Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2009

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Our nation’s schools should be safe havens for teaching and learning, free of crime and violence. Any instance of crime or violence at school not only affects the individuals involved, but also may disrupt the educational process and affect bystanders, the school itself, and the surrounding community (Henry 2000).

Ensuring safer schools requires establishing good indicators of the current state of school crime and safety across the nation and regularly updating and monitoring these indicators. This is the aim of Indicators of School Crime and Safety.

This report is the twelfth in a series of annual publications produced jointly by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Institute of Education Sciences (IES), in the U.S. Department of Education, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) in the U.S. Department of Justice. This report presents the most recent data available on school crime and student safety. The indicators in this report are based on information drawn from a variety of data sources, including national surveys of students, teachers, and principals. Sources include results from a study of violent deaths in schools, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the National Crime Victimization Survey and School Crime Supplement to the survey, sponsored by the BJS and NCES, respectively; the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and the Schools and Staffing Survey and School Survey on Crime and Safety, both sponsored by NCES. The most recent data collection for each indicator varied by survey, from 2006 to 2007–08. Each data source has an independent sample design, data collection method, and questionnaire design, or is the result of a universe data collection. All comparisons described in this report are statistically significant at the .05 level. Additional information about methodology and the datasets analyzed in this report may be found in appendix A.

This report covers topics such as victimization, teacher injury, bullying, school conditions, fights, weapons, availability and student use of drugs and alcohol, and student perceptions of personal safety at school. Indicators of crime and safety are compared across different population subgroups and over time. Data on crimes that occur away from school are offered as a point of comparison where available.
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HEAT STRESS AND EXHAUSTION COMPOUNDED BY FOOTBALL UNIFORMS

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When football players train and compete in hot conditions, heat stroke is always a risk, and treatment delays can be fatal. Although 20 heat stroke deaths occurred during high school and collegiate practices between 2000 and 20071, until recently human responses to wearing a football uniform while exercising had only been sparsely investigated.



Two new studies published this month in the Journal of Athletic Training, the scientific publication of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association, help shed light on the role that American football uniforms play in football players’ perception of heat stress and heat exhaustion. March is National Athletic Training Month with the theme “Sports Safety is a Team Effort.”



Both studies, based on research conducted at the University of Connecticut, reveal greater strain on players wearing either a full NFL uniform, or partial uniforms without helmets and shoulder pads. In addition, football players find it difficult to determine on their own if and when potentially dangerous body temperature increases develop, which means greater vigilance by coaches, athletic trainers and others on the sidelines is required to ensure athletes are playing safely.



In a study titled, “The American Football Uniform: Uncompensable Heat Stress and Hyperthermic Exhaustion,” football players completed three controlled trials in a hot environment (33C, 48 percent to 49 percent relative humidity) wearing a full or partial NFL uniform, or a control condition wearing shorts, socks, sneakers and a T-shirt. Researchers concluded that wearing a full or partial uniform resulted in greater strain on a player’s body – including higher body temperature, abnormally low blood pressure and early exhaustion during heat stress -- than they did during the control condition. These findings support previous recommendations calling for limiting use of helmets and shoulder pads during the initial days of summer workouts, in order to reduce the risk of heat illness.



1 National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research


“Considering every athlete’s need for ample time to acclimatize in the heat, there is no justification for wearing protective equipment during the initial three to five days of summer football workouts, when the highest incidence of heat stroke and heat exhaustion occurs,” said one of the study’s authors Brendon P. McDermott, PhD, ATC, athletic trainer and assistant professor in the graduate athletic training program in the department of health and human performance at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.



McDermott offers the following tips for safe football participation in the heat:




1. All coaches, parents and athletes should be properly educated on basic prevention, recognition and treatment of exertional heat illnesses.

2. No athletic practice should last more than 3 hours in the heat.

3. No “double-session” practices should occur in the first 5 days of activity.

4. Practices should be separated by at least 3 hours and proper sleep should be attained between consecutive days of activity.

5. Rest break length and frequency should be scheduled and adhered to, based on environmental conditions and exercise intensity.

6. An athletic trainer should be on site before, during and after all practices to ensure proper prevention, recognition and treatment of suspected injury or illness.

7. Remove protective equipment during rest breaks for at least 10 minutes.

8. Remove extra clothing and protective equipment during intense conditioning drills (sprints, etc.)

9. Do not moisten uniform or equipment on purpose.





In the second report, “Perceptual Responses While Wearing an American Football Uniform in the Heat,” participants completed 10 minutes of seated rest and up to 60 minutes of treadmill walking on three occasions: once wearing full uniforms, once wearing partial uniforms and once wearing control clothing (shorts, socks, sneakers and a T-shirt).



When athletes wore full and partial uniforms, they perceived no differences in their body conditions, even when their body temperature increased. These findings indicate that football players find it difficult to perceptually rate their own exercise conditions, even as potentially dangerous hyperthermia develops. The report counsels that these findings be considered by coaches who design practices, particularly if players are not heat acclimatized, or if they are unfit in the early season when most heat illnesses occur.



“Although football uniforms, including shoulder pads and helmets, protect players from impact, they also trap body heat, increasing the risk of heat illness secondary to cardiovascular strain and hyperthermia,” said McDermott, who was also an author of the second study. “The addition of a football uniform with or without pads increases body and skin temperature, but does not increase perceived stress at a given workload and decreases the amount of exercise an individual can safely perform. The athletic training staff and coaches, as in the first study, must be highly attentive to this, because an athlete may not be aware that he is experiencing a life-threatening rise in body temperature.”



To read both Journal of Athletic Training articles in their entirety, visit:
http://www.journalofathletictraining.org/doi/pdf/10.4085/1062-6050-45.2.117


http://www.journalofathletictraining.org/doi/pdf/10.4085/1062-6050-45.2.107
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Key Factors in Attracting Teenagers to After-School Programming and Retaining Them

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Five key features characterize after-school programs that succeed in recruiting and retaining teenagers, according to a new study by researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education's Harvard Family Research Project and Public/Private Ventures, a national nonprofit organization.

The report, "Engaging Older Youth: Program and City-level Strategies to Support Sustained Participation in Out-of-School Time," commissioned by The Wallace Foundation, is one of the most comprehensive studies to date looking at an area that is little explored but of critical importance to those concerned about the wellbeing of middle- and high-school students, especially those from low-income communities. Researchers believe that high-quality programming could help put these students on a path to success in school and life, but many out-of-school-time providers have found it difficult to attract and enroll teenagers and then get them to participate in activities regularly.

