The 52-report series from The Education Trust is a tool for measuring the impact of federal stimulus funding on improving the academic opportunities and outcomes for all of our nation’s students
Last month, Congress made an unprecedented commitment to America’s public schools, passing the single biggest increase in federal education funding in our nation’s history. As the U.S. Department of Education begins to distribute the one-time funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the onus is on states to live up to that challenge and ensure that this investment boosts overall achievement and closes gaps.
To measure how effectively states are using the infusion of federal support, the public will need accurate, reliable data. The Education Trust’s Education Watch series assembles some of the most critical indicators of student achievement, attainment, and opportunity, providing a state-by-state snapshot of public education in America.
The data in these reports and the accompanying “quick look” chart mark the starting line in America’s “Race to the Top” – the federal effort to provoke bold, enduring progress in education. Education Watch reveals which states are farthest along the course, which are gaining on those leaders, and which are barely out of the starting blocks. Throughout the duration of ARRA spending, The Education Trust will provide updates on state progress as new data become available.
These reports reflect the most up-to-date information available across states. While some states may have more recent data on their own schools and reform efforts, Education Watch uses only data that are consistent across states. This allows for accurate comparisons and the ability to identify and learn from the leaders on each indicator. While no state is yet where it needs to be, especially in terms of educating lower income students and students of color, some are doing a much better job than others.
For example, on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP):
• Delaware posted the biggest gains in fourth-grade reading performance for African-America, Latino, and lower income students. Delaware’s scores are up by 24 points for African Americans, 42 points for Latinos, and 25 points for lower income students since 1998.
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• In eighth-grade math, Massachusetts leads the nation in gains overall since 2000, and was among the top gainers for Latinos and lower income students. However, state improvement among African-American students (6 points) lagged significantly behind the national average (16 points), resulting in a widening of the performance gap between African-American and white students. Massachusetts was one of just two states in which an achievement gap between student subgroups grew larger.
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• Louisiana is the only state in which the gap between African-American and white students has narrowed significantly in both fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math.
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Though each state is different, common patterns emerge from these NAEP data, indicating just how far we have to go to ensure that all young Americans have equal access to a high-quality education – especially lower income students and students of color, who now comprise almost half of all students in our nation’s public schools. Student performance is too low overall, varying dramatically between student groups, and the pace of improvement is far too slow.
“These reports provide a sobering look at the challenging work that lies ahead,” said Kati Haycock, president of The Education Trust. “One thing is clear: To secure our economic future, we must confront educational inequities head-on and ensure that every school in America is ready to help every student advance farther, faster. The federal dollars are not a license to do business as usual; they come with a demand for change. We will never have this opportunity again, so the pressure is on for states to invest big in what works for kids and stop supporting the policies and programs that simply aren’t getting the job done.”
When evaluating student achievement data, many people are quick to attribute performance to the home lives of students. But the variation of results among states for the same groups of students proves that what happens in school matters immensely.
That’s why the Education Watch data on opportunity in education offer a valuable way to compare student achievement, taking into account the level of resources available to each student group. A look at these data show that lower income students and students of color – the ones who most often come to school with less – are consistently and systematically provided with less of everything that research and experience tell us matters most in school: less access to well-prepared, effective teachers; less access to challenging curriculum; and less funding.
For example:
• In Colorado, Latino students represent 20 percent of the state’s 11th- and 12th-grade students. But just seven percent of the students taking Advanced Placement exams in Calculus, English Language and Composition, and Biology are Latino.
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• Schools in Pennsylvania’s high-poverty districts have $1,153 less to spend per pupil than schools in the state’s more affluent districts.
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• In only three states – California, New York, and Indiana – does need-based state aid intended to help lower income families pay for college amount to more than 20 percent of the average tuition costs at the states’ four-year colleges and universities.
