Education Research Report:
THIS WEEK'S EDUCATION RESEARCH REPORT
New York State school districts: inaccurate, incomplete and biased sex-ed instruction
Many public school districts across New York State provide sex-ed instruction that is inaccurate, incomplete and biased, according to a report released by the New York Civil Liberties Union that analyzes sex-ed materials that have been used in 82 public school districts. The report, Birds, Bees and Bias: How Absent Sex Ed Standards Fail New York’s Students, examines sex-ed materials used during the 2009-2010 and 2010-11 school years. The NYCLU sent freedom of information requests for the materials to 108 districts statewide; 26 provided too little information and were excluded from... more »
2012 Vital Signs measures K-12 STEM learning state-by-state
A new set of reports from Change the Equation (CTEq) paints a wide-ranging and in-depth picture of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning in each state and the District of Columbia. Vital Signs 2012 examines not only student performance but also access to educational opportunity and the amount of instructional support schools and teachers receive. The 51 state reports, which include data never available before, offer specific recommendations for each state to improve STEM teaching and learning in grades K-12. At a time when job demand in most states excee... more »
College- and career-ready standards in English and mathematics have ben adopted by all 50 states & DC
Achieve's seventh annual "Closing the Expectations Gap" report shows how all states are aligning those standards with policies to send clear signals to students about what it means to be academically prepared for college and careers after high school graduation. For the first time, the report also details not only states' policy progress on the college- and career-ready agenda but also their efforts to implement those policies since only faithful implementation can improve student achievement. Achieve conducts an annual policy survey that asks all 50 states and the District of Colu... more »
The SAT and high school grades contribute to predicting academic performance in college
Many college admissions teams use SAT scores along with other information, such as high school grades, in choosing their incoming freshman classes. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the SAT has been the subject of much scrutiny. Some researchers have asserted that the SAT isn’t a good predictor of academic performance in college once socioeconomic status (SES) – usually measured as a combination of parents’ education and family income – and high school grade point average are taken into account. And some critics have argued that the SAT is fundamentally biased against students ...more »
Does the Responsive Classroom approach improve student outcomes?
Researchers at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education have released preliminary results from their recently completed $2.9 million, three-year Responsive Classroom Efficacy Study funded by the US Department of Education's research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences. Their study addressed the questions: *Does the Responsive Classroom approach improve student outcomes? If so, how and for whom?* The simple answer is, "Yes, *Responsive Classroom *practices lead to teacher improvement and student gains." Here are the specifics: 1. *Improved Student Achievement:...more »
Writing 2011 Results
This report presents results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2011 writing assessment, the first large-scale computer-based assessment in writing. The Nation’s Report Card: Writing 2011 is designed to provide information about the writing skills of students through the completion of computer-based tasks. In 2011, the study was administered to students at grades 8 and 12 as part of the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress. National results for representative samples of students at grades 8 and 12 are reported as average scale scores and as perc... more »
The Impact of College Quality on College Completion Rates
In Massachusetts high school students with test scores above multiple thresholds were granted tuition waivers at in-state public colleges of lower quality than the average alternative available to such students. This study found: First, students are remarkably willing to forego college quality for relatively small amounts of money. Second, choosing a lower quality college significantly lowers on-time completion rates. For the marginal student, enrolling at an in-state public college lowered the probability of graduating on time by more than 40%. The low completion rates of scho... more »
How Should School Districts Shape Teacher Salary Schedules?
*Linking School Performance to Pay Structure in Traditional Compensation Schemes Jason A. Grissom1* This study examines the relative distribution of salary schedule returns to experience for beginning and veteran teachers. The authors argue that districts are likely to benefit from structuring salary schedules with greater experience returns early in the teaching career. To test this hypothesis, the authors matched salary data to school-level student performance data on math and reading achievement tests across states. The authors find that frontloaded compensation schemes—those ... more »
Literary reading provides "a truly valuable exercise of people's brains."
