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Eric.ed.gov – Arkansas Better Chance (ABC) Shrinks Gap in Kindergarten Readiness for Economically Disadvantaged Students

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: One important reason early childhood education contributes to the overall success of students in the K-12 system is that it helps students start kindergarten better prepared. Every kindergartener entering a public school in Arkansas is given the Qualls Early Learning Inventory (QELI). This is a developmentally appropriate assessment that observes known cognitive knowledge and classroom behaviors that are linked to success in school. It also provides a snapshot of how prepared students are entering kindergarten. The QELI has six areas of assessment: General Knowledge, Oral Communication, Written Language, Math Concepts, Work Habits, and Attentive Behaviors. Through a series of observations and questions, teachers determine if the student is Not Developed, Developing, or Developed in each of the six areas. QELI scores for 130,583 students from 2008-2012 were… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – School Improvement Grants: Progress Report from America’s Great City Schools

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This report measures trends in performance among urban schools receiving federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) awards as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). The Council of the Great City Schools aims to document how member districts of the Council of the Great City Schools implemented SIG and specifically what effects the program had on student test scores and school “holding power”–the ability of high schools to move students through the system on a timely basis. Finally, based on interviews with district and school-based staff in several case study districts, common characteristics of successful and unsuccessful implementation of the SIG program in Council schools and districts are identified and described. Results of the analysis across states for grades three through eight in both… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Engaging District and School Leaders in Continuous Improvement: Lessons from the 2nd Year of Implementing the CORE Improvement Community

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: California’s shift towards continuous improvement in education makes understanding how districts and schools can learn to improve a more pressing question than ever. The CORE Improvement Community (CIC), a network of California school districts engaged in learning about improvement together, is an important testing ground to learn about what this work entails. This report continues drawing lessons from the CIC’s second year as its districts work together towards a common aim: to improve the mathematics achievement of African American and Latinx students in Grades 4-8. The CIC applies a specific continuous improvement approach, called improvement science, to support teams in reaching the aim. Improvement science, unlike many approaches to reform, is not a specific “program” designed to fix educators’ performance in a particular aspect of their work… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Race to the Top. Florida Report. Year 3: School Year 2012-2013. [State-Specific Summary Report]

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This State-specific summary report serves as an assessment of the Florida’s annual Race to the Top implementation. The Year 3 report for Phase 1 and 2 grantees highlights successes and accomplishments, identifies challenges, and provides lessons learned from implementation from approximately September 2012 through September 2013. In Year 3, the State continued to execute contracts and implement activities consistent with the State’s amended timelines. In Year 3, Florida implemented the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in first grade and trained approximately 13,000 educators on implementing the CCSS during summer institutes. Florida Department of Education (FDOE) continued to add CCSS-aligned resources to the Teacher Standards Instructional Tool (TSIT). The State also continued the Math Formative Assessment System (MFAS) providing Florida educators access to approximately 374 tasks and rubrics… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Causal Factors Attributed to Student Success on the California High School Exit Examination

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: American students are failing to demonstrate expected competency on basic skills taught in schools. The educational system needs a major overhaul to address declines in scholarly engagement. The State Board of Education (SBE) designed the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) to give some merit to the high school diploma. Minorities and economically disadvantaged students fail to attain minimal proficiency levels on standardized tests and to achieve gains comparable to those attained by students from affluent school districts, even when the most rudimentary skills are being tested. The purpose of this study is to compare existing differences in student achievement by viewing existing data and to gauge faculty perspectives on why some students fare better than others on the CAHSEE. Appended are: (1) Letter of Informed Consent;… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – The Relationship between Gender, Ethnicity, and Technology on the Impact of Mathematics Achievement in an After-School Program

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The gap among ethnicities and gender in mathematics achievement is a well-known problem. While the gap has been shrinking over the past three decades, it has not completely diminished (Jencks & Phillips, 1998; McGraw, Lubienski, & Strutchens, 2006). The ALEKS, Assessment and LEarning in Knowledge Spaces, tutoring system is one promising example of a technology that can target this problem. ALEKS is a Web-based intelligent tutoring system (ITS) that instructs students on the mathematical topics that they are most ready to learn, assesses students’ current knowledge, and evaluates student performance on problems related to those topics. In order to better understand the role that technology can play in decreasing achievement gaps for gender and ethnicity, the authors examined the effect of interacting with ALEKS in a 6th… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Race to the Top. Georgia. State-Reported APR: Year One

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This paper describe Georgia’s progress in implementing a comprehensive and coherent approach to education reform from the time of application through June 30, 2011. In particular, it highlights key accomplishments over the reporting period in the four reform areas: standards and assessments, data systems to support instruction, great teachers and leaders, and turning around lowest-achieving schools. Race to the Top focuses on improving Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education for Georgia students. The plan includes providing professional development for math and science teachers, strengthening the pipeline of science and math teachers from institutes of higher education, and expanding STEM related virtual courses. As a result, in partnership with the Georgia Department of Education, Georgia Tech received funding through the Race to the Top program to expand… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Access to Effective Teaching for Disadvantaged Students. NCEE 2014-4001

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Recent federal initiatives emphasize measuring teacher effectiveness and ensuring that disadvantaged students have equal access to effective teachers. This study substantially broadens the existing evidence on access to effective teaching by examining access in 29 geographically dispersed school districts over the 2008-2009 to 2010-2011 school years. The report describes disadvantaged students’ access to effective teaching in grades 4 through 8 in English/language arts (ELA) and math, using value-added analysis to measure effective teaching. On average, disadvantaged students had less access to effective teaching in these districts. Providing equal access to effective teaching for FRL and non-FRL students would reduce the student achievement gap from 28 percentile points to 26 percentile points in ELA and from 26 percentile points to 24 percentile points in math in a given… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Unconscious Bias in the Classroom: Evidence and Opportunities, 2017

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The underrepresentation of women and racial and ethnic minorities in computer science (CS) and other fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is a serious impediment to technological innovation as well as an affront to fundamental notions of fairness and equity. These gaps emerge in the early grades and tend to persist, if not widen, throughout the secondary and postsecondary years. The unconscious biases (UB) of teachers, school administrators, and fellow students may contribute meaningfully to the persistence of these gaps. Fortunately, a nascent literature on targeted interventions that directly address UB suggests there may be compelling opportunities to promote broader engagement in CS and STEM education and employment. The fields of neuroscience, social psychology, economics, and sociology articulate the many possible origins of UB and… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Does Teach for America Have Long-Term Impacts?

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Children enter school with vastly different skill levels and formal schooling often magnifies these disparities over time. Widening achievement gaps between high- and low-income children have grown substantially in the last 50 years. Further, the opportunity gap facing most low-income students contributes to a host of academic and social challenges including: lower performance in math and reading, increased truancy and incarceration, less higher-level course taking, and lower graduation and college entrance rates than their higher-income peers, and these disparities are not new. Teach For America (TFA) was founded with the purpose of addressing these educational inequities. Early on in its existence, TFA became focused on “closing the achievement gap” for students in the schools it serves, and put a large stake in promoting, “significant gains,” (defined as… Continue Reading