The study included information from close to 200 out-of-school-time programs in six cities, in part to find out what programs that successfully recruited and retained teenagers had in common. Using statistical techniques, the researchers compared higher-retention programs with lower-retention programs and isolated five factors that distinguished the higher-retention group:

- A larger number of leadership opportunities offered to participants,

- A larger number of ways in which program staffers kept informed about the teens' lives,

- An annual enrollment of 100 or more,

- Location in a setting other than a school, and

- The practice of holding regular staff meetings to discuss program issues.

"With the Elementary and Secondary Education Act currently up for reauthorization, these findings shed light on an important aspect of older student success," said Heather Weiss, Ed.D., Harvard Family Research Project founder and director. "Teenagers tend to know what they want to learn, and it is particularly interesting that programs that helped teenagers develop leadership skills were able to retain youth longer. Community-based after-school programs also have the power to retain teenagers-even those who may be disengaging from school-by offering a separate space where they can pursue their interests."

Jean Grossman, senior fellow at Public/Private Ventures, commented that "one of the big takeaways from this study was how proactive programs that kept youth coming for 12 months or more were at meeting their participants' real needs. Staff spent time discussing program issues to get them right, provided developmentally appropriate opportunities-such as higher levels of program input and leadership-and went the extra mile to stay informed about youth's lives outside the programs."

The study found that the five factors were significant in retaining participants regardless of whether they were in middle- or high-school. But program staffers interviewed for the report also highlighted important differences in programming for middle- and high-school students. Successful middle school programs gave students opportunities to interact with peers; created structures and routines to make participants feel comfortable and safe; and took advantage of the participants' willingness to try new things, particularly through peer interaction. High school programs focused more on providing formal and informal opportunities for students to explore and prepare for college and other post-graduation activities; gave youth more responsibility through job-like programming, apprenticeships, and mentoring; and offered more targeted content focused on the skills older teens wanted to learn.

The researchers also identified a set of retention and recruitment practices that, although not statistically related to retention, were consistently reported by program providers as being important in engaging older youth. These included: fostering a sense of community through connections to program staff and peers, providing developmentally appropriate activities and incentives, and engaging families.

In addition, the report details the influence on the programs of initiatives to build citywide systems of out-of-school time programming. These efforts bring together and assist the work of the various public and private organizations involved in providing out-of-school activities, and the report identifies the types of services likely to help in boosting teen participation. The study found these city-level supports especially useful to smaller OST programs.

"We think the report findings are relevant not only to providers who are serving middle- and high-school students, but also to cities that are considering ways to support and coordinate after-school programming," said Nancy Devine, director of communities at The Wallace Foundation.

The six cities in the study were: Chicago, Cincinnati, New York City, Providence, San Francisco, and Washington, DC.

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Since 1983, Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP) has helped stakeholders develop and evaluate strategies to promote the well-being of children, youth, families, and their communities. HFRP works primarily in the areas of out-of-school-time programming and family and community engagement in education. Underpinning all of HFRP's work is a commitment to evaluation for strategic decision-making, learning, and accountability.

Public/Private Ventures (P/PV) is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization with offices in Philadelphia, New York City and Oakland. For over 30 years, P/PV has tackled critical challenges facing low-income communities-by seeking out and designing innovative programs, rigorously testing them and promoting solutions proven to work.

The Wallace Foundation commissioned this report as part of its effort to help develop lessons relevant to cities on how to build systems that coordinate and support high-quality out-of-school-time programming. As part of its out-of-school-time initiative, launched in 2003, Wallace granted funds to support after-school system-building initiatives in: Boston; Chicago; New York City; Providence; and Washington, DC. This investment was designed to help create citywide system-building efforts that could advance three interrelated goals for the out-of-school-time field: improving program quality, making programs accessible to youth who need them most, and improving youth participation so more children can realize benefits.

The Wallace Foundation is an independent, national foundation dedicated to supporting and sharing effective ideas and practices that expand learning and enrichment opportunities for all people. The Foundation maintains an online library of lessons about what it has learned, including knowledge from its current efforts aimed at:

*strengthening educational leadership to improve student achievement
*enhancing out-of-school-time learning opportunities and
*building appreciation and demand for the arts
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Hand-clapping songs improve motor and cognitive skills

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A researcher at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) conducted the first study of hand-clapping songs, revealing a direct link between those activities and the development of important skills in children and young adults, including university students.

"We found that children in the first, second and third grades who sing these songs demonstrate skills absent in children who don't take part in similar activities," explains Dr. Idit Sulkin a member of BGU's Music Science Lab in the Department of the Arts. "We also found that children who spontaneously perform hand-clapping songs in the yard during recess have neater handwriting, write better and make fewer spelling errors."

Dr. Warren Brodsky, the music psychologist who supervised her doctoral dissertation, said Sulkin's findings lead to the presumption that "children who don't participate in such games may be more at risk for developmental learning problems like dyslexia and dyscalculia. There's no doubt such activities train the brain and influence development in other areas. The children's teachers also believe that social integration is better for these children than those who don't take part in these songs."

As part of the study, Sulkin went to several elementary school classrooms and engaged the children in either a board of education sanctioned music appreciation program or hand-clapping songs training – each lasting a period of 10 weeks.

"Within a very short period of time, the children who until then hadn't taken part in such activities caught up in their cognitive abilities to those who did," she said. But this finding only surfaced for the group of children undergoing hand-clapping songs training. The result led Sulkin to conclude that hand-clapping songs should be made an integral part of education for children aged six to 10, for the purpose of motor and cognitive training.

During the study, "Impact of Hand-clapping Songs on Cognitive and Motor Tasks," Dr. Sulkin interviewed school and kindergarten teachers, visited their classrooms and joined the children in singing. Her original goal, as part of her thesis, was to figure out why children are fascinated by singing and clapping up until the end of third grade, when these pastimes are abruptly abandoned and replaced with sports.

"This fact explains a developmental process the children are going through," Dr. Sulkin observes. "The hand-clapping songs appear naturally in children's lives around the age of seven, and disappear around the age of 10. In this narrow window, these activities serve as a developmental platform to enhance children's needs -- emotional, sociological, physiological and cognitive. It's a transition stage that leads them to the next phases of growing up."