Test subject Matt Langione, a doctoral candidate at the University of California-Berkeley, leisurely reads Jane Austen's 'Mansfield Park' in the mock scanning room. The researchers found that blood flow in the brain increases during such leisurely reading, but in different areas of the brain than when the subjects read the novel more closely. (Photo: Linda A. Cicero / Stanford News Service) The inside of an MRI machine might not seem like the best place to cozy up and concentrate on a good novel, but a team of researchers at Stanford are asking readers to do just that. In an innov... more »
Training helps teens manage anger, lower blood pressure
A 10-week program that fits easily into the high school curriculum could give students a lifetime of less anger and lower blood pressure, researchers report. Health and physical education teachers taught anger and stress management to 86 ninth graders in Augusta, Ga., and found their ability to control anger increased, their anxiety decreased and their blood pressures were generally lower over the course of a day compared to 73 of their peers who received no intervention, according to a study published in the journal Translational Behavioral Medicine. Among the 30 percent of parti... more »
Teachers, school climate key to Latino immigrants' academic success
Teachers and schools that value diversity have a big impact on the academic experiences of Latino immigrant children living in predominantly White communities. That's the finding of a new study by researchers at the University of Kentucky. The study appears in a special section of the September/October 2012 issue of Child Development on children from immigrant families. Children who had a teacher who valued diversity felt more positively about their ethnicity than children who had a teacher who felt uncomfortable with diversity, the study found. "This is important because feeling ... more »
Mixed findings emerge on immigrant families' home environments
Despite often living in poor neighborhoods, immigrant Mexican mothers report few conflicts at home, support from spouses, and strong mental health. At the same time, these moms say they are less likely to read with their young children than native-born White mothers, stemming in part from comparatively low levels of education. Immigrant Chinese mothers, in contrast, report being more likely than native-born White peers to read with their young children, but more likely to report weaker mental health and greater household conflict. These are just some of the findings from a national... more »
Children of immigrants have advantage in academics, school engagement
A new study has found that children of immigrants have an advantage over children of native-born Americans when it comes to the transition to adulthood. Among children of similar socioeconomic backgrounds, school conditions, and other characteristics, those born abroad to immigrant parents who came to the United States before their teen years are more likely to follow the best trajectory in academic achievement and school engagement, followed by those born in the United States to immigrant parents. Those are the conclusions reached by a study conducted at Johns Hopkins University ... more »
Parents' education before migrating tied to children's achievement
Immigrant parents' education before migrating is more strongly tied to their children's achievement in the United States than any other social, economic, or linguistic parental attribute, either before or after migration. That's the conclusion of a new study in a special section of the September/October 2012 issue of Child Development on the children of immigrants. The study was carried out by researchers at the Pennsylvania State University. Immigrants come to the United States with different socioeconomic backgrounds and levels of proficiency in English. Past research hasn't fu... more »
Comparison of educational readiness of immigrant children in 4 nations
Young children whose families immigrate to Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States are as prepared and capable of starting school as their native-born counterparts, with one exception—vocabulary and language development. That's the finding of a new study published in the September/October 2012 issue of the journal Child Development in a special section on the children of immigrants. The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Bristol, Columbia University, the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, the University of New South Wales, t... more »
Math anxiety causes trouble for students as early as first grade
Many high-achieving students experience math anxiety at a young age — a problem that can follow them throughout their lives, new research at the University of Chicago shows. In a study of first- and second-graders, Sian Beilock, professor in psychology, found that students report worry and fear about doing math as early as first grade. Most surprisingly math anxiety harmed the highest-achieving students, who typically have the most working memory, Beilock and her colleagues found. "You can think of working memory as a kind of 'mental scratchpad' that allows us to 'work' with whate... more »
Education spending rising but access to higher education remains unequal in most countries, says OECD
*US lags in access to preschool and college* Governments should increase investment in early childhood programmes and maintain reasonable costs for higher education in order to reduce inequality, boost social mobility and improve people’s employment prospects, according to a new OECD report. Education at a Glance 2012 reveals stark differences between countries in the opportunities they offer young people to enter higher education, notably for children of poor families or whose parents have had a limited education. “Countries need an increasingly educated and skilled workfor... more »
Boosting the Quality and Efficiency of Special Education
Special education consumes a growing share of increasingly tight district budgets but academic achievement among students with special needs continues to lag. How are districts spending their special education dollars? Does spending more translate to better results for their students with special needs? In this study, the District Management Council’s Nate Levenson uses the largest database of information on special education spending and staffing ever assembled to uncover significant variance in how districts staff for special education. Levenson concludes that if the high-spendi... more »
PISA: Poverty Is Schools' Achilles heel
*From the National Association of Secondary School Principals blog:* National Association of Secondary School Principals Executive Director, Dr. Gerald N. Tirozzi has taken "a closer look at how the U.S. reading scores on PISA compared with the rest of the world’s, overlaying it with the statistics on how many of the tested students are in the government’s free and reduced lunch program for students below the poverty line." Tirozzi pointed out, “Once again, we’re reminded that students in poverty require intensive supports to break past a condition that formal schooling alone canno... more »
Can videogaming benefit young people with autism spectrum disorder?
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 1 in 88 children in the U.S. has autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a broad group of neurodevelopmental disorders. Children and adolescents with ASD are typically fascinated by screen-based technology such as videogames and these can be used for educational and treatment purposes as described in an insightful Roundtable Discussion published in Games for Health Journal: Research Development, and Clinical Applications, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.. The article is available free on the Games fo...more »