Education Research Report:
This Week's Education Research Report
Students: strong hearts and lungs = better grades
*Physically fit boys and girls scored higher on reading and math, research reveals* Having a healthy heart and lungs may be one of the most important factors for middle school students to make good grades in math and reading, according to findings presented at the American Psychological Association's 120th Annual Convention. "Cardiorespiratory fitness was the only factor that we consistently found to have an impact on both boys' and girls' grades on reading and math tests," said study co-author Trent A. Petrie, PhD, professor of psychology and director of the Center for Sport Psy... more »
Enhancing the Efficacy of Teacher Incentives through Loss Aversion
Domestic attempts to use financial incentives for teachers to increase student achievement have been ineffective. In this paper, NBER researchers demonstrate that exploiting the power of loss aversion—teachers are paid in advance and asked to give back the money if their students do not improve sufficiently—increases math test scores between 0.201 (0.076) and 0.398 (0.129) standard deviations. This is equivalent to increasing teacher quality by more than one standard deviation. A second treatment arm, identical to the loss aversion treatment but implemented in the standard fashion,... more »
Pay Teachers More: Financial Planning for Reach Models
This report contains links to financial analyses of three of the 20+ Opportunity Culture school models. Savings and cost calculations of the models—*Elementary Subject Specialization, **Multi-Classroom Leadership, *and *Time-Technology Swap Rotation*—illustrate that schools could increase excellent teachers’ pay up to approximately 130%, *without increasing class sizes and within existing budgets*. In some variations, schools may pay *all * teachers more, sustainably. Combining these and other sustainable models to extend the reach of excellent teachers and promote excellence by all... more »
Urban Schools Often Neglect Top Teachers While Keeping Weaker Ones
A new study finds that urban schools are systematically neglecting their best teachers, losing tens of thousands every year even as they keep many of their lowest-performing teachers indefinitely—with disastrous consequences for students, schools, and the teaching profession. The study by TNTP, a national nonprofit dedicated to ensuring that all students get excellent teachers, documents the real teacher retention crisis in America’s schools: not only a failure to retain enough teachers, but a failure to retain the right teachers. The Irreplaceables, released at an event featuring ... more »
Public High Schools Admit Students Based on Academic Record
*Schools disproportionately serve Asians and African Americans; Whites and Latinos underrepresented * A new report, “Exam Schools from the Inside,” investigates 165 public high schools in the United States that are dedicated to teaching top achievers. These high schools are sometimes known as “exam schools” in reference to their selective admissions criteria, which can include entrance exams. Researchers Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Jessica Hockett have explored these institutions, asking if their “whole school” focus on high achievers might play a larger role in educating top students... more »
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 »