eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The Virginia Community College System (VCCS) is engaged in a strategic planning process to improve performance beyond the goals in “Dateline 2009,” the system’s current vision and plan. A key objective is to encourage colleges to improve retention and academic success for students, particularly the substantial numbers who arrive unprepared for college-level work. Specifically, the VCCS seeks to improve the rates at which underprepared students complete developmental coursework and advance to take and pass college courses, particularly the initial college-level, or “gatekeeper,” math and English offerings. The VCCS asked the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University, to conduct analyses to inform its efforts to improve student outcomes. In response, CCRC designed a study to address the following question: What student characteristics, course-taking patterns,… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This paper asks whether placement recommendations for a developmental math course at an elite public institution impact students’ future academic performance, course-taking, and college outcomes. Researchers use these specific outcomes to measure whether developmental courses help students develop the skills necessary to succeed in college, inspire them to take different courses, and help them graduate or persist in college. The study examines the ways in which instructor characteristics can drive these outcomes, and whether instruction at this university in a program for low-achieving students and particularly underprepared low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented minority students achieves its goal of reducing achievement gaps. This informs specific course and instructor policies to help underprepared students in their first semesters in college. The research setting is an elite public institution with a… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Lower-level mathematics courses often become a dead-end for mathematics course-taking among low-achieving students. However, several new upgraded mathematics courses reflecting emerging standards in mathematics are improving students’ chances of taking college preparatory mathematics and raising student achievement. California and New York have created “transition courses” to serve as a bridge between basic and college preparatory mathematics. This document focuses on the nature of instruction in transition mathematics courses, the consequences of student placement in the new transition courses, and the linkages among course type, course content, and students achievement. The findings presented here are based on both qualitative and quantitative data gathered from seven high school in San Diego and San Francisco in California and in Buffalo and Rochester in New York. Schools were chosen which had… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: As the use of online courses in high schools increases rapidly across the United States, schools are using courses from a multitude of sources to achieve a variety of educational goals. Policies and practices for monitoring student progress and success in online courses are also diverse. Yet few states formally track or report student participation in online learning. Iowa and Wisconsin are among the states that do not track such information. This study analyzed data from a survey developed to describe how and why brick-and-mortar public high schools in Iowa and Wisconsin use online learning for their students. The survey, developed by Regional Educational Laboratory Midwest in collaboration with members of its Virtual Education Research Alliance, reflects the need for better information about the basic characteristics of… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Females are underrepresented in courses in mathematics, science, and computer and other high technology applications. Research in the last decade has identified a variety of factors that contribute to females’ lack of participation in math, science, and technology. These factors include, but are not limited to, the following: stereotypic images and expectations, lack of self-confidence, peer pressure, learning environment, teacher behavior, lack of female role models, failure to see relevance, attributional style or personal responsibility, and lack of incentives. The following strategies can address these issues: (1) parents’, teachers’, and counselors’ efforts to dispel stereotypes; (2) improvement of self-confidence; (3) use of peer pressure by making success in math and science prestigious; (4) enhancement of the learning environment; (5) equalization of teacher behavior; (6) provision of female… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The number of jobs in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is growing rapidly and is expected to increase by approximately 1 million in the United States between 2012 and 2022 (Vilorio, 2014). People of many racial/ethnic minorities, however, including Hispanic people, are underrepresented among recipients of STEM degrees and among employees in STEM fields (Beede et al., 2011). Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest conducted this review of the research literature to identify malleable factors that can be measured in K-12 settings and that predict students’ postsecondary STEM success (defined as enrolling in, persisting in, and completing a postsecondary STEM major or degree), particularly for Hispanic students. Identifying these predictive malleable factors can help policymakers and district and school administrators develop and implement interventions that increase the percentage… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This paper tests if gender-discrimination in grading affects pupils’ achievements and course choices. I use a unique dataset containing grades given by teachers, scores obtained anonymously by pupils at different ages, and their course choice during high school. Based on double-differences, the identification of the gender bias in grades suggests that girls benefit from a substantive positive discrimination in math but not in French. This bias is not explained by girls’ better behavior and only marginally by their lower initial achievement. I then use the heterogeneity in teachers’ discriminatory behavior to show that classes in which teachers present a high degree of discrimination in favor of girls are also classes in which girls tend to progress significantly more than boys, during the school year but also during… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: We investigate the relationship between teacher licensure test scores and student test achievement and high school course-taking. We focus on three subject/grade combinations–middle school math, ninth-grade algebra and geometry, and ninth-grade biology–and find evidence that a teacher’s basic skills test scores are modestly predictive of student achievement in middle and high school math and highly predictive of student achievement in high school biology. A teacher’s subject-specific licensure test scores are a consistent and statistically significant predictor of student achievement only in high school biology. Finally, we find little evidence that students assigned to middle school teachers with higher basic-skills test scores are more likely to take advanced math and science courses in high school. Link til kilde
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This is the first in a series of three research briefs summarizing findings from the newest and most rigorous research related to racial and socioeconomic diversity in public schools. The studies on which this brief is based were published recently in three special issues of the peer-reviewed journal, “Teachers College Record,” edited by Professors Roslyn Arlin Mickelson of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Kathryn Borman of the University of South Florida. The weight of evidence from these studies demonstrates that racially isolated, high-poverty schools tend to negatively influence math and science course-taking patterns and achievement as measured by test scores. Meanwhile, under certain conditions, lower poverty schools and schools that do not enroll highly disproportionate shares of African American and/or Latino students tend to… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: We use panel data in Washington State to study the extent to which teacher assignments between fourth and eighth grade explain gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students–as defined by underrepresented minority status (URM) and eligibility for free or reduced price lunch (FRL)–in their eighth grade math test scores and high school course taking. We find some significant gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students in the value added of the teachers to which they are assigned in these grades, although gaps in middle school grades are sensitive to the specification of value added. We then show that teacher assignments are highly predictive of both eighth-grade test scores and advanced course taking in high school, and that differences between advantaged and disadvantaged students in teacher assignments explain significant portions… Continue Reading →
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