Young children whose parents are active participants in their development by reading, talking, teaching and playing at every opportunity help their children become better prepared for school according to Alan Mendelsohn, M.D., Associate Professor of Pediatrics at NYU School of Medicine and Bellevue Hospital Center in New York City and his colleagues in developmental-behavioral pediatrics, developmental psychology, public policy and education. They are taking advantage of numerous health check-ups of children from birth to 5 years of age – the most critical time for brain development – to study whether working with parents can help children be better prepared for school.
For many children, health care represents the only contact with child professionals before starting school, and therefore provides an opportunity to implement low cost, preventive interventions to improve outcomes in low socioeconomic status (SES) children at high risk for disparities in development and school readiness. In partnership with Children of Bellevue, Inc., an interdisciplinary team of child health and development professionals (pediatrics, developmental psychology, and education) formed a laboratory at New York University and Bellevue Hospital Center (BHC) with the goal of leveraging health care in order to enhance parent-child interactions, a crucial and modifiable poverty-related factor.
The objective of the study was to determine whether primary care parenting interventions can have an impact on parent child interaction at age 14 months. In one of the programs, called the Video Interaction Project (VIP), parents are videotaped while they wait to see the doctor; working together with an early childhood education specialist, parents learn to engage in positive interactions by watching themselves on tape. In a prior study, VIP has already been shown to improve IQ and reading achievement in first grade. In a second program, called Building Blocks (BB), parenting materials are mailed monthly to families in order to encourage positive interactions with their children. In both programs, the key component is the link to child health care, which provides an opportunity for universal intervention at low cost; both build on successful child health care literacy programs such as Reach Out and Read. Together with critical educational initiatives such as pre-kindergarten, working with parents during child health care visits can help the most vulnerable children succeed in school and in life.
Being Bullied in Childhood Associated With Psychotic Symptoms Among Pre-Teens
Children who are consistently victimized by peers appear more likely to develop psychotic symptoms in early adolescence, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Some psychosis-like symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions are commonly experienced in childhood and adulthood, according to background information in the article. Children with these symptoms are at increased risk of developing psychosis in adulthood. “Recent studies have demonstrated an association between traumatic events such as abuse in childhood and psychosis in adults,” the authors write.
Andrea Schreier, Ph.D., of Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, Coventry, England, and colleagues studied 6,437 individuals in early adolescence (average age 12.9) who were part of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). Parents had completed regular mailed questionnaires about their child’s health and development since birth, and the children underwent yearly physical and psychological assessments from age 7.
At each visit, trained interviewers rated the children on whether they had experienced psychotic symptoms (hallucinations, delusions or thought disorders) during the previous six months. Children, parents and teachers reported on whether the child had experienced peer victimization, defined as negative actions by one of more other students with the intention to hurt.
A total of 46.2 percent of participants were categorized as victims and 53.8 percent were not victimized at either ages 8 or 10. At follow-up, 13.7 percent had broad psychosis-like symptoms (one or more symptoms suspected or definitely present), 11.5 percent had intermediate symptoms (one or more of the symptoms was suspected or present at times other than going to sleep, waking from sleep, fever or after substance use) and 5.6 percent had narrow symptoms (one or more symptoms definitely present).
The risk of psychotic symptoms was approximately doubled among children who were victims of bullying at age 8 or 10, independent of other psychiatric illness, family adversity or the child’s IQ. The association was stronger when victimization was chronic or severe.
“A range of mechanisms has been proposed to explain the link between traumatic events, such as victimization, and psychotic symptoms,” the authors write. For instance, chronic stress from bullying may act on a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia to trigger symptoms.
“Whether repeated victimization experiences alter cognitive and affective processing or reprogram stress response or whether psychotic symptoms are more likely due to genetic predisposition still needs to be determined in further research,” the authors conclude. “A major implication is that chronic or severe peer victimization has non-trivial, adverse, long-term consequences. Reduction of peer victimization and of the resulting stress caused to victims could be a worthwhile target for prevention and early intervention efforts for common mental health problems and psychosis.”
Middle-school Math Classes Are Key To Closing Racial Academic Achievement Gap
More challenging middle-school math classes and increased access to advanced courses in predominantly black urban high schools may be the key to closing the racial academic achievement gap, according to a University of Illinois study.
"Although we've poured a lot of money and resources into trying to reduce inequalities between black and white students, we've mainly focused on test scores and that hasn't been successful," said Christy Lleras, a U of I assistant professor of human and community development.
Why target middle-school math? Lleras said there's a feedback loop between math placement, student effort, and academic achievement.
