TODAY'S Education Research Report

Education Research Report

TODAY'S Education Research Report

Helping smooth the transition to kindergarten

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 3h

The schools and districts profiled in the four communities in this report have taken different steps to help smooth the transition to kindergarten for children and families, with a particular emphasis on promoting equity by focusing on better serving children from low-income families. Because of the historic divide between early learning and the formal K–12 school system, it will require years of

Using Local, State, and Federal Dollars to Improve Pre-K to K Transitions

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 3h

When early learning experiences are connected from birth through third grade (B–3rd), children and their families can more seamlessly transition between ECE programs and grade levels. Smoothing transitions requires careful planning, effective policies and practices, and funding. The transition between pre-K and kindergarten is a particularly important one. There are a number of federal and state

Community Colleges Apprenticeship Programs

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 3h

Apprenticeship is a proven education and employment model that combines structured on-the-job learning with related technical or classroom instruction to prepare individuals for specific occupations. Apprentices are paid, have access to work-site mentors, and earn progressively higher wages as they advance in their programs. The rising cost of higher education, combined with the increasing skill

YESTERDAY

Effect of Simplifying Financial Aid Offers on College Enrollment and Borrowing

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 19h

. Recent policy and research efforts have focused on simplifying the college-going process, improving transparency around college costs, and helping students make informed decisions. In 2012, the Obama administration released the “shopping sheet,” a standardized financial aid offer that is intended to provide students with simplified information about costs, loan options, and college outcomes. Th

Investigating the Impact of the Pittsburgh Promise

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 19h

Place-based promise scholarships are a relatively recent innovation in the space of college access and success. Although evidence on the impact of some of the earliest place-based scholarships has begun to emerge, the rapid proliferation of promise programs largely has preceded empirical evidence of their impact. This paper analyses the causal effect of the Pittsburgh Promise on students’ immedia

Parental Credit Constraints and Child College Attendance

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 19h

Parents in the United States frequently supplement the student loans available to their children by cosigning on a loan, borrowing against their home equity, or with unsecured debt in their own names. This paper investigates whether some students are constrained from attending and completing college by their parents’ lack of access to credit markets by linking individual parental credit scores to

The Returns to Education at Community Colleges: New Evidence

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 19h

This study uses nationally representative data from the Education Longitudinal Survey (ELS) to update the literature on returns to community college education, comparing the experiences of the ELS cohort that graduated high school in 2004 with those of the National Education Longitudinal Survey (NELS) cohort that graduated high school more than a decade earlier, in 1992. The author estimates that

The Wisconsin Scholars Grant (WSG)

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 20h

The WSG is a privately funded program designed to help low-income Wisconsin families pay for college and increase college completion. Student access to the WSG is based on Pell Grant eligibility, Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) information, and college admissions records. The grant provided students with $1,800 per year for each year in which they were enrolled in a Wisconsin two

The Multiple Measures Placement System

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 20h

Research shows that using only test scores to place students in remediation—the typical method—is correlated with over-placement, which can lead to unnecessary time and expense spent on the pursuit of a degree. To combat 

Education Research Report

CURMUDGUCATION: NH: Failing To Learn From Charter History

CURMUDGUCATION: NH: Failing To Learn From Charter History

NH: Failing To Learn From Charter History

I have a soft spot in my heart for New Hampshire. I was born there, and much of my family lived there. My grandmother was a legislator for ages, and many of my relatives are still in the state.

So it's a bummer to see the state fall into reformy mistakes.

Earlier this year, the state announced that they were going to grab some of that free federal money to embark n a five-year mission to seek new charter schools and boldly repeat mistakes where many have gone before. The state intends to double the number of charter schools by adding about 27 new charters to the 28 current one.

Also, this iconic scene no longer exists.

The state is getting $46 million in federal taxpayer money specifically to help with charter start-up costs. It's an interesting stance for a heavily GOP state; consider the website for Live Free And Start "an initiative of the NH Tech Alliance, is working to make New Hampshire an even better place for innovative businesses to start, grow and succeed." They have lots of ideas about how to fund you new business; none of them are "hit the federal government for some bucks." The federal grant program is certainly not the only government grant program for starting a business, but it's an odd thing for free-market sink-or-swim conservatives to support.

