Education Research Report

Education Research Report

Education Research Report

National School Climate Survey for LGBTQ

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 13h

GLSEN, the leading education organization working to create safe and inclusive schools for LGBTQ students, announced today new findings from the 2017 National School Climate Survey , showing for the first time in a decade that victimization of LGBTQ youth is not decreasing at rates previously seen -- and has, in fact, gotten worse for transgender and gender nonconforming youth. Begun in 1999, the

School counselors reflect on their experience following student deaths

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 19h

When five school counselors who were part of a counseling team were interviewed to learn how they professionally and personally experienced the deaths of multiple students in one year in their school while attending to the needs of the school community, several themes emerged. The Journal of Counseling & Development study's first theme, gravity of the losses, related to the significance of the lo

By using recorded audio feedback academics can reduce workload mentally and physically

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 20h

Academics experience that by using the Recorded Audio Feedback (RAF) in higher education they can give more relaxed and dialogic feedback for their learners and reduce their own workload both mentally and physically. Recorded Audio Feedback (RAF) is one method for providing feedback for learners that is becoming increasingly popular, especially in e-Education. RAF can be defined as formative or s

Controlling children's behavior with screen time leads to more screen time

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 20h

Giving your child extra time on the iPad for good behaviour may not be the best idea according to a new University of Guelph study. Researchers found children, whose parents dole out screen time as a reward or revoke it as punishment, spend more time on a smartphone, tablet, computer or in front of the television than children whose parents don't. "It's similar to how we shouldn't use sugary trea

Minority Ph.D. students in STEM fare better with clear expectations, acceptance

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 20h

Women and underrepresented minorities in STEM fields are more likely to advance professionally, publish more research and secure postdoctoral and faculty positions if their institutional culture is welcoming and sets clear expectations, according to a study of hundreds of Ph.D. students at four top-tier California research universities. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA,

Teacher Pensions Have Important Retention Impact, Provide Substantially Greater Retirement Security than 401(k)-Style Accounts

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 1d

A new report finds that teacher pension plans play a critical role in retaining educators while also providing greater retirement security than 401(k)-style retirement accounts. Eight out of ten educators serving in the six states studied can expect to collect pension benefits that are greater in value than what they could receive under an idealized 401(k)-type plan. The study also finds that the

Using Chronic Absence to Accelerate Action for Student Success

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 1d

Data Matters Using Chronic Absence to Accelerate Action for Student Success, by Hedy N. Chang, Lauren Bauer and Vaughan Byrnes, September 2018. *Revised December 2018. This report provides a national and state analysis of how many schools face high levels of chronic absence and discusses the implications for state and local action. Nearly 8 million students, in every state and at every grade leve

JAN 09

School teasing and bullying after the presidential election

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2d

In response to media reports of increased teasing and bullying in schools following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, researchers in this study investigated its prevalence with a Virginia school climate survey completed by approximately 155,000 7th and 8th grade students in 2013, 2015, and 2017. Survey results were mapped onto presidential election results for each school division’s locality.

Teachers make the difference -- even in virtual reality, but boys and girls differ in terms of how they learn best

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2d

Few years from now, students in schools all over the world will receive part of their education in virtual learning environments. Wearing VR-goggles the students will be able to enter 3-dimentional, simulated places and situations that they would normally not have access to because it would be too expensive, too dangerous or physically impossible. Teaching via VR-technology is spreading widely th

How today's high school cliques compare to yesterday's

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2d

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Texas at Austin, have found that while many high school peer crowds and influences have remained constant over time, changing demographics, cultural influences and the increasing number of college-bound youth have led to the emergence of new peer groups and perceptions. The study, which i

Immigrant kids in U.S. deliberately build STEM skills

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2d

U.S. immigrant children study more math and science in high school and college, which leads to their greater presence in STEM careers, according to new findings from scholars at Duke University and Stanford University. "Most 

Education Research Report

Charter School Debate Fueling the Los Angeles Teacher Strike | Time

Charter School Debate Fueling the Los Angeles Teacher Strike | Time

How the Debate Over Charter Schools Is Fueling the Looming Los Angeles Teacher Strike

More than 30,000 Los Angeles teachers are preparing to strike on Monday for the first time in 30 years due to failed negotiations over school funding, pay raises and classroom sizes. But as they look to mobilize support, teachers are also focusing on the growth of charter schools as a central issue in the nation’s second largest school district.

At a press conference Wednesday night following another day of negotiations, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) President Alex Caputo-Pearl accused district leaders of wanting “to starve our schools in order to justify cuts and justify handing more schools over to privately run charter schools.”