"Over time, these three factors affect each other. Students who take more advanced math courses in middle school lengthen their lead over time, and the positive school-related behaviors developed in those advanced courses lead to even higher achievement.
"But the opposite is also true. Lower math placement in middle school significantly lowers a student's chances of getting into higher-level math courses in high school, which translates into fewer skills and behaviors and greater achievement gaps in high school," she said.
These gaps are largest in high-minority urban schools. "For kids in predominantly black urban schools, the biggest predictor of the math course they took in high school was the math course they took in eighth grade. For all other students, the biggest predictor was their prior achievement, not the course they took," she noted.
Lleras used data from the U.S. Department of Education's National Educational Longitudinal Study to follow the effects of math placement, school-related behaviors, and achievement in more than 6,500 public school students as they progressed from the eighth to the tenth grade.
Transcript data indicated the highest-level math course the student had taken at these levels. Math achievement was measured via tests given at the end of these school years. And engagement and effort were measured by teachers' evaluations of the student's attentiveness, disruptiveness, and homework habits.
Lleras believes that increased access to more advanced and rigorous math classes in high-minority urban schools can have a significant direct effect on all students' achievement and particularly that of African American students.
"Being in a classroom where the expectations are higher, the course work is more rigorous, and the climate is more academic has huge effects on student effort," she said.
Lleras worries that lower-performing schools will concentrate on teaching to the tests mandated by No Child Left Behind.
"Instead of focusing on test scores, we may be better able to affect educational trajectories by improving teacher quality and reducing class sizes, which helps to create school climates that foster both academic learning and student effort," she said.
Because racial achievement gaps were already significant by eighth grade, Lleras believes educators must begin to address gaps in achievement and opportunities to learn much earlier.
She argues that universal preschool and expansion of Head Start would go a long way toward reducing early racial inequalities because early-childhood programs tend to affect student-related attitudes and engagement more than achievement test scores.
"Children can't learn new material until they have the toolkit of skills and school-related behaviors to do so," she said.
"Then we have to make a sustained effort to keep these children learning over time. We need a persistent and additional effort to support urban minority students through tutoring programs and improved access to challenging material and high-quality teachers," she said.
"This study was a snapshot of three years in these kids' lives, and in just three years, they were falling farther and farther behind," she added.
The study was published in a recent issue of the American Educational Research Journal.
Effectiveness of Selected Supplemental Reading Comprehension Interventions: Impacts on a First Cohort of Fifth-Grade Students
This release reports on the impacts on student achievement for four supplemental reading curricula that use similar overlapping instructional strategies designed to improve reading comprehension in social studies and science text.
Fifth-grade reading comprehension for each of three commercially-available curricula (Project CRISS, ReadAbout, and Read for Real) was not significantly different from the control group. The fourth curriculum, Reading for Knowledge, was adapted from Success for All for this study, and had a statistically-significant negative impact on fifth-grade reading comprehension.
This study is being conducted as part of the National Assessment of Title I.
Complete report:
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20094032/pdf/20094032.pdf
K-State researcher: Poverty is rooted in US education system
Inequalities are rooted in many areas of the U.S. education system, and the current system's relationship with poverty has not improved, according to a Kansas State University researcher.
Kay Ann Taylor, associate professor of secondary education at K-State, has studied the historical and modern aspects of poverty, including its relationship with education. Her research, which is published in the winter 2009 Journal of Educational Controversy, shows that a more in-depth understanding of poverty is needed for social transformation.
"There is no simple answer to alleviate poverty, just as there is no simple answer for its embedded state in America," Taylor said. "However, the common element shared by all is our humanness. People devastated by poverty are not deficient, less than or subhuman. They are not broken; however, the system in which they are embroiled very well may be."
Taylor's historical research shows that numerous factors led to poverty, including laws and acts, white and male privilege, scientific racism and social welfare. Her research about the current manifestations of poverty shows that much work needs to be done, because the situation has not improved. Taylor said a problem in U.S. public schools is that many reinforce a dominant cultural reproduction, which undermines independent thought.
"Education in the modern corporate-industrial society has emerged as central to state political and ideological management," she said. "Political and ideological management involves ideation, which in this context means the imparting and reinforcement of ideas and values that support the current economic and social order."
Taylor said frequently textbooks in primary and secondary schools and in higher education do not address issues like poverty fully and often are reduced and oversimplified. "Far too many schools continue to endorse a curriculum of the absurd that encompasses 'heroification' of primarily white males, while the contributions of women and people of color appear in pop-out format in textbooks," she said.
