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Eric.ed.gov – Math and Science Reform. Local Education Fund Issue Brief. Volume 1, Number 1

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Politicians, academics, and business and community members all seem to be raising concerns that America is not as globally competitive as it once was. This is due, in part, to the fact that public schools in America are not producing high school graduates with the math, science, and technical skills to succeed in higher education or be employed in a knowledge-based, global marketplace. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, jobs requiring science, engineering or technical training will increase 24 percent between 2004 and 2014 to 6.3 million. However, less than half of high school graduates in the United States are academically prepared for college-level math and science. Between 1970 and 2010, America’s proportion of science and engineering doctorates will fall from 50 percent to 15 percent.… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Six Lessons to Facilitate Deep Ownership of Ambitious Instructional Reforms

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: In partnership with the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, RFA has been studying Philadelphia schools’ take-up of an instructional reform that has demonstrated positive impacts on teacher knowledge and student learning in math. The Ongoing Assessment Project (OGAP) is designed to deepen teachers’ understanding of foundational concepts in math and engage them in regular formative assessment of their students’ problem-solving strategies. Implementing an ambitious educational reform such as this one is notoriously challenging, as project staff, district personnel, and school leaders struggle to move from initial professional development–where so much money is invested–to deep, routine engagement in schools and classrooms. Teachers’ instructional practices are difficult to change, and it is particularly hard to engender reform ownership in contexts full of competing demands. In our 2019 study… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Rocketship Education: Pioneering Charter Network Innovates Again, Bringing Tech Closer to Teachers. An Opportunity Culture Case Study

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: When Rocketship Education, a pioneering, rapidly expanding charter school network, looked at its results, it could have rested on its laurels. With seven schools in California together ranking as the top public school system for low-income elementary students, Rocketship had proof that its blended-learning model–combining online learning with face-to-face instruction–works. But next year, Rocketship leaders will fix a disconnect they see between what happens in the online learning lab and the classroom, to give teachers more control over the students’ digital learning and further individualize the teaching. Instead of reporting to a separate computer lab, fourth- and fifth-graders will move within an open, flexible classroom between digital learning and in-person instruction, with those moves based on their individual needs and the roles that specific teachers are best… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Early Momentum Metrics: Why They Matter for Higher Education Reform. CCRC Research Brief. Number 65

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: In this brief, the authors propose three measures of “early momentum” for two reasons: Research is beginning to show that these near-term metrics predict long-term success, and the metrics focus attention on initial conditions at colleges that are particularly important for solidifying the foundation for student success. While these measures are valuable individually, as a group they give a better picture of the impact of reforms on students, and thus are more valuable if used together. These measures include: (1) Credit momentum–defined as attempting at least 15 semester credits in the first term or at least 30 semester credits in the first academic year; (2) Gateway momentum–defined as taking and passing “pathway-appropriate” college-level math and college-level English in the first academic year; and (3) Program momentum–defined as… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – The Next Chapter of Education Funding in Massachusetts. White Paper No. 199

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: As state leaders consider needed updates to the Commonwealth’s school funding formula, they should remember just how well the approach taken by Tom Birmingham, former Massachusetts state Senate president, and co-author of the 1993 Education Reform Act worked. Beginning in 1993, Massachusetts’ SAT scores rose for 13 consecutive years. The state’s scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shot up, too. By 2005, Massachusetts students became the first to score best in the nation in all four major NAEP categories (fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math). Since then, they have repeated the feat on every subsequent administration of NAEP except one. While American students as a whole lag behind their international peers, the 2007 and 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study results showed… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Building Better Narratives in Black Education

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: “Building Better Narratives in Black Education” fundamentally changes the narrative and face of education reform to meaningfully include Black voices, leaders and initiatives that truly have equity and Black student success at the core. This is imperative as there is an education crisis for Black students in the United States. Recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results indicate that only seven percent of Black students performed at or above proficient on the 12th grade math exam in 2015, compared with 32 percent of White students. African American students are less likely to meet ACT college readiness benchmarks than any other racial group and often lag behind on various indicators on the primary and secondary levels. However, far too often the narrative has stopped there. While it… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Sustaining the Impact: A Follow-Up of the Teachers Who Participated in the Math-in-CTE Study

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: During the 2004-05 school year, the National Research Center for Career and Technical Education conducted a study entitled “Building Academic Skills in Context: Testing the Value of Enhanced Math Learning in Career and Technical Education,” commonly referred to as the Math-in-CTE study. This was a random-assignment experiment that tested the effects of enhancing instruction in the mathematics inherent in the curricula for five occupational areas. Post-testing found that students of teachers who had been in the experimental group scored significantly higher than students of teachers who had been in the control group on two standardized tests of mathematics achievement: 9% higher on TerraNova and 8% higher on Accuplacer. These higher scores were the result of professional development that brought career and technical education (CTE) and mathematics teachers… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – The State of State MATH Standards, 2005

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Two decades after the United States was diagnosed as “a nation at risk,” academic standards for our primary and secondary schools are more important than ever?and their quality matters enormously. In 1983, as nearly every American knows, the National Commission on Excellence in Education declared that “The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.” Test scores were falling, schools were asking less of students, international rankings were slipping, and colleges and employers were complaining that many high school graduates were semi-literate. America was gripped by an education crisis that centered on weak academic achievement in its K-12 schools. Though that weakness had myriad causes, policy makers, business leaders,… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Charlotte, N.C.’s Project L.I.F.T.: One Teacher’s View of Becoming a Paid Teacher-Leader. An Opportunity Culture Case Study

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Romain Bertrand is a middle school math teacher and Opportunity Culture enthusiast. As the 2012-13 school year wound down, he was already thoroughly looking forward to the next–when he will become a multi-classroom leader at Ranson IB Middle School, taking accountability for the learning results of 700 students. At Ranson, a Project L.I.F.T. school in Charlotte, N.C., Bertrand sees the opportunities of its new Opportunity Culture–to extend the reach of excellent teachers to more students, for more pay, and develop other teachers–giving him and others exactly the sort of recognition and respect he says teachers now sorely lack. Bertrand grew up in Avignon, in the south of France, the son of teachers who both went on to become principals. After teaching middle school math in France for… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Using Technology and Mentorship to Improve Teacher Pedagogy and Educational Opportunities in Rural Nicaragua

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This study used ethnographic methods to understand factors influencing the implementation of an educational intervention combining short math content videos with teacher trainings and mentorship in high-poverty primary schools in Nicaragua with implications for rural school reform. Educators in rural schools in Latin American face serious obstacles to improve classroom instruction and pedagogy, including lack of resources and overcrowding. Research suggests an over-reliance on input-output models in which inputs (e.g. teacher salaries, textbooks, technology, computer labs, numbers of classrooms, etc.) are expected to produce particular outputs (student retention, lowering drop-out rates, increasing graduation rates, etc.); however, studies show that regardless of the resources, much depends on effective use of resources for successful teaching and learning (O’Sullivan, 2006; L. S. Shulman, 1987). While input/output models provide insights into… Continue Reading