California Charter Schools Don’t Narrow Black-White Achievement Gap
Ω In a recent report, the California Charter School Association claims that the state’s charter schools are narrowing the Black-White achievement gap. Not so, explains Arizona State University professor David Garcia, an expert on charter school research, in a review of the CCSA study conducted for the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) at the University of Colorado Boulder. Garcia finds flaws in the report’s methods, and he explains that the gap is “largely unaffected by charter enrollment.” Further, Garcia pours cold water on the report’s claim that innovative practices are a... more »Incentive programs that merely pay teachers for student test scores produce limited results
Ω *Other incentives are more popular with teachers, produce better outcomes and can be used to spread expertise to colleagues. * Do teachers think like salesmen or assembly line workers? Does a financial reward tied to a production goal or sales target motivate teachers to teach better, and do students benefit from these financial incentives? The answer is that few or no gains come from such teacher incentives. This is because pay-for-performance schemes don’t respond to what teachers care most about, but other incentives might be much more successful, according to Creating Teacher... more »Report on School Leadership is Poorly Researched and Misleading, says New Review
Ω A review by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) of a recent report that proposes a range of state policies designed to make school principals more effective finds that the report ignores existing research on the subject, lacks evidence for the approaches it advocates, and sidesteps both state and professional policies that directly address the sorts of problems it purports to remedy. The Center for American Progress (CAP) report, Gateways to the Principalship: State Power to Improve the Quality of School Leaders, was reviewed for NEPC’s Think Twice think tank review proje... more »Overpaid Teachers Report from Heritage/AEI is Based on Bad Stats, Groundless Assumptions
Ω A recent report from the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute, Assessing the Compensation of Public School Teachers, claims public school teachers are paid 52 percent more than fair market rates. While attention-grabbing, this contention is based on a faulty assessment that relies on “an aggregation of spurious claims” to make its case, according to a labor market expert. The Heritage/AEI report was authored by Jason Richwine and Andrew Biggs. It pits the wages and benefits of teachers against those of similarly educated and experienced private-sector workers and... more »Looking Again at Long-Term Teacher Effects and ‘Value-Added’
Ω Can short-term measures of teacher effects indicate long-term effectiveness? A recent, highly publicized report, The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood, concludes that elementary school teachers’ so-called value-added effects on their students show up years later in those students’ teenage pregnancy rates, college success and career earnings. A new review of that study, conducted for the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), found that while the study is impressive in many ways, more evidence is needed to prove a key part of it... more »Can Charters and Equity Goals Coexist?
Ω *NEPC reports offer guidance and model legislation to ensure charter schools promote equity and not inequality* While our society is more diverse than ever before, schools are more segregated today than they were 30 years ago. School choice policies that allow children to enroll in schools outside of their neighborhood have the potential to reduce segregation and many of the inequities that flow from that segregation. Yet some of the nation’s most segregated K-12 schools are public charter schools. A new report from the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), Chartering Equity... more »Review of state policies on teacher induction
Ω In this report New Teacher Center (NTC) summarizes existing policies for each state, related to 10 key criteria most critical to the provision of universal, high-quality induction and mentoring support for beginning educators. The latest evidence suggests that beginning teachers are more common in our schools today than at any other time in at least the last twenty years. In 1987-88 the typical teacher had 15 years of experience; by 2007-08, the typical teacher had but one year in the classroom. As policymakers work on strengthening accountability and expectations for teachers, t... more »Attending middle school increases risk of dropping out of high school
Ω * As compared to students in K-8 elementary schools, middle school students also score lower on achievement tests. Losses amount to as much as 3.5 to 7 months of learning.* A new study of statewide data from all Florida public schools, “The Middle School Plunge: Achievement tumbles when young students change schools,”finds that moving to a middle school in grade 6 or 7 causes a substantial drop in student test scores relative to those of students who remain in K-8 schools, and increases the likelihood of dropping out of high school. In the past ten years, urban school districts suc... more »