The No Child Left Behind Act also continues to be a problem, except for students who attend private schools, which are exempt from the act. Taylor said this increases the education system's inequalities since typically children of the powerful, wealthy elite have the opportunity for a private education, as they have for generations. For example, the mandate of the act that allows military recruitment in low-achieving and typically low-income schools targets the poor and exempts the wealthy and elite, she said.
"The No Child Left Behind Act's scripted curriculum, relentless testing and oppressive mandates create a robotic-like setting for mindless regurgitation of irrelevant and contextually void facts that challenge our most creative, dedicated and culturally responsive teachers ? and run the remainder out of teaching all together," Taylor said.
Because public school funding relies, in part, on property taxes, Taylor said in communities with little property ownership in the way of a tax base, schools and children suffer. Another area that needs to be revamped is education for teachers. Educators need to understand the multiple dimensions of poverty in order to be knowledgeable and effective, she said.
"Teachers are placed in the forefront of this dilemma, and many have no personal experience or educational background to address issues of poverty in their classrooms," Taylor said.
When teachers are not well informed about issues like poverty, Taylor said they are unable to relate to situations students face. For instance, when a child acts out, many teachers neglect to consider possibilities for the student's actions that could be effects of poverty.
"Another destructive and common stereotype held by teachers is that parents of poor children do not care about their education," Taylor said. "They cite parents' lack of involvement or attendance as a reason. However, they fail to understand that poor parents love and care about their children and their education just as every parent does, and that their lack of involvement or attendance may be due to working several jobs, unreliable transportation or numerous other factors."
Taylor said educators should be respectful, caring and empathetic and should create a challenging and engaging learning environment for children at all levels. She said the essential characteristics include a small teacher-to-student ratio, relevant curriculum where the students see themselves represented and an environment where children feel safe.
"Although these characteristics may not eliminate poverty, they will provide learners with a solid foundation upon which to build, rather than reproducing control, mindlessness, isolation and stratification," Taylor said.
Surge of Chinese Language Programs
More U.S. students than ever before are beginning to learn Chinese, according to a rreport, "Chinese in 2008: An Expanding Field."
Though a comprehensive survey of student enrollment is not available, data collected for the report indicates that the number of Chinese programs in the United States has grown by almost 200 percent since tallies were last taken in 2004. Additionally, in the year between 2005 and 2006, the number of students at the higher education level who were learning Chinese jumped by 52 percent, stated the report. Labeled as "unprecedented" by the report, the expansion is viewed as the result of interest from multiple sources in the study of China, including government, education and the public and private sectors. Innovations in technology as well as a greater emphasis on immersion experiences have also contributed significantly, said the report.
Programs like the College Board's own AP® Chinese Language and Culture program have helped put Chinese on an equal footing with more commonly taught languages, such as French, German and Spanish, the report said. "AP Chinese has seen rapid growth and is expected to increase 50 percent by May 2008 to approximately 5,000 exams," said Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board.
While encouraging, the report cautioned that the momentum must now be utilized strategically so that new programs are given the structure to establish strong roots and provide the opportunity to students to proceed with proficiency and literacy development. "Without serious and systematic attention to the next phase of growth, there is a danger that the seedlings could fail to thrive or even wilt," the report said. In addition to this push for structure and coordination, the report stressed the need for qualified teachers, better availability of Chinese programs to elementary-school-age children, better communication and coordination between high school and college programs, and better access to Chinese education programs to students outside metropolitan areas.
Complete report:
http://internationaled.org/Chinese%20Lang%20Mtg%20Report%20081005.pdf
New Research: California High School Exit Exam Lowers Graduation Rates for Girls and Students of Color
Among Low-Achieving Girls and Students of Color, Graduation Rates Decline by Nearly 20 Percentage Points Because of the Exit Exam
A new study released by the Institute for Research on Education Policy and Practice at Stanford University reveals a startling impact of the California High School Exit Exam on California’s lowest performing students. The exit exam has reduced graduation rates among girls and students of color in the lowest-performing quartile by nearly 20 percentage points.
The study uses longitudinal data to examine the effects of the exit exam by comparing students scheduled to graduate just before (2005) and after (2006-07) the exit exam became a requirement for graduation from California’s high schools.
According to the study, the exit exam has had a severe impact on graduation rates among students who performed poorly on previous standardized tests. In particular, the data show the negative effects of the exit exam were very large for female and minority students:
• On average, graduation rates for female students whose scores were in the lowest quartile on earlier standardized tests were 19 percentage points lower than those of similar female students in the same quartile who were not subject to the exit exam. Graduation rates for males in the same quartile were 12 percentage points lower.