Sulkin says that no in-depth, long-term study has been conducted on the effects that hand-clapping songs have on children's motor and cognitive skills. However, the relationship between music and intellectual development in children has been studied extensively, prompting countless parents to obtain a "Baby Mozart" CD for their children.

This study also demonstrates that listening to 10 minutes of Mozart music (.i.e., the 'Mozart Effect') does not improve spatial task performance more than 10 minutes hand clapping songs training or 10 minutes exposure to silence.

Sulkin also found that hand-clapping song activity has a positive effect on adults: University students who filled out her questionnaires reported that after taking up such games, they became more focused and less tense. "These techniques are associated with childhood, and many adults treat them as a joke," she said. "But once they start clapping, they report feeling more alert and in a better mood."

Sulkin grew up in a musical home. Her father, Dr. Adi Sulkin, is a well-known music educator who, in the 1970s and 1980s, recorded and published over 50 cassettes and videos depicting Israeli children's play-songs, street-songs, holiday and seasonal songs, and singing games targeting academic skills.

"So quite apart from the research experience, working on this was like a second childhood," she noted.
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MANY CHARTER SCHOOLS LACK THE AUTONOMY NEEDED TO SUCCEED

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Like a boxer with one hand tied behind his back, far too many U.S. charter schools lack the freedom they need to succeed, according to a new report released by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

“There has been much focus on whether charters are producing results,” said Fordham President Chester E. Finn, Jr., “but no one has really taken a good hard look at whether charters are being granted the freedom they were promised to deliver the academic outcomes America wants from them.”

Conducted by Public Impact, Charter School Autonomy: A Half-broken Promise scanned the nation to find out just how autonomous charter schools really are in key domains. Analysts examined charter laws in 26 states as well as school contracts from 50 of the country’s most active authorizers (which collectively oversee nearly half of U.S. charter schools).

The study found that a number of states—e.g. Maryland, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Tennessee—burden their charter schools with excessive rules and red tape while others such as Arizona, California, Texas, and D.C. provide high levels of autonomy.

Nationwide, the typical charter school can expect a middling degree of autonomy. States averaged B-plus for the degree of autonomy they afford charter schools, but the average grade dropped to B-minus when charter school authorizer conditions were added—and would likely dip in the C range once federal regulations and other state and local policies are factored in.

“The grand “bargain” that undergirds the charter school concept,” remarked Finn, “is that these new schools must deliver solid academic results but that, in return, they’ll be given freedom to be different. Sadly, this study shows that many policymakers and authorizers aren’t honoring the freedom side of the bargain.”

More key findings include:

• Schools were likeliest to face restrictions on teacher certification (95 percent) and revising their charters and/or making mid-course changes to their programs (70 percent).
• Charter schools enjoyed the greatest autonomy over curricula, calendars, teacher work rules, staff dismissals and purchasing.
• Although state laws are the primary source of constraints on charter school autonomy, sixty percent of charter school authorizers imposed additional restrictions.
• Among authorizers, school districts and institutions of higher education imposed the most additional restrictions while nonprofit organizations and state boards imposed the least.

“It’s not surprising that many school districts fail to give their charter schools adequate autonomy,” said Michael Petrilli, Vice President for National Programs and Policy at Fordham Institute. “Many of them never wanted charters in the first place. This is one more reason to believe that most districts aren’t up to the task of authorizing charter schools, and should be relieved of that duty.”
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Educational Technology in U.S. Public Schools: Fall 2008

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This First Look report presents data from a fall 2008 Fast Response Survey System (FRSS) survey of public schools on the availability and use of educational technology. This includes information on computer hardware and Internet access, availability of staff to help integrate technology into instruction and provide timely technical support, and perceptions of educational technology issues at the school and district level. It follows a series of school level surveys dating back to 1994; the 2008 surveys also included one conducted at the district level and another asked of teachers.

Findings from the survey of schools include:

* An estimated 100 percent of public schools had one or more instructional computers with Internet access. The ratio of students to instructional computers with Internet access was 3.1 to 1. All public schools reported having one or more instructional computers with Internet access. Nearly all-97 percent -- had one or more instructional computers located in classrooms and 58 percent of schools had laptops on carts. Schools report having one instructional computer with Internet access for every three students.

* Public schools used their district network or the Internet to provide standardized assessment results and data for teachers to individualize instruction (87 percent), data to inform instructional planning at the school (85 percent), online student assessment (72 percent), and high-quality digital content (65 percent).

* Nine out of 10 schools reported that it takes 8 hours or less to get network services restored when the network goes down (22 percent reported less than 1 hour and 68 percent reported 1 to 8 hours). Fifty-one percent of schools reported that it takes 1 to 8 hours to receive assistance with software problems or questions, and 45 percent reported that it takes 2 to 5 days to get a computer repaired.
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SELF-REGULATION KEY TO ACADEMIC SUCCESS FOR AT-RISK CHILDREN

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A study that will be published in a forthcoming journal adds to the mounting evidence that self-regulation – or children’s ability to control their behavior and impulses – is directly related to academic performance.

A key finding in that study shows that at-risk children who can self-regulate have higher reading, math and vocabulary achievement.

The study was conducted by then-Oregon State University graduate student Michaella Sektnan, who did the research as her master’s thesis working with Megan McClelland, an associate professor at OSU and a nationally recognized leader in the areas of self-regulation and early childhood development. Sektnan is now a faculty research assistant for OSU Extension Family and Community Health.

In her paper to be published in a fall edition of Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Sektnan used data on 1,298 children from birth through the first grade from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. “Family risk” in the data was defined by ethnic minority status, low maternal education, low family income and chronic depressive symptoms in the mother.

“We know that these risk factors can lead to a gap in academic achievement,” Sektnan said. “The relationship to risks such as poverty, ethnic status, and maternal education has been well-documented. What we wanted to know was, controlling for these factors, does self-regulation make a difference?”

It turns out the answer to that question is yes. Controlling for these risk factors, Sektnan found that children whose parents and teachers reported that they had strong self-regulation in preschool and kindergarten did significantly better on math, reading and vocabulary at the end of first grade.

