Every year, thousands of new teachers pass through hundreds of different teacher preparation programs and are hired to teach in the nation’s schools. Most new teachers come from traditional route to certification (TC) programs, in which they complete all their certification requirements before beginning to teach. In recent years, however, as many as a third of new hires have come from alternative route to certification (AC) programs, in which they begin teaching before completing all their certification requirements (Feistritzer and Chester 2002). AC programs have grown in number and size in recent years in response to a variety of factors, including teacher shortages and the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, which requires that every core class be staffed with a teacher who has obtained full certification or, in the case of alternative routes to certification, is enrolled and making adequate progress toward certification through an approved program.
Despite the expansion of these new routes into teaching, there exists little research to provide guidance as to the effectiveness of different teacher training strategies. The increased variation in teacher preparation approaches created by the existence of various AC and TC programs offers an opportunity to examine the effect of different components of training on teacher performance. For example, some AC programs require less education coursework than TC programs. We can exploit this type of variation to examine whether the form of training is associated with differences in teacher performance.
The potential advantages and disadvantages of the various routes to certification have been debated, and the amount of coursework required by AC and TC programs is critical to issues of certification and teacher effectiveness.
Some critics contend that the coursework required by TC (and some AC) programs is excessive and unnecessarily burdensome (Finn 2003; Hess 2001; U.S. Department of Education 2002), providing little benefit while discouraging talented people from entering the teaching profession (Ballou and Podgursky 1997). AC programs have been viewed as a way to eliminate these barriers. However, supporters of TC programs argue that easing requirements degrades quality because AC teachers are insufficiently prepared for the classroom and less effective than TC teachers (Darling-Hammond 1992). Even in cases where the coursework is similar, TC programs require that people complete their requirements prior to becoming a teacher of record, while AC programs allow them to begin teaching first. None of these claims, however, have been rigorously studied in the context of the programs that are most prevalent.
This study is intended to inform this effort by rigorously examining the effect of AC teachers on student achievement and classroom practices compared to the effect of TC teachers in their same school and grades. The study also provides suggestive evidence about what training and pretraining characteristics may be related to teacher performance.
The main findings of the study are:
• Both the AC and the TC programs with teachers in the study were diverse in the total instruction they required for their candidates. The total hours required by AC programs ranged from 75 to 795, and by TC programs, from 240 to 1,380. Thus not all AC programs require fewer hours of coursework than all TC programs. The degree of overlap in coursework requirements between AC and TC programs in the study was dictated by variations in state policies on teacher certification programs. For example, in New Jersey all AC teachers were required to complete fewer hours of coursework than all TC
• While teachers trained in TC programs receive all their instruction (and participate in student teaching) prior to becoming regular full-time teachers, AC teachers do not necessarily begin teaching without having received any formal instruction. Overall, low-coursework AC teachers in the study were required to take an average of 115 hours of instruction—64 percent of the total amount of instruction they would receive—before starting to teach, and high-coursework AC teachers in the study were required to take an average of 150 hours—about 35 percent of the total amount they would receive— before starting to teach. Nine AC teachers in the study, seven of them from New Jersey, were not required to complete any coursework before becoming regular full-time teachers.
• There were no statistically significant differences between the AC and TC teachers in this study in their average scores on college entrance exams, the selectivity of the college that awarded their bachelor’s degree, or their level of educational attainment. Both low- and high-coursework AC teachers were more likely than their TC counterparts to identify themselves as black (40.5 percent versus 17.5 percent and 32.4 percent versus 7.5 percent) and less likely to identify themselves as white (50 percent versus 75.5 percent and 40.5 percent versus 70 percent). In addition, the low-coursework AC teachers were more likely than their TC counterparts to report having children (70.2 percent versus 28.3 percent).
• There was no statistically significant difference in performance between students of AC teachers and those of TC teachers. Average differences in reading and math achievement were not statistically significant. Furthermore, students of AC teachers scored higher than students of their TC counterparts in nearly as many cases as they scored lower (49 percent in reading and 44 percent in math). The effects of AC teachers varied across experiments, and nonexperimental correlational analysis of teachers’ pretraining and training experiences explained 5 percent of the variation in math and 2 percent in reading. Therefore, the route to certification selected by a prospective teacher is unlikely to provide information, on average, about the expected quality of that teacher in terms of student achievement.
• There is no evidence from this study that greater levels of teacher training coursework were associated with the effectiveness of AC teachers in the classroom. The experimental results provided no evidence that students of low-coursework AC teachers scored statistically differently from students of their TC counterparts, nor did students of high-coursework AC teachers compared to those of their TC counterparts. Correlational analysis similarly failed to show that the amount of coursework was associated with student achievement. Therefore, there is no evidence that AC programs with greater coursework requirements produce more effective teachers.
• There is no evidence that the content of coursework is correlated with teacher effectiveness. After controlling for other observable characteristics that may be correlated with a teacher’s effectiveness, there was no statistically significant relationship between student test scores and the content of the teacher’s training, including the number of required hours of math pedagogy, reading/language arts pedagogy, or fieldwork. Similarly, there was no evidence of a statistically positive relationship between majoring in education and student achievement.
