Many children who are retained in kindergarten, first or third grade for academic reasons do not subsequently receive a document outlining the individualized special education services they should receive, according to a report in the June issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Each year, 5 percent to 10 percent of American students are retained at the same grade level, according to background information in the article. One in 10 students age 16 to 19 have repeated a grade. "Some of these students may require special education services at the time they are retained, in subsequent years or both," the authors write. "One approach to supporting a child with low academic achievement is the provision of special education services, as indicated in an Individualized Education Program (IEP). An IEP is a legally binding document describing a child's special education services and is developed after the child has undergone a special evaluation and has been determined eligible for services."
Eligibility for an IEP varies from state to state, but under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, every American child has the right to an evaluation. Michael Silverstein, M.D., M.P.H., of Boston Medical Center, and colleagues studied 380 children nationwide who were retained in elementary school for academic reasons (300 in kindergarten or first grade and 80 in third grade). The children were followed up through fifth grade.
Of the children retained in kindergarten or first grade, 40 (12.9 percent) had an IEP on record during the year they were held back, 60 (18.2 percent) received an IEP in the next one to five years and 210 (68.9 percent) never received an IEP. Twenty (18.9 percent) of the third-graders had an IEP during or before the year they were retained, 10 (8.8 percent) received one in the next one to two years and 60 (72.3 percent) never received one.
Children retained in kindergarten and first grade were less likely to have an IEP if they had a high socioeconomic status or lived in the suburbs rather than rural areas. "Among kindergarten/first grade retainees with persistently low academic achievement in math and reading, as assessed by standardized testing, 38.2 percent and 29.7 percent, respectively, never received an IEP," the authors write.
"Although debates about the value of grade retention abound, the practice, in and of itself, has never been demonstrated to be an effective intervention relative to subsequent academic achievement or socioemotional adjustment," the authors write. "Therefore, some experts in the field believe that retention should be accompanied by focused individualized assessments of children's special education needs. Although our results do not definitely demonstrate that retained children have been denied their rights to such assessments, they raise the question of whether the potential special education needs of retained children, particularly those who demonstrate persistent academic difficulties, are being addressed consistently."
Nation's Schools Failing to Assess Teacher Effectiveness, Treating Teachers as Interchangeable Parts
Study Describes “Widget Effect,” Which Prevents Schools from Recognizing Excellence, Providing Support, or Removing Ineffective Teachers
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen, U.S. Representative George Miller (D-CA) Join in Call for Overhaul of Teacher Evaluation Systems and Policies Governing Use of Evaluation Ratings
The New Teacher Project
America’s schools operate in a policy environment that assumes all teachers are the same, according to a comprehensive study by The New Teacher Project (TNTP), a national nonprofit dedicated to ensuring that all students get excellent teachers. Though a teacher’s effectiveness is singularly important to student success, schools do not distinguish great teaching from good, good from fair, or fair from poor, and a teacher’s effectiveness in helping students to succeed academically almost never factors into critical decisions such as how teachers are hired, developed or retained.
This pervasive indifference to teacher performance is fundamentally disrespectful to teachers and gambles with the lives of students. It means that excellent teaching goes unrecognized, hard-working teachers who could improve are ignored, and poor performance goes unaddressed.
The Widget Effect: Our National Failure to Acknowledge and Act on Differences in Teacher Effectiveness is the product of an extensive and collaborative research effort to quantify this fundamental problem and offer solutions for school districts and policymakers.
“Effective teachers who are fairly compensated are vital ingredients in the reforms our schools need,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said. “Schools need to have evaluation systems that fairly and accurately identify effective teachers.”
"If we expect every child to receive a world-class education, we must provide teachers with the fair compensation and opportunities they deserve," said U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. "This includes a thorough and meaningful evaluation process. Education is key to a lasting economic recovery; building a professional, well-rewarded and appreciated teaching workforce is in the best interest of both our students and our economic future."
The two-year research project spanned four states—Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois and Ohio—and 12 diverse districts, ranging in enrollment from 4,000 to over 400,000 students. TNTP analyzed survey responses from over 15,000 teachers and 1,300 principals, and data from more than 40,000 teacher evaluation records. Advisory panels in each state—including over 50 district and state officials and 25 teachers’ union representatives—actively informed the research, and panel members’ written responses to the study are available, unedited, on the report website (www.widgeteffect.org).