“For all outcomes, higher self-regulation was related to higher reading, math and vocabulary, regardless of which risk factor was present,” Sektnan said. “This builds on the increasing body of knowledge about the need to develop self-regulation skills in young children.”

To give an example, McClelland points to the test scores of the children in this national survey. At-risk children with stronger self-regulation in kindergarten scored 15 points higher on a standardized math test in first grade, 11 points higher on an early reading test, and nearly seven points higher on a vocabulary test than at-risk children with weaker self-regulation.

“These were pretty impressive increases in children’s achievement,” McClelland said. “I’m a proponent of building self-regulation in children but even for me, these results were surprising. The discrepancy between these children, tested at a very young age, and their academic scores compared to their peers who were not as able to regulate their behavior was larger than we anticipated.”

McClelland, who has developed simple games such as the Head-to-Toes task to measure self-regulation and predict academic achievement, said it is obvious that in the case of at-risk children, merely focusing on self-regulation skills won’t be enough.

“Obviously, these issues – poverty, educational status, maternal depression – are extremely serious and must be addressed,” she said. “But we now know that we can also help children be successful by teaching them how to self-regulate.”

McClelland added that the data is clearer now than ever: a child that can listen, pay attention, follow instructions, and persist on a task, even if faced with what seems to be giant hurdles at a very young age, will achieve greater success in school.

“Self-regulation is not just about compliance or being obedient,” McClelland said. “It’s about a very basic, but very necessary skill: being able to listen and pay attention, think, and then act. The message to parents may be to put down the flash cards and see if another approach, like playing a simple game of ‘Simon Says’ works better.”
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College Transfer Admission

Only a fraction of research collected on the college admission process reflects the experience of fully one-third of the nation's students who enter two- or four-year colleges and end up transferring to another institution. The Special Report on the Transfer Admission Process, issued today by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, aims to fill the void by illuminating details surrounding transfer admission.

According to a NACAC survey, which was administered in partnership with a dissertation project at Michigan State University, average acceptance rates at colleges and universities nationwide differed for transfer (64 percent) and first year students (69 percent). A more striking divergence between the two student categories emerged when factors in the admission process were evaluated. When a postsecondary student decides to transfer to another school, criteria measured on the secondary level becomes much less significant, as admission offices greatly favor postsecondary experience. In the transfer process, postsecondary GPA is clearly the most important factor, with more than 90 percent of surveyed institutions rating it as "considerably important." Only 12 percent gave the same rating to high school GPA and only seven percent gave that rating to standardized test scores.

The report also includes a breakdown of the survey results by institutional characteristics:

- Private colleges rated nearly every admission factor in the transfer process as more important when compared to their public counterparts.

- Smaller institutions tended to place more emphasis on both direct observations of a student (high school GPA, standardized test scores, essay or writing samples) and those factors that are largely outside of a student's control (quality of the high school and prior postsecondary institution, ability to pay, alumni relations).

- Larger institutions tended to rate overall postsecondary GPA, grades in transferrable courses and state or county of residence more highly. They were also more likely to view being more than 25 years old as a positive in the transfer admission decision.

- More selective institutions placed greater emphasis on almost all of the factors when compared to less selective institutions. The more selective schools also were more likely to view plans to enroll part-time negatively.

The report also holds data that could be beneficial to postsecondary institutions looking at new applicant pools in a time of shifting demographics. The Department of Education recently projected drops in high school graduates for many states in the next decade, and transfer students could potentially fill some enrollment gaps. The NACAC report found that the average yield rate for transfers was 64 percent, compared to an average of 42 percent for first-year students.
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Texting poetry inspires kids to learn

...Chester Middle School Principal Ernie Jackson, for instance, challenged reading and social studies teacher Mel Wesenberg to find ways to use text messaging to teach poetry.

The results were surprising: Kids who used their cell phones to boil down the main points of the stanzas got 80 percent of the questions about a poem correct on a state test.

Kids taught the same poem in the traditional way – reading, reciting and discussing – got only 40 percent of the questions right.

“That's a big jump,” Jackson said during a recent demonstration of the experiment with a sixth-grade class...

Complete article
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Teacher Perspectives of School-Level Implementation of Alternate Assessments for Students With Significant Cognitive Disabilities

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Teachers' perspectives on school-level implementation of alternate assessments are analyzed in a national study released by the National Center for Special Education Research. This study included more than 400 teachers of students with significant cognitive disabilities from three states. The report provides information on the background and experiences of teachers of students with significant cognitive disabilities, the skills and characteristics of the students they teach, and their classroom environments. It also describes their perspectives on how well they understand the alternate assessment system, their expectations and beliefs, the availability and use of instructional resources, and their students' opportunity to learn academic content.

Key findings include:

* The percentage of teachers who reported that state alternate assessment requirements had a strong or moderate influence on their instruction was 88 percent for reading/English language arts and mathematics and 84 percent for science. The percentage of teachers who reported that results of the state alternate assessment had a strong or moderate influence on their instruction was 60 percent for reading/English language arts, 62 percent for mathematics, and 58 percent for science.

* The percentage of teachers reporting that students received instruction in the seven content areas 3 or more times per week ranged from 39 percent for arts to 93 percent for reading/English language arts. Eighty-seven percent of teachers reported that students received instruction in mathematics three or more times per week and 53 percent of teachers reported that students received instruction in science three or more times per week.
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Charter Schools, Traditional Public Schools Similarly Segregated

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Flawed comparisons lead Civil Rights Project to unwarranted conclusions


New research conducted by Gary Ritter and associates at the University of Arkansas finds that the charter sector and the traditional public-school sector are not very different in the level of segregation experienced by students. The research is published in “A Closer Look at Charter Schools and Segregation,” which will appear in the Summer 2010 issue of Education Next and is now available online.

The new findings contradict the conclusions drawn by the authors of a study released in January 2010 by the UCLA-based Civil Rights Project (CRP). The authors of the CRP study, “Choice without Equity,” concluded that charter schools are much more segregated than traditional public schools. Ritter finds that “when examined more appropriately, the data actually reveal small differences in the level of overall segregation between the charter school sector and the traditional public-school sector.”