Executive Summary:
http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/PDFs/education/teacherstrainedes09.pdf
Full study:
http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/redirect_PubsDB.asp?strSite=PDFs/education/teacherstrained09.pdf
tate education rankings released for 15th straight year, again show spending does not correlate with student results.
February 3, 2009
WASHINGTON, D.C.—A majority of students in American public schools failed to meet proficiency levels in fourth- and eighth-grade mathematics and reading, and SAT and ACT scores stagnated, despite decades-long increases in public-school spending, according to a new report by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
Using nationally recognized test results, the ALEC Report Card on American Education ranked the 50 states and the District of Columbia accordingly, one being the best and 51 the worst. Minnesota placed first in the unique ranking, Washington, D.C. last.
“The Report Card on American Education clearly shows there is no correlation between educational dollars spent and student achievement in our traditional public school system,” said Andrew T. LeFevre, author of the report and executive director of the Pennsylvania-based REACH Foundation. “At some point, state policymakers must ask themselves if more of the same is going to produce a different result.”
The report also provides extensive data from 1986-87 to 2007-08 on state and federal funding, school resources, graduation rates, GED completion rates, and school-choice initiatives, including tax credit, scholarship, and charter school programs—alternatives to traditional public education ALEC supports. With the federal administration expected to ramp up education spending through a host of new public programs, the evidence is undeniably clear: Further government funding does not necessarily produce corresponding results.
“States across the country have proved that through education reforms rooted in freedom and accountability, more can be done with less,” said Jeff W. Reed, director of ALEC’s Education Task Force. “But it is up to state lawmakers to give taxpayers a break and parents and students the opportunity to choose what works best for them.”
Full report:
http://www.alec.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Report_Card_on_American_Education
New resource for teachers, public on how to recognize science when you see it
'Understanding Science' clarifies what science is, is not
If you think you know what science is and how science works, think again.
A new University of California, Berkeley, Web site called "Understanding Science" (http://undsci.berkeley.edu/) paints an entirely new picture of what science is and how science is done, showing it to be a dynamic and creative process rather than the linear – and frequently boring – process depicted in most textbooks.
Funded by the National Science Foundation as a resource for teachers and the public, the material was vetted by historians and philosophers of science as well as by K-12 teachers and scientists.
"Through this collaborative project, we hope to overturn the paradigm of how science is presented in our classrooms," said Roy Caldwell, a UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology who led the project along with colleague David Lindberg. "The Web site presents, not the rigid scientific method, but how science really works, including its creative and often unpredictable nature, which is more engaging to students and far less intimidating to those teachers who are less secure in their science."
"Part of the fun of science is lost when you present it as a linear thing," said Natalie Kuldell, an instructor in biological engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and one of 18 scientific advisors for the project. While the five-step process described in textbooks – ask a question, form an hypothesis, conduct an experiment, collect data and draw a conclusion – isn't wrong, "it is an oversimplification," she said.
The core idea, said Judy Scotchmoor, assistant director of the UC Museum of Paleontology at UC Berkeley and coordinator of Understanding Science, is that science is about exploring, asking questions and testing ideas. The site provides a Science Checklist that can be used to determine just how "scientific" particular activities are.
Scotchmoor will discuss the Understanding Science approach at a Friday, Feb. 13, session celebrating the Year of Science 2009. The session is from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. in the Columbus EF room of the Hyatt Regency Chicago.
"The goal was to present (the concept) that testable ideas are right at the center of science, and if you don't generate testable ideas, then you are really not doing science," Kuldell said.
Testing, however, is intertwined with exploration and discovery – the "cowboy" aspect of science, in the words of one project advisor – review of hypotheses and theories by skeptical peers, and actual application of the science to real world problems.
Within the Web site, personal stories contributed by top scientists around the country illustrate the interplay of exploration, peer review and outcomes, and demonstrate the different pathways to discovery taken in different fields of science, from biology to cosmology.
Scotchmoor hopes that the site will show students and the public that "science really is an adventure. There are certain rules that you need to follow, but really you can't predict where questions will take you."
The Web site premiered on Jan. 5 during the launch of Year of Science 2009, and received rave reviews from New York Times science writer Carl Zimmer, who referred to it in his blog as "a guided tour through the basic questions of what science is and how it works." He particularly praised the Process of Science flowchart illustrating how science works. A set of four interlocking circles represent the interplay between hypothesis testing and the ways scientists generate these hypotheses, while multiple arrows connect the circles to illustrate the roundabout way scientists make their discoveries.
"At best, I think, stories about science can only be snapshots of small patches of science's cycles within cycles," Zimmer wrote of the flowchart. "It (story telling) uses the one-dimensional medium of language to gesture towards science's mind-boggling multidimensionality. This picture from Understanding Science will help me remember to make that gesture, long after the Year of Science is over."
Four years ago, Scotchmoor, Caldwell and Lindberg created a Web site called Understanding Evolution that now provides a much-needed resource for teachers and the public.
