A study released today by the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL) confirms that homework is linked to higher student achievement—but only if it is judiciously assigned and engaging to the student.
The substantial evidence review brings up to date the landmark 2006 study by Harris Cooper, which systematically reviewed homework research published between 1987 and 2003.
CCL’s systematic review examines results of 18 studies, published from 2003 to 2007, that looked into the effectiveness of homework in primary, intermediate and secondary schools across Europe and the United States. There were no equivalent Canadian studies published in this five-year period.
The key findings are summarized in CCL's Lessons in Learning article "Homework helps, but not always," which is a digest of the 61-page systematic review.
Key findings
• Homework that demands active student engagement—such as deciding which strategy to use for a particular mathematics word problem—is more likely to be effective than, for example, rote repetition..
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• Of the three studies examining primary students, the evidence did not suggest that homework benefits younger students.
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• Lower achieving students appear to have the most to gain from doing homework.
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• CCL’s review confirmed Harris Cooper’s general rule of thumb that homework should not exceed 10 minutes per grade level per day. (i.e., a Grade 8 student should receive no more than 80 minutes of homework per day.)
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The impact of homework on academic achievement is a topic that was identified by the Canadian Teachers' Federation as an issue of importance to teachers.
Complete report:
http://www.ccl-cca.ca/CCL/Reports/SystematicReviews/Homework.htm
LEFT BEHIND IN AMERICA: THE NATION’S DROPOUT CRISIS A REPORT BY THE CENTER FOR LABOR MARKET STUDIES AT NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY IN BOSTON AND THE ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS NETWORK IN CHICAGO
America is currently in the throes of a persistent high school dropout crisis that has been a long time in the making, with substantial disparities in dropout rates across race, ethnic, and income groups and geographic areas. The absence of new funding at the federal and state level since the 1980s has led to decades of disinvestment in re-enrollment programs across the country. In the current global economy, having at least a high school diploma is a critical step for avoiding poverty, and a college degree is a prerequisite for a well-paying job. The costs of dropping out of high school today are substantial and have risen over time, especially for young men, who find it almost impossible to earn an adequate income to take care of themselves and their families.
The Obama Administration's national education agenda expresses clear support for addressing the dropout crisis through preventive measures implemented during the middle-school years and reforming the No Child Left Behind law. The selection of former Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan as National Education Secretary sets the stage for an exploration of strategies to re-engage students who have already dropped out of high school. Because of the widespread, pressing nature of the crisis and the large numbers of young people who have already dropped out, a national re-enrollment strategy should be a fundamental part of America's national education agenda.
In order to lay the groundwork for an informed discussion of solutions, the Center for Labor Market Studies (CLMS) in cooperation with the Chicago Alternative Schools Network analyzed a variety of data from 2007, including dropout data from U.S. Census Bureau American Community Surveys, household data from the Current Population Survey, national data on GED certificate awards, and other official sources to gauge the level of the crisis at the national level and in the nation's 12 largest states which include California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia.
A BLEAK NATIONAL PICTURE: NEARLY 6.2 MILLION DROPOUTS
The dropout crisis impacts all of America, but affects men, Blacks, and Hispanics particularly hard. In 2007, an astounding 16.0% of persons between 16 and 24 years of age (nearly 6.2 million people) were high school dropouts. Among these dropouts, 60.1% were men, 18.8% were Black, and 30.1% were Hispanic. In addition:
• Nearly one in five U.S. men between the ages of 16-24 (18.9%) were dropouts in 2007.
• Nearly three out of 10 Hispanics were dropouts (27.5%).
• More than one of five Blacks had dropped out of school (21%)--versus a dropout rate for Whites of 12.2%.
DROPOUT CRISIS EQUALLY PRESSING IN 12 LARGEST STATES
STATE DROPOUTS AGED 16- 24 DROPOUT RATE
California 710,383 14.4%
Florida 423,529 20.1%
Georgia 270,114 22.1%
Illinois 218,949 13.2%
Michigan 162,512 12.8%
New Jersey 111,236 10.8%
New York 368,854 14.6%
North Carolina 202,280 17.6%
Ohio 188,335 13.3%
Pennsylvania 196,360 12.5%
Texas 582,109 18.5%
Virginia 139,783 13.9% (Additional national and state findings are available in the full report).
LIFELONG ECONOMIC IMPACTS FROM DROPPING OUT Americans without a high school diploma have considerably lower earning power and job opportunities in today’s workforce. Over a working lifetime from ages 18-64, high school dropouts are estimated to earn $400,000 less than those that graduated from high school. For males, the lifetime earnings loss is nearly $485,000 and exceeds $500,000 in many large states. Due to their lower lifetime earnings and other sources of market incomes, dropouts will contribute far less in federal, state, and local taxes than they will receive in cash benefits, in-kind transfers, and correctional costs. Over their lifetimes, this will impose a net fiscal burden on the rest of society.
By contrast, adults with high school diplomas contribute major fiscal benefits to the country over their lifetime. The combined lifetime fiscal benefits––including the payment of payroll, federal, and state income taxes––could amount to more than $250,000 per graduated student. Such a public fiscal benefit more than outweighs the estimated cost of enrolling a student who has dropped out.
WHAT'S NEEDED: A FEDERAL AND STATE RE-ENROLLMENT PROGRAM
It is our responsibility as a society to explore every potential means to do so. If we do nothing, the cost of inaction will be steep--not just for the nearly 6.2 million high school dropouts, many of whom will remain jobless and with low incomes, but for the economic and social wellbeing of our nation as a whole, for years to come.