The basic flaw in the CRP study is that it compares the racial composition of charter schools, which tend to be located in inner cities, with that of traditional public schools, which are located in all different kinds of environments. “Based only on enrollments aggregated to the national and state level, the authors repeatedly highlight the overrepresentation of black students in charter schools in an attempt to portray a harmful degree of segregation,” co-author Brian Kisida explains. “This comparison is likely to generate misleading conclusions for one simple reason, as the authors themselves point out… ‘the concentration of charter schools in urban areas skews the charter school enrollment towards having higher percentages of poor and minority students.’”

Ritter continues, “Instead of asking whether all students in charter schools are more likely to attend segregated schools than are all students in traditional public schools, we should be comparing the levels of segregation for the students in charter schools to what they would have experienced had they remained in their residentially assigned public schools.”

The CRP report includes an analysis of whether charter or traditional schools are more segregated within 39 metropolitan areas, however, the analysis does not take into account the fact that charter schools are disproportionately located in low-SES urban areas within those metropolitan areas.

The authors of the new study modified the analysis conducted by the CRP so that the percentage of students in segregated charter schools in just the central city would be compared to the percentage of students in segregated traditional public schools within the same central city for 8 large metropolitan areas. The results confirm that the Civil Rights Project’s report overstates the relative level of segregation in the charter sector.

For example, the Civil Rights Project reports that, in the metropolitan area surrounding the District of Columbia, 91.2 percent of charter students are in segregated schools, compared with just 20.9 percent of students in traditional public schools. However, the reanalysis shows that, if the comparison is restricted to students in the central city, the percentage of charter students attending segregated schools stays roughly the same, but the percentage of students attending segregated traditional public schools jumps to 85 percent.

After re-analyzing the data for all 39 metropolitan areas, the authors of the re-analysis conclude, “Using the best available unit of comparison, we find that 63 percent of charter students in these central cities attend school in intensely segregated minority schools, as do 53 percent of traditional public school students.” They note that this re-analysis likely underestimates the true levels of segregation in the traditional public schools that the charter school students would otherwise attend because, even within central cities, charter schools are more likely to open in neighborhoods that are more segregated.
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Strategic recommendations for improving access to quality early education

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After 18 months of study, the Early Education Commission (EEC) has issued strategic recommendations for improving access to quality early education for children ages zero to five across metro Atlanta, and ultimately the state.

The recommendations lay out a multi-year plan for assuring consistently high-quality early learning – with Georgia ultimately becoming a national leader in ensuring that children enter kindergarten ready to learn and on a path to "read to learn" by third grade. "Read to learn" refers to a reading skill level necessary for a third-grader to learn at an age-appropriate pace and become a successful student.

Stephanie Blank, Trustee of the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, will chair the governing board of the Georgia Coalition for Early Education (GCEE), a new, independent successor group to the EEC that will offer strategic assistance to existing providers, funders and stakeholders in early learning and care. A national search is being launched for an executive director of the coalition.

"The key to Georgia's future economic prosperity and social well-being lies in the care and education of our youngest children," said Ms. Blank, who served on the EEC. "There is ongoing advocacy and quality improvement work in metro Atlanta and the state: our goal is to move early learning to the top of the public agenda and broaden the scope and reach of those efforts."

Co-chaired by Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta CEO Dennis Lockhart and Spelman College President Beverly Daniel Tatum, Ph.D., the EEC assembled in the fall of 2008 to investigate the impact of early learning on the short- and long-term economic health of metro Atlanta. The commission learned from nationally renowned experts in the early education field, studied research, assessed the state of early learning in the metro area and state, and identified opportunities for improvement.

"It is essential that children be ready to learn when they enter kindergarten – we know brain development in a child's early years charts a course for success over a lifetime," said Dr. Tatum. "We also know that there is more to school readiness than being ready to read – social, emotional and other cognitive milestones are important, and the EEC's recommendations address all of those."

In addition to the neuroscience aspects of early childhood education, EEC members learned about the positive return on investment early intervention provides versus the exponential cost of remediation, and the importance quality centers and trained educators play in these outcomes.

Said Dennis Lockhart, "Beyond the intrinsic social value, investing in early education is just the smart thing to do. Research clearly shows that early interventions have better rates of return than do traditional economic development projects."

Consistent with the commission's recommendations, the GCEE will focus on four main areas:

• Improve Quality – for both center-based and home-based early care and education.
• Enhance Parental involvement – supporting families with the tools and resources needed to provide quality learning experiences.
• Increase Public Awareness – to raise awareness of how quality early learning experiences impact a child's long-term success.
• Intensify Advocacy – for increased quality, accessibility and affordability of early childhood care and education.
"This commission has recommended vital next steps that will significantly support and enhance ongoing efforts in our state," said Holly Robinson, Commissioner of Bright from the Start: Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning. "Helping parents identify and assure quality early education is critically important for their children and for Georgia. And Stephanie Blank is a brilliant choice as chair of the coalition; she is a greatly respected community leader who researches, understands and is devoted to this issue."

About the Early Education Commission

Convened in the fall of 2008 by the United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta, the Early Education Commission brought together a group of 23 prominent Atlanta business and civic leaders representing diverse constituencies to conduct a thorough review of empirical evidence and expert opinion with regard to the case for cohesive action on Pre-K education, share a broad directional agenda for the metro Atlanta community, and offer concrete action recommendations for stakeholders in the early childhood community. Its focus was to investigate the impact of early learning on the short- and long-term economic development of metropolitan Atlanta with the overall goal to improve the availability and quality of early childhood education in metropolitan Atlanta, and ultimately throughout the state of Georgia. To find out more about the Early Education Commission, visit unitedwayatlanta.org and click on "Early Education" under the "Our Work" tab.

About United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta

For more than a century, United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta has continued to mobilize people in our community to help tackle the issues that are too big for anyone to solve alone. What makes United Way unique is how it helps our community work together to make lasting impact on tough community problems that take all of us to solve. United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta invests in the areas of education, income, health and ending chronic homelessness. To find or give help, dial 2-1-1 or visit us online at unitedwayatlanta.org.
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86 percent of disadvantaged preschoolers lack basic motor skills

Disadvantaged urban preschoolers aren't only at risk for failure in the classroom – they are likely to struggle on playgrounds and athletic fields as well, research suggests.

A new study found that more than eight out of every ten disadvantaged preschoolers from two urban areas showed significant developmental delays in basic motor skills such as running, jumping, throwing, and catching.

