Cyberbullying and bullying are not the same
Ωh University of British Columbia research comparing traditional bullying with cyberbullying finds that the dynamics of online bullying are different, suggesting that anti-bullying programs need specific interventions to target online aggression. "There are currently many programs aimed at reducing bullying in schools and I think there is an assumption that these programs deal with cyberbullying as well," says Jennifer Shapka, an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at UBC who is presenting this research at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual meet... more »
Study: Reasons for suspension and expulsion complex, race still central
Ω An Indiana University study presented on Friday at the American Educational Research Association meeting in Vancouver shows that race continues to be an important factor in determining who receives out-of-school suspension and expulsion, and that racial disparities in school discipline are most likely due more to school characteristics than to the characteristics of behaviors or students. Russ Skiba, professor in counseling and educational psychology at the Indiana University School of Education, led the study, exploring factors affecting disproportionate rates of suspension and... more »
US Students Need New Way of Learning Science
Ω American students need a dramatically new approach to improve how they learn science, says a noted group of scientists and educators led by Michigan State University professor William Schmidt. After six years of work, the group has proposed a solution. The 8+1 Science concept calls for a radical overhaul in K-12 schools that moves away from memorizing scientific facts and focuses on helping students understand eight fundamental science concepts. The "plus one" is the importance of inquiry, the practice of asking why things happen around us -- and a fundamental part of science. ... more »
Measuring Risk Intelligence
Ω Tests exist for evaluating personality, intelligence and memory. However, up to now, it was not easily possible to find out how good someone is at making decisions in risky situations. "Yet this is an important skill that has an enormous influence on many of our decisions," says psychologist Edward Cokely, who came up with the idea of developing a quick test for this skill at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in 2007. In the intervening five years, he has carried out 21 sub-studies in 15 countries with colleagues from Max Planck Director Gerd Gigerenzer's group at th... more »
Effects of the Elements of Reading® Vocabulary Program on Word Knowledge and Passage Comprehension
Ω A cluster randomized trial estimated the effects of a supplemental vocabulary program, Elements of Reading®: vocabulary on student vocabulary and passage comprehension in moderate- to high-poverty elementary schools. Forty-four schools participated over a period spanning 2 consecutive school years. At baseline, 1,057 teachers and 16,471 students from kindergarten, first, third, and fourth grade participated. The schools were randomly assigned to either the primary or intermediate grade treatment group. In each group, the nontreatment classrooms provided the control condition. Tr... more »
Impact of the Early College High School Model
Ω Early college high schools are a new and rapidly spreading model that merges the high school and college experiences and that is designed to increase the number of students who graduate from high school and enroll and succeed in postsecondary education. This article presents results from a federally funded experimental study of the impact of the early college model on Grade 9 outcomes. Results show that, as compared to control group students, a statistically significant and substantively higher proportion of treatment group students are taking core college preparatory courses an... more »
How Effective Are Scholarships to Recruit the “Best and Brightest” Into Teaching
Ω *Who Is Recruited, Where Do They Teach, How Effective Are They, and How Long Do They Stay?* Is a popular innovation for increasing human capital in the teaching profession—competitive college scholarships for teachers—effective? The authors of this study show that one large and long-standing merit-based scholarship program (a) attracts teacher candidates who have high academic qualifications; (b) yields graduates who teach lower performing students, although not as challenging as the students of other beginning teachers; (c) produces teachers who raise high school and third- thr... more »
Charter school adoption and implementation in Indianapolis
Ω This paper examines the policy context of charter school adoption and implementation in Indianapolis -- the only city in the U.S. with independent mayoral authorizing authority. The study identifies specific implications of this hybrid of mayoral control, including expanded civic capacity and innovation diffusion across Indianapolis area public school systems. This qualitative study utilizes over 30 in-depth interviews conducted with key stakeholders. Legislative, state, and school district documents and reports were analyzed for descriptive evidence of expanded civic capacity, s... more »
Vouchers, Responses and the Test Taking Population: Evidence from Florida
Ω This study analyzes the Florida voucher program that embedded vouchers in an accountability regime. Specifically, it investigates whether threat of vouchers and stigma associated with the Florida voucher program induced schools to strategically manipulate their test-taking population. Under Florida rules, scores of students in several special education and limited English proficient categories were not included in the computation of school grades. Did this induce the threatened schools to reclassify some of their weaker students into these “excluded” categories so as to remove the... more »
Pre-K Spending Per Child Drops to Levels of Nearly a Decade Ago
Ω *Low Quality of Many State Preschool Programs Threatens Nation’s Progress* Funding for state pre-K programs has plummeted by more than $700 per child nationwide over the past decade — keeping the quality of many states’ preschools low even as enrollment has grown, a new report from the National Institute of Early Education Research (NIEER) shows. “Parents would be outraged if we had such low expectations for the first grade or kindergarten,” said Steve Barnett, the longtime director of NIEER, a nonpartisan center at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. “As economic condition...more »
Is Administration Leaner in Charter Schools?