What makes it even worse to support is the amount of money in this business tart-up fund that has been flushed away. I'll refer you, once again, to the report from the Network for Public Education that lays out how many many many many millions of taxpayer dollars that have been wasted on charter schools that closed quickly or, in the worst cases, never even opened. I suppose the state can take the  position that the money being wasted on't be theirs. But coverage raises the usual  question of just how much free CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: NH: Failing To Learn From Charter History

“Let the Children Play” is Developmentally Appropriate Education | tultican

“Let the Children Play” is Developmentally Appropriate Education | tultican

“Let the Children Play” is Developmentally Appropriate Education

By T. Ultican 9/25/2019

Two education experts and fathers have issued a clarion call to “Let the Children Play.” Pasi Sahlberg and William Doyle co-authored Let the Children Play: How More Play Will Save Our Schools and Help Children Thrive. These two fathers with young children were both shocked by the education system they found when the American scholar Doyle took his family to Finland and Finland’s Education Director General, Sahlberg, brought his family to the United states. Their book is a tour de force about play practices globally and the research supporting the developmental need for children to play.

The authors document the stunning reduction in authentic outdoor self-directed play children in the United States and around the world are experiencing. They share a large amount of scholarly data indicating what a big mistake it is to reduce recess and they identify the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) as the cause for that policy error. Doyle and Sahlberg report on the amazing results both physically and academically being reported from diverse schools worldwide that have reintroduced significant authentic play. The book concludes with statements from 27 education scholars from Asia to Europe about the importance of high-quality play to human development.

The Authors as Depicted on the Book Cover

In 2015 when William Doyle arrived in Finland as a visiting scholar with his wife and seven-year-old son, he found a school system that sent their children outside for 15-minutes every hour to participate in self-directed play. They sent children outside even when the temperature is as low as 5° Fahrenheit below which they stay inside to play. He shares that one day while watching children go to lunch CONTINUE READING: “Let the Children Play” is Developmentally Appropriate Education | tultican

From Stanford’s Sean Reardon: Schools Alone Cannot Overcome Racial Achievement Gaps Caused By Concentrated Poverty | janresseger

From Stanford’s Sean Reardon: Schools Alone Cannot Overcome Racial Achievement Gaps Caused By Concentrated Poverty | janresseger

From Stanford’s Sean Reardon: Schools Alone Cannot Overcome Racial Achievement Gaps Caused By Concentrated Poverty

Here is the succinct conclusion of a complex, technical, and nuanced report released on Monday by Stanford University’s Sean Reardon and a team of researchers, Is Separate Still Unequal? New Evidence on School Segregation and Racial Academic Achievement Gaps: “We use 8 years of data from all public school districts in the U.S.  We find that racial school segregation is strongly associated with the magnitude of achievement gaps in 3rd grade, and with the rate at which gaps grow from third to eighth grade. The association of racial segregation with achievement gaps is completely accounted for by racial differences in school poverty: racial segregation appears to be harmful because it concentrates minority students in high-poverty schools, which are, on average, less effective than lower poverty schools… We find that the effects of school poverty do not appear to be explained by differences in the set of measurable teacher or school characteristics available to us.”

In the report, Reardon defines academic test score gaps: “We examine racial test score gaps because they reflect racial differences in access to educational opportunities. By ‘educational opportunities,’ we mean all experiences in a child’s life, from birth onward, that provide opportunities for her to learn, including experiences in children’s homes, child care settings, neighborhoods, peer groups, and their schools. This implies that test score gaps may result from unequal opportunities either in or out of school; they are not necessarily the result of differences in school quality, resources, or experience. Moreover, in saying that test score gaps reflect differences in opportunities, we also mean that they are not the result of innate group differences in cognitive skills or other genetic endowments… (D)ifferences in average scores should be understood as reflecting opportunity gaps….”