The study illustrates that teacher evaluation systems reflect and codify the “Widget Effect”—the tendency of school districts to treat teachers as essentially interchangeable—in several major ways:
• All teachers are rated “good” or “great.” Less than 1 percent of teachers receive unsatisfactory ratings, even in schools where students fail to meet basic academic standards, year after year.
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• Excellence goes unrecognized. In districts with more than two ratings, 94 percent of teachers receive one of the top two. When superlative ratings are the norm, truly exceptional teachers cannot be formally identified. Nor can they be compensated, promoted or retained on a systemic basis.
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• Professional development is inadequate. Almost 3 in 4 teachers did not receive any specific feedback on improving their performance in their last evaluation.
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• Novice teachers are neglected. Low expectations for beginning teachers translate into benign neglect in the classroom and a toothless tenure process.
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• Poor performance goes unaddressed. Half of the districts studied have not dismissed a single tenured teacher for poor performance in the past five years. None dismiss more than a few each year.
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“Improving instructional quality is the cornerstone of successful school reform,” said Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen. “This report clearly shows that states must revisit their evaluation of educators - just as we have revisited assessments for students - to ensure great results. Every teacher deserves to have an evaluation process that will strengthen their skills in the classroom.”
According to the study, the Widget Effect is deeply ingrained in the fundamental policies that determine the composition and quality of the nation’s teacher workforce. To reverse the Widget Effect, evaluation systems must generate accurate and credible information about each teacher’s effectiveness in realizing student academic success. This information must then be used drive professional development and inform decision-making throughout the school district. Effective teaching must be recognized; ineffective teaching must be addressed. The study offers four major recommendations:
• Adopt a performance evaluation system that fairly, accurately and credibly differentiates teachers based on their effectiveness promoting student achievement.
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• Train administrators and other evaluators in the teacher performance evaluation system and hold them accountable for using it fairly and effectively.
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• Integrate the performance evaluation system with critical human capital policies and functions such as teacher assignment, professional development, compensation, retention and dismissal.
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• Address consistently ineffective teaching through dismissal policies that provide lower-stakes options for ineffective teachers to exit the district and a system of due process that is fair but efficient.
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“Enacting these common-sense recommendations will require uprooting decades of ingrained complacency about teacher performance,” said Daniel Weisberg, a study co-author and Vice President of Policy for TNTP. “But we can’t afford to wait. When an excellent teacher leaves, an entire school suffers. When a poor performer remains year after year, whole classrooms of children fall behind, sometimes forever. This is happening every day, in thousands of schools around the country. We have to stop treating teachers like widgets.”
Taken together, the recommendations represent a comprehensive approach to improving instructional effectiveness and maximizing student learning. But the study emphasizes that they cannot be implemented piecemeal; adopting some while ignoring others will not reverse the Widget Effect or close the achievement gap that has long disadvantaged poor and minority students.
“The current political climate creates an incredible opportunity for districts and states to tackle the Widget Effect head on,” said Ariela Rozman, CEO of The New Teacher Project. “President Obama and Secretary Duncan are putting an unprecedented focus on teacher effectiveness, and the economic recovery package includes substantial education funding for states and districts to implement new policies on this issue. Now it is up to everyone committed to the success of our students – teachers, administrators, policymakers – to turn a new page on an old problem. It’s time to treat our teachers like the professionals they are – if we care about the success of our students, we have to start caring about the success of their teachers.”
The Widget Effect: Our National Failure to Acknowledge and Act on Differences in Teacher Effectiveness is available at:
http://www.widgeteffect.org/downloads/TheWidgetEffect.pdf
Gender, Culture, and Mathematics Performance
Sociocultural Factors Determine Math Success, Not Gender
Using contemporary data from the U.S. and other nations, the authors of this study address 3 questions: Do gender differences in mathematics performance exist in the general population? Do gender differences exist among the mathematically talented? Do females exist who possess profound mathematical talent?
In regard to the first question, contemporary data indicate that girls in the U.S. have reached parity with boys in mathematics performance, a pattern that is found in some other nations as well.