California Charter Schools Don’t Narrow Black-White Achievement Gap
Ω In a recent report, the California Charter School Association claims that the state’s charter schools are narrowing the Black-White achievement gap. Not so, explains Arizona State University professor David Garcia, an expert on charter school research, in a review of the CCSA study conducted for the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) at the University of Colorado Boulder. Garcia finds flaws in the report’s methods, and he explains that the gap is “largely unaffected by charter enrollment.” Further, Garcia pours cold water on the report’s claim that innovative practices are a... more »
Incentive programs that merely pay teachers for student test scores produce limited results
Ω *Other incentives are more popular with teachers, produce better outcomes and can be used to spread expertise to colleagues. * Do teachers think like salesmen or assembly line workers? Does a financial reward tied to a production goal or sales target motivate teachers to teach better, and do students benefit from these financial incentives? The answer is that few or no gains come from such teacher incentives. This is because pay-for-performance schemes don’t respond to what teachers care most about, but other incentives might be much more successful, according to Creating Teacher... more »
Report on School Leadership is Poorly Researched and Misleading, says New Review
Ω A review by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) of a recent report that proposes a range of state policies designed to make school principals more effective finds that the report ignores existing research on the subject, lacks evidence for the approaches it advocates, and sidesteps both state and professional policies that directly address the sorts of problems it purports to remedy. The Center for American Progress (CAP) report, Gateways to the Principalship: State Power to Improve the Quality of School Leaders, was reviewed for NEPC’s Think Twice think tank review proje... more »
Overpaid Teachers Report from Heritage/AEI is Based on Bad Stats, Groundless Assumptions
Ω A recent report from the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute, Assessing the Compensation of Public School Teachers, claims public school teachers are paid 52 percent more than fair market rates. While attention-grabbing, this contention is based on a faulty assessment that relies on “an aggregation of spurious claims” to make its case, according to a labor market expert. The Heritage/AEI report was authored by Jason Richwine and Andrew Biggs. It pits the wages and benefits of teachers against those of similarly educated and experienced private-sector workers and... more »
Looking Again at Long-Term Teacher Effects and ‘Value-Added’
Ω Can short-term measures of teacher effects indicate long-term effectiveness? A recent, highly publicized report, The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood, concludes that elementary school teachers’ so-called value-added effects on their students show up years later in those students’ teenage pregnancy rates, college success and career earnings. A new review of that study, conducted for the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), found that while the study is impressive in many ways, more evidence is needed to prove a key part of it... more »
Can Charters and Equity Goals Coexist?
Ω *NEPC reports offer guidance and model legislation to ensure charter schools promote equity and not inequality* While our society is more diverse than ever before, schools are more segregated today than they were 30 years ago. School choice policies that allow children to enroll in schools outside of their neighborhood have the potential to reduce segregation and many of the inequities that flow from that segregation. Yet some of the nation’s most segregated K-12 schools are public charter schools. A new report from the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), Chartering Equity... more »
Review of state policies on teacher induction
Ω In this report New Teacher Center (NTC) summarizes existing policies for each state, related to 10 key criteria most critical to the provision of universal, high-quality induction and mentoring support for beginning educators. The latest evidence suggests that beginning teachers are more common in our schools today than at any other time in at least the last twenty years. In 1987-88 the typical teacher had 15 years of experience; by 2007-08, the typical teacher had but one year in the classroom. As policymakers work on strengthening accountability and expectations for teachers, t... more »
Attending middle school increases risk of dropping out of high school
Ω * As compared to students in K-8 elementary schools, middle school students also score lower on achievement tests. Losses amount to as much as 3.5 to 7 months of learning.* A new study of statewide data from all Florida public schools, “The Middle School Plunge: Achievement tumbles when young students change schools,”finds that moving to a middle school in grade 6 or 7 causes a substantial drop in student test scores relative to those of students who remain in K-8 schools, and increases the likelihood of dropping out of high school. In the past ten years, urban school districts suc... more »
