United States.--No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

This dissertation analyzes administrative discretion in public policy implementation in application of a new framework of integrative approach to administrative discretion developed from deficiencies of the citizen participation, representative bureaucracy, and private-interest groups democracy frameworks. The new framework holds that public agencies use discretion to integrate in decision making views of elected authorities, private-interest groups, public-interest groups, and other groups that seek to influence implementation. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy is used as the case study, and the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) is the implementation setting. The dissertation answers the following question: How integrative of group views was DOE’s discretionary decision making in the implementation of NCLB? This research applies a structured content analysis method that consists of content analysis and a content analysis schedule (see Jauch, Osborn, & Martin, 1980). Using a Likert question, the dissertation developed six integration levels of DOE’s discretionary decision making from not at all integrative to extremely integrative and found that most decisions were very integrative.

The purpose of this study was to examine differences in pro-social behaviors and reading skills between a treatment group of first grade students who received the Ready to Learn (Brigman, Lane, & Lane, 2008) intervention, delivered by a certified professional school counselor, and a comparison group of first grade students who did not receive this intervention. Counselors in the treatment group were trained in the proper implementation of the manualized Ready to Learn program during a professional development session. They were also trained in other study-related procedures, such as the online check-in tool and the regular site visits by the researcher. The study followed a quasi-experimental design. The Child Behavior Scale (CBS; Ladd, Herald-Brown & Andrews, 2009) was used to measure pro-social behaviors, and Rigby Running Records (Rigby, 2010) was used to assess reading skills. A series of analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were performed to deter mine whether or not there were statistically significant differences between the treatment and comparison group. An analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) using a pretest score as the covariate was performed to test significance in the difference of reading scores. Results indicate a statistically significant increase in pro-social with peers behaviors, as well as statistically significant decreases in hyperactive and distractible behaviors as well as excluded by peers indicators for the treatment group.