Focusing on the second question, studies find more males than females scoring above the 95th or 99th percentile, but this gender gap has significantly narrowed over time in the U.S. and is not found among some ethnic groups and in some nations. Furthermore, data from several studies indicate that greater male variability with respect to mathematics is not ubiquitous. Rather, its presence correlates with several measures of gender inequality. Thus, it is largely an artifact of changeable sociocultural factors, not immutable, innate biological differences between the sexes.
Responding to the third question, the authors of this study document the existence of females who possess profound mathematical talent.
Finally, the authors of this study review mounting evidence that both the magnitude of mean math gender differences and the frequency of identification of gifted and profoundly gifted females significantly correlate with sociocultural factors, including measures of gender equality across nations.
Full study: (This item requires a subscription to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.)
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/06/01/0901265106.full.pdf+html?sid=f5139f7e-6026-44d4-b0a8-5dbaafd3b28b
Longer high-stakes tests may result in a sense of mental fatigue, but not in lower test scores
Spending hours taking a high-pressure aptitude test may make people feel mentally fatigued, but that fatigue doesn't necessarily lead to lower test scores, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. If anything, performance might actually improve on a longer test, the study found.
"The experience of fatigue during testing does not appear to be, in and of itself, detrimental to test performance," said co-authors Phillip Ackerman, PhD, and Ruth Kanfer, PhD.
The study, in the June Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, stemmed from concerns that when taking longer tests over several hours in one sitting, students would feel increasingly fatigued, and, in turn, perform worse. High-stakes tests are typically used for admission to college and to regulated professions such as medicine, law and accounting.
Cognitive fatigue -- a sense of being mentally worn out or exhausted -- is actually only partly determined by the length of the test, according to the research. Some people simply seem to feel it more than others in situations that demand prolonged concentration and mental effort.
In the study, 239 freshman college students from the Atlanta area took three different versions of the SAT Reasoning Test. Under conditions simulating the actual exam, with start times of 8 A.M. on three consecutive Saturdays, the students completed tests specially constructed for three different durations: 3.5, 4.5 and 5.5 hours. (The current SAT is 3.75 hours of testing over a 4.5-hour session. In this study, the short version of the test had one less of the verbal, math and writing sections; the long version had one more of each. Otherwise, the tests were the same.) Students received a cash bonus if they beat their previous SAT scores.
Before, during and after each test, students completed a questionnaire designed to asses their mood, emotions, confidence, subjective fatigue and more. As expected, the longer they worked on a test, the more the students reported mental fatigue. At the end of 5.5 hours of testing, students reported high levels of fatigue.
However, even though students reported greater fatigue for longer tests, their average performance for both the standard and long tests was significantly higher than for the short test. In fact, the short-form average score was 1,209 out of a possible 1,600; the standard-form average score was 1,222; and the long-form average score was 1,237. Scoring was weighted to make performance comparable across the different length tests.
"A difference of 28 points, as shown between the short and long sessions, would be meaningful, especially if a student's on the borderline for an admission cutoff," Ackerman said.
So why do some test-takers report more fatigue? Personality comes into play, Ackerman and Kanfer found. Students who reported more fatigue for the long tests also were likely to report more fatigue for the standard and short tests. They even were more likely to report fatigue before they started the tests. The students' fatigue was less related to how much sleep they had the night before than to individual differences in stable clusters of personality traits, such as achievement motivation and competitiveness (less fatigue) and neuroticism and anxiety (more fatigue).
In other words, test length may not matter; some people are just plain more likely to feel testing fatigue. "Fatigue appears to be more about the individual's expectations of and prior experience with testing than about the length of the test," Ackerman concluded.
The authors said that there is much to learn about how students regulate their effort to achieve higher scores despite longer test sessions. "One possibility is that more students respond to feelings of fatigue by increasing rather than decreasing their effort," said Ackerman.
Given the increasing reliance by schools, employers and certification boards on long high-stakes tests, Ackerman and Kanfer hope that knowing that cognitive fatigue probably won't hurt scores will encourage more students to take these tests, which serve as gateways to opportunity. However, the authors suggest that future test-takers complete entire practice tests in a single sitting, so that they know how they might feel when they take the actual test.
(Full text of the article is available at http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/xap152-ackerman-kanfer.pdf)
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