He called for a cap on charter school growth, including it on a list of issues that, while not on the bargaining table now, “absolutely shape the direction of public education in Los Angeles.”

Los Angeles schools Superintendent Austin Beutner has said previously that the contract dispute should not be seen as a referendum on charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated. And he has called claims that he wants to privatize the school district “baseless.” But the issue has become a focal point in the debate over the future of Los Angeles schools, as union leaders accuse Beutner and the city’s Board of Education of favoring charter schools over traditional public schools.

About one in five Los Angeles students now attend charter schools, and charter school enrollment has continued to grow in the past decade as overall enrollment in the district has declined. The city now has more charter schools and more charter school students than any other school system in the country, the Los Angeles Times reported. Most charter school employees are not unionized.

Meanwhile, charter school advocates have been gaining ground in the city. In 2017, outside spending on campaigns for two school board seats topped $14 million in what was described as “the most expensive school board race in U.S. history” — an election that pitted teachers unions against wealthy charter school backers, resulting in a pro-charter majority on the board.

Union leaders and other charter school critics argue that such schools have CONTINUE READING: Charter School Debate Fueling the Los Angeles Teacher Strike | Time

Sacramento City leaders walk out of budget talks with teachers union | The Sacramento Bee

Sacramento City leaders walk out of budget talks with teachers union | The Sacramento Bee
Standoff between Sacramento City school district and teachers flares up

Talks between teachers and the Sacramento City Unified School district aimed at resolving a severe budget crisis have broken down as a dispute between the two parties heats up.

A scheduled meeting between the Sacramento City Unified School District and Sacramento City Teachers Association Wednesday to discuss the union’s proposal to solve the budget crisis ended before it began, after district officials walked out and the teachers union called it a “setup.”

The two were scheduled to meet to discuss cost saving ideas to alleviate a pending financial meltdown, according to a statement by the district. 

In December, an independent financial audit identified a $30 million shortfall in the district’s budget, and warned of a possible takeover by the state if the problem was not addressed by November 2019, when money is expected to run out.

The district and the union were scheduled to meet for an hour Wednesday afternoon to discuss their differences, but a dispute about the location of the meeting and the time the two parties arrived derailed the talks before they began.

District officials said Thursday that union officials were late to the meeting, leaving Superintendent Jorge Aguilar waiting. Aguilar left about 20 minutes after the scheduled start time, when no union officials were present, district spokesman Alex Barrios said.

Union officials said Thursday they were in the lobby of the meeting space, and entered the meeting room about 15 minutes after the scheduled start time. An argument with remaining district officials then allegedly ensued, with all parties eventually leaving without conducting the scheduled meeting.

“SCTA leaders showed up late to the designated meeting location,” read a statement from the CONTINUE READING:Sacramento City leaders walk out of budget talks with teachers union | The Sacramento Bee

Decades of Academic Research Support Community Schools Strategy in New York City’s Renewal Schools | janresseger

Decades of Academic Research Support Community Schools Strategy in New York City’s Renewal Schools | janresseger

Decades of Academic Research Support Community Schools Strategy in New York City’s Renewal Schools

So-called “corporate” school reform has been defined by setting standards and testing students to see if they have met the standards.  Rewards and punishments follow for the teachers and schools said to have produced these results. The assumption has been that a school is a closed box that can turn around the lives of the enrolled students—all apart from the fact that students spend only six or seven hours of the day at school. Corporate school reformers said they would disrupt the stasis they thought defined bureaucratic public schools by offering rewards and punishments to motivate teachers to work harder and smarter. Many of these so-called education reformers came from the business schools and employed competition as their primary motivator. And the politicians who followed their advice brought us test score targets to be met and a promise quickly to make every child a winner.

We were warned in advance that this wouldn’t work as we planned.  Dr. James Comer at the Yale School Development Program created a multifaceted program to help schools support the most vulnerable children and to engage educators, parents and the community in this process of building trust and strong relationships.  In 1997, in his book Waiting for a Miracle, Comer described the results. While his staff and outside evaluators believed that the Comer schools had made important progress in improving the children’s education, Comer wrote: “Our best approximation suggests that after three years about a third of the schools make significant social and academic improvement, a third show a modest improvement which is often difficult to sustain, and a third show no gain.” (Waiting for a Miracle, p. 72) The Comer program suggested that seven years was a more realistic timeline to look for real school improvement.

