THIS WEEK'S EDUCATION RESEARCH REPORT
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Eighty-five percent of American students attend school in a state that has adopted the Common Core State Standards. As these states transition from adoption to implementation of the new standards, many are grappling with how best to assess whether students are learning the material contained in the Common Core. Debates about the costs and merits of Common Core tests are raging in states across the country. In this report, Brown Center Fellow Matthew M. Chingos critically examines the likely costs of the various assessment options that are available to states, but urges states to also consider
Pennsylvania’s 500 public school districts have dramatically increased their reliance on disciplinary practices that result in students being removed from school over the past 15 years, creating an educational crisis that goes far beyond the state’s largest school system in Philadelphia, a new study shows.Beyond Zero Tolerance: Discipline and Policing in Pennsylvania Public Schools, published by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, represents a ground-breaking analysis that for the first time aggregates data from across the state for all major forms of school discipline. The res
The November 2013 issue of Educational Researcher (ER), a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), is now available on the association’s website. Included in this issue is a report on an innovative algorithm for automated test construction that results in much more highly aligned – and therefore, more valid – assessments of student mastery of state content standards. The November issue of ER includes three feature articles and one essay. Links to the full text of each article are available through AERA’s website at www.aera.net/ERNov13.This month’s feature
NOV 13
Factors Other Than Race and Poverty Determine Reading Achievement
This study investigated the unique relations between school concentrations of student risk factors and measures of reading, mathematics, and attendance. It used an integrated administrative data system to create a combined data set of risks (i.e., birth risks, teen mother, low maternal education, homelessness, maltreatment, and lead exposure) for an entire cohort of third-grade students in a large
Early Childhood Initiatives and Third-Grade Outcomes in North Carolina
This study examines the community-wide effects of two statewide early childhood policy initiatives in North Carolina. One initiative provides funding to improve the quality of child care services at the county level for all children between the ages of 0 to 5, and the other provides funding for preschool slots for disadvantaged four-year-olds. Differences across counties in the timing of the rollo
Strategic Involuntary Teacher Transfers and Teacher Performance:
Despite claims that school districts need flexibility in teacher assignment to allocate teachers more equitably across schools and improve district performance, the power to involuntarily transfer teachers across schools remains hotly contested. Little research has examined involuntary teacher transfer policies or their effects on schools, teachers, or students. This article uses administrative da
NOV 12
What Urban, Low-Income Tweens Want in Afterschool Arts Program
Professional artists, hands-on learning, and public performances top the list of elements tweens want in afterschool arts programs, according to a national market-research-based study released today. This rare look into the expectations of urban, low-income tweens offers insights directly from tweens, teens and their families; teachers and leaders in the arts and youth development; best practice e
edTPA Summary Report Now Available
The Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity (SCALE) has announced the public release of the edTPA Summary Report for the 2012-13 field test. The report describes edTPA design, development efforts by the profession for the profession, data informing validity and reliability studies, and field test and standard-setting results. edTPA is the first nationally available, educator-designed
Changes in Levels of Affirmative Action in College Admissions
Affirmative action in college admissions was effectively banned in Texas by the Hopwood ruling in 1997, by voter referenda in California and Washington in 1996 and 1998, and by administrative decisions in Florida in 1999. The Hopwood and Johnson rulings also had possible applicability to public colleges throughout Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in t
Technology-based algebra curriculum: Positive effects in 2nd year
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 2 years or to adopt Cognitive Tutor Algebra I (CTAI), which uses a personalized, mastery-learning, blended-learnin
NOV 11
Teen night owls likely to perform worse academically, emotionally
Teenagers who go to bed late during the school year are more prone to academic and emotional difficulties in the long run, compared to their earlier-to-bed counterparts, according to a new study from UC Berkeley.Berkeley researchers analyzed longitudinal data from a nationally representative cohort of 2,700 U.S. adolescents of whom 30 percent reported bedtimes later than 11:30 p.m. on school days
NOV 07
Secondary Math Teachers from Teach for America: higher scores on end-of-year mathematics achievement tests
“The Effectiveness of Secondary Math Teachers from Teach for America and the Teaching Fellows Program”This study examined the impact of Teach for America (TFA) and The New Teacher Project’s Teaching Fellows (TF) programs on the mathematics achievement of students in grades 6–12. TFA and TF provide alternative routes to teacher certification and aim to provide high-quality teachers to schools in l