That means that they are at risk of giving up on physical activities and becoming obese teenagers and adults, said Jackie Goodway, lead author of the study and associate professor of physical activity and educational services at Ohio State University.

"These fundamental motor skills – running and catching and throwing and kicking – are the movement ABCs," Goodway said.

"If children don't learn the ABCs, they can't read. And if they don't learn basic motor skills they won't participate in sports or exercise. That's the problem we may be facing with the children in this study."

Goodway conducted the study with two of her former doctoral students: Leah Robinson, now at Auburn University and Heather Crowe, now at Towson University. Their study appears in a recent issue of the journal Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport.

The researchers studied 469 preschool students enrolled in urban, state-funded programs serving disadvantaged youth. Included were 275 children, mostly African American, from a Midwestern city and 194 children, mostly Hispanic, from a southwestern city.

The children were evaluated using a standardized test of motor skills. They participated in tests of locomotor skills which included running, jumping, hopping, leaping, sliding and galloping. They were also evaluated on object control skills through tests of throwing, catching, kicking, striking, dribbling and rolling.

Results showed that 86 percent of the children scored below the 30th percentile of children nationwide, which is considered developmentally delayed.

While girls and boys had similar scores on the locomotor skills, girls did significantly worse than boys on object control activities in which they used an object such as a ball or a bat. Boys' average scores were at the 22nd percentile on object control, while girls' were at the 11th percentile.

In general, girls of every socioeconomic category perform more poorly than boys do in the object control tests, Goodway said. However, disadvantaged girls do much worse than do other girls on these tests.

These findings may surprise people who believe children don't need instruction in motor skills, Goodway said.

"Most people, even many educators, believe that motor skills just naturally develop in children, but our study shows that's clearly not true," Goodway said.

"Like any skill, there needs to be instruction, there needs to be practice, there needs to be feedback. That's how children master these motor skills."

The problem is that children from disadvantaged, urban neighborhoods don't get the opportunities that other children have to play outside in parks and backyards where they can learn how to run and jump and catch footballs and dribble basketballs.

"Their parks may be full of gangs, they don't have backyards that are safe, they are often raised by single mothers who are working multiple jobs and don't have time to supervise them outside," Goodway said.

"These children spend most of their time sitting in school and then going home and sitting in front of the TV."

While the children in this study were mostly minorities, Goodway said the results would apply to any children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

"Ethnicity doesn't matter. It's about poverty," she said.

Goodway said she has developed an intervention program to help preschoolers like those in this study and is currently studying its effectiveness. Preliminary results suggest that disadvantaged children who are taught motor skills as preschoolers can make "huge gains."

She said she hopes that Head Start and other programs designed for disadvantaged preschoolers begin to include more physical education as part of what they offer. Preschool teachers also need to learn more about teaching motor skills.

"We have a window of opportunity during early childhood when we can teach disadvantaged children motor skills and help get them back to where they need to be," Goodway said.

"But once they get to late elementary school, it is very hard to changed their attitudes and behaviors."
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Multistate Review of Professional Teaching Standards

States update their teaching standards on an ongoing basis and can learn from other states' efforts. For example the "Updated multistate review of professional teaching standards" adds to their previous 2009 review of teaching standards by offering options for broad consideration that include — structure and target groups of teachers, as well as ways of addressing special populations and use of technology — from six of the largest states in the nation. This review of teaching standards in six states—California, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas—focuses on the structure, target audience, and selected content of the standards.
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Good Teaching Can Determine Students Realize Potential

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Good teaching allows kids’ natural reading abilities to shine through, new research suggests. In contrast, in classrooms with poor teachers, children perform at a more uniformly low level, even though their geneticallybased abilities may vary widely.

The extent to which reading ability is the result of genetics or environment has been the subject of much debate. In a study published in the 23 April issue of Science, Jeanette Taylor of Florida State University and colleagues analyzed reading skills, as reflected by the Oral Reading Fluency test, of identical and fraternal twins in elementary school in Florida.

“When children receive more effective instruction, they will tend to develop at their optimal trajectory,” Taylor said. “When instruction is less effective, then children's learning potential is not optimized and genetic differences are left unrealized.”

By comparing the scores of twins, who share either 50% or 100% of their genes, the researchers could estimate how much of the differences in the reading-test scores were due to genetic factors, environmental factors to which both twins were exposed, or environmental factors that were different for each twin. The researchers used the improvement of the twins’ classmates over the course of a year as a measure of teacher quality.

The results showed that the variation in test scores that was due to genetic differences was greater in classes with good teachers than in classes with poor teachers. Thus, genes and environment seem to interact in such a way that teaching quality either limits children or allows them to reach their natural potential as readers.
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Academic language impedes students' ability to learn science

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Middle and high school students who read fluently in English class and on the Web may find that they cannot understand their science texts. And their science teachers may be ill prepared to guide them in reading the academic language in which science information is presented. In "Academic Language and the Challenge of Reading for Learning About Science," an article to be published in Science on April 23, 2010, Catherine E. Snow, a professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education and the Boston research director for the Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP), makes the case that students need to be taught academic language in order to learn science and other subjects.

Word Generation, a SERP program developed under Snow's leadership, presents middle school students with all-purpose academic words embedded in interesting topics and provides materials for teachers of science, mathematics, and social studies to extend the academic language focus across the curriculum and throughout the week. "The goal is for students to be able to read academic material on their own, but many will need some help through programs like Word Generation to get to that point," said Snow.

In addition to having its own specialized vocabulary, academic language is more concise, using complex grammatical structures to express complicated ideas in as few words as possible. This is especially true when it comes to scientific writing. Students who prefer reading Web content over books have fewer opportunities to learn this language on their own.

Snow is helping teachers solve everyday learning problems that occur in classrooms thanks to a unique collaboration between the nation's top research and development talent and education professionals created by the SERP Institute. "By recruiting highly distinguished scholars like Catherine Snow, SERP has succeeded in making the difficult and often unglamorous work of tackling critical problems of everyday practice a respected endeavor," said Suzanne Donovan, SERP executive director.

The SERP collaboration is thriving at the William B. Rogers Middle School in Boston, which serves as a showcase for other schools in the district and beyond. With Word Generation now firmly embedded in everyday practice, academic language is taught systematically by teachers across the spectrum. "Word Generation is not a program to have kids memorize words and their meanings each week," said Principal Andrew Bott. "It is a program about how to look at words, to consider them in different forms, to access them across content areas, to determine different meanings of words depending on the content area, and to use a more sophisticated vocabulary on their own," he said.
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Poor quality teachers may prevent children from reaching reading potential, study finds

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When it comes to early reading, a bad teacher can prevent children from reaching their full potential.