"We discovered, however, that there was a lot of confusion about what science is and isn't," Scotchmoor said.
"Teachers had misconceptions, such as what a theory is or whether creationism is science," Caldwell said. "Many even thought science wasn't creative, in part because of cookbook labs, in part because of the emphasis on testing factual knowledge, not process."
With advice and input from historians, philosophers, teachers and scientists, Scotchmoor, Caldwell and Lindberg constructed the Web site from scratch, modeling it after Understanding Evolution. Understanding Science has been endorsed by the California Science Teacher's Association and the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and will be part of the next edition of a popular high school biology textbook, "Biology" (Prentice Hall), by Ken Miller and Joe Levine.
Kuldell uses it in her second- and third-year college lab courses to "set the expectations of my students, (to show them) that science is iterative and messy and doesn't always make a clean story – and that that should be expected. You work and then you rework, you get feedback, you rethink your ideas, and then retest. Science isn't quite as neat as people wish it were and think it should be."
The Web site will continue to grow, with personal profiles of scientists and their research, each accompanied by a flow chart showing how they proceeded from ideas to discovery.
"We hope these cool stories will draw people in," Scotchmoor said.
Better late than never?
For most of us, thinking of high school graduation brings memories of walking across a stage to “Pomp and Circumstance” after four years of hard work.
But for a persistent and overlooked group of students—late graduates—the picture is different. While we admire their staying power, was it worth the extra effort for them and their schools?
The short answer is yes. On-time graduation remains the best prospect for students, and districts should make on-time graduation the first priority for all students. But the extra work late graduates and their schools put toward earning a high school diploma pays off—not only in academic outcomes, but in every aspect of life including work, civic, and health. Late graduates do markedly better in all arenas than GED recipients and dropouts. And, when the data is controlled to compare students of equivalent socioeconomic status and achievement level, late graduates come close to on-time graduates’ achievement.
The Center for Public Education found these results by conducting a new study comparing late graduates’ outcomes to their peers who graduated on time and those that did not.
The data for the study came from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88), which followed a nationally representative sample of eighth graders through high school, college, and the workforce until the year 2000. The results, as summarized below, show the benefits late graduates receive and also make a strong case for providing students with the support they need. Additionally, it makes a case for giving schools the incentives they need to help students who take longer than four years to graduate.
Who are late graduates?
• Late graduates are those who take more than four years to graduate high school. They are more likely to be minority or language minority students, live in a poorer household, and have two or more risk factors associated with dropping out.
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• Late graduates end middle school and start high school with skills comparable to those who will eventually drop out or receive a GED; in the eighth grade they are no more prepared to go on to high school math or English. Late graduates fall further behind their on-time classmates in ninth grade, where they mainly take non-academic math courses.
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• Late graduates start making better grades in high school than those who eventually drop out or receive a GED. This may suggest that late graduates exhibit more persistence.
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How do late graduates fare?
In post-secondary education:
• Late graduates distinguish themselves not so much by enrolling in college, but in completing a degree. While they are not significantly more likely (59 percent) than GED recipients (51 percent) to enroll in college, they are much more likely to go on and obtain either an Associates or Bachelors degree.
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In employment:
• More late graduates than GED recipients and dropouts are employed with full-time jobs. Late graduates are also less likely to earn incomes at the low end of the income scale.
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• Late graduates are significantly better off in terms of job benefits. Of the late graduates who were employed after 1994, close to two-thirds (63 percent) held a job that offered retirement benefits compared to just over half (53 percent) of GED recipients and less than half of dropouts (45 percent). Seventy-six percent of late graduates also had health insurance coverage compared to 66 and 61 percent of GED recipients and dropouts, respectively.
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What can school boards do?
• It is worth a district’s time and resources to graduate students who fall behind, even if they take longer than four years.
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• Ensure that all students leave eighth grade prepared for high school work. All students should take an academic math course in ninth grade to remain in the mathematics pipeline.
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• Identify possible dropouts in middle school and establish effective dropout programs. (See also the Center for Public Education’s “Keeping kids in school”.)
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• Provide support in high school for low-achieving students to develop their ability to think ahead, persist, and adapt to an environment. These, more than ability, are the crucial qualities that help late graduates succeed.
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Fulll report:
http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/site/lookup.asp?c=kjJXJ5MPIwE&b=4950685
Trends in Geoscience Education from K-12 through Community College
The "Status of the Geoscience Workforce" report is based on original data collected by AGI as well as from federal data sources, professional membership organizations, and industry. The report integrates all of these various data sources into a comprehensive view of the human and economic parameters of the geosciences, including supply and training of new students, workforce demographics and employment projections, to trends in geosciences research funding and economic indicators.
"Chapter 1: Trends in Geoscience Education from K-12 through Community College," takes an in-depth-look at the access students have to earth science education. The report details state requirements for earth science education in middle through high school and the number of high school teachers nationwide.
In addition to course requirements, the report focuses on trends in college bound students including SAT scores and choice of college major. The Status Report also highlights the availability of geosciences education at community colleges and examines the trends in associate degrees conferred from geosciences programs at these institutions.
