eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This paper looks at the popularity of after-school mathematics by focusing on the Kumon and Russian School of Mathematics models. In 1954, Toru Kumon, a high school math teacher in Japan, designed a series of math worksheets to help improve the test scores of his son Takeshi, a second grader. Toru’s goal was to teach Takeshi how to learn independently through the worksheets and improve his calculation skills prior to reaching high school. By working every day on the problems, Takeshi was able to reach the level of differential and integral calculus when he was just a few months into the sixth grade. The Kumon model is based on four elements: (1) Individualized instruction; (2) Self-learning; (3) Small-step worksheets; and (4) Kumon instructors. Parents who want to… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Public Impact’s “Opportunity Culture” (OC) initiative provides a suite of models aimed at extending the reach of highly effective teachers and has partnered with school districts to implement these interventions in schools. Using administrative data from three partner school districts that collectively include 44 OC schools, we estimate the relationship between OC staffing models and student achievement in math and reading. We find that the bulk of exposed students received treatment under OC’s multiclassroom leadership model, in which a master teacher with demonstrated effectiveness intensively leads and coaches a team of teachers, and that these students scored higher in math in all specifications. In reading, while most specifications find positive and significant learning gains for students taught by team teachers, the specification that performs best in our… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Teachers play a critical role in establishing classroom and school environments that contribute to students’ social and emotional development. This paper explores whether we can estimate a classroom-level measure of student growth in SEL by applying value-added models to students’ [social-emotional learning] SEL. We analyze data from the 2016 and 2017 administrations of student self-report surveys, which contain responses from roughly 40,000 students in Grade 5 within five of California’s CORE Districts. We estimate separate value-added models for each of the four SEL constructs assessed–growth mindset, self-efficacy, self-management, and social awareness–and for math and [English language arts] ELA academic growth. We find across-classroom-within-school variance of students’ SEL outcomes, even after accounting for school-level variance. The magnitude of classroom-level impacts on students’ growth in SEL appears similar to… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: I investigate the determinants of high school completion and college attendance, the likelihood of taking science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) courses in the first year of college and the probability of earning a degree in a STEM field. The focus is on women and minorities, who tend to be underrepresented in STEM fields. Tracking four cohorts of students throughout Florida, I find that large differences in math achievement across racial lines exist as early as elementary school and persist through high school. These achievement differences lead to higher drop-out rates in high school and a reduced probability of attending college for black students. However, conditional on immediately attending a four-year college after high school, black and Hispanic students are more likely than whites to take STEM… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: What was the role of imperfect local information in the growth, gender gap, and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) major selection of early 20th century American universities? In order to examine pre-1950 American higher education, this study constructs four rich panel datasets covering most students, high school teachers, and doctors in the state of California between 1893 and 1946 using recently-digitized administrative and commercial directories. Students attending large California universities came from more than 600 California towns by 1910, with substantial geographic heterogeneity in female participation and STEM major selection. About 43 percent of university students in 1900 were women, and the number of women attending these universities increased by more than 500 percent between 1900 and 1940. Meanwhile, the number of California towns with female… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This paper contributes importantly to the growing literature on the training of special education teachers and how it translates into classroom practice and student achievement. The authors examine the impact of pre-service preparation and in-service formal and informal training on the ability of teachers to promote academic achievement among students with disabilities. Using student-level longitudinal data from Florida over a five-year span the authors estimate “value-added” models of student achievement. There is little support for the efficacy of in-service professional development courses focusing on special education. However, teachers with advanced degrees are more effective in boosting the math achievement of students with disabilities than are those with only a baccalaureate degree. Also pre-service preparation in special education has statistically significant and quantitatively substantial effects on the ability… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: School performance pressures apply disproportionately to tested grades and subjects. Using longitudinal administrative data and teacher survey data from a large urban school district, we examine schools’ responses to those pressures in assigning teachers to high-stakes and low-stakes classrooms. We find that teachers who produce greater student achievement gains in math and reading are more likely to be placed in a tested grade-subject combination in the following year and that the relationship between prior performance and assignment is stronger in schools where principals have more influence over assignments. This strategic response has the consequence of disadvantaging achievement in early grades, however, concentrating less effective teachers in K-2 classrooms, which in turn produces lower achievement for those students, as measured by low-stakes assessments, that may persist into tested… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The 2010 report from the National Research Council on teacher education programs in the United States, “Preparing Teachers: Building Evidence for Sound Policy,” reported that “the empirical evidence on effective teacher preparation [is] nearly nonexistent” (p. 99). The publication later that year of two major studies, one on the preparation of mathematics teachers and the other on teacher preparation in early literacy, marked the first use of nationally representative data to begin to answer important questions concerning teacher preparation in the U.S. In June 2011, the Education Policy Center (EPC) at Michigan State University convened an audience of scholars and policymakers from across the country to discuss the results of the two studies, “Breaking the Cycle: An International Comparison of U.S. Mathematics Teacher Preparation, Initial Findings from… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: In the United States, the prevailing high school mathematics course sequence begins with a year of Algebra I, followed by a year of geometry and a year of Algebra II. Educators and others have raised concerns about the extent to which this sequence, which prioritizes the mastery of algebra, is appropriate for the longer-term education and career goals of students who do not intend to pursue STEM degrees in college. These concerns have impelled educators and policymakers to reexamine the prominence of algebra in high school mathematics curricula and to consider new approaches that provide students with more mathematics course options better aligned with their academic and career goals. In this paper, we explore existing approaches to high school mathematics curricula as well as new developments in… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Measures of teachers’ “value added” to student achievement play an increasingly central role in k-12 teacher policy and practice, in part because they have been shown to predict teachers’ long-term impacts on students’ life outcomes. However, little research has examined variation in the long-term effects of teachers with similar value-added performance. In this study, we investigate variation in the persistence of teachers’ value-added effects on student achievement in New York City. We separate persistent effects into general effects that improve both the subject taught (math or English language arts (ELA)) and the other area of measured achievement and subject-specific effects which improve only the subject taught. Two findings emerge. First, a teacher’s value-added to ELA achievement has substantial crossover effects on long-term math performance. That is, having… Continue Reading →
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