Martin County School District Turn-around Initiative

A capstone submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in the College of Education at Morehead State University by Mark Andrew Blackburn on April 10, 2014

Exposing Neoliberalism\u27s Erosion of Special Education in Ontario Schools

My positionality as a critical scholar frames the problem of practice. The POP discusses a lack of transparency stemming from a longstanding hierarchy of influence from the ministry of education to local school boards and then to individual schools. A political, economic and social analysis frames the organizational context which impacts my role and agency within the organization. The organization’s worldview, tied to the ministry’s worldview, undermines student experience, as does both organization’s leadership approach. Using a critical bureaucracy and anti-oppressive theory, this organizational improvement plan investigates the physical and bureaucratic barriers that undermine special education student experience. Critical theory supports the leadership approach to change due to my agency. There is a tethering of neoliberalism, bureaucracy, and ableism that all intersect in this organizational improvement plan. The framework for leading the change process uses the zone of mediation as a framework for change. The leadership and humility change model is used to propel change as it aligns with the theoretical framing of this organization improvement plan. This organizational improvement plan uses an adapted community analysis model to assess readiness for change. Three options to address solutions to the POP are investigated with a preferred solution, an equity audit, selected. As a change facilitator, the support for change will be explored through servant, transformative and advocacy leadership theories. The change implementation plan uses a spiral of inquiry to monitor the change process, and communicating the change process occurs through tailoring messages to the various audience, aligning with the servant-leadership approach. Keywords: neoliberalism, critical bureaucracy theory, anti-oppressive theory, leadership and humility change model, servant-leadership, transformational-leadership, advocacy-leadership, special educatio

Addressing the Recidivism Challenge in San Diego County: Learning from Lived Experience Approaches

The problem is as old as the justice system itself—how to reduce the chance that an individual reoffends after they commit an offense and become involved with the justice system. This challenge of reducing recidivism remains critical. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, there are over 120,000 individuals in state prisons in California. Another 380,000 cycle through jails in California every year. In 2021, roughly 25,000 individuals were released from prison in California each year. This is the scope of the challenge. In San Diego County, a wide variety of agencies and organizations are working to address the recidivism challenge. In addition, although there is no way to measure this accurately, there is a willingness across the spectrum to experiment with new approaches and solutions. This report focuses on one area of relatively new and promising approaches—those that elevate the talent and expertise of individuals with “lived experience” with the justice system. Support for lived experience approaches is growing both nationally and in San Diego. Beyond the rising number of lived experience initiatives, this type of work in San Diego has become largely normalized. There is broad agreement that lived experience work should be part of the portfolio used to reduce recidivism, with clear demand from stakeholders involved in reentry, including law enforcement officials, service providers, community members, and, crucially, justice-involved individuals. Given the growing prevalence of and support for lived experience approaches in San Diego, it is important to create a deeper understanding of how to increase the impact of these approaches. Toward that end, this report identifies strengths of lived experience approaches to amplify, challenges of lived experience approaches to mitigate, and lessons from lived experience approaches that can be applied more broadly.https://digital.sandiego.edu/ipj-research/1057/thumbnail.jp

Book Reviews

Foster, Climate and Culture Change in North America AD 900-1600. by David McCally; Din, War on the Gulf Coast: The Spanish Fight against William Augustus Bowles. by Kristofer Ray; Millett, The Maroons of Prospect Bluff and Their Quest for Freedom in the Atlantic World. by Jeffrey L. Fortney; Lawson, Jim Crow\u27s Counterculture: The Blues and Black Southerners, 1890-1945. by Court Carney; Reid and Bennett, eds., Beyond Forty Acres and a Mule: African American Landowning Families since Reconstruction. by Dolita D. Cathcart; Boyd, Georgia Democrats, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Shaping of the New South. by Sarah H. Brown; De Young, Skyway: The True Story of Tampa Bay\u27s Signature Bridge and the Man Who Brought it Down. by Alan Blis; Foster, Integrating Women into the Astronaut Corps: Politics and Logistics at NASA, 1972-2004. by Paul Rubinso

When Families, Organizational Culture, and Policy Collide: A Mixed Method Study of Alternative Response

Objective Alternative response (AR) is a family-centered, preventative approach for child protection systems. This study first examined what family and case factors predicted re-investigation and then explored which organizational factors influence caseworker and agency implementation of AR. Method Using administrative data from child protection reports, AR families (N = 9,959) and traditional response (TR) families (N = 13,974) were followed for 18 months to determine re-investigation rates using multilevel modeling where families were nested in county of residence. Four focus groups with 14 participants were conducted to discuss the quantitative findings, organizational culture, and implementation of AR. Results AR families had lower odds of re-investigation; males and younger children also had lower odds. Families with multiple children, prior investigations, receipt of Medicaid, and medium/high risk had higher odds of re-investigation. AR caseworkers provided insights regarding the intersection of family factors, organizational culture and support, and agency implementation of AR. Although participants supported AR, their ability to implement it was influenced by agency support and availability of resources to carry out the basic requirements of the policy. A clear distinction in responses emerged between those who held dual cases versus those holding only AR cases. Conclusion Although AR reduces the odds of re-investigation for low-risk families and was endorsed by caseworkers, AR policy in practice is complex and requires further evaluation, particularly from the perspective of AR caseworkers who faced implementation hurdles

