Date of Award

Fall 12-1-2005

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Educational Leadership

First Advisor

Robert L. Boyd

Second Advisor

Bradley V. Balch

Third Advisor

Robert S. Perrin

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine administrator's perceptions of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, with particular emphasis on the areas of standards, assessment, accountability, and parental choice. One hundred superintendents and 660 principals were randomly selected to participate in the study. The survey consisted of five questions regarding standards, five questions regarding assessment, five questions regarding accountability, and five questions regarding parental choice as each relates to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Administrators were asked to rate their level of agreement with each of the statements using an 8-point scale ( 1 =disagree, 8=agree ). Administrator responses to questions within each group were transformed into a composite variable by adding the score for each question in the group and dividing by five. The result was four composite variables per administrator: standards, assessment, accountability, and parental choice. Four independent means t-tests were to be conducted using data from all administrator surveys; however, the number of principal respondents (256) was much larger than the number of superintendent respondents (63). In order to provide more equal variance, 63 principals were randomly selected from the 256 respondents using the SPSS "select cases" function. Four independent means t-tests were then conducted using data from the 63 superintendent surveys and the 63 randomly sampled principals. The independent variable was administrator type (superintendent or principal). The dependent variables were standards, assessment, accountability, and parental choice as reported using the composite variable for each. No significant differences between superintendents' perceptions and principals' perceptions were found.

Share

COinS