Education Research Report: Debunking Grit, Free and Reduced-Price Lunch: A Valid Measure of Educational Disadvantage, Within-Year Teacher Turnover And More

Education Research Report

Education Research Report

TODAY

Fine motor skills, executive functions, and basic numerical skills in kindergarten

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 5h

Research Findings : This study examined the interrelations between fine motor skills, executive functions, and basic numerical skills in kindergarten as well as their predictive value for mathematics achievement in 2nd grade in a sample of 136 children. Structural equation modeling techniques were used to uncover the unique predictive value and mediation of 4 predictors. The results indicated tha

Focused Early Childhood Curriculum Can Enhance Social-Emotional Competence in Low-Income Children

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 5h

Research Findings : This meta-analysis examined 29 (quasi-)experimental studies that involved low-income children ages 3 to 5 who might be subject to risks of academic failure and other negative outcomes. Compared to the controls, children who learned with social-emotional learning (SEL) curricula demonstrated significantly improved social-emotional competence, with an effect size or standardized

Teaching and Learning in Pre-K through 2nd Grade - Lessons from Boston

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 5h

This report explains the work that has taken place over the last decade in Boston to not only improve pre-K, but to build on the successes of pre-K through reform of classroom environments, instructional practices, and curricula in pre-K, kindergarten, and, more recently, in first and second grade. It is a story of reforming from the bottom up, of realizing that the work of increasing student ach

Postsecondary Graduation Rates, Outcome Measures, Student Financial Aid, and Admissions

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 5h

About 19 percent of first-time full-time students who enrolled in 2-year institutions in 2013 graduated within two years (100 percent of normal time), according to new postsecondary data. However, that rate jumped to 37 percent when the time for graduation was extended to four years (200 percent of normal time). The National Center for Education Statistics released a First Look repor t today (Dec

Teacher Sorting is a Global Phenomenon

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 8h

Although substantial evidence from the United States suggests that more qualified teachers are disproportionately concentrated in the schools and classrooms of academically and socioeconomically advantaged children, it is not clear whether the problem of teacher sorting is global in scope. This study uses data from the 2013 Teaching and Learning International Survey to examine whether and how sch

Debunking Grit

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 8h

Grit is a construct that is widely studied by educational researchers and that has generally been enthusiastically received by educational practitioners. This essay highlights that many of the core claims about grit have either been unexamined or are directly contradicted by the accumulated empirical evidence. Specifically, there appears to be no reason to accept the combination of perseverance a

Within-Year Teacher Turnover

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 9h

Teacher turnover occurs during and at the end of the school year, although documentation of within-year turnover currently rests on anecdotal evidence. On average, over 4.6% of teachers turn over during the school year, which amounts to 25% of total annual turnover. Teachers transfer within districts at higher rates at the beginning of the school year and leave teaching at higher rates at the beg

Free and Reduced-Price Lunch: A Valid Measure of Educational Disadvantage

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 9h

Students in the United States whose household income is less than 130% of the poverty line qualify for free lunch, and students whose household income is between 130% and 185% of the poverty line qualify for reduced-price lunch. Education researchers and policymakers often use free and reduced-price lunch (FRPL) status to measure socioeconomic disadvantage. But how valid is this measure? Linking

New Report on Teacher Evaluation Lacks Coherence

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 9h

A new report from the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) highlights six teacher evaluation systems purportedly “yielding substantial benefits.” This comes at the end of a decade when reformed teacher evaluation systems that link teacher performance to measures of student growth have been at the center of educational debate. Amy Farley and Leah Chamberlain of the University of Cincinnati r

YESTERDAY

Learning to read comes at a cost

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 23h

The early focus on larger units may have positive effects, and explain why young children are so good at learning certain areas of grammar, say scientists from the PSL University of Paris, the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. They found that preliterate 6-year-olds were better at learning grammatical relations between words than at learning novel

Children perform better when parents are involved in school life

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 23h

A family's involvement in a child's education acts as a source of social mobility, according to a study by experts from the HSE Centre of Social and Economic School Development, Mikhail Goshin and Tatyana Mertsalova http://doi. org/ 10. 17323/ 1814-9545-2018-3-68-90 . Lower income parents who actively participate in their children's school life open up more opportunities for their children. The r

Students who meet 8-hour sleep challenge do better on finals

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 23h

Students given extra points if they met "The 8-hour Challenge" -- averaging eight hours of sleep for five nights during final exams week -- did better than those who snubbed (or flubbed) the incentive, according to Baylor University research. "Better sleep helped rather than harmed final exam performance, which is contrary to most college students' perceptions that they have to sacrifice either s