The new report is part of a huge mapping study across the United States of unequal educational opportunity: “There are 403 metropolitan areas, 3,142 counties (and county-equivalents) and roughly 13,200 school districts serving grades 3-8 in the United states. Our analytic sample for the white-black achievement gap models contains 5,755 school districts, 2,067 counties, and 389 metropolitan areas. For the white-Hispanic achievement gap models, CONTINUE READING: From Stanford’s Sean Reardon: Schools Alone Cannot Overcome Racial Achievement Gaps Caused By Concentrated Poverty | janresseger

FAIRTEST: Four Dozen More Colleges Drop SAT-ACT Requirement | Diane Ravitch's blog

FAIRTEST: Four Dozen More Colleges Drop SAT-ACT Requirement | Diane Ravitch's blog

FAIRTEST: Four Dozen More Colleges Drop SAT-ACT Requirement

FairTest                                   
National Center for Fair & Open Testing

for further information, contact:
Bob Schaeffer (239) 395-6773
mobile  (239) 699-0468

for immediate release Wednesday, September 18, 2019
BEST YEAR EVER FOR TEST-OPTIONAL HIGHER ED. ADMISSIONS
AS 47 ADDITIONAL INSTITUTIONS DROP ACT/SAT SCORE REQUIREMENTS;
MORE THAN HALF OF “TOP 100” LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES
ARE AMONG 1,050 SCHOOLS NO LONGER REQUIRING STANDARDIZED EXAMS

This is a record year for colleges and universities deciding that students can apply without submitting ACT or SAT standardized exam scores. Over the past twelve months, 47 schools have announced new test-optional admissions policies, according to the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), which maintains the master database. That brings the total of accredited, bachelor-degree institutions that will make decisions about most applicants without regard to test scores to 1,050.

More than half of the U.S. News “Top 100” liberal arts colleges now have ACT/SAT-optional policies. So do a majority of colleges and universities in the six New England states and several other jurisdictions including Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

All told, U.S. News includes more than 360 test-optional and test-flexible schools in the first tiers of their respective categories. Top-rated test-optional colleges include Bates, Bowdoin, Colorado College, Furman, Holy Cross, Pitzer, Rollins, Sewanee, Smith, Trinity, Wesleyan and Whitman. Among leading national universities, CONTINUE READING: FAIRTEST: Four Dozen More Colleges Drop SAT-ACT Requirement | Diane Ravitch's blog

Mike Klonsky's Blog: What's happened to Chicago schools since Arne Duncan got Judge Kocoras to lift the deseg consent decree

Mike Klonsky's Blog: What's happened to Chicago schools since Arne Duncan got Judge Kocoras to lift the deseg consent decree

What's happened to Chicago schools since Arne Duncan got Judge Kocoras to lift the deseg consent decree

I'm reading Sarah Karp's WBEZ story about Chicago's experiment with school desegregation and recalling how Arne Duncan helped get a federal judge to quash the city's deseg consent decree.

Karp writes:

Most of the city’s 78 magnet and test-in schools — including classical, gifted and selective enrollment — were created under the decree as a way to lure in a diverse group of students. But even after the court order was lifted, school district officials said they believed integration was important, and they started integrating by the socioeconomic status of children.

Students wait for the bus in front of Bouchet Elementary Math & Science Academy in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood. More than 74% of students whose neighborhood school is majority black schools are bussed to majority-black schools. (Manuel Martinez/WBEZ)

In 2009, U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras lifted the consent decree ending three decades of efforts to integrate Chicago schools. The decree’s bilingual education provisions, according to Kocoras, duplicated protections in state law. The ruling came despite evidence presented by DOJ lawyers in court that the district repeatedly failed to enroll English learners in bilingual education fast enough or provide them with required services.

Since then, writes Karp, CPS has continued busing and spending extra funding on magnet and test-in schools and also added 13 new ones plus more charter schools that have been shown to contribute to segregation. This year, the school district plans to spend $50 million for bussing and extra positions at these schools, which serve 62,000 students.