To view chapter one in its entirety, please go to http://www.agiweb.org/workforce/reports.html. The rest of the "Status of the Geoscience Workforce" report will be released over the course of February 2009.
STRONGER EFFORT NEEDED TO PREVENT MENTAL, EMOTIONAL, AND BEHAVIORAL PROBLEMS IN YOUNG PEOPLE; RESEARCH SHOWS MANY PREVENTION PROGRAMS WORK
The federal government should make preventing mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders and promoting mental health in young people a national priority, says a new report from the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine. These disorders -- which include depression, anxiety, conduct disorder, and substance abuse -- are about as common as fractured limbs in children and adolescents. Collectively, they take a tremendous toll on the well-being of young people and their families, costing the U.S. an estimated $247 billion annually, the report says.
Research has shown that a number of programs are effective at preventing these problems and promoting mental health, the report says. Such programs could be implemented more broadly, but currently there is no clear federal presence to lead these efforts. The White House should create an entity that can coordinate agency initiatives in this area, set public goals for prevention, and provide needed research and funding to achieve them, said the committee that wrote the report.
"There is a substantial gap between what is known about preventing mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders and what is actually being done," said Kenneth E. Warner, committee chair and dean of the University of Michigan School of Public Health. "It is no longer accurate to argue that these disorders can never be prevented. Many can. The nation is well-positioned to equip young people with the skills and habits needed to live healthy, happy, and productive lives in caring relationships. But we need to develop the systems to deliver effective prevention programs to a far wider group of children and adolescents."
Most mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders have their roots in childhood and adolescence, the report notes. Among adults who have experienced these disorders, more than half report the onset as occurring in childhood or early adolescence. In any given year, an estimated 14 percent to 20 percent of young people have one of these disorders.
First symptoms typically occur two to four years before the onset of a full-blown disorder – creating a window of opportunity when preventive programs might make a difference, the report says. And some programs have shown effectiveness at preventing specific disorders in at-risk groups. For example, the Clarke Cognitive-Behavioral Prevention Intervention, which focuses on helping adolescents at risk for depression learn to cope with stress, has prevented episodes of major depression in several controlled experiments.
Other programs have demonstrated broader preventive effects in general populations of young people, the report says. Programs that can be offered in family or educational settings show particular promise in promoting mental health and addressing major risk factors.
One example of an effective school-based program is the Good Behavior Game, which divides elementary school classes into teams and reinforces desirable behaviors with rewards such as extra free time and other privileges. Studies have shown that the program significantly reduces aggressive and disruptive behavior during first grade. The one-year intervention also has benefits over the long term, lowering the students' risk of alcohol and drug abuse, as well as rates of suicidal thoughts and attempts. And it significantly reduces the likelihood that highly aggressive boys will be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder as adults. Research has shown that programs that focus on enhancing social and emotional skills can also improve students' academic performance, the report notes.
Still other programs improve children's mental health and behavior by enhancing parenting skills, the report says. The Positive Parenting Program, for example, uses a range of approaches, from a television series on how to handle common child-rearing problems to in-person skills training for parents struggling to handle children's aggressiveness or lack of cooperation. These methods have been shown to lower kids' disruptive behaviors, a positive change that persisted one year later.
The report recommends that the White House create an entity to lead a broad implementation of evidence-based prevention approaches and to direct research on interventions. The new leadership body should set public goals for preventing specific disorders and promoting mental health and provide the funding to achieve them. The departments of Education, Justice, and Health and Human Services should align their resources and programs with this strategy. These agencies should also fund state, county, and community efforts to implement and improve evidence-based programs. At the same time, the report cautions, federal and state agencies should not support programs that lack empirical evidence, even if they have community endorsement.
The committee also urged continued research to build understanding of what interventions work for whom and when, and how best to implement them. The National Institutes of Health should develop a comprehensive 10-year plan to research ways to promote mental health and prevent mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders in young people. In addition, agencies and foundations should establish equality in research funding between ways to prevent mental and behavioral disorders and ways to treat these problems, the report says; currently, the balance is weighted toward research on treatment.
The report also discusses screening programs that attempt to identify children with risk factors for mental, emotional, or behavioral disorders. Screening can be helpful for targeting interventions, but it should be used only if it meets certain criteria, including that the disorders to be prevented are a serious threat to mental health and that there is an effective intervention to address the risks or early symptoms. Parents should be given detailed information about the purpose and methods of screening, and the wishes of those who don't want their children included should be respected. Without community acceptance and sufficient capacity to respond to the needs identified, screening is of limited value, the committee noted. It added that approaches to connecting screening with specific interventions need to be tested.
The report was sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council make up the National Academies. They are private, nonprofit institutions that provide science, technology, and health policy advice under a congressional charter. The Research Council is the principal operating agency of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. A committee roster follows.