Boys with social difficulties most susceptible to early substance use

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 23h

Boys who enter sixth-grade with co-occurring social skills, anxiety, learning and conduct problems are at the greatest risk of developing aggressive behavior and using tobacco, alcohol and marijuana by the end of eighth grade, a new study found. "While substance use among all boys in the study population increased over time, it increased the fastest among boys who had the greatest social skills n

despie soaring job growth, only 64,405 students received computer science degrees

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 23h

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, has released the highly anticipated report "Retention in Computer Science Undergraduate Programs in the U.S.: Data Challenges and Promising Interventions." Among its key recommendations, the report calls for additional research to provide a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics of attrition and retention, and encourages higher education instituti

Why Are STEM Doctoral Completion Rates Lower for Women?

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 1d

Women entering PhD programs in which they have no female peers are 12 percentage points less likely to graduate than men entering the same program. More than half of all doctoral graduates in the United States in 2016 were women, but women accounted for just 23 percent of engineering and 26 percent of mathematics graduates. In Nevertheless She Persisted? Gender Peer Effects in Doctoral STEM Progr

Public Service Loan Forgiveness Denials

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 1d

Complete article The hardest thing in higher education isn’t getting into an elite college; it’s getting approved for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). So far, the U.S. Department of Education has only approved 1 percent of all applications for PSLF —a federal loan program that forgives debts of borrowers who make 120 qualifying payments while working in public service jobs such as teaching

High-Stakes Testing, Stress, and Performance

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 1d

Chronic stress – due to neighborhood violence, poverty, or family instability – can affect how individuals’ bodies respond to stressors in general, including the stress of standardized testing. This, in turn, can affect whether performance on standardized tests is a valid measure of students’ actual ability. This study collected data on students’ stress responses using cortisol samples provided b

How attending an elite college affects later-life outcomes

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 1d

This paper revisits the question of how attending an elite college affects later-life outcomes. For men, the findings echo those in Dale and Krueger (2002): controlling for selection eliminates the positive relationship between college selectivity and earnings. There are also no significant effects on men's educational or family outcomes. The results are quite different for women: the authors fin

Later High School Start Times and Student Academic Outcomes

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 1d

This study uses statewide student-level data from North Carolina to estimate start time effects for all students and for traditionally disadvantaged students. The authors found that urban high schools were likely to start very early or late. Later start times were associated with positive student engagement outcomes (reduced suspensions, higher course grades), especially for disadvantaged student

Education Research Report

Betsy DeVos’ Financial Disclosure Fails to Account for Divestiture of 24 Assets - CREW

Betsy DeVos’ Financial Disclosure Fails to Account for Divestiture of 24 Assets - CREW

BETSY DEVOS’ FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE FAILS TO ACCOUNT FOR DIVESTITURE OF 24 ASSETS

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ Annual 2018 financial disclosure report, obtained by CREW last week, has not been certified by the Office of Government Ethics more than six months after it was filed and fails to document how or when she divested from twenty-four assets included in her ethics agreement.

Periodic transaction reports (PTRs)—which disclose purchases, sales, or exchanges over $1,000 made by the filer, their spouse, or dependent child—also show that the Secretary increased her controversial interest in Neurocore in 2017. This activity all points to lingering concerns about Secretary DeVos’ vast financial interests and highlights a weakness in financial disclosure laws that makes it difficult to assess whether officials are living up to their ethical requirements.

 Neurocore

The issues with Secretary DeVos’ financial disclosure report begin on its first page. Signalling that there may yet be problems with it, the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) has still not certified the report more than six months after it was filed and after it was amended twelve times in a two-month span. While we do not know what has prevented OGE from certifying the report, it is clear that there are problems with it beyond its lack of certification.

Though not required by her ethics agreement, Secretary DeVos failed to sell her controversial interest in Neurocore, a company that works with children and adults on brain diagnostics and treatment that CREW has previously discussed in a 2017 report. In fact, Secretary DeVos increased her interest in the company in 2017. PTRs show that Secretary DeVos made three purchases of Neurocore stock in 2017: one for between $1,000,001-$5,000,000 on 4/07/2017, another for between $250,001-$500,000 on 6/13/2017, and the third for between $1,000,001-$5,000,000 on 7/06/2017.