One of the most artificial aspects of corporate school reform was the setting of achievement test targets and short timelines as a motivator.  No Child Left Behind established that all American children in public schools would be proficient by 2014 or their schools and teachers would be punished. As we moved closer to 2014, everybody began to realize that making all CONTINUE READING: Decades of Academic Research Support Community Schools Strategy in New York City’s Renewal Schools | janresseger

On Creativity and The Stories Our Schools Tell Themselves | The Jose Vilson

On Creativity and The Stories Our Schools Tell Themselves | The Jose Vilson

ON CREATIVITY AND THE STORIES OUR SCHOOLS TELL THEMSELVES

Around each March, a few students say they can do my job better than me. At the end of the year, I let them mock the adults in the building for a bit before they graduate to high school. A few years ago, however, I decided to flip that challenge and gave them a lesson plan template to work from. They were interested in how they could get their class to learn. They’d create whole poster boards for their lessons and develop PowerPoint projects that they’d use to teach me. In May, they were a few days from presenting and teaching their classes.

A few adults walked in with power and gaze. One of them said, “Does this look like the kids are learning?” The question already prompted disapproval. Instead of asking for my lesson, asking my students, and watching them speak as if the learning was theirs, a few minutes passed by and a whole department and district would be pushed, prodded, berated, and prompted over the years and to this day to the traditional, rote pedagogy that would supposedly raise test scores and, ostensibly, learning.

With only a hint of irony in these adult voices, the call for creativity has rung louder recently. No. Don’t do that.

Creativity continues to float around the educational zeitgeist even as the ropes tighten the noose around our pedagogies. The move to emulate rigorous – the actual meaning of the word – instruction may have had good intentions. We assigned more numbers to what we felt the students learned. Graduation rates. College acceptance rates. Test scores. All of them. If these and other numbers CONTINUE READING: On Creativity and The Stories Our Schools Tell Themselves | The Jose Vilson

2017 National School Climate Survey | GLSEN

2017 National School Climate Survey | GLSEN
2017 National School Climate Survey
New Data Shows Progress on Safe Schools for LGBTQ Youth Slows for First Time in Years

The GLSEN National School Climate Survey is our flagship report on the school experiences of LGBTQ youth in schools, including the extent of the challenges that they face at school and the school-based resources that support LGBTQ students’ well-being. The survey has consistently indicated that specific school-based supports are related to a safer and more inclusive school climate, including: supportive educators, LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum, inclusive and supportive policies, and supportive student clubs, such as Gay-Straight Alliances or Gender and Sexuality Alliances (GSAs).

The full GLSEN 2017 National School Climate Survey report includes information on LGBTQ middle and high school students' experiences, including:

• Hearing biased language, from both students and educators
• Experiences of harassment and assault
• Anti-LGBTQ discrimination
• Effects of a hostile school climate on educational outcomes and psychological well-being
• The availability and utility of supportive school resources

This report also examines demographic and school differences in students’ experiences, as well as changes in school climate over time. In addition, for the first time, this installment of GLSEN’s National School Climate Survey also includes insights on LGBTQ-inclusive sex education, student activism, parent advocacy, experiences of LGBTQ students with disabilities, and experiences of LGBTQ immigrant students.

  

CONTINUE READING: 2017 National School Climate Survey | GLSEN

Whatever Happened To ‘The Waiting For Superman’ Kids? | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Whatever Happened To ‘The Waiting For Superman’ Kids? | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Whatever Happened To ‘The Waiting For Superman’ Kids?

The PR of education reform focuses on the feel-good, beating the odds, stories about heroic teachers and and rock-star superintendents who never give up on their students.

There are the 106 original graduates of Chicago’s Urban Prep Charter school that Arne Duncan saved by shutting down the failing school that they would have attended if not for his policies.  There is the boy whose Memphis Teach For America teacher taught him rugby — his ticket to college which got the boy featured in an ESPN documentary and got the TFA teacher on Forbes’ 30 under 30 list.  And there are the four inner-city kids who were featured in ‘Waiting For Superman’ — Anthony Black, Daisy Esparza, Bianca Hill, and Francisco Regalado.  After ‘Waiting For Superman’ came out, they were even invited to The White House.

But what happens to these kids after they have served their purpose as PR pawns for education reformers?

For the most part, we don’t know.

Urban Prep had promised that they were going to publish their 6-year college graduation rate for that first class.  They were supposed to do that, but never did, to the best of my knowledge.  Recently one of the three Urban Prep campuses has been put on the school CONTINUE READING: Whatever Happened To ‘The Waiting For Superman’ Kids? | Gary Rubinstein's Blog