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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 – Supporting Early Grades Student Achievement: An Exploration of RTI[superscript 2] Practices. Tennessee RTI[superscript 2] Model

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Almost half of Tennessee’s students are not on grade level in reading and math by the time they complete third grade, and very few of those students achieve proficiency in later grades. To combat this trend and support the skill development and academic achievement of all students, Tennessee has adopted a framework for addressing individual learning needs called Response to Instruction and Intervention (RTI[superscript 2]). RTI[superscript 2] promotes the use of research-based, high-quality instruction and interventions and provides an integrated, seamless model that supports student progress at every level. Statewide implementation of RTI[superscript 2] occurred in elementary schools in 2014-15. According to educator reports, elementary schools have embraced the RTI[superscript 2] framework, incorporating its key components into their daily routines. Despite schools’ concerted efforts to implement RTI[superscript… 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 – Cross Cultural Comparison of Rural Education Practice in China, Taiwan, and the United States

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The purpose of this research is to compare the rural education practices of China, Taiwan, Canada and the United States. International comparisons of mathematics achievement find that students in Asian countries outperform those from the USA. Excluded from these studies, however, are students from rural areas in China. This study compares the math abilities of 272 selectively chosen 5th grade students from rural, central China, 361 students from rural, northern Taiwan and 95 students from rural, central Pennsylvania. The test instrument was the same as used in previous China vs. USA comparisons and focused on four subtopics: computation, number concepts, geometry and problem solving. The results showed that rural Chinese and Taiwanese students outperformed similar American students in the area of mathematics achievement. The rural Chinese and… 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 – Mexican Students at Primary School and Their Perception and Attitude towards Science

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This study is part of a larger research project financed by CONACYT, the Mexican authority in Science, Research and Technology. The purpose of this study is to understand perception and attitude towards science of Mexican students at primary school level. Data were collected through a survey answered by 1,559 students from 38 private and public primary schools in 15 cities across Mexico. Findings show that the students from the sample have a positive perception of their science class, and a rather positive attitude towards science. They also report a positive attitude to math. They report that their teachers apply a diversity of teaching-learning techniques, such as the use of new technologies; the use of observation diaries; visits to museums, factories, parks and other institutions; applying surveys and… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – How Non-Linearity and Grade-Level Differences Complicate the Validation of Observation Protocols

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Teacher evaluation is currently a major policy issue at all levels of the K-12 system driven in large part by current US Department of Education requirements. The main objective of this study is to explore the patterns of relationship between observational scores and value-added measures of teacher performance in math classrooms and the variation in these relationships across grade levels. While the MET analyses used a single composite score consisting of a simple average of the eight component scores of the protocol, in our work we treated each component separately since each measures a separately definable aspect of classroom practice. Specifically, across all the components, the authors pose the following questions: (1) Do the relationships between observation scores of math teachers and their value-added scores tend to… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Can We Measure Classroom Supports for Social-Emotional Learning?

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This brief applies value-added models to student surveys in the CORE Districts to explore whether social-emotional learning (SEL) surveys can be used to measure effective classroom-level supports for SEL. The authors find that classrooms differ in their effect on students’ growth in self-reported SEL–even after accounting for school-level effects. Results suggest that classroom-level effects within schools may be larger than school-level effects. However, the low explanatory power of the SEL models means it is unclear that these are causal effects that have appropriately controlled for student-level characteristics. Finally, there are generally low correlations between classroom-level growth in SEL and classroom-level growth in English language arts (ELA) or math, suggesting the SEL measures may capture growth not measured by academic test scores. Although results are preliminary, they indicate… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Investigation of the 5th Grade Students’ Engagements in Mathematics Course towards Student Opinions

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The research was conducted to determine the opinions of students (10-11 years) on their engagement to mathematics course. These students are 5th grade students at a secondary school in Turkey. Qualitative research method was used in the research. At the study, designed as case study, a total of seven secondary school students were participated the research. The study group was constituted with “snowball sampling” technique of purposeful sampling methods. The data was collected by a semistructured interview form. Sixteen-page interviews obtained from the interviews were transferred to the computer. Data analysis was performed in content analysis. Codes were listed as a result of analysis. Common themes were constituted from the codes. As a result of the research, three themes, (cognitive, social and emotional engagement) eleven sub-themes and… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Towards an Understanding of the Testing Opt-Out Movement: Why Parents Choose to Opt-Out or Opt-In

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The opt-out movement, a grassroots coalition of opposition to high-stakes tests that are used to sort students, evaluate teachers, and rank schools, has the largest participation on Long Island, New York, where approximately 50% of the eligible students in grades three to eight opted out of the English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics tests in 2019 (“Projects: ELA and Math Opt-Outs 2016-2019,” 2019). Quantitative research has shown a racial disparity between parents who opted out and opted in with White, middle class parents participating in the opt-out movement at greater rates than Latinx, Black, and Asian parents (Au, 2017; Bennett, 2016; Hildebrand, 2017; Klein, 2016; Murphy, 2017; Phi Delta Kappa & Gallup Poll, 2017; Pizmony-Levy & Green Saraisky, 2016; Ryan, 2016; Tompson, Benz, & Agiesta, 2013). Parents… Continue Reading