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Eric.ed.gov – Starting Young: Massachusetts Birth-3rd Grade Policies That Support Children’s Literacy Development

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Massachusetts is one of a handful of states that is often recognized as a leader in public education, and for good reason. The Commonwealth consistently outperforms most states on national reading and math tests and often leads the pack in education innovations. “Starting Young: Massachusetts Birth-3rd Grade Policies that Support Children’s Literacy Development,” a report from the Early & Elementary Education Policy team at New America, examines state policies and local initiatives that aim to give children a strong start and offers recommendations to help ensure more students are moving up the learning staircase. Massachusetts has taken important steps, but to have a larger sustainable impact on children’s literacy development, more is needed. The report also provides a list of interviews and notes. Link til kilde

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Eric.ed.gov – Finding & Keeping Educators for Arizona’s Classrooms

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Quality teaching is essential to providing children with the knowledge and skills necessary for a high quality of life. It’s essential to the economy, as well. Business thrives when it has ready access to an educated workforce, allowing Arizona to compete for the best industries and companies. Quality teaching helps build the society in which we live today and tomorrow. This report uses hard data as well as voices from teachers themselves to describe the current state of Arizona’s educational workforce, specifically focusing on the factors that attract new teachers into the profession and those factors that drive too many existing teachers out of it. Highlights of the findings include the following: (1) Teachers of the baby-boom generation are approaching the end of their careers and will… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – The Qualifications and Classroom Performance of Teachers Moving to Charter Schools. Working Paper 27

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Do charter schools draw good teachers from traditional, mainstream public schools? Using a panel dataset of all North Carolina public school teachers from 1997-2007, this research paper finds nuanced patterns of teacher quality flowing into charter schools. High rates of inexperienced and uncertified teachers moved to charter schools, but among certified teachers changing schools, the on-paper qualifications of charter movers were better or no different than the qualifications of teachers moving to comparable mainstream schools. Estimated measures of classroom performance for a subset of grade 3-5 teachers show that charter movers were more effective in math and reading instruction, relative to other mobile teachers. Charter movers compared less favorably, however, to non-mobile teachers and colleagues within their sending schools. The distribution of classroom performance among future charter… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Recruiting, Preparing, and Retaining High Quality Secondary Mathematics and Science Teachers for Urban Schools: The Cal Teach Experimental Program

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Recruiting, preparing, and retaining high quality secondary mathematics and science teachers are three of the most critical problems in the nation’s urban schools that serve a vast majority of children from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Although the factors contributing to these problems are complex, one area that has caught the attention of leaders of the teacher education community centers are the alternative pathways (or routes) through which teachers are trained and allowed into the profession. Many of these alternative pathways, teacher educators argue, aim to move teachers into teaching on a fast track and thereby short-change the necessary training that candidates need to have to become adequately prepared as classroom teachers. This article looks at the arguments on both sides: proponents and critics of traditional and… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Teacher Effectiveness: The Conditions that Matter Most and a Look to the Future

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Over the last decade, policy and business leaders have come to know what parents have always known: teachers make the greatest difference to student achievement. With new statistical and analytical methods used by a wide range of researchers, evidence has been mounting that teacher quality can account for a large share of variance in student test scores. The evidence on the distribution of qualified and effective teachers is also clear–and the findings are not good. Teachers who have met the demanding standards of National Board Certification and those who have generated higher “value-added” student achievement gains are far less likely to teach economically disadvantaged and minority students. As a result, high-poverty schools are more likely to be beset with teaching vacancies in math and special education, and… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Fifty Years of Federal Teacher Policy: An Appraisal

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Federal policy directed to teaching and teachers is the subject of this review, which is organized around: (1) recruitment; (2) training; (3) accountability; (4) incentives; (5) qualifications; (6) class size reduction; (teacher working conditions; and (8) human resource management and the overall coordination of teacher policy. For each theme, the authors describe past and current federal policy; assess the evidence on policy effects and effectiveness; and conclude with an overall appraisal. Recommendations for future federal teacher policy are provided. Reported observations include: (1) lack of policy research that might supply direction to ongoing policy investments; (2) teaching presents a number of fundamental problems that policy has yet to address successfully; (3) local conditions in schools and districts play a large role in the effectiveness of federal teacher… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – No Common Denominator: The Preparation of Elementary Teachers in Mathematics by America’s Education Schools

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The nation’s higher goals for student learning in mathematics cannot be reached without improved teacher capacity. To accomplish these goals an analysis of current teacher preparation in mathematics is necessary, along with the development of an agenda for improvement. Based on groundwork laid during a meeting in Washington, D.C. in March 2007, the eight members of this study’s Mathematics Advisory Group guided the National Council on Teacher Quality’s evaluation of the mathematics preparation of elementary teachers. The Mathematics Advisory Group consists of mathematicians and distinguished teachers with a long history of involvement in K-12 education. The study sample included 77 institutions representing programs of all types and in 49 states and the District of Columbia (excluding Alaska), constituting more than 5 percent of those institutions offering undergraduate… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Alabama’s Education Report Card, 2009-2010

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: In a more consistent and viable manner than ever before, education in Alabama is moving toward its ultimate goal of providing every student with a quality education, thereby preparing them for work, college, and life after high school. Alabama’s graduation rates from 2002 to 2008 increased significantly, tripling the national average increase and ranking fourth in the country. Alabama’s progress in reading continues to prove the state’s reading initiative is effective. Educational assessments clearly show the historic gains Alabama made in reading in 2007 (greatest gains in Reading in America and in the history of the National Assessment of Educational Progress) continue to remain steady. Alabama’s trailblazing distance learning program, ACCESS, remains a spectacle of achievement recognized and reported on by national television programs and newspapers across… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Due Diligence and the Evaluation of Teachers: A Review of the Value-Added Analysis Underlying the Effectiveness Rankings of Los Angeles Unified School District Teachers by the “Los Angeles Times”

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: On August 14, 2010, the “Los Angeles Times” published the results of a statistical analysis of student test data to provide information about elementary schools and teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The analysis, covering the period from 2003 to 2009, was put forward as an evaluation of the effects of schools and their teachers on the performance of students taking the reading and math portions of the California Standardized Test. In Los Angeles, teachers were classified into one of five levels of “effectiveness” for their teaching in reading, math and a composite of the two. The decision by the “L.A. Times” to make these results publicly available at a dedicated web site, and to publish an extensive front page story that contrasted–by name–teachers… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Certification Requirements and Teacher Quality: A Comparison of Alternative Routes to Teaching. Working Paper 64

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Traditionally, states have required individuals complete a program of study in a university-based teacher preparation program in order to be licensed to teach. In recent years, however, various “alternative certification” programs have been developed and the number of teachers obtaining teaching certificates through routes other than completing a traditional teacher preparation program has skyrocketed. In this paper I use a rich longitudinal data base from Florida to compare the characteristics of alternatively certified teachers with their traditionally prepared colleagues. I then analyze the relative effectiveness of teachers who enter the profession through different pathways by estimating “value-added” models of student achievement. In general, alternatively certified teachers have stronger pre-service qualifications than do traditionally prepared teachers, with the least restrictive alternative attracting the most qualified perspective teachers. These… Continue Reading