Her financial disclosure report shows that she holds between $5,000,001 and $25,000,000 of stock in the company. According to a New York Times article, an advertising-industry review board found in June 2018 that some of Neurocore’s claims “were based on mixed Continue reading: Betsy DeVos’ Financial Disclosure Fails to Account for Divestiture of 24 Assets - CREW

Dogged Advocates for Justice Protest Ohio State School Takeovers of Youngstown, Lorain, and East Cleveland | janresseger

Dogged Advocates for Justice Protest Ohio State School Takeovers of Youngstown, Lorain, and East Cleveland | janresseger

Dogged Advocates for Justice Protest Ohio State School Takeovers of Youngstown, Lorain, and East Cleveland

After January, John Kasich will no longer be governor of Ohio. House Bill 70, the law that paved the way for the Youngstown—and now Lorain and East Cleveland—school takeovers is the biggest stain on his legacy.  In gerrymandered Ohio, with huge legislative Republican majorities after the November 2018 election—62 Republicans and 37 Democrats in the Ohio House and 24 Republicans and 9 Democrats in the Ohio Senate—it remains unlikely that HB 70 will be overturned.

House Bill 70 prescribes that any Ohio school district which has received “F” grades for three years running on the state’s school district report card be managed by an appointed Academic Distress Commission instead of the locally elected school board. The state takeover law was sprung on an unsuspecting public at an afternoon hearing of the Senate Education Committee in late June of 2015, when Senate Education Committee chair Peggy Lehner introduced a 66-page amendment to a House bill which had already been moving forward with widespread popular support to expand wraparound full-service Community Learning Centers.  Senate Bill 70 was rushed through committee and passed by the full legislature within 24 hours. The amendment—which had been cooked up by Governor Kasich, then-state superintendent (and now discredited) Richard Ross, and Ross’s assistant, David Hansen, the husband of Governor Kasich’s chief of staff—fully changed the content of what had been House Bill 70 to enable the state to nullify the power of elected local school boards and insert state overseer Academic Distress Commissions, which appoint a CEO to run the district on behalf of the state.

Three years have passed.  Lorain joined Youngstown under state takeover, and now East Cleveland has been added.  In May of this year, northeast Ohio Democrats Kent Smith (whose district includes East Cleveland) and Teresa Fedor (Toledo) introduced HB 626 to overturn Ohio’s state takeover law.  The Elyria Chronicle-Telegram‘s Carissa Woytach explains: “The bill would suspend the creation of new academic distress commissions, keeping other failing Continue reading: Dogged Advocates for Justice Protest Ohio State School Takeovers of Youngstown, Lorain, and East Cleveland | janresseger

You Don't Have To Like It (Students Watch and Talk About Us, Anyways) | The Jose Vilson

You Don't Have To Like It (Students Watch and Talk About Us, Anyways) | The Jose Vilson

YOU DON’T HAVE TO LIKE IT (STUDENTS WATCH AND TALK ABOUT US, ANYWAYS)

A few times a month, I’ll be on the whiteboard, jotting down examples for my lesson with my back turned to my students. The students find ways to distract themselves (while believing they have nothing to copy down along with me, but that’s another story). I let them rock until I’m turned back around and then they know it’s go time. Today, however, I took the opportunity to listen in when one student said: “School sucks.” I didn’t stop them. In fact, they went off for about two minutes and my ad libs were as follows:

“Oh, word?”
“Yo, for real.”
“Nah, I hear that.”
“Um, I can’t talk about that. When you graduate, I’ll holla. Not now, though.”
“No, not saying you’re not graduating, but yeah, that’s too old.”

We took our students’ feedback for granted. If you ever want to know how a school is doing, you don’t have to ask the adults. Ask them if you wish. Well, most of them. Look at the reports and the jumble of quantitative data on any number of Excel spreadsheets. You don’t even have to necessarily visit the school, though that’s my #2 indicator, really. We could visit a school, get a peek at the gorgeous bulletin boards, and lay out gridded curriculum early and often. We can look at the accolades splayed near the entrance and the artwork on the walls. We can check the website with its responsive design and glossy photos, too.

And, if you want to know how a school’s doing, ask the students.

Our society vastly undervalues student opinion as a matter of course. In the way of efficiency and so-called rigidity, we continually push for institutions that force schooling upon students, not education Continue reading: You Don't Have To Like It (Students Watch and Talk About Us, Anyways) | The Jose Vilson

Changing One’s Mind about School Reform | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Changing One’s Mind about School Reform | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Changing One’s Mind about School Reform

The following post is an encore published nearly seven years ago. I have updated and added sections to it.

A few years ago, Diane Ravitch told (The Death and Life of the Great American School System) of her recent switch from championing school reforms (testing, accountability, and choice) as a federal policymaker, educational historian, and pundit to rejecting these policies. Ravitch’s turnaround got me thinking about what I had believed earlier in my career and believe now sixty years later.