Voucher Programs Grow by 8 Percent in 2008-09, National Report Shows
Two New Programs, Bipartisan Support Featured in New School Choice Yearbook 2008-09
More than 171,000 children are benefiting from school voucher and scholarship tax credit programs this year, according to the national nonprofit Alliance for School Choice. The Alliance today released its School Choice Yearbook 2008-09, the school choice movement's most-comprehensive digest of facts, trends, news, and research.
The 60-page Yearbook is complete with fast facts and useful data for education reformers. For example:
• There are 18 school choice programs operating in 10 states and the District of Columbia.
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• Student enrollment in school choice programs grew 8 percent—to a projected 171,332 students—over the 2007-08 school year and has grown 89 percent since the 2003-04 school year.
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• There are 24,190 students with special needs receiving scholarships to attend the private schools of their parents' choice.
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• Legislators in 44 states introduced school choice bills during the 2007-08 legislative session.
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• Pennsylvania has more students (43,764) in school choice programs than any other state, but Florida is a close second with 41,843 students. Florida's enrollment numbers are expected to increase during the school year.
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In 2008, new private school choice programs were created in Georgia and Louisiana, while four additional programs were improved or expanded. As a result of 2008 successes, there are now an estimated 22,700 additional scholarship opportunities available for the 2008-09 school year.
The Yearbook, an award-winning annual publication, contains detailed information about each state's school choice offerings, as well as features about the growing Democratic support for school choice and support among public school teachers for vouchers and tax credit programs.
“The success and growth of the school choice movement comes not as a result of work in Washington, D.C., but because of work by state-level activists, parents, and committed lawmakers across the country,” said Alliance Interim President John Schilling. “Through the Yearbook, we are honored to chronicle the hard work and achievements of the school choice heroes spanning the country from Phoenix to Providence.”
The School Choice Yearbook is available for download online at http://www.allianceforschoolchoice.org/UploadedFiles/ResearchResources/Yearbook_02062009_finalWEB.pdf
Report: Oakland Charter Schools Outperform District Peers with Poor, Minority Students
Charter Schools in Oakland Outperform at Every Grade Level, with High-Poverty Students and with Minority Students
Charter public schools in the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) are outperforming their district public school peers at all grade levels, with high-poverty students, with English Language Learner (ELL) students and with ethnic minority students with the exception of whites, according to a new report released today by the California Charter Schools Association. The report also found that these gains are most prominent at the middle and high school levels, and that these gains are increasing over time.
Entitled, “A Longitudinal Analysis of Charter School Performance in Oakland Unified School District,” the report analyzed results from California’s Academic Performance Index (API) Growth results and also assessed, in the most detailed analysis to date, charter schools’ performance compared to their most “similarly-matched” Oakland district public schools that students would otherwise likely attend.
The report found that nearly seven in 10 charter schools (69 percent) on average outperformed their three most “similarly-matched” district schools on 2008 API Growth results.
The report also found that charter schools significantly outperformed district public schools in middle (836 to 624) and high schools (688 to 528) and slightly outperformed district schools at the elementary school level (725 to 705). Of the top ten highest-performing public schools in Oakland, all secondary schools were charter schools.
Oakland’s charter schools outperformed Oakland’s district public schools on behalf of Asian, African-American and Latino students, as well as ELL and high-poverty students while they slightly trailed in the performance of white students. Of all subgroups, charter schools most significantly outperformed among African-American and socioeconomically disadvantaged students (a gap of 77 and 76 points, respectively).
“Charter schools in Oakland are shattering the myth which says that, if you are a poor or minority student, you will not do well in our public schools,” said Peter Thorp, Chief of Staff of the California Charter Schools Association. “Charter schools are making incredible strides at succeeding with students that have not historically done as well in traditional public schools. We urge administrators and educators to closely and openly analyze what these laboratories of innovation are doing right so that we can stimulate improvements in district public schools.”
The report also found that Oakland’s charter schools are serving a significantly higher percentage of Latino students, a higher average percentage of high-poverty (low socio-economic status) students, roughly an equal percentage of African-American students, and a lower percentage of Asian-American and white students.
Oakland Unified currently has 33 charter public schools serving nearly 8,000 students. Seventeen percent of the district’s public school students attend charter schools, meaning that Oakland Unified has one of the highest percentages of charter school enrollment in California.
The analysis used California’s API data collected from the California Department of Education during the 2005-06 through the 2007-08 academic school years to conduct a district-level longitudinal assessment of charter schools and district public schools, including elementary, middle and high school levels, as well as specified subgroup populations.
The analysis compared charters’ performance to their three most similar traditional public school peers within a five-mile radius. All but one charter school had three similar matches. Similar schools were selected based on the school’s enrollment, racial composition, average parent level of education, and free/reduced price lunch participation, methodology based on a foundation of national research. The report was authored by Stanford Ph.D. Aisha Toney, Senior Data Analyst for the California Charter Schools Association.
To download a copy of the full report and executive summary, visit: www.myschool.org/pressroom
Air Pollution Too High Near Some US Schools
Air pollution is dangerously high around schools near some U.S. industrial plants, according to a recent study involving researchers from the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University.