But, says Karp, the WBEZ analysis finds only about 20% of magnet and test-in schools meet the racial makeup goal set out in the court order, compared to 35% a decade ago. Under that CONTINUE READING: Mike Klonsky's Blog: What's happened to Chicago schools since Arne Duncan got Judge Kocoras to lift the deseg consent decree

NYC Public School Parents: Revelations at today's hearings on high-stakes testing and testimony by Emily Carrazana

NYC Public School Parents: Revelations at today's hearings on high-stakes testing and testimony by Emily Carrazana

Revelations at today's hearings on high-stakes testing and testimony by Emily Carrazana

Today's NYC Council hearings on "Breaking the testing culture" were fascinating.  CM Treyger did a great job in asking piercing questions to DOE, especially about the NY State high school Regents exams and why they don't encourage the creation of more Performance- based assessments like those used by the New York Performance Standards Consortium.

There was also compelling testimony from Anthony Ramos, now a Broadway actor who had a lead role in Hamilton and is now starring in the film "In the Heights".  He spoke about how he failed multiple Regents exams at New Utrecht high school, and struggled in school.  His high school had class sizes of 35 which severely hampered his learning: "There are like 35 kids in a class with 35 different issues in their head and one person to deal with that , who probably doesn't even want to teach that because it's just in the curriculum."  His testimony and that of the Sara Steinweiss, the NYC theater teacher who recognized his talent, put him in a play, found a college scholarship for him and changed his life, is posted here, along with an animated short about his story.  Here is an article about his experiences in the WSJ.

Several Consortium students and teachers also talked about how engaging and challenging the education provided by their schools has been in comparison to the rote learning that the Regents exams require.  When Linda Chen, Chief Academic Officer of DOE was asked why the DOE doesn't celebrate the Consortium school practices, she said it's a complex process to implement performance-based assessments. CM Treyger responded "So is dismantling inequity in our schools, but it's worth doing."

CM Treyger asked about the cost of testing. DOE officials spends $3 million on the administration of Regents/3-8 state exams and prep materials, $1.9 million to Pearson and for "administrative support" for the SHSAT test, and $4.4 million for the gifted exams -- totaling nearly $10 million in all.

The most shocking thing was to hear Linda Chen, Chief Academic Officer of DOE confirm that they intend to implement a uniform system of standardized formative assessments four times a year in place of current school-selected assessments, in order to "streamline" them, because "we can't compare results with so many different tests."

This will undoubtedly lead to more meaningless and wasteful testing and test-prep. They can't completely eliminate the locally-chosen school-based assessments because by the CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: Revelations at today's hearings on high-stakes testing and testimony by Emily Carrazana

The Absurdity of Standardized Testing: Caught Between Prediction and Assessment | gadflyonthewallblog

The Absurdity of Standardized Testing: Caught Between Prediction and Assessment | gadflyonthewallblog

The Absurdity of Standardized Testing: Caught Between Prediction and Assessment

Standardized testing is truly absurd.

It’s both a prediction and an assessment.

You take a test to determine what you’ve learned and that will in turn predict what you will be able to learn in the future.

We hardly ever do this anywhere else in life.

We don’t measure babies’ leg muscles to predict whether they’re ready to walk. We let them do what they do, possibly with some encouragement and positive models of locomotion, and they do it.

There are cognitive and developmental benchmarks we look for, and if children don’t hit them, we provide help. But no further prediction is necessary – certainly not based on artificial markers put together by corporate interests.

In most situations, predictions are superfluous. We just assume that everyone can learn if they so desire – unless something happens to make us think otherwise. And CONTINUE READING: The Absurdity of Standardized Testing: Caught Between Prediction and Assessment | gadflyonthewallblog

CURMUDGUCATION: Ohio Has A Chance To Fix A Terrible School Takeover Law. It's Going To Blow It.

CURMUDGUCATION: Ohio Has A Chance To Fix A Terrible School Takeover Law. It's Going To Blow It.

Ohio Has A Chance To Fix A Terrible School Takeover Law. It's Going To Blow It.

It looked like Ohio was going to get better, but the legislature is poised to screw it all up.

