Education Research Report

Education Research Report

Education Research Report

Math Pathways: Expanding Options for Success in College Math

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2h

Download This report, released in collaboration with the Center for the Analysis of Postsecondary Readiness, explains a new model of college math education that has come to be called math pathways. Three prominent examples of math pathways – with research evidence on their effectiveness – are included.

Transitions and Alignment From Preschool to Kindergarten

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2h

Download This special report – focused on early learning and kindergarten – examines effective transition programs and practices, and the importance of alignment across basic pedagogical components.

50-State Comparison: State Policies on School Discipline

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2h

Recent data show significant disparities in the application of suspension and expulsion based on race, gender and disability status. The emergence of these data, coupled with research showing the long-term negative impact of removing students from the learning environment, has prompted many state education leaders to re-examine their school discipline requirements. This has led to legislation aim

50-State Comparison: Teacher Leadership and Licensure Advancement

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2h

On the path to strengthen teacher pipelines, support excellent teaching and improve retention, many states have developed opportunities for teacher leadership and advancement. While most states offer advanced licenses to encourage ongoing learning and growth within the teaching profession, many are now also including supports and incentives to encourage more teachers to become leaders in their cl

50-State Comparison: Developmental Education Policies

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2h

Developmental education assessment and placement policies guide how students may demonstrate college readiness and are placed into college-level courses. States and postsecondary systems use a variety of measures to determine a student’s college readiness. Often, policies require that students submit scores from a national, standardized test. Some states and postsecondary systems allow students t

Governance in Early Childhood Education

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2h

Download This Education Trends report examines the different structures and strategies — including the creation of state offices, the consolidation of others, and collaboration and coordination across several state agencies – used in the states to govern early education. State examples and policy considerations are included to provide insight and help address the many challenges policymakers face

Too much credit given to most recent teaher for improved student learning

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2h

The federal Race to the Top competition provided significant impetus for states to adopt value-added models as a part of their teacher evaluation systems. Such models typically link students to their teachers in the spring semester when statewide tests are administered and estimate a teacher's performance based on his or her students’ learning between the test date in the previous school year and

What Constitutes Prudent Spending from Private College Endowments?

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 3h

This study examines how private colleges and universities choose to spend versus reinvest resources in endowment funds that have suffered investment losses. The analysis takes advantage of a market downturn and public policy shift, which together revealed how colleges define prudent spending. Investment losses during the financial crisis of 2008 left many endowment gift funds below their original

Positive Effects of Court-Ordered Finance Reforms

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 3h

This study provides new evidence about the effect of court-ordered finance reforms that took place between 1989 and 2010 on per-pupil revenues and graduation rates. Seven years after reform, the highest poverty quartile in a treated state experienced an 11.5 percent to 12.1 percent increase in per-pupil spending, and a 6.8 to 11.5 percentage point increase in graduation rates.

DEC 31 2018

Teacher Characteristics, Student Beliefs, and the Gender Gap in STEM Fields

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2d

This article uses data from the U.S. High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 to investigate the relationship between high school students’ beliefs about female abilities in math and science and their teacher gender, beliefs, and classroom behaviors. Estimates are obtained by comparing the same ninth graders between math and science classes, thus controlling for student fixed effects. Students were

College Students’ Reflections on Their High School Peer Crowds

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2d

High school peer crowds are fundamental components of adolescent development with influences on short- and long-term life trajectories. This study provides the perspectives of contemporary college students regarding their recent high school social landscapes, contributing to current research and theory on the social contexts of high school. This study also highlights the experiences of college-bo

The impact of Social Security on retirement timing: comparing covered and non-covered teachers

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2d

This study documents an important role for Social Security income in workers' retirement timing. About 40 percent of public school teachers are not covered by Social Security. This provides an opportunity to analyze the causal impact of Social Security on retirement timing by comparing covered and non-covered teachers. Using individual-level data from the American Community Survey, we find robust

DEC 27 2018

Distinguishing between students who guess and those who know

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 5d

Measuring the knowledge of students in online courses poses a number of challenges. Researchers from the Higher School of Economics and the University of Leuven made improvements to the model for assessing academic achievements and published their results in the journal Heliyon . Several systemic factors make it difficult for the developers of online courses to assess students' proficiency accura

