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 »
Impact of Hybrid Algebra 1 Instruction on Student Achievement: None
Ω Hybrid Algebra 1 Instruction combines traditional face-to-face instruction with an online program. This study used a two-cohort sample with 25 high schools in year 1 (SY 07/08: 13 treatment and 12 control) and 22 in year 2 (SY 08/09: 11 and 11), the randomized sample included 6,908 students, 61.4 percent of whom were in rural schools. The study, Effects of the Kentucky Virtual Schools hybrid program for algebra I on grade 9 student math achievement, found that the hybrid class format was no more effective at increasing student achievement and future coursetaking in math than alge... more »
The impact of extended learning time on student learning
Ω If less time in the classroom is a cause of poor student performance, can adding more time be the cure? This strategy underlies a major effort to fix the nation’s worst public schools. Billions of federal stimulus dollars are being spent to expand learning time on behalf of disadvantaged children. And extended learning time (ELT) is being proposed as a core strategy for school turnaround. But the hard truth is that there is far more research showing the ill effects of unequal time than research showing that ELT policies can make up the difference. In a new Education Sector report... more »
78.2 percent of teenagers reported having consumed alcohol
A survey of a nationally representative sample of U.S. teenagers suggests that most cases of alcohol and drug abuse have their initial onset at this important period of development, according to a report published in the April issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, a JAMA Network publication. Alcohol and drugs use patterns in adolescence are increasingly seen as indicators of later substance abuse, the authors write in their study background. Joel Swendsen, Ph.D., of the University of Bordeaux, France, and colleagues examined the prevalence, age at onset and sociodemographic facto... more »
ADHD is over-diagnosed
Ω What experts and the public have already long suspected is now supported by representative data collected by researchers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) and University of Basel: ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, is over-diagnosed. The study showed that child and adolescent psychotherapists and psychiatrists tend to give a diagnosis based on heuristics, unclear rules of thumb, rather than adhering to recognized diagnostic criteria. Boys in particular are substantially more often misdiagnosed compared to girls. These are the most important results of a study conducte... more »
FCC: “Digital Textbook Playbook” for national adoption of digital textbooks in the next five years
Ω · While the United States spends more than $7 billion a year on textbooks, too many students are using books that are 7-10 years old with outdated material. · Digital textbooks are used in pockets of the U.S., but adoption is not widespread. · The U.S. trails countries like South Korea in transitioning to digital textbooks; the country has announced that they will begin transitioning all students to digital textbooks starting in 2013. · About a third of Americans – 100 million people – have not adopted broadband at home. Students need home broadband to access digital content and t... more »
New NEA Research Report Shows Potential Benefits of Arts Education for At-Risk Youth
Ω At-risk students who have access to the arts in or out of school also tend to have better academic results, better workforce opportunities, and more civic engagement, according to a new NEA report, *The Arts and Achievement in At-Risk Youth: Findings from Four Longitudinal Studies*. The study reports these and other positive outcomes associated with high levels of arts exposure for youth of low socioeconomic status. *The Arts and Achievement in At-Risk Youth* study uses four separate longitudinal studies (three from the U.S. Department of Education) to track children, teenager... more »
Arts education in U.S. public schools
Ω This report presents selected findings from seven congressionally mandated arts in education surveys. These surveys were designed to provide national estimates of the characteristics of arts education in public K-12 schools for the 2009-10 school year and to allow comparison to selected estimates from an earlier study done in 1999-2000. This report provides national data about arts education for public elementary and secondary schools, elementary classroom teachers, and elementary and secondary music and visual arts specialists. • In the 2009–10 school year, music education was ... more »
CDC estimates 1 in 88 children (11.3 per 1,000) has been identified with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
Ω Complete report This marks a 23% increase since the last report in 2009 and a 78% increase since CDC's first report in 2007. Some of the increase is due to the way children are identified, diagnosed and served in their local communities, although exactly how much is due to these factors in unknown. The number of children identified with ASDs varied widely across the 14 Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network sites, from 1 in 47 (21.2 per 1,000) to 1 in 210 (4.8 per 1,000). ASDs are almost 5 times more common among boys (1 in 54) than among girls (1 in 252... more »