysis, findings emerge in a manner different from that of more traditional studies since the very idea of studying a culture is subjected to a critical self-examination about the motives for the research and the degree to which the study faithfully represents that culture's voices rather than imposing its own voice, intentionally or not. One methodological finding of this study was that the entire process of inquiry--from literature search to theoretical analysis to data collection and data analysis--constitutes a finding in itself. That process showed, for example, that the quality of problems students encounter in learning experiences can determine the extent of learning. The authentic, naturally occurring problems encountered in the shop appears to provide students with a quality of problem solving competence higher than that gained from solving prefabricated problems.

A closely related finding was that competence in bicycle repair tended to correlate positively with the ability to judge which type of knowing--abstract or concrete--is appropriate for any given problem solving situation. The study also found that problem solving competence relies on a student's problem framing competence, an observation that corroborates findings by Hutchins and Lave. Another methodological finding is that VA can open up new ways of conceiving competence that were previously unavailable using more traditional analytic methods. The VA ethic aims to understand the informants' attitudes and beliefs at an emic level, the level of the informant, rather than trying to understand verbal data collected from the informant through a series of direct or indirect interventions.

There are just over 1,000 sitting superintendents and like number of local educational agencies (LEA's) in California, serving 6.2 million students. Superintendents' ability to share knowledge and learn from each other is limited; this is especially true the further one's work is removed from concentrated urban populations. This study addresses the following question: As a first-time district superintendent, what roadblocks stand in the way of effectively leading the district? To consider the question, this inquiry interprets a representative sample of my experiences as a first-time superintendent over the past five years during a period characterized by constant fiscal stress, organizational uncertainty, and shifting demographic populations. The theoretical basis from which this inquiry draws includes three streams of qualitative research (a) autoethnography, (b) organizational sensemaking, sensegiving, and decision-making, and (c) Critical Race Theory. Using the emerging field of autoethnography to interpret selected experiences in a design study that makes sense of them, I hope to help other superintendents, and those interested in decision-making for schools and districts, to set a better course by measured, sense-making reflections of their own experiences. Similar to conventional ethnography, auto-ethnographic methods require the researcher to systemically gather and sort data, to express such data in a manner that follows the conventions of the field, and to present and interpret findings in a manner acceptable by the field's official journals and research publications.

To apply a clearer lens to the question, I apply the theoretical perspectives of Critical Race Theory (CRT), its Latin derivative Latino Critical Race Theory (LatCRIT), and organizational sensemaking, sensegiving, and decision-making to inform my observations. I apply selected experiences to the narrative theme identified as board and administrative leadership relationships.

The findings and conclusions drawn from this research are designed to offer additional understandings to first-time superintendents who serve in relatively small districts with rapidly changing demographics, specifically where growing populations of Latino students, with socio-economic, cultural, and linguistic challenges, require new service models and interventions. Even given the limitations and shortfalls of this methodology, there is sufficient acceptance of autoethnography as a qualitative device from which valuable conclusions and findings can be drawn. This research has the potential to raise other questions around effective leadership and governance for future researchers to consider. Perhaps the most important product of this study will be to support an end to the isolation superintendents feel, particularly those first-time superintendents who serve outside urban areas, far from the highway of shared, face-to-face experiences communicated by urban superintendents.

Federal Program Monitoring (FPM) is California’s current education compliance monitoring process. Roughly 120 local educational agencies (LEAs) each year are selected to receive a FPM review—half on-site and half online. Through FPM, the California Department of Education (CDE) reviews a variety of categorical programs, including the English learner (EL) program, for compliance with state and federal mandates. LEAs found to be non-compliant (NC) in one or more categorical programs are required to resolve the NC findings within certain timelines or, potentially, face state fiscal sanctions.

This comparative case study explored the responses to FPM by district leaders from two urban school districts selected via a purposive sampling approach. In particular, this study investigated whether LEAs leverage FPM to improve the provision of services to English learners and, in particular, English language development (ELD) instruction.

My conceptual framework posits that the different responses by district leaders to the various forms of education accountability regimes I identify can be explained, in part, to their position on various conceptions that, ultimately, influence their willingness and their capacity—integrity serving as a mitigating factor. These responses that can be grouped into three categories: leveraged compliance, contrived compliance, or non-compliance.

As predicted by my conceptual framework, I found contrasting findings across the two districts for predictable reasons, or, theoretical replication. The Puente Verde USD had a high level of willingness to be responsive to FPM. In comparison, Windy Hills USD’s ideological stance on ELD—incongruent with the CDE’s—coupled with their integrity to do what they felt was the right thing, inhibited their willingness to be as responsive to FPM. Additionally, whilst both LEAs had relatively high levels of capacity to implement EL programs, Windy Hills’ lower absorptive capacity constrained further capacity building.

Although compliance monitoring, like FPM, is often seen as a bureaucratic exercise, some LEAs are able to seize the opportunity to leverage it to improve services, while others, even when possessing relatively high levels of capacity may not. Oftentimes, compliance with FPM is seen as a simple bimodal response. What this study found is that it is much more nuanced.

The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act required states to report graduation rates as a condition of high school accountability for receipt and use of federal Title I funds, and to set growth targets that would ensure all students graduate from high school. It also reaffirmed the long-standing national policy that graduation rates be used as the indicator of high school quality and effectiveness. However, the method used by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to calculate graduation rates has generated multiple claims from some researchers that the graduation rates reported by NCES are inflated for all groups and exceptionally exaggerated for students of color. Understanding, interpreting and effectively using graduation rate data is politically and educationally challenging for all stakeholders, but most challenging for superintendents of local school districts. These education leaders must make wise and effective decisions about institutional and educational improvements to increase graduation rates as a part of mandated state and federal accountability and improvement goals.

This study reviews the literature on methods used to calculate graduation rates and uses California open source data to examine the results of two frequently used and discussed methods. The goal of this study is to: 1) provide superintendents with additional information and knowledge about how graduation rates are calculated, or more importantly, miscalculated; 2) identify common problems with the data; 3) contribute to a discussion on how superintendents may best use the data; and 4) consider implications for decision making that may help them meet the challenges of improving or increasing graduation rates in their districts.