The study, conducted by USA Today reporters, examined air pollution levels near schools around the U.S. over an eight month period. They used a computer model from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that tracks the paths of industrial air pollution around the United States to predict the areas of highest air pollution. The USA Today reporters then partnered with university researchers, including Amir Sapkota of the University of Maryland School of Public Health, to monitor the air quality around schools in areas predicted to have both low and high levels of pollution. The findings were published on the front page of USA Today on December 10, 2008.
The researchers found high levels of toxins, including volatile organic compounds (VOC) and fine particulate matter, in the air near schools in the path of industrial pollution. Most of the affected schools were located on the East Coast and in the Midwest with the largest numbers in states like Illinois, New York, Louisiana and West Virginia . In many cases, toxin levels were much higher than those considered safe by the Environmental Protection Agency. In some cases, the pollution was high enough to cause concern for long term adverse health effects.
"The study brings the air pollution problem to the forefront and shows that we need to pay more attention," said Sapkota. "By making people aware of the problem so that they can take action, this study serves an important purpose."
Sapkota helped measure and identify the VOCs collected from around the designated monitoring sites. VOCs are organic compounds that react to produce ozone (photochemical smog) and fine particulate matter or haze. They are found in emissions from burning oil and gasoline, as well as in cleaners, paints and tobacco smoke. They can cause both short- and long-term health effects.
Another researcher, Patrick Breysse of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, analyzed the metallic compounds collected from the air.
The Smallest Victims
The study focused on schools because children are required by law to be there for long periods of time. This prolongs their exposure to any chemicals that might pollute the surrounding air. Children are most susceptible to these compounds because their bodies are small and in the process of developing.
"Exposure to a certain amount of toxin in a child is not the same as the exposure of an adult to the same amount of toxin," Sapkota said. "Because the child weighs less, he or she is exposed to more toxin per unit of body weight than an adult." Sapkota believes the next step is for the schools that are in these toxic hotspots to do more monitoring, especially of their indoor air quality, to assess the extent of the problem.
"The monitoring in this study was conducted outdoors," said Sapkota. "That doesn't necessarily mean that the toxin concentration is the same indoors, where people spend most of their time."
According to the EPA, the concentration of VOCs indoors can be up to ten times higher than concentrations outside. Air filters cannot remove gaseous VOCs from the air.
Sapkota also emphasized that everyday pollutants do not just come from industry. "VOCs also come from cleaning solvents, furniture, stored gasoline, and car exhaust, all of which can be found in or near our houses" he said.
He says individuals can help reduce VOC exposure by taking certain actions, such as choosing cleaning products with low VOC s, and taking public transportation rather than driving individual cars.
"The primary reason for taking action is that air pollution affects our health," Sapkota said. "We want to prevent people from getting sick and to do that we must remove or minimize exposure to air pollution."
Pre-verbal number sense common to monkeys, babies, college kids
Basic arithmetic and "number sense" appear to be part of the shared evolutionary past of many primates; it's the use of language to explain abstractions that apparently takes human math to a higher level.
Elizabeth Brannon, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, studies how human adults and infants, lemurs, and monkeys think about numbers without using language. She's looking for the brain systems that support number sense and trying to figure out how this cognitive skill develops.
"Number is one of the more abstract domains of cognition: three coins and three loaves of bread are very different concepts," says Brannon. "Yet, many studies show that babies, even in the first year of life, can tell the difference between quantities."
She runs about 500 babies per year through her testing lab at Duke, as well as macaques, lemurs and the odd undergraduate. Most of the experiments involve computer touch-screens and sets of brightly colored dots.
After seeing the same number of objects repeated in different-looking sets, infants recognize the novelty of a new number of objects. So do macaques. And both college kids and macaques can do a rough sort of math by summing sets of objects without actually counting them. Their speed and accuracy are about the same, in fact.
That the evolved brain has some fundamental sense of number without language should come as little surprise, Brannon says.
"There are all sorts of reasons why number would be useful for nonhuman animals in the wild. In foraging situations animals need to make decisions about how long to stay in a given patch of food and when to move on," Brannon says. "Territorial animals may need to assess the number of individuals in their own group relative to competing groups to decide whether to stand their ground or retreat."
Understanding the biological basis of our number sense might also help early childhood educators.
Brannon's latest work is aimed at understanding how the human brain changes to accommodate symbolism as a child learns the names of numbers and begins to grasp more abstract manipulations. "If the nonverbal number sense is really providing a critical foundation for math achievement, then this will suggest teaching methods that provide more grounding in the nonverbal quantity system."
Brannon is also exploring the macaque's sense of an empty set, what we'd call zero with our linguistically intensive sense of number. The monkeys are more likely to confuse an empty set with a 1 or a 2 than they are to confuse it with an 8 or a 9, she says, which shows they're putting zero in the proper place on the number line.
"We're trying to understand how the animal mind works. How much of human thought is dependent on language?"
Students Who Feel Connected To Peers, Teachers Are More Inclined To Warn Of Dangerous Fellow Student
Students who feel connected to their peers and teachers are more inclined to alert a teacher or principal if they hear a fellow student "wants to do something dangerous," according to a new study published by the American Psychological Association.
