THIS WEEK'S EDUCATION RESEARCH REPORT
JUL 03
Indicators Of School Crime And Safety, 2012
This report presents data on crime and safety at school from the perspectives of students, teachers, and principals. This annual report, a joint effort by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), provides detailed statistical information on the nature of crime in schools. This report contains 21 indicators of crime at school from a number of sources
JUL 02
Poor planning skills found to contribute to income-achievement gap
Children from low-income families tend to do worse at school than their better-off peers. Now a new study of a large ethnically and socioeconomically diverse group of children from across the United States has identified poor planning skills as one reason for the income-achievement gap, which can emerge as early as kindergarten and continue through high school.The study, by researchers at Cornell
JUL 01
High Povert Does Not Always Mean Low Algebra Scores
The map shows the relationship between the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches and Algebra I scores in Missouri school districts. The dark-shaded areas are those in which a higher percentage of students receiving such lunches is associated with lower end-of-course algebra scores. This statistically significant relationship is not found in lighter-shaded areas. Distric
Head Start children and parents show robust gains in new intervention
An eight-week intervention involving 141 preschoolers in a Head Start program and their parents produced significant improvements in the children's behavior and brain functions supporting attention and reduced levels of parental stress that, in turn, improved the families' quality of life.The findings -- from the first phase of a long-term research project by University of Oregon neuroscientists t
More challenging standards-based exams reduce graduation and increase incarceration rates
This study evaluates the effects of high school exit exams on high school graduation, incarceration, employment and wages. The authors find relatively modest effects of high school exit exams except on incarceration. Exams assessing academic skills below the high school level have little effect. More challenging standards-based exams reduce graduation and increase incarceration rates. About half t
JUN 28
New NAEP Report Compares Today’s Student Performance With That of 40 Years Ago
Long-term trend assessment shows improvementfor black and Hispanic students since the 1970sToday’s 9-and 13-year-old students scored higher in reading and mathematics than their counterparts did 40 years ago according to The Nation’s Report Card: Trends in Academic Progress 2012, a long-term trend assessment designed to track changes in the achievement of students ages 9, 13 and 17 since the 1970s
JUN 27
Teachers Spend $1.6 Billion of Their Own Money on Educational Products for their Classrooms
The National School Supply and Equipment Association (NSSEA) has just released the 2013 NSSEA Retail Market Awareness Study estimating that public school teachers spent $3.2 billion in educational products in the 2012-2013 school year, $1.6 billion of it from their own pockets. This study reports on teachers' knowledge of parent-teacher stores, including their spending patterns, funding sources, s
Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2012
A joint effort by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and National Center for Education Statistics, this annual report examines crime occurring in school as well as on the way to and from school. This report presents data on crime at school from the perspectives of students, teachers, principals, and the general population from an array of sources--the National Crime Victimization Survey, the School
The Magnitude of Student Sorting Within Schools
The authors of this study use administrative data from three large urban school districts to describe student sorting within schools. Students are linked to each of their teachers and students’ classmates are identified. There are differences in the average achievement levels, racial composition, and socioeconomic composition of classrooms within schools. This sorting occurs even in self-contained
JUN 25
Language Intervention Levels Playing Field for English Language Learners
A new approach to teaching pre-kindergarten could take a bite out of the achievement gap and level the playing field for America’s growing population of English language learners, according to a recently published study by researchers at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of education and human development.“We are excited that we have helped teachers develop ways of teaching that result in such remarkab
Spatial Training Boosts Math Skills
Training young children in spatial reasoning can improve their math performance, according to a groundbreaking study from Michigan State University education scholars.The researchers trained 6- to 8-year-olds in mental rotation, a spatial ability, and found their scores on addition and subtraction problems improved significantly. The mental rotation training involved imagining how two halves of an
Kids’ Reading Success Boosted by Long-Term Individualized Instruction
Students who consistently receive individualized reading instruction from first through third grade become better readers than those who don’t, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.These findings come after a three-year study that followed several hundred Floridian students, who received varying amounts of individualiz
Study finds improvement in the overall performance of charter schools since 2009
"Gains" include slower declines than traditional public schools71% (math)-75% (reading) of charter schools aren't doing any better than traditional public schools31% of charter schools significantly weaker in math"Gains" fueled by closing of the worst charter schoolsA new, independent national study finds improvement in the overall performance of charter schools, driven in part by the presence of
Value of education rises in crisis but investment in this area is falling