A range of effective re-enrollment programs have emerged in recent years both nationally and in number of cities including Chicago, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and Portland (Oregon). These programs have found that young people who have left high school before earning a diploma are not dead-end dropouts, but often are in fact students waiting and looking for opportunities to reenroll and finish high school. The most successful programs are small (80-150 students), offering comprehensive after-school and summer activities, led by experienced principals and teachers, focused on learning in the real world, well funded with local school site program and fiscal control, and track specific, measurable outcomes for student achievement including skill gains, enrollment, attendance, credit gains, promotions, and graduations. These programs should be used as models for additional local and national efforts.
Full report:
http://www.clms.neu.edu/publication/documents/CLMS_2009_Dropout_Report.pdf
Basic Reading Skills and the Literacy of the America's Least Literate Adults
The 2003 NAAL assessed the English literacy skills of a nationally representative sample of 18,500 U.S. adults (age 16 and older) residing in private households. NAAL is the first national assessment of adult literacy since the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS). The NAAL project comprised four assessment components: the core literacy tasks, the main literacy assessment, the Fluency Addition to NAAL (FAN), and the Adult Literacy Supplemental Assessment (ALSA). Results from the main literacy assessment are reported as averages and as the percentage of adults in each of four literacy levels: Below Basic, Basic, Intermediate, and Proficient. This report focuses on results from the FAN and the ALSA.
The Adult Literacy Supplemental Assessment (ALSA) was administered to adults unable to successfully answer the core literacy tasks. Instead of completing the main literacy assessment, these adults completed the ALSA, which gathered information about their letter-reading, word-reading, word-identification, and basic comprehension skills.
The Fluency Addition to NAAL (FAN) measures the basic reading skills of America's adults. The FAN was administered to all adults who participated in the NAAL project following the completion of the main literacy assessment or the supplemental assessment.
Key Findings:
* Seven million adults, or about 3% of the adult population, could not complete even the most basic literacy tasks in the main assessment and were given the supplemental assessment.
* Nearly 1 in 5 adults in the nonliterate in English group had a high school diploma or GED. Among them, more than half (representing roughly 600,000 adults) had earned their high school degree in the US.
* For those for whom Spanish is a first language, a delay in learning English is associated with low basic reading skills. Those who learned English before age 11 had basic reading scores similar to average native English speakers (97 words read correctly per minute); however, for those who learned English after age 21, average scores were 35 points (or about one-third) lower. Due to the correlational nature of these data, it is impossible to make causal attributions, i.e., to say that a delay in learning English causes low basic reading skills.
• Adults who took the main literary assessment were able to read, on average, 98 words correctly per minute (wpm), in comparison to 34 wpm by those in the supplemental assessment.
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Full report:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009481.pdf
Study finds children's activity levels not influenced by more PE time in school
Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Scheduling more physical education time in schools does not mean children will increase their activity levels, suggests new research that discovered those who got lots of timetabled exercise at school compensated by doing less at home while those who got little at school made up for it by being more active at home.
The scientists, who presented their research Thursday at the European Congress on Obesity, found that the total weekly physical activity among children attending different schools was much the same despite large differences in the amount of time allocated to PE. The researchers propose it's not the environment that drives physical activity levels in children, but some form of central control in the brain similar to appetite – an 'activitystat'.
"These findings have implications for anti-obesity policies because they challenge the assumption that creating more opportunity for children to be active – by providing more playgrounds, sports facilities and more physical education time in schools – will mean more physical activity," said the study's analyst, Alissa Frémeaux, a biostatistician at Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry in Plymouth, UK. "If health strategists want to alter the physical activity of children, it is important that they first understand what controls it."
The researchers studied 206 children from three primary schools (age 7__ years) with widely different amounts of timetabled physical education. Children attending one school got on average 9.2 hours a week of scheduled PE, while those at the second school got 2.4 hours a week and those at the third got just 1.7 hours in a week.
The study is the first to track the school activity patterns of children repeatedly over a long period of time using accelerometers, gadgets that record clock time and duration as well as intensity of activity. The children wore the accelerometer – the gold standard for measuring physical activity in large population studies - all day, every day for 7 days during each of four consecutive school terms. The researchers analysed the intensity and amount of in-school physical activity, out-of-school activity and the amount of total weekly physical activity. Body measurements for body composition and blood samples for metabolic health were also taken for each child. The results were adjusted for age, gender, daylight hours and rainfall.
The researchers found that although the children attending the high-PE school did 40% more activity during school hours than the other children, their total weekly activity was no different from the others.
"There was, of course, a range in the amount of activity the children did at each school, but the range and it's average were the same regardless of what school they went to. We discovered that the children who got a lot of PE time at school were compensating by doing less at home, while those who got very little PE time compensated by cranking up their activity at home, so that over the week, they all accumulated the same amount," Frémeaux said. "We believe the range of activity among children, from the slothful to the hyperactive, reflects not the range in environmental opportunities, but the range of individual activity set-points in the brains of children."
Frémeaux pointed out that rodent experiments, as well as other observations in children and adults such as the same physical activity level in people from different geographical regions and between weekend and weekdays, lend support to the activitystat theory.
Frémeaux concluded: "There is plenty of evidence that the opportunities for children to be active have changed over recent years, but we cannot find the evidence that more opportunity means more activity."
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