eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This report examines the implementation and effects of the academic summer program for middle school students offered by Building Educated Leaders for Life (BELL). BELL’s middle school program serves rising sixth- through eighth-grade students who are performing one to two years below grade level. The goals of the program are to increase students’ literacy and math skills and to enhance their social development. Overall, the findings from this study indicate that BELL mounted a fairly well-run and well-staffed five-week summer program in summer 2012 and that students attended at a high rate even though the program was voluntary. The pattern of impact estimates suggests that, on returning to school in fall 2012, BELL students may have had stronger math skills than they would have had otherwise, equivalent… Continue Reading →
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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 har udgivet: The New York State Education Department, in partnership with the New York City Department of Education, developed a “Striving Readers project” to address the literacy needs of early adolescent struggling readers in middle school. The goal of the project was to implement and examine the impact of a one-year comprehensive supplemental literacy intervention offered in New York City middle schools. The 11 schools included in the study were drawn from 4 of the 5 boroughs of New York City, and were relatively homogeneous. Most were primarily male, and Hispanic/Latino. Furthermore, the majority of the students represented diverse backgrounds. The schools served grades 6-8, though ranged in size as well as number of teachers. The sample students were chosen from the pool who had earned scores of 2… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This applied dissertation was designed to identify the characteristics of students enrolled in a GED® preparation program who transitioned to postsecondary programs at the same institution after passing the GED® test. The characteristics studied included age; gender; ethnicity; prematriculation scores in reading, language, and math in the Test of Adult Basic Education (TABE); and hours spent preparing for the GED® test in an open-entry, open-exit remedial laboratory environment. Through the use of binary logistic regressions to answer the research questions, a prediction model was constructed. The variables that are able to predict an increased likelihood of transition to postsecondary programs were being between the ages of 16 and 24 at the time of enrollment in the GED® program and having an ethnicity category of Asian, White/Caucasian, Hispanic,… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Several avenues are open to students who wish to study advanced science or mathematics in high school, which include Advanced Placement courses and teacher-designed courses unaffiliated with organized programs. We employ a retrospective cohort study of 4,691 nationally representative college students at 34 randomly selected, colleges and universities to examine the relationship between taking advanced high school courses and students’ interest in pursuing a STEM career, while controlling for prior interests and experiences. We are able to distinguish between those students choosing to take an additional year in a science or math subject from those taking Advanced Placement (AP), which is most commonly taken as a second year course, but is increasingly taken as a first year course. We find that the number of years of a… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: A major challenge for practitioners in adult mathematics education is to achieve effective learning outcomes in the face of prevailing negative attitudes in their students, often present as a consequence of unsatisfactory early mathematics learning experience and flowing from the wellestablished connection between adult innumeracy and mathematics anxiety. Whether in nonspecialist mathematics teaching in diverse disciplines such as economics, nursing, and teacher education, or in adult numeracy teaching, the issues are essentially the same: traditional approaches to mathematics teaching, including constructivism, do not work for math-averse students. The need to find new ways to tackle old problems is further fuelled by the impact of the digital age, with mounting evidence that many aspects of accepted teaching and learning practices are being generally undermined by learners’ exposure to… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Education researchers and policymakers agree that teachers differ in terms of quality and that quality matters for student achievement. Despite prodigious amounts of research, however, debate still persists about the causal relationship between specific teacher credentials and student achievement. In this paper, we use a rich administrative data set from North Carolina to explore a range of questions related to the relationship between teacher characteristics and credentials on the one hand and student achievement on the other. Though the basic questions underlying this research are not new–and, indeed, have been explored in many papers over the years within the rubric of the “education production function”–the availability of data on all teachers and students in North Carolina over a ten-year period allows us to explore them in more… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Research shows that school-wide positive behavior supports (SWPBS) can be an effective alternative to traditional reactive, punitive approaches to problem behavior. However, few studies examine the use of the approach as part of a comprehensive school improvement process involving academic as well as behavioral goals, particularly with regard to use of data-driven decision making and data teams. This article describes the efforts of a low-performing middle school in establishing preventative measures and interventions within such a framework. Results indicate a reduction in teacher discipline referrals and student suspensions, including those involving students with disabilities and statistically significant improvement on 30 of 47 items of a school climate and student resiliency survey. In addition, school scores on state mastery tests in both reading and math improved by 25%… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Seven district improvement initiatives were implemented in 2011-12 in the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS). All were well designed and coordinated, with common goal setting processes and use of common monitoring tools. All initiatives either met or partially met 2011-12 goals. Some were more successful in showing student outcomes, with the most positive initiatives being elementary mathematics and adolescent literacy. These results should be used to influence future decisions about continuation or strengthening of these efforts. New components that were well received and implemented by those trained (but which did not have achievement results as yet) should also be considered for future funding. Appended are: (1) SIOP® Training and 6 Tables; (2) LEA AYP Results; (3) Elementary Math Coach Initiative with Results and Elementary Math Outcomes;… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: We have many reasons to invest in preschool programs, including persistent gaps in school readiness between children from poorer and wealthier families, large increases in maternal employment over the past several decades, and the rapid brain development that preschool-age children experience. But what do we know about preschool education’s effectiveness? In this article, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Christina Weiland, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn report strong evidence that preschool boosts children’s language, literacy, and math skills in the short term; it may also reduce problem behaviors such as aggression. Over the elementary school years, however, test scores of children who were exposed to preschool tend to converge with the scores of children who were not. Many factors may explain this convergence. For example, kindergarten or first-grade teachers may focus on helping… Continue Reading →
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