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State reports:
http://www2.edtrust.org/edtrust/summaries2009/states.html
Gaining new insights into mentoring programs for adolescent girls
Proteges can successfully gain a combination of emotional benefits, new skills development and healthy experiences with adult companionship
(Boston) -- A study of a Big Brothers Big Sisters of America formal mentoring program, which matched adolescent girls with women mentors, revealed that strong emotional support and improvement in girls psychosocial functioning from these relationships was a dominant theme coupled with the development of new skills and confidence through collaborations.
Unlike previous mentoring studies, this one explicitly examined the relational processes in adolescent girls' relationship with female adult mentors from the perspective of the participants themselves. Each adolescent and mentor pair was extensively interviewed separately and then together. Their recorded comments were analyzed and revealed that girls benefit from both skill development and gain vital emotional support.
Those findings appear in the Journal of Primary Prevention in a study led by Renee Spencer, an assistant professor at Boston University School of Social Work and Belle Liang, an associate professor at Boston College that was published last month.
"In the absence of much research on gender in mentoring, many have assumed that boys are mostly interested in doing activities with male mentors, which, by nature, may be more focused on skill building and problem solving whereas girls are more interested in developing emotionally-focused relationships with mentors," said Spencer. "However, in our study, we found that these girls' relationships with their mentors offered both emotional support and opportunities to develop skills and confidence through collaborations with their mentors in shared activities, such as doing homework together or learning to sing."
A key ingredient needed for the healthy psychological development in adolescents is a strong relationship with adults. For these young people living in single-parent homes or coming from disadvantaged backgrounds, community-based mentoring programs try to create such connections by matching them with unrelated adult volunteers in the hope that a caring and supportive relationship will develop.
The study, "She Gives Me a Break from the World": Formal Youth Mentoring Relationships Between Adolescent Girls and Adult Women," involved in-depth interviews of 12 pairs of girls, referred to as protégées, and women who had been in a mentoring relationships for between 2.5 to 11 years. They were in a formal mentoring program established through the Big Sister Association of Greater Boston.
The girls, racially and ethnically diverse, ranged in age from 13 to 17 years, and were referred to the agency by friends and family members or child protective services case workers. The mentors, mostly single women, were White and 28 to 55-years of age. They met their protégées with parental consent, regularly three to four times per month for at least a year and routinely corresponded through emails and phone conversations.
While mentoring is often viewed as the adult offering support to the child, the study found that the collaboration of these 12 pairs was more of a two-way arrangement, in which "the adult partners or joins in the process of working with the child to meet her goals, offers scaffolding to expand the reach of the child and actively contributes to the learning, thereby enhancing the likelihood of success."
A thematic analysis of the three-part interviews (adolescent alone, adult alone and pair together), some initial themes were identified and grouped into five larger categories: shared activities, emotional support, companionship, collaboration and improvement in the girls' psychosexual functioning.
Emotional support was a dominant theme with some girls saying, "I can tell her all my secrets," and "we talk about everything," while the mentors commented about "she knows she can talk to me about anything," and "She knows that I'm always gonna be there… But I think she tells me some things….that she doesn't tell her mom." Still others cited an adolescent girl's anger issues and the need to be a calming influence.
In developing new skills and confidence the girls would praise how they learned new things and gained help with their studies.
The study acknowledges that the mentors ability to listen, respond with genuine thoughts and opinions while not passing judgment was in part because they were freed from the responsibilities of parenting.
"For many of these girls, their mentors had the luxury of being able to spend lengthy amounts of time alone with them, something their stretched parents were often less able to offer," the study noted.
For everyone involved, companionship – the spending time together -- meant "fun," a word repeated by both protégées and mentors. Although for some mentors, "fun" meant spending a lot of money on particular things, the authors noted that "our findings, however, seem to suggest that girls enjoy trying new things in the context of close and supportive relationships."
The findings from this study suggest that programs serving girls should be cautious about prioritizing emotional support over skill-building, or assuming that skill-building may undermine more collaborative or bi-directional relationships between female youth and adult program participants. Instead, attention should be given to integrating various types of support in interventions for girls, as emotional support and collaborative skill-building may play a synergistic role in supporting the positive development of female youth.
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