• The same unintended effect of the exit exam was found among minority students (Black, Latino and Asian) in the lowest quartile of academic achievement. Graduation rates of minority students in the bottom quartile declined by 15 to 19 percentage points after the introduction of the exit exam requirement. Graduation rates of similar white students declined by only 1 percentage point.
The study examined records for students in four of the largest school districts in California: San Francisco, Fresno, Long Beach and San Diego. Researchers analyzed data measuring student persistence (whether or not students stayed in school), achievement, and graduation rates for the first classes required to pass the exit exam for graduation (the classes of 2006 and 2007). These figures were then compared to similar students from the same districts who were scheduled to graduate in 2005, before the exit exam was a graduation requirement.
Unlike prior research on the California exit exam, this study examined the varying effects of the exit exam for students of different achievement levels and demographic characteristics. Other key findings from the study include:
• There is no evidence that the exit exam has improved student achievement. Students subject to the exit exam learned no more between 10th and 11th grade (as measured by the California Standards Tests) than did similar students from the cohort not required to take the exam.
• The findings of the study are consistent with “stereotype threat” explanations of test performance.
The study found that female students and Black and Hispanic students underperform on the math exit exam, and that Black, Hispanic, and Asian students underperform on the English Language Arts exit exam, compared to male and White students with similar levels of academic skills. As a result, exit exam passing rates for female and minority students are much lower than for comparably-skilled male and White students. This is consistent with well-documented “stereotype threat” explanations of test performance, which explain that high-stakes tests (like the exit exam) produce more stress in minority students and girls than in white students and boys because students fear that their performance on the test will confirm negative stereotypes about the academic skills of their group.
The full report:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/irepp/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=243
Crime, Violence, Discipline, and Safety in U.S. Public Schools, Findings from the School Survey on Crime and Safety: 2007-08.
This First Look report uses data from the 2007-08 School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS) to examine a range of issues dealing with school crime and safety, such as the frequency of school crime and violence, disciplinary actions, and school practices related to the prevention and reduction of crime. SSOCS is the primary source of school-level data on crime and safety for NCES. Since 1999, it has been administered four times to the principals of nationally representative samples of public primary, middle, high, and combined schools.
The full report:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009326.pdf
Financial Barriers to Attending College Affect Academic Goals in Young Students
Most young students do not enjoy homework. However, after being told that good grades will help them get into college and lead to a better life, most students eventually buckle down and start studying. But what if college is not an option? If a student thinks they won't be able to afford a higher education – if the path towards college feels closed to them – they may conclude that studying and homework are a waste of time. Psychologists Mesmin Destin and Daphna Oyserman from the University of Michigan wanted to know at what age this thinking starts to set in and found out that this mentality and lack of motivation towards school occurs in children as young as 11 years of age.
Seventh-grade students from low-income families participated in these studies. The students were either provided with information about need-based financial-aid opportunities available to them (i.e., open-path mind-set – that college was a possibility for them) or information about the enormous costs associated with a college education (i.e., closed-path mind-set – that college was not a viable option for them). The students then completed questionnaires about their academic goals, expected grades and how many hours they planned on studying and doing homework later that evening.
The results, reported in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reveal that mind-set matters. When students, as young as 11 years of age, felt that college was an option for them, they expected to do better in school and planned on putting more effort into studying and homework, compared to students who did not view college as a realistic possibility. When the researchers looked at the students' current grade point averages, they found that the positive effects of an open-path mind-set were not as great for students with lower grade point averages; these students planned on spending less time studying compared to students with higher grades.
Many students begin receiving financial aid information towards the end of high school but these findings indicate that may be too late. The authors note that, based on these results, parents and children from low-income families "should learn about the financial accessibility of college early, before gaps in student achievement levels emerge and some fall behind."
Most young students do not enjoy homework. However, after being told that good grades will help them get into college and lead to a better life, most students eventually buckle down and start studying. But what if college is not an option? If a student thinks they won't be able to afford a higher education – if the path towards college feels closed to them – they may conclude that studying and homework are a waste of time. Psychologists Mesmin Destin and Daphna Oyserman from the University of Michigan wanted to know at what age this thinking starts to set in and found out that this mentality and lack of motivation towards school occurs in children as young as 11 years of age.