But those students who don't feel connected are less likely to act. Researchers from The Pennsylvania State University and Missouri State University looked into why some students adopt a "code of silence" when faced with a fellow student's dangerous intentions.
The researchers presented a hypothetical scenario of a peer's plan "to do something dangerous" to 1,740 middle and high school students from 13 schools. The students were asked if they would (1) intervene directly, (2) tell a teacher or principal, (3) talk it over with a friend but not tell an adult, or (4) do nothing.
High school students (964) were less likely than middle school students (776) to talk directly to the peer planning to do something dangerous or tell a teacher or principal, said lead author Amy K. Syvertsen, MEd. "High schools are generally larger than middle schools and provide less opportunity for teachers and students to interact, which is the foundation for building trust, caring and community between the two."
Most students who said they would take action favored directly approaching the peer rather than telling an adult. "This may be a reflection of where many of these students are developmentally. They want to assert their autonomy, make decisions and handle the situation on their own," said the authors.
Students who generally felt a sense of pride in their school and concern for others were more likely to say they would act rather than ignore the situation. For all students, Syvertsen said, knowing they could voice their opinions and be heard by a school official along with their sense of belonging – how they and their friends fit into the school culture – best predicted whether they would confront the peer themselves or tell an adult.
Fear of getting into trouble makes students less willing to go to a teacher or principal with their concerns about a peer's potentially dangerous plan and more likely to ignore the situation, said the authors. Yet those students who said they would speak directly to the peer said they didn't believe they would get into trouble.
Certain school policies, such as zero tolerance, may create an atmosphere that prevents students from confiding in a teacher or school administrator because of the perceived repercussions, said Syvertsen. "Blanket policies that are often not clearly explained to teachers or students can create an atmosphere in which rules get in the way of relationships between students and teachers, to the detriment of keeping the schools safe," said the authors.
"Fostering a caring school climate where students and teachers look out for each other to keep one another safe can't be taught in a single lesson or by using deterrents, like metal detectors or harsh policies," Syvertsen added. "It is built on daily interactions between the teachers and students."
Although the nature of the dangerous school event used in the study was hypothetical, the results of this study provide some sense of students' willingness to act should a similar situation arise.
Journal reference:
Amy K. Syvertsen et al. Code of Silence: Students' Perceptions of School Climate and Willingness to Intervene in a Peer's Dangerous Plan. Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 101, No.1
Unfocused Ambitions, Inequitable Allocation of Counseling Resources Contribute to Stressful College Admission Process for Students
Unfocused ambitions, in part, help fuel the intense college application process in some high schools, according to a research paper released today by the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). Combined with the inequitable distribution of college counseling resources, such ambitions may unnecessarily complicate the college admission process for many students across the country, the report notes.
The paper, "College Choice and Adolescent Development: Psychological and Social Implications of Early Admission," was written for NACAC by Barbara Schneider, John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor in the College of Education at Michigan State University. Key findings include:
- Students' college aspirations, when unaligned with career interests, may contribute to "college fever," or the perception that getting into a highly selective college is the primary goal of the transition from high school to college. Unfocused adolescent postsecondary aspirations could be channeled into more well-crafted expectations. The task is not simply "cooling out" adolescents to apply to less competitive institutions, but to try to align their interests with institutions that offer the types of programs and majors that compliment their future goals.
- The prospect of paying for college, the complexity of financial aid applications, and varied requirements for admission applications continue to constrain the college decision process. Between the technical nature of information requested and the procedures students are required to follow, the college decision process has become profoundly complicated, with most adolescents depending on parents and counselors to help make post-high school plans for them.
- The increasing responsibilities required of high school counselors, unmanageable student-to-counselor caseloads, and the expansive period of adolescence has resulted in one of the greatest challenges facing high school counselors today-the inability to fully assist students for whom guidance is especially valuable at this stage of development.
- Existing literature suggests that Early Decision admission practices seem inconsistent with adolescent development. While the case has yet to be made empirically, this research paper suggests that discussions about Early Decision policies should address the challenges such policies create for students, and the inequities they may produce among those who could, but do not, apply.
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Full report:
http://www.nacacnet.org/PublicationsResources/Research/Research%20Member%20Only/AdolescentDevelopment.pdf
Teachers to make house calls?
A Florida state council is recommending that teachers and principals be required to make quarterly home visits and weekly phone calls.
The suggestion is one of many in the just released 2008 report of the Florida Council on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys. (The education section begins on page 51.)
The report notes that 80 percent of black males in Florida high schools are scoring below grade level on the FCAT, and that by one measure, only about one-third of them are graduating on schedule. The home-visit recommendation specifically targets the "parents of students who are earning less than a C average or are clearly underperforming even if their grades are on average a C or better."
Among other recommendations:
- Better tracking of student disciplinary actions.
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- Hiring more black teachers.
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- The creation of voluntary orientation programs for the parents of black male students entering high school.