The Effect of Grade Retention on Adult Crime

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 5d

This paper presents the first analysis in the literature of the effect of test-based grade retention on adult criminal convictions. The rsearchers use math and English test cutoffs for promotion to ninth grade in Louisiana using administrative data on all public K-12 students combined with administrative data on all criminal convictions in the state. They use the promotion discontinuity as an ins

Schools of choice less likely to respond to inquiries from students with low achievement

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 5d

School choice may allow schools to “cream skim” students perceived as easier to educate. To test this, researchers sent emails from fictitious parents to 6,452 schools in 29 states and Washington, D.C. The fictitious parent asked whether 

The Greedy, Selfish Billionaires Who Rig Taxes in Washington State | Diane Ravitch's blog

The Greedy, Selfish Billionaires Who Rig Taxes in Washington State | Diane Ravitch's blog

The Greedy, Selfish Billionaires Who Rig Taxes in Washington State

Hanna Brooks Olsen writes here about the billionaires of Washington State and their clever strategies to stay very rich whileappearing to be philanthropists.

They give to the poor. They give toworking people. They give to the homeless.

But they make sure that Washington State has the most regressive Taxes in the nation, which protects their fortunes.

Because when billionaires do anything for anyone else, it’s cause for celebration.

We see this a lot out here in Washington state, a place that is uncommonly kind to people with ample wealth. This is not hyperbole; a report released in October found that, once again, the Evergreen State has the country’s most regressive tax structure. The richest percentile of residents — those who earn more than half a million dollars annually — pay three percent of their income in annual state and local taxes. Meanwhile, those who earn under $24,000 per year — many of whom live below the poverty line — shell out 17.8 percent.

This makes it difficult for lawmakers to tackle the big problems; for over a decade, Washington has struggled to fund basic education and provide critical mental health care to those in need. Every year, elected officials head into session wondering how they’re going to pay for new roads and transportation upgrades when property taxes are maxed out.

But this structure is not an accident. It is by design, crafted and upheld by CONTINUE READING: The Greedy, Selfish Billionaires Who Rig Taxes in Washington State | Diane Ravitch's blog

CURMUDGUCATION: How Much Money In That Edusector?!!

CURMUDGUCATION: How Much Money In That Edusector?!!

How Much Money In That Edusector?!!

When you're starting to wonder why so many people are interested in education, even though they have no training, experience, or apparent deep interest in education, it's helpful to see some numbers.

Like 2,600,000,000.

Reportsnreports is an international outfit that provides "market research reports to industries, individuals, and organizations to accelerate decision making process." They offer a library of over a half million reports with coverage of at least 30,000 niche markets. They've got reports on negative pressure wound therapy growth and the zirconium dioxide market. And they pay an average salary of $83K. So this is not some guy writing market reports in his garage.

Reportsnreports has released a report on the "Education and Learning Analytics Market." $2.6 billion is how much money they reckoned was in that sector for 2018. And that's peanuts compared to their projection for 2023, when they figure the sector will involved $7.1 billion.

That's $7,100,000,000.

Analytics are expected to grow in connection with the growth of computer-driven personalized [sic] CURMUDGUCATION: How Much Money In That Edusector?!!

Charter School Sector Cannot Be Reformed or Effectively Regulated | janresseger

Charter School Sector Cannot Be Reformed or Effectively Regulated | janresseger

Charter School Sector Cannot Be Reformed or Effectively Regulated

As we begin a new year, consider that charter schools were first authorized thirty years ago.  As this sector of publicly funded but privately operated schools has matured, it has become clearer that a serious set of problems are part of charter schools’ very design. Charter schools were envisioned as free to innovate and less bound by regulation and bureaucracy.  In a fine analysis just before the holidays, the Executive Director of the Network for Public Education, Carol Burris summarizes some of the most pervasive problems she has noticed as she has traveled through a number of states examining their charter school sectors. The Network for Public Education has published two in-depth, multi-state reports on the impact of charters and school privatization—the recent Grading the States, and the 2017, Charters and Consequences. While charters are established in state laws which may differ from state to state, Burris has been tracking broad trends.  She explains:

“Entrepreneurial governance, freed from most of the regulations and oversight mandated for true public schools, was at the heart of the ‘charter school experiment.’  Thirty years later, we have the results.  Charter school students generally do about the same academically as their public school counterparts; in some places, they do better, and in others, they do worse. There is no evidence that charters are more innovative than public schools, with many relying on ‘no excuses’ discipline reminiscent of a late 19th-century school. The original idea of a teacher-led school designed to create innovative practices has been lost.”

