THIS WEEK'S EDUCATION RESEARCH REPORT
YESTERDAY
High School Socioeconomic Segregation and Student Attainment
Using data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, this study examines the association between high school socioeconomic segregation and student attainment outcomes and the mechanisms that mediate those relationships. The results show that socioeconomic segregation has a strong association with high school graduation and college enrollment. Controlling for an array of student and school fac
Equity or Marginalization? The High School Course-Taking of Students Labeled With a Learning Disability
Placement of some students into the courses needed only for high school graduation and others into those that prepare them for college constitutes academic stratification. This study uses data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 to investigate whether students labeled with learning disabilities complete fewer academic courses by the end of high school compared to their peers who are not
JUL 18
IB Middle Years Programme Develops Students and Teachers Eager to Learn and Take on New Challenges
The International Baccalaureate (IB) has announced new research findings that aim to provide deeper understanding of how students in the Middle Years Programme (MYP) are influenced to become lifelong learners and active global citizens through participation in the MYP. The study, conducted by Julie Wade and Natalie L. Wolanin, found that MYP students identified the rigour and challenge of MYP cour
Children with ear deformity may need intervention to improve school performance
Children born with a complete absence of the external ear canal, even if only one ear is affected, are more likely than their peers to struggle in school, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.Hearing amplification and corrective surgery are available for the condition, called aural atresia. But many children with single ear atresia (unilateral atresia)
Singing helps students tune into a foreign language, study shows
Singing in a foreign language can significantly improve learning how to speak it, according to a new study.Adults who listened to short Hungarian phrases and then sang them back performed better than those who spoke the phrases, researchers found.People who sang the phrases back also fared better than those who repeated the phrases by speaking them rhythmically.Three randomly assigned groups of tw
JUL 17
The Political Foundations of the Black–White Education Achievement Gap
More than 50 years after Brown v. Board, African American students continue to trail their White peers on a variety of important educational indicators. In this article, the authors investigate the political foundations of the racial “achievement gap” in American education. Using variation in high school graduation rates across the states, they first assess whether state policymakers are attentive
Exploring Key Levers to Boost College Readiness Among Black and Latino Males
College readiness is becoming an increasingly important standard by which to measure school success and student achievement. While high school graduation and dropout prevention remain critical issues for educators, there is a substantial gap in outcomes between students who only earn a high school diploma and those who go on to obtain a college degree. For example, young adults with a bachelor’s d
AP Exams and Personality Traits Help Predict Long-Term Success in College
Long-term success in college may be better predicted with Advanced Placement (AP) exams and personality traits in combination with standard admission practices, according to new research from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Rice University.The study showed that prediction of student graduation may be significantly improved by including in the college admission process consideration of AP e
JUL 16
Young children with autism benefit regardless of high-quality treatment model
Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have found that preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) who receive high-quality early intervention benefit developmentally regardless of the treatment model used—a surprising result that may have important implications for special-education programs and school classrooms across the country.“This is the first study designed to
Immigrant Young Adults Have Mixed Record of Success in High School and College
Young adults who are immigrants or the children of immigrants have a mixed record of success in Washington State, with the performance of many English language learners lagging behind state averages even as the state’s immigrant youth have a relatively high level of college-degree attainment compared to other immigrants nationwide, the Migration Policy Institute reported today.In a new report, Sha
Reading Recovery® has positive effects on general reading achievement and potentially positive effects on alphabetics, reading fluency, and comprehension for beginning readers
Reading Recovery® is a short-term intervention that provides one-on-one tutoring to first-grade students who are struggling in reading and writing. The supplementary program aims to promote literacy skills and foster the development of reading and writing strategies by tailoring individualized lessons to each student. Tutoring is delivered by trained Reading Recovery® teachers in daily 30 minute p
Revenues and expenditures for public elementary and secondary education for School Year 2010-11
Current expenditures per pupil for public elementary and secondary education were $10,658 on a national level in FY 11. Current expenditures per pupil ranged from $6,326 in Utah to $20,793 in the District of Columbia. Expenditures per pupil were next highest in New York ($18,834); New Jersey ($16,855); Alaska ($16,663); Connecticut ($16,224); and Wyoming ($15,815). Adjusting for inflation, per pup
Developing Socially Just Teachers
This interpretive study investigated how 12 graduates from a justice-oriented teacher preparation program described their teaching goals, practices, and influences on those practices after their 1st year of teaching in an urban school. Relationships among these teachers’ orientations toward socially just teaching, self-reported socially just teaching practices, and self-reported preprogram, progra
Early Spatial Reasoning Predicts Later Creativity and Innovation, Especially in STEM Fields
Exceptional spatial ability at age 13 predicts creative and scholarly achievements more than 30 years later, according to results from a Vanderbilt University longitudinal study, published today in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.The study, conducted by David Lubinski and colleagues at Vanderbilt University Peabody College of education and human develo
CREDO’s Significantly Insignificant Charter Schools Findings
Even Setting Aside Its Analytical Flaws, Study Merely Confirms that Charter Schools Perform on Par with Traditional Public SchoolsThe Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University announced in a June 25th press release that “charter school students now have greater learning gains in reading than their peers in traditional public schools.” This conclusion was repeated in
JUL 15
Educators Explore Innovative "Theater" As A Way To Learn Physics
By role-playing how energy flows and changes, learners achieve rich insights about this central, globally relevant conceptIn a study released this week, education researchers found that personifying energy allowed students to grapple with difficult ideas about how energy works. Contrasted with more traditional lectures and graphs, this innovative instructional technique may be useful for teaching