It has been hard to keep up with the news out of Lorain, Ohio, a school district that is being run through the wringer under Ohio's terrible, awful, no good, really bad school takeover law (HB 70). Lorain's CEO (a district takeover czar created by HB 70), David Hardy, Jr., is yet another guy who believes that his two years as a TFA temp in a classroom qualifies him to be an education policy expert and, under HB 70, run every single aspect of a school district-- well, at worst, he is someone who has vastly over-estimated his capabilities and, at best, is a manager who does not play well with others.

Some shady baloney going on here

I'm not going to go through all the shenanigans of the past many months, but one episode gives you a flavor of the atmosphere in Lorain. The district treasurer tried to resign for a new job. The board did not accept his resignation, but Hardy did, and proceeded to attempt to replace the treasurer with his own pick. The board filed a restraining order against Hardy, who in turn threatened that the district staff would not be paid, a threat that seems to have been based in nothing more than Hardy's tendency to get pissy when people get in his way (kind of like the time he "fired" some union reps).

But meanwhile, even as Hardy has been working overtime to show all the ways that HB 70 is a bad CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Ohio Has A Chance To Fix A Terrible School Takeover Law. It's Going To Blow It.

Was Daedalus really stricken with grief when Icarus fell into the sea? Or just disappointed by the design failure? – Fred Klonsky

Was Daedalus really stricken with grief when Icarus fell into the sea? Or just disappointed by the design failure? – Fred Klonsky

WAS DAEDALUS REALLY STRICKEN WITH GRIEF WHEN ICARUS FELL INTO THE SEA? OR JUST DISAPPOINTED BY THE DESIGN FAILURE?

Was Daedalus really stricken with grief when Icarus fell into the sea? Or just disappointed by the design failure? -Alison Bechdel

As a K-5 art teacher the curriculum was a yearly construction and reconstruction, and always based fundamentally on what was interesting to me and what interested my students.

As a student in Professor Schubert’s education classes I was introduced to Ralph Tyler’s Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction which contained Tyler’s four basic curriculum questions:

1.  What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?

2.  What educational learning experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes?

3.  How can these educational experiences be effectively organized?

4.  How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained?

Tyler gave me a  CONTINUE READING: Was Daedalus really stricken with grief when Icarus fell into the sea? Or just disappointed by the design failure? – Fred Klonsky

Neo-segregation: Why these communities are divorcing their school districts - The Washington Post

Neo-segregation: Why these communities are divorcing their school districts - The Washington Post

Neo-segregation: Why these communities are divorcing their school districts

After the U.S. Supreme Court declared separate public schools for black and white students were unconstitutional in the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling, some whites in the South resisted by opening private schools or by creating white-only public school districts.

For nearly two decades, a new school secession movement has been growing — and it’s not only in the South. I ran a post last year about this, and here is a new look, with a discussion about the consequences for U.S. students.

This report comes from a newsletter produced and published by the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The center produces high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions and issues critiques of research published elsewhere. This was published on the center’s website, and I was given permission to publish it.

Here’s the report from the National Education Policy Center:

In 2014, six suburban towns seceded from Shelby County Schools, the school district that includes the city of Memphis, Tennessee.

One year later, the rapidly growing, semirural suburb of Pike Road seceded from Alabama’s Montgomery Public Schools, building separation from the city that Martin Luther King, Jr. began calling home in 1954.

Meanwhile, in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, three secessions occurred between 2000 and 2010, and a fourth is pending.

The secessions are part of a trend of neo-segregation in which predominantly white and relatively affluent areas divorce themselves from school districts that are majority-minority and have greater poverty. In total, 47 occurred between 2000 and 2017 in 13 counties, seven of which are located in CONTINUE READING: Neo-segregation: Why these communities are divorcing their school districts - The Washington Post

Litigating Algorithms, Beyond Education | VAMboozled!

Litigating Algorithms, Beyond Education | VAMboozled!

Litigating Algorithms, Beyond Education

This past June, I presented at a conference at New York University (NYU) called Litigating Algorithms. Most attendees were lawyers, law students, and the like, all of whom were there to discuss the multiple ways that they have collectively and independently been challenging governmental uses of algorithm-based, decision-making systems (i.e., like VAMs) across disciplines. I was there to present about how VAMs have been used by states and school districts in education, as well as present the key issues with VAMs as litigated via the lawsuits in which I have been engaged (e.g., Houston, New Mexico, New York, Tennessee, and Texas). The conference was sponsored by the AI Now Institute, also at NYU, which has as its mission to examine the social implications of artificial intelligence (AI), and in collaboration with the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law, affiliated with the NYU School of Law.