Burris identifies five pervasive problems:

First:   Freedom from regulations and public oversight under law—the kind of protection democratic governance provides public schools —has left charter schools vulnerable to widespread waste and fraud: “When public dollars freely flow without independent oversight, it is all too easy for dollars to find their way into employee pockets and bank accounts, for friends and relatives to get ‘sweetheart deals’ and for school leaders to receive astronomical salaries that would be unheard of in public schools… Every serious legislative attempt to rein in abuse meets opposition from the charter lobby, which makes strategic donations to legislators to avoid accountability.”

Second:   Charter schools find sometimes subtle ways to select the students their operators CONTINUE READING: Charter School Sector Cannot Be Reformed or Effectively Regulated | janresseger

Big Education Ape: SPOTLIGHT BLOG OF THE WEEK: JAN RESSEGER BLOG (janresseger.wordpress.com) - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2018/12/spotlight-blog-of-week-jan-resseger.html

Lowering Class Size: If Not Now, When?

Lowering Class Size: If Not Now, When?

Lowering Class Size: If Not Now, When?

Whereas, The District is committed to creating the most enriching academic environment for all students, which includes a reduction in class-size;“

– LAUSD School Board

On June 18, 2013, the Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD) School Board voted for a resolution that directed their “Superintendent to examine the feasibility of implementing class-size reduction for the 2014-15 academic calendar and to develop a long term, class-size reduction strategy that will yield positive academic results”. In the over five years that have passed since the resolution should have been implemented, the District has had four different Superintendents. The class size ratio has remained exactly the same.

In 2015, KNBC ran a story about “Parents, teachers and students [who were] fed up with class sizes” at Hamilton High School, a school with about 3,000 students. In that school year, there were 66 classes with more than 40 students. In the previous year, there had been 110 CONTINUE READING: Lowering Class Size: If Not Now, When?

Jersey Jazzman: NJ Court Strikes Down Graduation Test; An Opportunity to Re-Think Testing?

Jersey Jazzman: NJ Court Strikes Down Graduation Test; An Opportunity to Re-Think Testing?

NJ Court Strikes Down Graduation Test; An Opportunity to Re-Think Testing?

Miss me?

Yesterday, a New Jersey appellate court struck down regulations that required students to pass two PARCC tests -- the statewide tests implemented a few years ago under the Christie administration -- as a requirement to graduate. Sarah Blaine has an excellent legal analysis you should read about the ruling. Let me add a few thoughts to it, coming less from a legal perspective and more from an educational one:

SOSNJ has posted a copy of the ruling on its Facebook page. The ruling notes that back in 1979 the NJ Legislature called for "'a statewide assessment test in reading, writing, and computational skills . . . .' N.J.S.A. 18A:7C-1. The test must 'measure those basic skills all students must possess to function politically, economically and socially in a democratic society.' N.J.S.A. 18A:7C-6.1."

As Sarah points out, state statutes are usually vague when it comes to things like setting standards; functioning "politically, economically and socially" will mean different things to different people. It's also not clear why the Legislature thought a test was necessary for graduation. Was it to uphold the value of a New Jersey diploma by making sure all holders could meet a certain standard? Was it to hold districts accountable for their programs? Was it to make sure the state, as a whole, was providing the resources needed for students to have educational success?

Or was it possible the Legislature never really thought about the purpose of the test? I'm not sure; I do, however, know that in the time since the passage of the law, psyshometricians have been giving long and hard thought to something called validity: in the most basic terms, whether a test measures what we want it to measure, and whether it should be used for the purposes in which it is used.

The passage of the federal No Child Left Behind in 2002 act gave us gobs of test outcome data, which has been used by policymakers and researchers to evaluate and justify educational policies. Unfortunately, many of these folks have failed to ask the most basic CONTINUE READING: Jersey Jazzman: NJ Court Strikes Down Graduation Test; An Opportunity to Re-Think Testing?