This Week's Education Research Report 1-12-13 #SOSCHAT #EDCHAT #P2

Education Research Report:

THIS WEEK'S EDUCATION RESEARCH REPORT

Some of the most popular study strategies -- such as highlighting and even rereading -- don't show much promise for improving student learning

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 1 day ago

Students everywhere, put down those highlighters and pick up some flashcards! Some of the most popular study strategies -- such as highlighting and even rereading -- don't show much promise for improving student learning, according to a new report published in *Psychological Science in the Public Interest,* a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. In the report, John Dunlosky of Kent State University and a team of distinguished psychological scientists review the scientific evidence for ten learning techniques commonly used by students. "Schools and parents spend a ... more »

Children taking psychotropic medications - GAO report

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 1 day ago

Experts have concerns that children with mental health conditions do not always receive appropriate treatment, including concerns about appropriate use of psychotropic medications (which affect mood, thought, or behavior) and about access to psychosocial therapies (sessions with a mental health provider). These concerns may be compounded for low-income children in Medicaid and children in foster care (most of whom are covered by Medicaid)--populations who may be at higher risk of mental health conditions. Within HHS, CMS oversees Medicaid, and ACF supports state child welfare agenc... more »

Quality Counts 2013: State of the States

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 2 days ago

*State and National Grades Issued for Education Performance, Policy; U.S. Earns a C-plus, Maryland Ranks First for Fifth Straight Year Grades and Highlights Reports Issued for All 50 States and D.C. * The full Quality Counts 2013 report and interactive state report cards: State Highlights Reports for the 50 states and the District of Columbiafeaturing detailed, state-specific data and our comprehensive grading of the states across six categories of educational performance and policy THE STATE OF THE STATES The annual Quality Counts report card—the most comprehensive ongoing ... more »

Quality Counts 2013: Code of Conduct—Safety, Discipline, and School Climate

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 2 days ago

The full Quality Counts 2013 report A collaboration between the Education Week newsroom and the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, Quality Counts 2013 investigates the impact of a school’s social and disciplinary environment on students’ ability to learn and on the teachers and administrators tasked with guiding them. The report’s journalism takes an in-depth look at a range of school-climate factors—including strong and positive peer interactions, a sense of safety and security, and school disciplinary policies and practices—that help to lay the groundwork for stude... more »

Gates Foundation: Teacher evaluations - a balanced approach works best – which incorporates the student survey data and classroom observations

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 2 days ago

The Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project, a three-year study designed to determine how to best identify and promote great teaching, has released its third and final research report. The project has demonstrated that it is possible to identify great teaching by combining three types of measures: classroom observations, student surveys, and student achievement gains. The findings will be useful to school districts working to implement new development and evaluation systems for teachers. Such systems should not only identify great teaching, but also provide the feedback teacher... more »

Enrollment in elementary and secondary schools

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 3 days ago

The National Center for Education Statistics has released Projections of Education Statistics to 2021. This publication provides projections for key education statistics. It includes statistics on enrollment, graduates, teachers, and expenditures in elementary and secondary schools, and enrollment and earned degrees conferred expenditures of degree-granting institutions. For the Nation, the tables, figures, and text contain data on enrollment, teachers, graduates, and expenditures for the past 14 years and projections to the year 2021. For the 50 States and the District of Columb... more »

Teachers personally experiencing student violence and harassment while at school

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 4 days ago

Teachers across the United States report alarmingly high rates of personally experiencing student violence and harassment while at school, according to an article published by the American Psychological Association that presents comprehensive recommendations to make schools safer for school personnel as well as students. "Understanding and Preventing Violence Directed Against Teachers: Recommendations for a National Research, Practice, and Policy Agenda," was published online Jan. 7 in the APA's flagship journal, American Psychologist. "Violence directed against teachers is a nati... more »

Physical education requirement at 4-year universities at all-time low

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 4 days ago

Even as policy makers and health experts point to an increased need for exercise, more than half of four-year colleges and universities in the United States have dropped physical education requirements compared to historic levels. Almost every U.S. college student was required to take physical education and exercise requirements in the 1920s; today, that number is at an all-time low of 39 percent, according to a new study. Oregon State University researcher Brad Cardinal, lead author of the study, examined data from 354 randomly selected four-year universities and colleges going b... more »

Modern parenting may hinder brain development

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 4 days ago

Social practices and cultural beliefs of modern life are preventing healthy brain and emotional development in children, according to an interdisciplinary body of research presented recently at a symposium at the University of Notre Dame. "Life outcomes for American youth are worsening, especially in comparison to 50 years ago," says Darcia Narvaez, Notre Dame professor of psychology who specializes in moral development in children and how early life experiences can influence brain development. "Ill-advised practices and beliefs have become commonplace in our culture, such as the... more »

How states decide which child receives early intervention for developmental problems

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 4 days ago

A new study out by researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, found large differences in the criteria that states use to determine eligibility for Part C early intervention services for infants and toddlers who have developmental delays. A developmental delay is any significant lag in a child's development as compared with typical child development. Current eligibility criteria for Part C services vary from state to state. With their colleagues, Steven Rosenberg, PhD, associate professor, University of Colorado Department of Psychiatry and Cordelia Robinson, PhD... more »