How to Keep Kids Engaged with Educational Games
If you want teams of students to stay engaged while playing educational games, you might want them to switch seats pretty often. That’s one finding from a pilot study that evaluated how well middle school students were able to pay attention to game-based learning tasks.Students at a Raleigh, N.C., middle school were divided into two-person teams for the pilot study. Researchers from North Carolina
Reducing Children’s Exposure to School Bus Diesel Exhaust
Children who are exposed to diesel exhaust from idling school buses are at increased risk of asthma exacerbation, decreased lung function, immunologic reactions, leukemia, and increased susceptibility to infections. Policies and initiatives that aim to protect school children from the harmful effects of exposure to diesel exhaust range from general environmental air quality standards to more speci
Psychosocial stimulation to stunted toddlers living in poverty has dramatic long-term effects
This study finds large effects on the earnings of participants from arandomized intervention that gave psychosocial stimulation to stuntedJamaican toddlers living in poverty. The intervention consisted ofone-hour weekly visits from community Jamaican health workers over a2-year period that taught parenting skills and encouraged mothers tointeract and play with their children in ways that would dev
JUL 12
The Effect of Grade Placement on English Language Learners’ Academic Achievement
Many English Language Learners (ELLs) migrate to the United States at older ages and administrators must choose a grade in which to place these new entrants as soon as they register for school. This study estimates the effect of grade placement on the short-term academic performance of ELLs who enroll in the Miami-Dade County Public School system between the ages of 7 and 12 using a district polic
JUL 11
School environment predicts school engagement through academic motivation
This longitudinal study adopted a multidimensional perspective to examine the relationships between middle school students' perceptions of the school environment (structure support, provision of choice, teaching for relevance, teacher and peer emotional support), achievement motivation (academic self-concept and subjective task value), and school engagement (behavioral, emotional, and cognitive en
Private Schools Not Always Better Internationally
This report. Who Chooses Which Private Education? Theory and International Evidence”, CEPR Discussion Paper 9513., finds evidence in the 2009 PISA survey (OECD 2012) that private schools indeed do not everywhere deliver better schooling outcomes. Figure 1. Country-specific differences between private and government school students’ average PISA test scores (in mathematics, reading, and science), p
State Track Records in Academic Performance/Improvement Analysed
Common Core standards have the potential to dramatically raise the rigor of instruction – and the level of achievement – in schools across the country. But these standards will also demand more of our students and teachers than ever before. While there is much work to be done in all states to lift all students to the college- and career-ready level, a new analysis shows that the stretch is far big
JUL 10
How Districts Enable and Support High-Performing Schools
This report features three effective school districts in North Carolina. The districts vary in terms of the types of students they serve, where they are located, and the number of schools they oversee. The districts include: * Catawba County, a rural district serving a student population of more than 17,000 students, around half of which were income eligible for free or reduced-price school lunche
School Districts’ Early Efforts to Develop Effective Principals: What $75 Million Buys
Over the last half dozen years, principals have been increasingly recognized as a linchpin for successful school improvement – yet less is known about how districts can develop a pipeline of highly-qualified candidates.A new independent evaluation report details how six urban school districts are beginning to build larger pools of strong principal candidates at a time when many policymakers view t
Charter Schools and the Road to College Readiness: The Effects on College Preparation, Attendance and Choice
What is the study about? This study examined whether attending a Boston charter school affected students’ high school and college outcomes. The study compared charter school students who were admitted via a random admission lottery and attended one of the six study charter schools to students who applied but were not admitted via lottery and instead attended another public school in Massachusetts.
JUL 09
School policies reduce student drinking – if they’re perceived to be enforced
University of Washington professor of social work Richard Catalano and colleagues studied whether anti-alcohol policies in public and private schools in Washington state and Australia’s Victoria state were effective for eighth- and ninth-graders.What they found was that each school’s particular policy mattered less than the students’ perceived enforcement of it. So, even if a school had a suspensi
Read Naturally®: potentially positive effects on general reading achievement for beginning readers
Read Naturally® is a supplemental reading program that aims to improve the reading fluency, accuracy, and comprehension skills of elementary and middle school students using a combination of texts, audio CDs, and computer software. What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) found that the Read Naturally® program has no discernible effects on alphabetics and comprehension, mixed effects on reading fluency, and
Characteristics of Private Schools in the United States
Results From the 2011–12 Private School Universe SurveyIn the fall of 2011, there were 30,861 private schools in the United States, enrolling 4,494,845 students, and employing 420,880 full-time-equivalent teachers. Ninety-six percent of all private schools were coeducational, while 2 percent enrolled all girls and 2 percent enrolled all boys. Of the 305,842 2010-11 private high school graduates, 6
Despite Common Core’s Call for Increased State Standards, 26 States Lower Proficiency Bar
Recently, states’ definitions of what makes a student proficient in math and reading have been changing—in some cases for the better, in others for the worse. In a new Education Next article, “Despite Common Core, States Still Lack Common Standards,” authors Paul Peterson and Peter Kaplan find that even though 37 states and the District of Columbia (D.C.) received a waiver from the U.S. Department
JUL 08
Novice Teachers’ Career Intentions and Decisions: the Impact of Preservice Preparation and Early Career Support
A rationale for providing high-quality support during teachers’ early years is to develop further the skills teachers acquire during preparation and to help overcome weaknesses that might lead them to abandon the profession. Yet, almost no consideration has been given to potential interactions between preservice preparation and induction support received. This study utilizes survey and administrat
Online & Face-to-Face Professional Development Equally Effective in the Context of Curriculum Implementation
This study employed a randomized experiment to examine differences in teacher and student learning from professional development (PD) in two modalities: online and face-to-face. The study explored whether there are differences in teacher knowledge and beliefs, teacher classroom practice, and student learning outcomes related to PD modality. Comparison of classroom practice and student learning out
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