I began teaching high school in 1955 filled with the passion to teach history to youth and help them find their niche in the world while making a better society. At that time, I believed wholeheartedly in words taken from John Dewey’s “Pedagogic Creed” (1897): “… education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform.”

And I tried to practice those utopian words in my teaching in Cleveland (OH) and Washington, D.C. between the early 1960s and mid-1970s. While in retrospect I could easily call this faith in the power of teaching and schooling to make a better life and society naïve, I do not. That passionate idealism about teaching and the role that schooling plays in a democratic, market-driven society gave meaning and drive to those long days working as a teacher, getting married, starting a family, and taking university classes at night.

That confident belief in the power of schools to reform society took me to Washington, D.C. in 1963 to teach Peace Corps returnees how to become teachers at Cardozo High School. I stayed nearly a decade in D.C. teaching and Continue reading: Changing One’s Mind about School Reform | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

CURMUDGUCATION: Florida Contemplates Putting Fox In Charge of Hen House

CURMUDGUCATION: Florida Contemplates Putting Fox In Charge of Hen House

Florida Contemplates Putting Fox In Charge of Hen House

As a legislator in Florida (Motto: Why sell swampland when you can just rob schools), Richard Corcoran was determined to make sure that public tax dollars were directed to enriching private school operators at public school expense.

Sorry about your future, kid

Corcoran pushed the Schools of Hope program, a program that allows charters to prey directly on public schools. And after asking charter operators how exactly they'd like this gift wrapped, he gave them the power to tap into public school tax dollars for building expenses. And he put the whole crappy mess in a legislative package designed to hide the smell of his money-grab. Corcoran has been at the front of the pack opening up Florida to all manner of profiteering with not just charters but vouchers, tax credit scholarships-- you name it and Florida not only has it, but has more of it than any other state. Meanwhile, his wife is a charter school operator.

Corcoran tried running for governor and failed, so he could use a job, and it looks as if he might have one lined up-- state high commissioner of education.

This comes on the heels of the announcement that the House education committee will be headed by Jennifer Sullivan, a woman who is spectacularly unqualified even by Florida standards. The 27-year-old was homeschooled and may or may not have picked up a few credits at a Christian college. That's right-- the head of the House committee that oversees Florida's schools has never actually attended one. And she loves choice.

So why not give Corcoran the top spot? Florida's legislature seems determined to completely Continue reading: CURMUDGUCATION: Florida Contemplates Putting Fox In Charge of Hen House

2017 Financials of the Koch’s Dark Money Network

2017 Financials of the Koch’s Dark Money Network

2017 Financials of the Koch’s Dark Money Network
The Koch network: as powerful as ever

Charles and David Koch maintain an extensive, powerful network of nonprofit organizations to further their libertarian and conservative ideological values.

Four nonprofits at the crux of the network — the Charles Koch Institute, Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Prosperity Foundation and Freedom Partners — bring in millions each year to further the Koch brothers’ agendas.

The brothers, who own Koch Industries, are known for supporting conservative policies, such as President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax policy overhaul and environmental regulation rollbacks.

Aside from the Charles Koch Institute, these groups made and spent less money last year compared to 2016, according to new tax returns obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Despite prohibitions from making politics their primary purpose, many politically active 501(c) nonprofit organizations’ spending follows a pattern of jumping during election years and dropping precipitously during off-years — giving the appearance of being political organizations without ever having to disclose who is funding their activities.

Charles Koch Institute

The Charles Koch Institute, the arm of the Koch network that funds educational and research programs, experienced a massive increase in revenue between 2016 and 2017. The Institute got a cash infusion of $55 million in 2017, more than triple the $16.9 million it made in 2016.

Even though the Institute is a public charity, it is behaving more like a private foundation relying on the whims of one donor or a small pool of donors and doesn’t solicit donations from the public, said Brian Mittendorf, an accounting professor from Ohio State University.

It also means that as a 501(c)(3) public charity, the Institute’s spending is more restricted compared to the Koch’s other 501(c)s. The organization needs to focus on Continue reading: 2017 Financials of the Koch’s Dark Money Network

The Charter School Shell Game | Inweekly

The Charter School Shell Game | Inweekly

The Charter School Shell Game

By Duwayne Escobedo

Marcus May’s greed had no limits. Two 45-foot yachts. Jet ski. Maserati and Triumph cars. Multiple houses for himself and a house for his mother. Exotic trips. Rolex watch and other jewelry.