That’s the finding of a new Florida State University study published in the April 23 issue of the journal Science. The study, “Teacher Quality Moderates the Genetic Effects on Early Reading,” may put an end to a longstanding scholarly debate about the amount of influence teachers have on students’ reading achievement.

“Teachers have an effect on student reading achievement,” said psychology Associate Professor Jeanette Taylor, the study’s lead author. “Better teachers provide an environment that allows children to reach their potential.”

Scholars know that genetics play the biggest role in a child’s reading achievement, while the environment — including the classroom experience — plays a smaller role. This study is significant because it shows for the first time that teachers have a direct influence on the genetic variability among children.


Jeanette Taylor
“When children receive more effective instruction, they will tend to develop at their optimal trajectory,” Taylor said. “When instruction is less effective, then children’s learning potential is not optimized and genetic differences are left unrealized.”

As state and national policy increasingly focuses on teacher quality, the effect that teachers have on the genetic foundation of reading is an important question. Taylor and her four co-authors, all Florida State researchers, addressed the question by examining data from identical and fraternal twins taking part in the Florida Twin Project on Reading. Identical twins share all of their genes while fraternal twins share, on average, half of their genes, so comparing them gives researchers a way to infer how much of the variability in reading achievement is because of genetic versus environmental influences.

The researchers studied 280 identical and 526 fraternal twin pairs in the first and second grades from Florida schools representing diverse environments. Using the scores of the twins’ Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) test, which assesses reading skill, they estimated how much of the variability in reading was due to genetic factors. Then they used the test scores of the twins’ classmates to create a measure of teacher quality.

If the end-of-the-year test scores showed the entire classroom of students made gains in reading achievement beyond expectations based on their scores at the beginning of the year, the researchers attributed the gain to a high-quality teacher. Conversely, the researchers assumed classrooms with lower gains had poor quality teachers. They did not include the twins in these calculations so that their teachers’ quality scores were independent of the twins’ achievement.

“We can essentially rank teachers in terms of the benefit to students’ learning from being in a particular teacher’s classroom in comparison to the average amount of gain seen in a particular grade,” said Alysia Roehrig, an assistant professor in the College of Education and one of the study’s co-authors.

The authors cautioned that other factors, such as classmates, resources and the physical classroom itself, might also influence the level of reading achievement among young students. However, this study clearly underscores the importance of teachers.

“Putting high quality teachers in the classroom will not eliminate variability among students nor guarantee equally high achievement from all children, but ignoring teachers as a salient contributor to the classroom environment represents a missed opportunity to promote children’s potential in school and their success in life,” the researchers concluded.
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Summary 4-21

Below is a summary of some of the most interesting research published in the last few weeks. More complete detail may be found by clicking on each link. More reports, and new reports as they become available can be found here.

The most interesting reports to me were the two below on writing:

New Report Finds that Writing Can Be Powerful Driver for Improving Reading Skills

Although reading and writing have become essential skills for almost every job, the majority of students do not read or write well enough to meet grade-level demands. A new report from Carnegie Corporation of New York and published by the Alliance for Excellent Education (the Alliance) finds that while the two skills are closely connected, writing is an often-overlooked tool for improving reading skills and content learning.


Don't Restrict Children's Writing Sources

An approach to teaching young children the principles of writing and literacy that prohibits them from borrowing from our common cultural landscape is a problematic one, according to a University of Illinois professor who studies childhood learning and literacy development.

Anne Haas Dyson, a professor of curriculum and instruction in the U. of I. College of Education, says that excluding pop culture touchstones such as movies, TV shows, comic books and cartoons from composition programs in order to focus almost exclusively on the everyday occurrences of a child’s life is a contradictory notion, at best.

“Since the line between fiction and reality for younger students is often very thin, it’s inevitable that children will borrow from what they know, and that they will create stories where they and their friends interact with Spider-Man, the X-Men or Hannah Montana,” Dyson said.

Not to be confused with plagiarism, copying, which could be thought of as an adolescent version of what hip-hop artists call “sampling,” has a long history as a pedagogical tool for teaching younger students the alphabet and letter formation. It was once advocated as a method for helping them make sense of written language and its connection to meaning, and was considered an intrinsic part of the production process for beginning writers.

Now, with schools under pressure to teach basic composition skills because of the regulated curriculum mandates of No Child Left Behind, Dyson says there has been a curricular rejection of open-ended composing, especially in schools serving low-income children, in favor of writing instruction that is much more regimented.

In these programs, writing is conscripted as an individual task, one that requires diligence and independence, and doesn’t allow for community participation.

“Even in kindergarten, we have these regulated writing programs where the child is supposed to write their own story based on their own life,” Dyson said. “It’s a conception of writing that invokes this myth of the solitary genius, where the great writer sits alone at a desk and writes. If you think of writing only in those terms, it becomes something quite different than how it actually functions in the world, which is as a medium for communication and participation.”

Dyson argues that allowing children to copy or borrow plotlines, narratives and characters from popular culture for their writing is a good thing, because that’s where they find their identities and otherwise make sense of the world.

“A lot of the so-called stories young children are writing in schools are pretty banal and boring,” she said. “If they’re going to live in this highly mediated, increasingly global world, we want to prepare them to be a part of it.”

Although she’s not arguing for a return to any old-fashioned methods of teaching, Dyson says that children who “copy” or play with ideas from popular media are “using elements of known stories to populate and imagine their own worlds,” she said.

“Out on the playgrounds, children play together with characters and plotlines from media stories, improvising their own versions of these tales, sometimes putting elements of varied stories together,” Dyson said. “In their writing, they build on what they do in play.”

Sometimes, young children use writing to collaboratively imagine or play out worlds on paper. When young children get the idea that they can choreograph their papers with their friends, or if what this one is going to write is going to be a response to what their friends wrote, that’s pretty sophisticated thinking, Dyson says.

“Each child may have their own paper, but they choreograph their papers so that they are playing together, and they understand the idea that they’re joining a textual playground with somebody else, and manipulating them through words or stories,” she said. “That is the essence of what you want to teach, that writing matters in the world.”