Anyhow, they just released their report from this conference and I thought it important to share out with all of you, also in that it details the extent to which similar AI systems are being used across disciplines beyond education, and it details how such uses (misuses and abuses) are being litigated in court.

See the press release below, and see the full report here.

—–

Litigating Algorithms 2019 U.S. Report – New Challenges to Government Use of Algorithmic Decision Systems

Today the AI Now Institute and NYU Law’s Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law published new research on the ways litigation is being used as a tool to hold government accountable for using algorithmic tools that produce harmful results.

Algorithmic decision systems (ADS) are often sold as offering a number of benefits, CONTINUE READING: Litigating Algorithms, Beyond Education | VAMboozled!

2019 Medley #20: Poverty and Testing | Live Long and Prosper

2019 Medley #20: Poverty and Testing | Live Long and Prosper

2019 Medley #20: Poverty and Testing

IT’S POVERTY, STUPID

The connection between family income and school achievement has been well documented (see the links at the end of this post ) yet policymakers and the media continue to blame schools, teachers, and the students themselves for low achievement.

David Berliner notes that there are out-of-school factors to student achievement including medical care, food insecurity, family and community characteristics, and environmental pollutants. Included among the latter is lead poisoning, which contributes to low achievement levels and is more damaging to children of poverty.

Policymakers, however, have a vested interest in deflecting the blame for low achievement onto schools, teachers, and students. If poverty and its side effects are ignored, then those who are tasked with helping reduce poverty and, by extension, its side effects, are not to blame.

The articles in this post discuss the effects of poverty on student achievement. Achievement, in nearly all the articles, is measured solely by standardized test scores. Standardized test scores, aside from keeping testing companies in business, “measure what matters least.” Alfie Kohn wrote,

What generally passes for a test of reading comprehension is a series of separate questions about short passages on random topics. These questions “rarely examine how students interrelate parts of the text and do not require justifications that support the interpretations”; indeed, the whole point is the “quick finding of answers rather than reflective interpretation.”

In mathematics, the story is much the same. An analysis of the most widely used standardized math rests found that only 3 percent of the questions CONTINUE READING : 2019 Medley #20: Poverty and Testing | Live Long and Prosper

Profile in Persistence: Every Educator Deserves a Living Wage

Profile in Persistence: Every Educator Deserves a Living Wage

Profile in Persistence: Every Educator Deserves a Living Wage

Debbie Reyes gets very emotional when she recalls the day a student broke her nose. A special education paraeducator for the Pfleugerville Independent School District, in Texas, Reyes works with students on the autism spectrum, many of whom are nonverbal and have severe sensory and behavior challenges.

It was the end of the day and time to clean up, but the boy was sleeping. His mother said he regularly woke up at 3 a.m., wanting to go to school and unable to go back to sleep. The special educators often let him nap, but when Reyes woke him up that afternoon, he responded by striking out, hitting her in the face with his elbow.

“I heard a pop and a crack,” she said. Her nose was fractured in two places, requiring surgery. It took more than a year for her nose to heal.

“I don’t blame him,” Reyes says, tearing up as she tells the story. “He needs a lot of behavior support, and his parents asked us for help. I work with him in the communications unit, a section of the special education room where we help students calm down and communicate what they’re feeling, because a student can’t learn until his behavior is under control.

He just needs help and I want to be a voice for him.” Reyes is committed to being a voice for her special education students. She’s also a voice for her fellow education support professionals (ESPs) who are essential to a well-rounded education for their students but still don’t earn a living wage.

Every Job Matters

Reyes and fellow ESP members of the Pflugerville Educators Association (PfEA) in central Texas have been fighting for a $3 an hour pay raise for all hourly employees CONTINUE READING: Profile in Persistence: Every Educator Deserves a Living Wage