Education Research Report:
THIS WEEK'S EDUCATION RESEARCH REPORT
Poor Oral Health Can Mean Missed School, Lower Grades
Poor oral health, dental disease, and tooth pain can put kids at a serious disadvantage in school, according to a new Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC study. “The Impact of Oral Health on the Academic Performance of Disadvantaged Children,” appearing in the September 2012 issue of the American Journal of Public Health, examined nearly 1500 socioeconomically disadvantaged elementary and high school children in the Los Angeles Unified School District, matching their oral health status to their academic achievement and attendance records. Ostrow researchers had previously document... more »
Review of Florida Test Scores Confirms Substantial Gains over Past Decade
*After the end of social promotion in 3rd grade, Florida shown to have boosted student performance * A new study of Florida test score gains, “Florida Defeats the Skeptics: Test scores show real progress in the Sunshine State,” confirms the state’s position as one of the country’s most rapidly improving school systems over the period 2002 to 2009. Although Florida’s record of steady improvement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (a national test administered to students in all states) has won plaudits from observers across the country, critics have alleged the impro... more »
Does Open Court Reading© Improve Adolescent Literacy?
Open Court Reading© is a core reading program for grades K–6 designed to teach decoding, comprehension, inquiry, and writing in a logical progression. Open Court Reading© aims to improve literacy, but what does the research say about its effectiveness? A new report from the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) takes a closer look. After reviewing 58 studies that examined the effects of Open Court Reading© on adolescent readers, the WWC determined that one study meets WWC evidence standards without reservations. That study, a randomized controlled trial, includes more than 900 students w...more »
Teacher Evaluations Found to Improve Midcareer Effectiveness
A new study, “Can Teacher Evaluation Improve Teaching?”, shows that Cincinnati’s rigorous Teacher Evaluation System (TES) has had a direct and lasting effect on midcareer teachers’ performance. Students taught by a teacher in the years after she had been through the evaluation program scored 0.11 standard deviations higher in math, on average, than the students she taught in the years before her evaluation (as measured by end-of-year 4th through 8th grade state tests). This difference is equivalent to about 3 - 4 months of additional instruction or a gain of about 4.5 percentile po... more »
Shocking Suspension Rates in thousands of districts across the nation
The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles has issued “Opportunities Suspended: The Disparate Impact of Disciplinary Exclusion From School,” a nationwide report based on an analysis of Federal government suspension-related data from the 2009-10 school year for grades K-12. This first-ever breakdown of nearly 7,000 districts found that 17% of African American students nationwide received an out-of-school suspension compared to about 5% of White students. The comparable rate for Latinos was 7%. The data analyzed covered about 85% of the... more »
PRESCHOOL CHILDREN WHO CAN PAY ATTENTION MORE LIKELY TO FINISH COLLEGE
Young children who are able to pay attention and persist with a task have a 50 percent greater chance of completing college, according to a new study at Oregon State University. Tracking a group of 430 preschool-age children, the study gives compelling evidence that social and behavioral skills, such as paying attention, following directions and completing a task may be even more crucial than academic abilities. And the good news for parents and educators, the researchers said, is that attention and persistence skills are malleable and can be taught. The results were just publi... more »