Ω *Resource Allocation in Charter and Traditional Public Schools* There is widespread concern that administration consumes too much of the educational dollar in traditional public schools, diverting needed resources from classroom instruction and hampering efforts to improve student outcomes. By contrast, charter schools are predicted to have leaner administration and allocate resources more intensively to instruction. This study analyzes resource allocation in charter and district schools in Michigan, where charter and tradition public schools receive approximately the same oper... more »
U.S. Middle School Students Give Their Take on Math
Ω Is math relevant to middle school students? Findings from the February 2012 “Math Relevance to U.S. Middle School Students” survey reveal mixed attitudes toward this foundational subject. While students say they like math (70 percent) and know it would be important to their future (58 percent), 44 percent of them would rather take out the trash than do their math homework. The Raytheon-commissioned survey also found that while 94 percent recognize that math is required to build a bridge, only 47 percent thought math was an important part of skateboard design, and only a third of s... more »
HIV, Other STD, and Pregnancy Prevention Education in Public Secondary Schools — 45 States, 2008–2010
Ω * Complete article with tables and notes* In the United States, 46% of high school students have had sexual intercourse and potentially are at risk for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and pregnancy (1). The National HIV/AIDS Strategy for the United States recommends educating young persons about HIV before they begin engaging in behaviors that place them at risk for HIV infection (2). The Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF) also recommends risk reduction interventions to prevent HIV, other STDs, and pregnancy a... more »
Homework Distractions
Ω A new regional study by a senior learning researcher and Mississippi State faculty member is the first to link homework distraction to a wide range of variables. The multi-level analysis by Jianzhong Xu, a professor in the university’s College of Education, examined a range of variables affecting homework distraction, at both the student level and the class level. He hypothesized that homework distraction is affected by such variables as gender, academic achievement and student attitudes toward the work. A member of the college’s leadership and foundations department, Xu also inc... more »
Managing Asthma in Student Athletes
Ω For the student athlete with asthma, spring and summer pose particular dangers. The most significant danger is the all-too-frequent lack of access to a life-saving asthma inhaler, explains Maureen George, PhD, RN, of the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. Federal law permits students to carry their asthma inhalers with them, yet many schools do not because of safety concerns. “Managing asthma is especially challenging for student athletes because many coaches do not feel comfortable assuming responsibility for administering asthma medications, nor are they trained to d... more »
Overweight Boys and Girls Benefit from Being Fit
Ω Improving or maintaining physical fitness appears to help obese and overweight children reach a healthy weight, reports a new study from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. Researchers analyzed four years of data from in-school fitness tests and body mass index (BMI) measurements of students in grades 1–7 in the city of Cambridge, Mass. In the study published online March 15 by the journal Obesity, Sacheck and colleagues examined the association between weight status and fitness levels by assessing student performance on five fitness tests. Re... more »
Tackling dyslexia before kids learn to read
Ω For children with dyslexia, the trouble begins even before they start reading and for reasons that don't necessarily reflect other language skills. That's according to a report published online on April 5 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, that for the first time reveals a causal connection between early problems with visual attention and a later diagnosis of dyslexia. "Visual attention deficits are surprisingly way more predictive of future reading disorders than are language abilities at the prereading stage," said Andrea Facoetti of the University of Padua in Italy.... more »
School Improvement Grants (SIGs) fail to spur expected dramatic changes
Ω Just over two years ago, the federal government committed over $3 billion nationwide to help states and districts turn around their worst-performing schools. The U.S. Department of Education intended for the School Improvement Grants (SIGs) to spur dramatic change. In the report “Tinkering Toward Transformation: A Look at Federal School Improvement Grant Implementation,” researchers from the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) show that, for the most part, the districts they studied—including urban, suburban, and rural—failed to make aggressiv...more »
Another Curriculum w/Professional Development: No Impact
Ω The study Impact on Student English Language Proficiency of Classroom Materials in Combination with Teacher Professional Development examines the impact on student English language proficiency of the *On Our Way to English (OWE*) curriculum, offered in combination with the *Responsive Instruction for Success in English (RISE)* teacher professional development. *On Our Way to English* was developed to provide ELL students access to English oral language development, comprehensive literacy instruction, and standards-based content area information in science and social studies. *Re... more »
Using Incentives to Move a District’s Highest-Performing Teachers to its Lowest-Achieving Schools
Ω “Moving Teachers: Implementation of Transfer Incentives in Seven Districts” describes the implementation and intermediate impacts of an intervention designed to provide incentives to induce a school district’s highest-performing teachers to work in its lowest-achieving schools. The intervention, called the Talent Transfer Initiative or TTI, was carried out in 7 districts and includes an incentive of $20,000 over 2 years to a district’s highest-performing teachers who agreed to move to teach in the district’s targeted lower performing schools. The report uses random assignment w... more