The jobs gap between well-educated young people and those who left school early has continued to widen during the crisis. A good education is the best insurance against a lack of work experience, according to the latest edition of the OECD’s annual Education at a Glance.Unemployment rates are nearly three times higher among people without an upper secondary education (13% on average across OECD co
Let’s Begin with the Letter People® has no discernible effects on oral language or phonological processing
The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) has an updated report on the preschool literacy programs Let’s Begin with the Letter People®.Let’s Begin with the Letter People® is an early childhood literacy curriculum that uses 26 thematic units (each of which covers a letter of the alphabet) to develop children’s language and early literacy skills. A major focus of the program is phonological awareness, incl
Doors to Discovery™ has potentially positive effects on oral language and print knowledge
The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) has released an updated report on a preschool literacy programs, Doors to Discovery.Doors to Discovery™ is a preschool literacy curriculum that uses eight thematic units of activities to help children build fundamental early literacy skills in oral language, phonological awareness, concepts of print, alphabet knowledge, writing, and comprehension. The eight thema
How School and District Leaders Support Classroom Teachers’ Work With English Language Learners
This study examines the ways in which school and district leaders create systems of support for classroom teachers who work with linguistically diverse students. The authors attempt to uncover the intentional supports leaders put in place for classroom teachers and how this may be part of a broader teaching and learning effort. Through a qualitative case study of four districts serving different p
JUN 24
Quality Matters More Than Quantity for Word Learning
Several studies have shown that how much parents say to their children when they are very young is a good predictor of children’s vocabulary at the point when they begin school. In turn, a child’s vocabulary size at school entry strongly predicts level of success throughout schooling even into high school and college. A new study by psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania now shows that ea
JUN 21
Effectiveness of Cognitive Tutor Algebra I at Scale
This article examines the effectiveness of a technology-based algebra curriculum in a wide variety of middle schools and high schools in seven states. Participating schools were matched into similar pairs and randomly assigned to either continue with the current algebra curriculum for two years or to adopt Cognitive Tutor Algebra I (CTAI), which uses a personalized, mastery-learning, blended-learn
Mindfulness Can Increase Wellbeing and Reduce Stress in School Children
Mindfulness -- a mental training that develops sustained attention that can change the ways people think, act and feel -- could reduce symptoms of stress and depression and promote wellbeing among school children, according to a new study published online by the British Journal of Psychiatry.With the summer exam season in full swing, school children are currently experiencing higher levels of stre
JUN 20
Student Engagement—Essential for Success in School—Is More Complex, Changeable Than Previously Thought
“Enhancing student engagement has been identified as the key to addressing problems of low achievement, high levels of student misbehavior, alienation, and high dropout rates.” – Pitt professor Ming-Te WangA student who shows up on time for school and listens respectfully in class might appear fully engaged to outside observers, including teachers. But other measures of student engagement, includi
Bullying and suicide among youth is a public health problem
Expert research from CDC panel provides details and clarity, reports the Journal of Adolescent HealthRecent studies linking bullying and depression, coupled with extensive media coverage of bullying-related suicide among young people, led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to assemble an expert panel to focus on these issues. This panel synthesized the latest research about the c
JUN 19
The vital role of the humanities and social sciences
A new report by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Commission on the Humanities and Social Science, titled The Heart of the Matter, looks at the vital role of the humanities and social sciences in preparing and sustaining Americans for the responsibility of productive citizenship in the United States and the world.The Heart of the Matter focuses on five areas of concern—K-12 Education; Tw
JUN 18
Foster Youth Face Significant Academic Hurdles
A new study, Foster Youth Transitions, released by the Institute for Evidence-Based Change (IEBC), in conjunction with the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Social Science Research (CSSR), examines the educational outcomes of foster youth in comparison to peers from similar disadvantaged backgrounds. Foster youth often experience instability and are deprived of support vital for the
The schools preparing teachers have become an industry of mediocrity
The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ)'s Teacher Prep Review reports that the colleges and universities producing America’s traditionally prepared teachers have become an industry of mediocrity, churning out first-year teachers with classroom management skills and content knowledge inadequate to thrive in classrooms with ever-increasing ethnic and socioeconomic student diversity.They assig
Does arts education really have a positive impact on academic skills?
Arts education is commonly said to be a means of developing skills considered as critical for innovation: critical and creative thinking, motivation, self-confidence, and ability to communicate and cooperate effectively, but also skills in non-arts academic subjects such as mathematics, science, reading and writing. Does arts education really have a positive impact on the three subsets of skills