Access to effective teaching for disadvantaged students in 29 school districts
Recent federal initiatives emphasize measuring teacher effectiveness and ensuring that disadvantaged students have equal access to effective teachers. This study substantially broadens the existing evidence on access to effective teaching by examining access in 29 geographically dispersed school districts over the 2008-2009 to 2010-2011 school years. The report describes disadvantaged students’ ac
2013 Mathematics Report Card
The nation’s eighth-grade students have made gains in mathematics since 2011, according to data from the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The Nation’s Report Card, Mathematics 2013 presents results from the 2013 NAEP assessments administered to students at grades 4 and 8 across the country. These reports present results for the nation, all 50 states, the District of Columbi
Report confirms charter schools enroll fewer special-needs students
There’s clear evidence that charter schools enroll significantly fewer special education students than traditional public schools. But why is that? In Why the Gap? Special Education and New York City Charter Schools, a recent report published jointly by the Manhattan Institute and the Center on Reinventing Public Education, Marcus Winters asserted the disparity is not the product of concerted atte
Educational video games can boost motivation to learn
Math video games can enhance students' motivation to learn, but it may depend on how students play, researchers at New York University and the City University of New York have found in a study of middle-schoolers.While playing a math video game either competitively or collaboratively with another player—as compared to playing alone—students adopted a mastery mindset that is highly conducive to lea
NOV 06
Early Childhood Educators Hold the Key to Children’s Communication Skills
Researchers at UNC’s Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute have completed a new examination of peer-reviewed science that reveals how early childhood educators can ignite the growth of language and communication skills in infants and toddlers. Earlier today, Nicole Gardner-Neblett and Kathleen Cranley Gallagher published the FPG team’s research-based recommendations online.“Early languag
School violence lowers test scores, not grades
It's hard to go a day without seeing news of violence in some form occurring in schools around the country, and Chicago is often cited as a city where crime rates in schools are particularly high. In a new study in the current issue of Sociology of Education, Brown University sociologist Julia Burdick-Will looked at the effect such violence has on school achievement among Chicago high school stude
Effects of incentives for high-performing teachers to transfer to low-achieving schools
One policy response to the challenge of attracting high-performing teachers to low-achieving schools is offering teachers monetary incentives to transfer. This report examines impacts of transfer incentives -- including the willingness of teachers to transfer when offered an incentive, teacher retention in the schools to which they transferred, and the impact of transfer incentives on student achi
NOV 05
Neediest Students Most Likely to Miss Aid Deadlines
Students with the greatest need for financial aid for college are the least prepared to submit the applications early enough to receive it, according to a study by a researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago and an Illinois financial aid official."Among all low-income students who qualify for need-based aid, those with a slightly higher expected family contribution are more likely t
NOV 04
Only 36 percent of third graders on track in cognitive development
The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s latest KIDS COUNT® report details how a child’s early development across critical areas of well-being is essential to make the effective transition into elementary school and for long-term school success. According to a newly released analysis of the Early Childhood Longitudinal study that began to track 13,000 children who were in kindergarten in 1998-99, by third
NOV 02
Problem of gender differences on physics assessments remains unsolved
The mystery of why women consistently score lower than men on common assessments of conceptual understanding of physics remains poorly understood In a new synthesis of past work, "The gender gap on concept inventories in physics: what is consistent, what is inconsistent, and what factors influence the gap?" A. Madsen, S. B. McKagan and E. C. Sayre, Physical Review Special Topics – Physic
NOV 01
Segregation in American schools still problematic, despite best efforts
As American schools struggle with issues of race, diversity and achievement, a new study in the American Sociological Review has split the difference in the ongoing discussion of resegregation. Yes, black, white and Hispanic students were less likely to share classrooms in 2010 than in 1993, but no, that increase in segregation is usually not the result of waning efforts to reduce it."People
The Impact of Race and Ethnicity on the Identification Process for Giftedness
Many gifted education experts have found that Black, Hispanic, and Native American students are less likely to be identified for gifted programs than Asian American and White students. A study was conducted to ascertain the degree of underrepresentation of these groups in gifted programs in Utah. Using state-collected data from 14,781 students in six representative school districts in Utah, it was