Education Research Report:
This Week's Education Research Report
This Week's Education Research Report
Spatial skills may be improved through training
Spatial skills--those involved with reading maps and assembling furniture--can be improved if you work at it, that's according to a new look at the studies on this topic by researchers at Northwestern University and Temple. The research published this month in Psychological Bulletin, the journal of the American Psychological Association, is the first comprehensive analysis of credible studies on such interventions. Improving spatial skills is important because children who do well at spatial tasks such as putting together puzzles are likely to achieve highly in science, technology... more »
Tween texting may lead to poor grammar skills
Text messaging may offer tweens a quick way to send notes to friends and family, but it could lead to declining language and grammar skills, according to researchers. Tweens who frequently use language adaptations -- techspeak -- when they text performed poorly on a grammar test, said Drew Cingel, a former undergraduate student in communications, Penn State, and currently a doctoral candidate in media, technology and society, Northwestern University. When tweens write in techspeak, they often use shortcuts, such as homophones, omissions of non-essential letters and initials, to qu... more »
Boys’ Impulsiveness May Result in Better Math Ability
In a University of Missouri study, girls and boys started grade school with different approaches to solving arithmetic problems, with girls favoring a slow and accurate approach and boys a faster but more error prone approach. Girls’ approach gave them an early advantage, but by the end of sixth grade boys had surpassed the girls. The MU study found that boys showed more preference for solving arithmetic problems by reciting an answer from memory, whereas girls were more likely to compute the answer by counting. Understanding these results may help teachers and parents guide student... more »
The Role of Master's Degrees in Teacher Compensation
A new report released by the Center for American Progress argues that states across the nation spent nearly $15 billion a year in bad investments because of the so-called master's degree bump. Teachers with advanced degrees are generally compensated with additional salary or stipends, known as the master’s degree bump, but some states are paying far more into this inefficient and unwise policy than others. In New York, for instance, the state spends more than $460 per student each year on its master’s degree bump. In others states, such as Utah, that number is $39 per student each ... more »
Achievement Growth: International and U.S. State Trends in Student Performance
*While 24 countries trail the U.S. rate of improvement, another 24 countries appear to be improving at a faster rate.* In a 2010 report, only 6 percent of U.S. students were found to be performing at the advanced level in mathematics, a percentage lower than those attained by 30 other countries. Nor is the problem limited to top-performing students. Only 32 percent of 8th-graders in the United States are proficient in mathematics, placing the United States 32nd when ranked among the participating international jurisdictions. Although these facts are discouraging, the United State... more »
First-Time Kindergartners in 2010-11
First-Time Kindergartners in 2010-11: First Findings From the Kindergarten Rounds of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K:2011), provides a snapshot of the 3.5 million kindergartners who were attending kindergarten in the United States for the first time in the 2010-11 school year. The ECLS-K:2011 is a longitudinal study that will follow students from their kindergarten year to the spring of 2016, when most of them are expected to be in fifth grade. Key findings from First-Time Kindergartners in 2010-11 include: • Most of the first-time k... more »
New Report Shows Progress in Child Education and Health Despite Economic Declines
The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s latest KIDS COUNT® Data Book shows both promising progress and discouraging setbacks for the nation’s children: While their academic achievement and health improved in most states, their economic well-being continued to decline. Over the period of roughly 2005 to 2011, the improvements in children’s health and education include a 20 percent decrease in the number of kids without health insurance; a 16 percent drop in the child and teen death rate; an 11 percent reduction in the rate of high school students not graduating in four years; and an 8 perc...more »
Public Schools have more $, employees per pupil than they did in 2000, but are now feeling a financial squeeze
After four years of economic slowdown, the United States appears – for the first time in decades – to be headed toward fewer per-pupil resources and significant labor-force reductions. Although both the number of school employees and expenditures per pupil have risen steadily for many decades, that trend has come to an end. There have been nine recessions in the United States since 1955, but before the current period of recession followed by slow growth, public education employees were significantly impacted by layoffs in only one economic downturn, in 1982-83. However, from June 2... more »
Student Motivation: School Reform’s Missing Ingredient
*CEP Report Summarizes Research on Understanding, Spurring Motivation* A series of papers by the Center on Education Policy (CEP) underscores the need for teachers, schools, parents and communities to pay more attention to the role of student motivation in school reform. While there is no single strategy that works to motivate all students, or even the same student in all contexts, the many different sources reviewed by CEP suggest various approaches that can help improve student motivation, the report finds. For example, programs that tailor support to individual students who are ... more »
School Improvement Grants Schools Face Challenges: 3 Reports
For many low-performing schools in Idaho, Maryland, and Michigan that were awarded federal school improvement grants (SIGs), replacing teachers and principals has proven to be the greatest challenge to implementation. Some SIG schools have also struggled to increase learning time for students, although others report fewer problems with this strategy. But one bright spot for several SIG schools in these states is that school climates appear to be getting better. These are among the findings in a series of special reports by the Center on Education Policy (CEP) at The George Washing... more »
Federal Stimulus Funds Saved Education Jobs
Education stimulus funds largely met the goal of saving or creating jobs for K-12 teachers and other education personnel, according to a summary of three years of survey research by the Center on Education Policy at the George Washington University (CEP). However, ongoing state budget shortfalls have slowed state implementation of education reforms tied to the receipt of stimulus money under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). “Federal stimulus funds appear to have blunted the effects of the economic downturn on the K-12 education sector,” said Maria Ferguson, CEP’s... more »
Technology in Early Education
Touch-screen technologies, on-demand multimedia, and mobile devices are prompting a rethinking of education. In a world of increasing fiscal constraints, state leaders are under pressure to capitalize on these new technologies to improve productivity and help students excel. The task is daunting across the education spectrum, but for those in early education (birth through 3rd grade), it is harder still. Until recently, most educators envisioned early learning as story time and hands-on activities with no technology in sight. Yet electronic media use among young children is growing... more »
Starting Early With English Language Learners
English Language Learners are a large and growing population in America’s public school system, but schools often fall short in preparing these students for success in college and the workforce. One state, Illinois, has tried to reverse that trend by starting services for young English Language Learners before they arrive in kindergarten. Illinois is in the process of expanding its services for English Language Learners into state-funded pre-K, so that students begin receiving ELL support when they first arrive in school, whether that is at age 3, 4, or 5. A new paper, Starting... more »