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Full report
http://myfloridalegal.com/webfiles.nsf/WF/JFAO-7NJN5A/$file/2008report.pdf
Results of the Third School Nutrition Dietary Assessment Study Published
A special Supplement to the February 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association presents findings from the recently released Third School Nutrition Dietary Assessment Study (SNDA-III), conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., as well as research from other studies using SNDA-III data. Sponsored by the Food and Nutrition Service of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), SNDA-III assesses the quality and contributions of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the
School Breakfast Program (SBP), longstanding government efforts to bring good food to the children of America.
The National School Lunch Program (NSLP), created in 1946, currently operates in nearly all public and many private schools in the United States, providing subsidized meals to more than 30 million children each school day. More than 10 million children also take advantage of the School Breakfast Program (SBP), which became a permanent federal program in 1975.
SNDA-III examines the school food environment, children’s dietary behaviors at school and outside of school and child overweight/obesity. SNDA-III was based on a nationally representative sample of 130 public School Food Authorities (districts that offer federally subsidized school meals), 398 schools within those districts and 2,314 public school students in grades 1-12 in 287 of these schools. Data were collected in the second half of school year 2004-2005 from district foodservice directors and their staff, school foodservice managers, principals, students and their parents. In addition, field interviewers who were collecting data from students and parents observed and recorded the types of competitive foods available in visited schools.
Supplement Guest Editor Mary Story, PhD, RD, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota, emphasizes the importance of the SNDA-III study. She writes, “Results of SNDA-III show that many schools have improved the nutritional quality of the NSLP and SBP school meals and foods sold outside of the reimbursable meal programs (competitive foods). However, there is much more room for improvement. Schools need to do even more to reduce the availability of high-calorie, low-nutrient foods and make school meals more nutritious. Although the majority of US schools offer breakfasts and lunches that meet the standards for key nutrients (such as protein, vitamins A and C, calcium and iron), reimbursable school meals remain too high in saturated fat and sodium, and children are not consuming enough fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Many public schools are constrained in providing better meals because of limited funds. It is time to reexamine the formulas used to set national reimbursement rates with reference to the costs of producing and serving school meals that meet the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005.”
“As an Institute of Medicine expert panel considers revisions to the meal patterns and nutrition standards for USDA’s school meal programs and Congress takes up reauthorization of the school nutrition programs again in 2009, the SNDA-III findings are particularly important,” commented Anne Gordon, PhD, a senior researcher at Mathematica in Princeton, NJ, who led the SNDA-III analysis. “Future studies will look back to SNDA-III to examine how school meals and school food environments have changed after implementation of subsequent federal policy initiatives. SNDA-
III data could also be used to estimate the potential effects of proposed changes in policy on schoolchildren’s diets.”
Clare Miller, MS, RD, a nutrition consultant and member of the American Dietetic Association School Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group, offers a commentary on the key findings of SNDA-III, and identifies many areas of concern for food and nutrition professionals, as well as for policymakers and parents. She notes, for example, that few schools provided lunches that met the recommendations in the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for fiber and none of the schools met the recommended sodium limitations. Also, she discusses the availability of competitive foods in public schools and how, regardless of whether children ate a school lunch, the competitive foods purchased were generally low-nutrient, energy-dense foods, including candy, desserts, salty snacks, french fries, muffins, donuts, sweet rolls, toaster pastries and caloric beverages other than milk or 100% fruit juice.
In a second commentary, Nancy Montanez Johner, Undersecretary, Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services at the US Department of Agriculture, emphasizes the need for studies such as SNDA-III to address critical challenges that remain to make the programs as effective as they can be in meeting the needs of participating children. Although more than 70% of schools serve meals that meet standards for many nutrients that contribute to healthful diets, few schools (6% to 7%) met all nutrition standards in school year 2004-2005, primarily because most meals served contain too much fat, too much saturated fat or too few calories. Although most schools offer the opportunity to select a balanced meal, few students make the more healthful choice.
The Special Supplement continues with nine research contributions coauthored by staff from Mathematica that expand on the findings of SNDA-III. The first describes the background and study design including complete details of the sampling methods and study limitations. “Because the SNDA-III study is comprehensive, recent and nationally representative, it provides not only a clear picture of the meals currently eaten by many of our nation’s children, but also a strong foundation for future policy development and research,” said Mary Kay Crepinsek, a senior researcher at Mathematica who oversaw the compilation of the special supplement.
Four articles present the central SNDA-III results regarding the nutrient content of school meals as offered and served, students’ nutrient intakes on school days, foods offered in school meals and in breakfasts and lunches consumed by students and the availability and consumption of competitive foods in school.
Two further articles examine students’ consumption of low-nutrient, energy-dense foods at home, school or other locations and the relationship of the school food environment to their dietary behaviors. Two final articles tie the SNDA-III results to the data on children’s body mass index to assess the effects of the school meal programs, the school environment and dietary behaviors on children’s weight status and child obesity. The Supplement closes with a summary of the findings and policy implications.
Full text:
http://www.adajournal.org/article/S0002-8223(08)02061-0/fulltext
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