Education Research Report:
THIS WEEK'S EDUCATION RESEARCH REPORT
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 »
Popular kids in US and Mexico more likely to smoke,
New research from the University of Southern California (USC) and University of Texas finds that popular students in seven Southern California high schools are more likely to smoke cigarettes than their less popular counterparts. The study, which appears online this week in the Journal of Adolescent Health, confirms trends observed in previous USC-led studies of students in the sixth through 12th grades across the United States and in Mexico. "That we're still seeing this association more than 10 years later, despite marginal declines in smoking, suggests that popularity is a str... more »
Social exclusion in the playground
Being the last one picked for the team, getting left out of the clique of cool girls, having no one to sit with at lunch… For children, social exclusion can impact everything from emotional well being to academic achievements. But what does it mean for the kids doing the excluding? Is the cure a one-size-fits-all approach that requires kids to include others, regardless of the situation at hand? Not necessarily, says new research from a professor now at Concordia University. Unlike previous studies where researchers created hypothetical situations and pre-selected the reasons fo... more »
Bullying of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder
A study based on information collected from 920 parents suggests an estimated 46.3 percent of adolescents with an autism spectrum disorder were the victims of bullying, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. Bullying involves negative actions toward a peer and is characterized by a power imbalance – physical, social or cognitive – between the victim and the perpetrator. Relatively little research has examined bullying involvement among adolescents with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to ... more »
New School Year Brings More Cuts in State Funding for Schools
States have made steep cuts to education funding since the start of the recession and, in many states, those cuts deepened over the last year. Elementary and high schools are receiving less state funding in the 2012-13 school year than they did last year in 26 states, and in 35 states school funding now stands below 2008 levels — often far below. States made these cuts after the deepest recession in 70 years hit beginning in late 2007, precipitating a historic collapse in state revenues. Because states relied heavily on spending reductions in response to the recession, rather than... more »
Medical Exemptions to School Immunization Requirements
School entry immunization requirements have resulted in low vaccine preventable disease levels and high vaccine coverage in the United States. All 50 states allow medical exemptions from immunizations required for school entry (http://www.vaccinesafety.edu/cc-exem.htm). Improper medical exemption usage, such as granting a medical exemption when there is no diagnosed contraindication, can result in medical complications, including life-threatening illness. Changes in nonmedical exemption rates and related increases in vaccine preventable disease incidence have been reported [3], but...more »
Child Care Costs are High and Going Up
Parents and the High Cost of Child Care: 2012 Report presents 2011 data reflecting what parents pay for full-time child care in America. It includes average fees for both child care centers and family child care homes. Information was collected through a survey conducted in January 2012 that asked for the average costs charged for child care for infants, 4-year-old children and school-age children in child care centers and in family child care homes in every state. The information was provided by State Child Care Resource and Referral (CCR&R) Network offices and local agencies tha... more »
Higher Education: Gaps in Access and Persistence Study,
The primary focus of the Higher Education: Gaps in Access and Persistence Study is to examine gaps in educational participation and attainment between male Blacks, Hispanics, Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders, and American Indians/Alaska Natives and their female counterparts and to examine gaps between males in these racial/ethnic groups and White males. The secondary focus of the report is to examine overall sex and racial/ethnic differences. In addition to these descriptive indicators, this report also includes descriptive multivariate analyses of variables that are associated w... more »
Teens Skip a Lot of School, Believe Parents Have No Idea
Regular school attendance is critical to academic success, yet a new reportfrom the Get Schooled Foundation reveals young people are often unaware that skipping even a few days of school can dramatically affect their grades and even decrease their odds of graduating. Further, students who skip a lot of school say their parents could have a big impact on improving their attendance, but for the most part their parents don’t know how often they cut class. The report, “Skipping to Nowhere,” is based on in-depth interviews with more than 500 teens in 25 cities. The interviews revealed t... more »
The Effects of School Vouchers on College Enrollment: Experimental Evidence from New York City