In the end, May, the founder of Newpoint Education Partners charter school, robbed the school districts of Escambia, Bay, Broward, Duval, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties for a grand total of $5,216,856.15, according to court documents.

For his scheme to defraud school systems and support his celebrity-like lifestyle, May was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison and ordered to pay back all the money he stole as well as $93,357.73 in court costs.

May wore handcuffs and an orange Escambia County Jail jumpsuit and showed no emotion throughout the court proceeding and during his fingerprinting. His Orlando defense attorney, Joseph Flynn, raised no objections.

Escambia County Assistant State Attorney Russ Edgar Jr. admonished the 56-year-old May for jilting funds from children and taxpayers.

“The education of our young shouldn’t be taken away for pure greed,” Edgar said in the courtroom.

Escambia County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Dannheisser took his comments a step further during the sentencing. The judge blamed Continue reading: The Charter School Shell Game | Inweekly

21st-Century Education Policy Enters Its Afternoon Rerun Stage - Rick Hess Straight Up - Education Week

21st-Century Education Policy Enters Its Afternoon Rerun Stage - Rick Hess Straight Up - Education Week

21st-Century Education Policy Enters Its Afternoon Rerun Stage

It's good to be back. While I was on blog break, talking about my new Bush-Obama School Reformvolume and reading the post-election education policy punditry, I was struck by something: 21st-century education policy has staggered into its afternoon rerun stage.

This reference would've made intuitive sense a few years ago but may feel a bit dated today, so I'll explain. Traditionally, hit television shows went through a few stages: The early excitement when they offered fresh plots, developed a fan base, and caught fire. The hit years, when the storylines were gripping, new episodes a big deal, and the stars omnipresent. The slow decline, as ratings sagged, the narrative got stale, and fans tuned out increasingly desperate plot twists.

And then, finally, there was the afternoon rerun stage—when a once-beloved show wound up in syndication on TBS, its intro and closing sequences compressed to allow for more commercials, the naughtier bits trimmed out, and episodes often aired out of sequence. Of course, by this point, the scarred episodes and scrambled plotting wouldn't much matter, because the whole thing was mostly wallpaper—something to have in the background while tapping away on a laptop or waiting in an auto repair shop.

Well, after years of prime-time play with Oprah, "Education Nation" glitz, State of the Union applause lines, and political relevance, 21st-century education policy has reached its rerun stage. How can we tell?

The magazine-cover names have left the show, and the stand-ins simply don't draw the attention or adulation that greeted the heyday cast. (Heck, Washington, D.C., can't find anyone who wants to be superintendent.) After more than 15 years of "meh" results, viewers have tuned out. Most tellingly, Continue reading: 21st-Century Education Policy Enters Its Afternoon Rerun Stage - Rick Hess Straight Up - Education Week

New York Times Exposes Louisiana School’s 100-Percent-College-Acceptance Lie, and More | deutsch29

New York Times Exposes Louisiana School’s 100-Percent-College-Acceptance Lie, and More | deutsch29

New York Times Exposes Louisiana School’s 100-Percent-College-Acceptance Lie, and More

If you read about a school with a 100-percent college acceptance rate for its grads, keep in mind that one of the surest ways to achieve such astounding results is to lie– to whip up fictitious student success stories that include a horrid home life and a string of glowing achievements that shows that these students Beat the Odds.

Such is apparently the tack of the husband and wife leadership at a Louisiana private school, T.M. Landry, an unaccredited (i.e., the state does not recognize the diplomas) private school held in a warehouse-styled building with an interior that is little more than an unfinished, open area with some white boards and a scattering of tables and chairs.

T.M. Landry is unaccredited, but what does that matter if its graduates are accepted into top-tier postsecondary institutions, right?

Well.

One of the problems with publicizing false success is that such Beat the Odds stories draw the attention of the media– media like the New York Times.

Either the story holds up– the school produces miraculous results (quite a story)– or the story falls apart and is shown to be fraud on fraud (also quite a story).

Unfortunately, the T.M. Landry fraud also includes evidence of physical and emotional abuse.

From the November 30, 2018, New York Times:

BREAUX BRIDGE, La. — Bryson Sassau’s application would inspire any college admissions officer.

A founder of T.M. Landry College Preparatory School described him as a “bright, energetic, compassionate and genuinely well-rounded” student whose alcoholic father had beaten him and his mother and had denied them money for food and shelter. His transcript “speaks for itself,” the Continue reading: New York Times Exposes Louisiana School’s 100-Percent-College-Acceptance Lie, and More | deutsch29