Basic Math Skills Linked to PSAT Math Success

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 5 days ago

New research from Western University provides brain imaging evidence that students well-versed in very basic single digit arithmetic (5+2=7 or 7-3=4) are better equipped to score higher on the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT), an examination sat by millions of students in the United States each year in preparation for college admission tests. In findings published January 4 in The Journal of Neuroscience research led by Daniel Ansari, Associate Professor in Western's Department of Psychology and a principal investigator at the Brain and Mind Institute, showed by utilizi... more »

School layouts can influence a child’s development by as much as 25 percent

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 1 week ago

A study of school design has discovered that school layouts can influence a child’s development by as much as 25 percent — positively or negatively — over the course of an academic year. The 751 pupils using 34 classrooms across seven primary schools in Blackpool were studied over the 2011-12 academic year by the University of Salford’s School of the Built Environment and architecture firm Nightingale Associates. Standardised data — such as age, gender and academic performance — were collected on each child at the start and end of the year, while each classroom was rated for qualit...more »

First-Year Undergraduate Remedial Coursetaking

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 1 week ago

A new report from NCES looks at what kinds of students take remedial courses, and what kinds of institutions offer remedial courses more often. This Statistics in Brief, First-year Undergraduate Remedial Coursetaking: 1999-2000, 2003-04, and 2007-08, uses data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) to measure the frequency and change of remedial coursetaking in U.S. postsecondary institutions. The results show that remedial coursetaking dropped significantly for nearly every school and student characteristic from 1999-2000 to 2003-04, but rose from 2003-04 to 20... more »

Why girls do better in school

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 1 week ago

Why do girls get better grades in elementary school than boys-even when they perform worse on standardized tests? New research from the University of Georgia and Columbia University published in the current issue of *Journal of Human Resources* suggests that it's because of their classroom behavior, which may lead teachers to assign girls higher grades than their male counterparts. "The skill that matters the most in regards to how teachers graded their students is what we refer to as ‘approaches toward learning,'" said Christopher Cornwell, head of economics in the UGA Terry Coll... more »

Recess a Necessary Break From the Demands of School

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 1 week ago

Both recess and physical education in schools promote activity and a healthy lifestyle, and should be a daily break for young children and adolescents. A new policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), “The Crucial Role of Recess in Schools,” will be published in the January 2013 issue of *Pediatrics.* Safe and properly supervised recess offers children cognitive, physical, emotional and social benefits. It should be used as a complement to physical education classes, not a substitute, and whether it’s spent indoors or outdoors, recess should provide free, uns... more »

Teenagers Without Internet Access at Home Are Educationally Disadvantaged

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 1 week ago

A major in-depth study examining how teenagers in the UK are using the internet and other mobile devices says the benefits of using such technologies far outweigh any perceived risks. The findings are based on a large-scale study of more than 1,000 randomly selected households in the UK, coupled with regular face-to-face interviews with more than 200 teenagers and their families between 2008 and 2011. While the study reflects a high level of parental anxiety about the potential of social networking sites to distract their offspring, and shows that some parents despair at their chil... more »

Nearly One in Three Children With Food Allergies Experience Bullying

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 1 week ago

Nearly a third of children diagnosed with food allergies who participated in a recent study are bullied, according to researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Almost eight percent of children in the U.S. are allergic to foods such as peanuts, tree-nuts, milk, eggs, and shellfish. Nearly half of parents surveyed (47.9 percent) were not aware of the bullying -- although both the bullied children and their parents reported experiencing higher stress levels and lower quality of life. The study, titled, "Child and Parental Reports of Bullying in a Consecutive Sample ... more »

94 percent of high school students accessed social media on their phones during class

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 1 week ago

* Study shows most common use of the Internet in class was to access social media sites, followed by listening to music, playing games, and sending text messages and photos*. Of Israeli high school pupils 94% access social media via their cell phones during class, reveals a new study conducted by the University of Haifa. Only 4% reported not using their cell phones at all during class. It was also found that in classes with more permissive teachers, cell phone use was lower than in classes where the teacher imposed strict discipline. "The students use their mobile phones in various... more »

Positive results from a comprehensive reform of Portland’s high school system

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 1 week ago

This report provides an update on the implementation of Portland Public Schools’ High School System Design (HSSD), a comprehensive reform of Portland’s high school system that was approved by the Portland School Board beginning in the fall of 2010, following an extensive two year public input process. HSSD changes were formally launched at the start the 2011-12 school year and will take full effect by the end of the 2014-15 school year. (High schools had already begun implementing a core program as early as 2010-11, and making other changes even earlier.) The high school reforms ... more »

Positive impacts of Pacific CHILD on reading comprehension and on teachers’ instructional practices

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 1 week ago

This study examines the impact of the Pacific Communities with High Performance in Literacy Development (Pacific CHILD) professional development program on student achievement in reading comprehension and on teacher pedagogical knowledge and instructional practice in English language arts classes. Pacific CHILD is a two-year professional development program that trains fourth and fifth grade teachers in research-based reading comprehension strategies and instructional practices for enhancing student reading comprehension. The study used a randomized design and involved 45 elemen... more »

Algebra for 8th graders: Negative effects among students in the bottom 60%

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 1 week ago

This paper examines the effects of policies that increase the number of students who take the first course in algebra in 8th grade, rather than waiting until 9th grade. Extending previous research that focused on the Charlotte-Mecklenberg school system, The authors use data for the 10 largest districts in North Carolina. The authors identify the effects of accelerating the timetable for taking algebra by using data on multiple cohorts grouped by decile of prior achievement and exploiting the fact that policy-induced shifts in the timing of algebra occur at different times in diff... more »