In this study, using a randomized experiment to measure the impact of school vouchers on college enrollment, Matthew Chingos and Paul Peterson, professor of government at Harvard University, examine the college-going behavior through 2011 of students who participated in a voucher experiment as elementary school students in the late 1990s. They find no overall impacts on college enrollment but do find large, statistically significant positive impacts on the college going of African-American students who participated in the study. Their estimates indicate that using a voucher to att... more »
FACULTY TRY INNOVATIVE TEACHING METHODS, BUT DON’T STICK WITH IT
*A study of physics faculty awareness and use of research-based instructional techniques offers greater understanding of what is missing from current education reform efforts* “Use of research-based instructional strategies in introductory physics: Where do faculty leave the innovation-decision process?” Charles Henderson, Melissa Dancy, and Magdalena Niewiadomska-Bugaj, Phys. Rev. ST Physics Ed. Research 8, 020104 (2012). Published online July 31, 2012. The world has changed dramatically in recent decades but many argue that the university system has not kept pace. As another acad... more »
Medical exemptions from school vaccination requirements across states
*Findings suggest need to ensure medical exemptions are granted only to children who truly need them* In states where medical exemptions from vaccination requirements for kindergarten students are easier to get, exemption rates are higher, potentially compromising herd immunity and posing a threat to children and others who truly should not be immunized because of underlying conditions, according to a study published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases and now available online. Nationwide in scope, the study found inconsistency among states in standards allowing medical exemption... more »
Many US schools are unprepared for another pandemic
Less than half of U.S. schools address pandemic preparedness in their school plan, and only 40 percent have updated their school plan since the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, according to a study published in the September issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). A team of researchers from Saint Louis University collected and analyzed survey responses from approximately 2,000 school nurses serving primarily elementary, middle, and high schools in 26 states to ascertain whethe... more »
The What Works Clearinghouse Reports for August
The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) provides detailed reports on individual studies of programs, practices, or policies include a user friendly summary of the study and its findings, along with the WWC’s assessment of the quality of the design of the research. During August, the WWC released five single study reviews: Bettinger, E. P., & Baker, R. (2011). The effects of student coaching in college: An evaluation of a randomized experiment in student mentoring (Working Paper No. 16881). Retrieved from: http://www.nber.org/papers/w16881. View the report at http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc... more »
Speaking Two Languages Also Benefits Low-Income Children
Living in poverty is often accompanied by conditions that can negatively influence cognitive development. Is it possible that being bilingual might counteract these effects? Although previous research has shown that being bilingual enhances executive functioning in middle-class children, less is known about how it affects lower income populations. In a study forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychological scientist Pascale Engel de Abreu of the University of Luxembourg and colleagues examine the effects of speaking two lan... more »
Kindergarten readiness: Are shy kids at an academic disadvantage?
Parents of young children hope for a successful kindergarten experience that will set their youngsters on the right path of their educational journey. Some worry about their kids not adapting to the school environment, particularly when the children are talkative and overactive. Yet, a new study by the University of Miami (UM) shows that overly shy preschool children are at greater academic risk than their chatty and boisterous peers. The study is one of the first to follow the social and academic progress of children throughout the preschool year. The report shows that children d... more »
Pretend Play May Not Be as Crucial to Child Development as Believed
Pretend play can be fun for preschool children, but a new University of Virginia study, published in the current online edition of the journal Psychological Bulletin, finds that it is not as crucial to a child's development as currently believed. Pretend play is any play a child engages in, alone, with playmates, or with adults, that involves uses of the imagination to create a fantasy world or situation, such as making toy cars go “vrrooooom” or making dolls talk. Based on a number of key studies over four decades, pretend play is widely considered by psychologists – and teachers ... more »
Diagnosis often missed for Hispanic children with developmental delay, autism
Hispanic children often have undiagnosed developmental delays and large numbers of both Hispanic and non-Hispanic children who first were thought to have developmental delay actually had autism, researchers affiliated with the UC Davis MIND Institute have found. The study, one of the largest to date to compare development in Hispanic and non-Hispanic children, is published in the journal *Autism.* The results lead the study authors to recommend increased public health efforts to improve awareness, especially among Hispanics, about the indicators of developmental delay and autism. ... more »