Seventh-grade students from low-income families participated in these studies. The students were either provided with information about need-based financial-aid opportunities available to them (i.e., open-path mind-set – that college was a possibility for them) or information about the enormous costs associated with a college education (i.e., closed-path mind-set – that college was not a viable option for them). The students then completed questionnaires about their academic goals, expected grades and how many hours they planned on studying and doing homework later that evening.
The results, reported in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reveal that mind-set matters. When students, as young as 11 years of age, felt that college was an option for them, they expected to do better in school and planned on putting more effort into studying and homework, compared to students who did not view college as a realistic possibility. When the researchers looked at the students' current grade point averages, they found that the positive effects of an open-path mind-set were not as great for students with lower grade point averages; these students planned on spending less time studying compared to students with higher grades.
Many students begin receiving financial aid information towards the end of high school but these findings indicate that may be too late. The authors note that, based on these results, parents and children from low-income families "should learn about the financial accessibility of college early, before gaps in student achievement levels emerge and some fall behind."
Applied Baccalaureate Degrees at Two-Year Colleges Play Critical Roles
Applied baccalaureate degree programs at community colleges not only offer a path for non-traditional students to earn a bachelor’s degree, but they also help state and local governments address shortages in the workforce, according to a University of Illinois expert who studies how first-generation college students use community colleges as a bridge to higher education.
Debra Bragg, a professor of educational organization and leadership and the director of the Forum on the Future of Public Education at Illinois, says that the applied baccalaureate degree is becoming a more popular option for students, especially for career-changing adult learners and first-generation college students, as states look for novel ways to improve access to higher education.
“Applied baccalaureate degree programs at community colleges can be used by students looking for a career that is emerging, or for adults who have earned college credits in the past and are looking to re-enter college, often to advance their careers to a supervisory level,” Bragg said.
An applied baccalaureate degree is a four-year bachelor’s degree that’s earned at both four- and two-year institutions of higher education such as a community or technical college; it counts technical and associate degree-level courses as credits toward a degree, something not all four-year universities do.
The subject matter of the degree usually focuses on applied academics or applied sciences and technologies in order to meet projected workforce needs in regions where workers are displaced by a crumbling manufacturing base, or by jobs that have been off-shored or outsourced.
Since 2000, the number of states awarding applied baccalaureate degrees has nearly doubled; today, 39 states offer the degree.
The most controversial aspect of applied baccalaureate degrees, according to Bragg, is that some are awarded by a community college. So far, only 10 states – Texas, Florida, Washington, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, West Virginia, New York and Hawaii – have community colleges that are authorized to pilot or award applied baccalaureate degrees, but Bragg anticipates that number will grow.
Earning an applied baccalaureate degree may provide a lifeline to underserved learners, including first-generation college students both young and old, and downsized workers who don’t hold a college degree but may have an associate’s degree, a technical certification, or a high school diploma, Bragg said.
“An applied baccalaureate degree represents a viable pathway for someone who previously hadn’t thought about earning a bachelor’s degree, but now sees it as a necessary step to getting and keeping a good job with benefits,” she said. “In the industrial era, course work in technical fields was thought to be sufficient to enable graduates to secure lifetime employment, so the programs lacked content required for earning a traditional bachelor’s degree. That’s not the case, anymore. An applied baccalaureate represents a capstone to programs originally labeled terminal at the two-year level.”
Even with the emergence of the applied baccalaureate degree programs nationally and the importance placed on re-training laid-off workers through community colleges in the Bush and Obama administrations, enrollment is still modest. And that’s a troubling trend, according to Bragg, because it puts the long-term economic viability of the U.S. at risk.
“There’s a very large pool of adults in the U.S. who don’t have any college education, who haven’t completed high school, or adults who have some college credit but have not earned any credentials,” Bragg said. “Those adults are out in the workforce but they’re not able to enter a high-paying career path, nor are they able to move up the ladder in their current jobs. In order to have an economic recovery, create more high-paying jobs and maintain our standard of living, we need a better-educated country. Better funding of our community colleges and increasing the number of applied baccalaureate programs can help to address our nation’s critical workforce needs.”
Bragg says the programs also suffer from a lack of funding.
“Whether you’re a two-year or four-year institution, there’s just not enough money at the state and federal level for higher education to go around,” she said.
Insufficient funding for education is a familiar refrain, but Bragg says access to higher education is important not only during times of economic crisis, but also to prepare for the void left behind by the mass retirements of the baby boomer generation.
“With the impending exodus of the baby boomer generation from the workforce, there’s going to be a tremendous brain-drain in both the private sector and at public institutions,” Bragg said. “There are simply not enough adults with bachelor’s degrees to replace that generation of workers.”
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