Patronage, Reputation and Common Agency Contracting in the Scientific Revolution: From Keeping 'Nature's Secrets' to the Institutionalization of 'Open Science'

This essay examines the economics of patronage in the production of knowledge and its influence upon the historical formation of key elements in the ethos and organizational structure of publicly funded open science. The emergence during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries of the idea and practice of “open science" was a distinctive and vital organizational aspect of the Scientific Revolution. It represented a break from the previously dominant ethos of secrecy in the pursuit of Nature’s Secrets, to a new set of norms, incentives, and organizational structures that reinforced scientific researchers' commitments to rapid disclosure of new knowledge. The rise of “cooperative rivalries” in the revelation of new knowledge, is seen as a functional response to heightened asymmetric information problems posed for the Renaissance system of court-patronage of the arts and sciences; pre-existing informational asymmetries had been exacerbated by the claims of mathematicians and the increasing practical reliance upon new mathematical techniques in a variety of “contexts of application.” Reputational competition among Europe’s noble patrons motivated much of their efforts to attract to their courts the most prestigious natural philosophers, was no less crucial in the workings of that system than was the concern among their would-be clients to raise their peer-based reputational status. In late Renaissance Europe, the feudal legacy of fragmented political authority had resulted in relations between noble patrons and their savant-clients that resembled the situation modern economists describe as "common agency contracting in substitutes" -- competition among incompletely informed principals for the dedicated services of multiple agents. These conditions tended to result in more favorable contract terms (especially with regard to autonomy and financial support) for the agent-client members of the nascent scientific communities. This left the new scientists better positioned to retain larger information rents on their specialized knowledge, which in turn tended to encourage entry into the emerging disciplines. They also were thereby enabled collectively to develop a stronger degree of professional autonomy for their programs of inquiry within increasingly specialized and formal scientific academies which, during the latter seventeenth century, attracted the patronage of rival absolutist States in Western Europe.open science, new economics of science, economics of institutions, patronage, asymmetric information, principal-agent problems, common agency contracting, social networks, 'invisible colleges', scientific academies

Sense of coherence among Syrians with refugee background, and its impact on their perceived employment opportunities in Norway

Master's Thesis in Global DevelopmentGLODE36

Online Transgender Health Information Seeking: Facilitators, Barriers, and Future Directions

The purpose of this research project was to explore the experiences of trans people accessing health information online, including the sources they use to access information. Additionally, it aimed to address which aspects of extant online platforms are facilitators and barriers to searching for health information. To address these questions, I conducted three asynchronous online focus groups with 26 participants from across the United States. The main results substantiate and expand previous literature that discuss platform-specific policies that disproportionately block and exclude trans users. To my knowledge this is the first time these barriers are positioned in a trans health context. Lastly, the results posit design suggestions to improve existing and future platforms to better serve trans users. This research is highly relevant for increasing trans people’s access to relevant health information in alternate formats and reducing proliferation of inaccurate trans health information within online spaces.Master of ScienceInformation, School ofUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162558/1/Augustaitis_Taikea_Final_MTOP_Thesis_20200504.pd

Advocate or Traditional Bureaucrat: Understanding the Role of ESL Supervisors in Shaping Local Education Policy toward Immigrant Communities

As recent immigrants seek a productive and dignified life in “new immigrant destinations” that have little historical experience with immigration, public education systems serve a key function in immigrant integration efforts. In a federal system increasingly focused on accountability, a crucial sub-set of education policy and local responsiveness to immigration is English language instruction and services for Limited English Proficient (LEP) students and parents. In such contexts, the role that local bureaucrats play, and whether they actively represent the interests of the newfound diversity of community members, are crucial questions if strongly held American ideals of social equity and equal opportunity are to be upheld. This research asks broad questions at the intersection of bureaucratic power, representative bureaucracy and educational policy toward English language learners at the local level. Variations in how school systems in the political bellwether of Virginia responded to a recent policy shock - federal guidance released in January 2015 that reiterated local school system responsibility for providing equal educational access to LEP students and parents – form a unique window into local policy-making. Using a concurrent triangulation mixed methodology that consists of a state-wide survey and interviews with a sub-set of the Title III coordinators who supervise programs for English Language Learners, this research shows Title III coordinators to be unrepresentative in passive terms of the foreign born population but nevertheless to have a strong sense of advocating for English Language Learners. Findings suggest that public service motivation is the key explanatory factor in driving a sense of role advocacy and this in turn drives a greater range of action taking by the coordinator to benefit ELLs. Despite this link between role advocacy and coordinator action, role advocacy is not found to be significant in driving the likelihood or range of system level responsiveness to the letter. Instead, political and demographic factors increase the likelihood of system action but, counter to existing literature, more conservative localities are found to be more likely to have responded to the Dear Colleague Letter. This suggests that a previous reluctance to act in these places may have been dislodged by the letter and points to the importance of change over time in conceptualizing local responsiveness to immigrants