Instructing young children to write only about the everyday occurrences of their own lives is just another version of the banning of the imagination in schools, Dyson says.

“This shoving down of highly regulated curriculum is cause for great concern,” she said. “In a lot of kindergartens, there is no more unstructured play. Kids are sitting at desks, doing work in a highly individualized way. And the more we push it down, the more kids there will be who are classified as struggling.”

I skipped third grade. I was younger (and smaller) than my classmates for much of my education. I have mixed feelings about that experience. But the research on the topic is certainly interesting:

How Schools Hold Back America's Brightest Students

America's schools routinely avoid academic acceleration, the easiest and most effective way to help highly capable students. While the popular perception is that a child who skips a grade will be socially stunted, fifty years of research shows that moving bright students ahead often makes them happy.

Acceleration means moving through the traditional curriculum at rates faster than typical. The 18 forms of acceleration include grade-skipping, early-entrance to school, and Advanced Placement (AP) courses. It is appropriate educational planning. It means matching the level and complexity of the curriculum with the readiness and motivation of the student.

Students who are moved ahead tend to be more ambitious, and they earn graduate degrees at higher rates than other students. Interviewed years later, an overwhelming majority of accelerated students say that acceleration was an excellent experience for them. Accelerated students feel academically challenged and socially accepted, and they do not fall prey to the boredom that plagues many highly capable students who are forced to follow the curriculum for their age-peers.

These reports highlight continuing education inequities in our schools:

School districts across the country are shortchanging low-income students


A new report documents how budgeting practices in school districts across the country are shortchanging low-income students and undermining the power of federal investments in high-poverty schools.

“Close the Hidden Funding Gaps in Our Schools” shines a light on these widespread and unjust accounting practices and offers Congress a straightforward legislative path: Fix the so-called comparability provisions of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

School Contributes to Pre-K to Prison Trend for African-American Youth


A disturbing thirty year trend has resulted in a disproportionate number of incarcerated African-American male youths in U.S. prisons. A new study from the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry shows that the conditions that contribute to this high representation (sixty percent of all incarcerated youth) begin early in life, and is often exacerbated by their experiences in school.

Many College Students Lack Needed Tech Skills

When students enter college, they either have it or they don't. And which side of the digital divide they fall on may well shape their identities and what route they take into careers, suggests a new study.

The research looked at the computer technology knowledge of 500 undergraduate students and how skills they brought from high school impacted their early college coursework.


Hybrid learning -Creating a new educational model to serve dropouts and at-risk students

The program uses a hybrid model, which combines elements of virtual learning and a traditional classroom setting. Students complete computer-based courses at dropout-recovery and credit- recovery centers under the direction of certified teachers. The program does not follow a daily class schedule. Instead, students may go to the centers to work on their courses at any time during the hours of operations.

Computer-based courses are the primary source of the learning content, which is advantageous for several reasons as it:

• Allows students to learn at their own pace and preferred time;
• Permits students to enroll or finish the program at any time during the year and not follow a traditional school calendar;
• Offers students a wide range of courses and course levels without requiring a dedicated teacher for each level and subject;
• Enables the use of a mastery-based curriculum that ensures students are learning as they progress through a course;
• Provides rapid, unbiased feedback that allows teachers to intervene as soon as students begin struggling with a concept.

The computer-based curriculum frees teachers from lesson planning and lecturing so that they can spend the bulk of their time providing students with individualized help with coursework on a need-by-need basis. Teachers also are responsible for making sure students stay on task and for grading essays and written assignments.


Problems inhibiting permanent change in low-performing schools

Manwaring documents how few states and districts use the tools provided to them by NCLB. Instead of closing schools or replacing personnel, districts and states most often choose other, less aggressive actions. So they hire consultants. They redesign the curriculum. They create smaller learning communities.

Markham Middle School has tried most of these reforms with no success. It has also received over $3 million in state and federal remediation funds. According to Manwaring:

"Markham Middle School is still, educationally speaking, a wreck. Sixteen percent of teachers are working under an emergency credential, 30 percent of classes in core academic subjects are taught by teachers who are not 'highly qualified' … only 3 percent of students scored proficient in math, and only 11 percent met that goal in English."

The Obama administration has made "turnaround" a major priority—vowing to fundamentally restructure and reshape the nation’s lowest-performing schools. And, with $3 billion in the stimulus and more promised through the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, there is a unique opportunity in the months and years ahead to dramatically improve our country’s lowest-performing schools.


Model Effectively Engages Middle-Grade Youth in Quality After-School Programs

An innovative model in Providence, Rhode Island to coordinate after-school programs to attract middle-school youth through neighborhood hubs has succeeded in enrolling over 40 percent of the student population in the seven participating middle schools.

The new draft national math standards are indeed challenging - and I have often wondered how elementary school teachers can teach many of these concepts - and some will be challenging even to middle school math teachers. Yet these two studies seem to contradict each other:



Math teachers in the United States need better training if the nation's K-12 students are going to compete globally.

"A weak K-12 mathematics curriculum in the U.S., taught by teachers with an inadequate mathematics background, produces high school graduates who are at a disadvantage. When some of these students become future teachers and are not given a strong background in mathematics during teacher preparation, the cycle continues."


Middle School Mathematics Professional Development Useless?

Results after one year of providing teachers math professional development (PD) indicate no improvement on their students' math achievement when compared to teachers who did not receive the study-provided PD.
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Katrina students show strong performance gains after four years in Texas schools

A new study has found that students who relocated to Texas because of Hurricane Katrina have made significant academic progress during the past four years and are performing slightly better than a demographically and economically matched set of Texas students.

When compared with all Texas students, the Katrina students perform as well or better than the Texas students on reading performance and the gap in mathematic performance narrowed substantially.

“I was so proud of the Texas public schools when they took in the students who evacuated their homes because of Hurricane Katrina. But today, I am even more proud of these schools and our educators because they have made a real and lasting difference in the lives of these children,” said Commissioner of Education Robert Scott.

When Hurricane Katrina slammed into coastal states in August 2005 creating major damage across the southern United States, 46,504 evacuees from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida suddenly enrolled in Texas public schools.

Texas schools opened their doors and provided not only academic services but clothing, counseling and other services to the children.

Recently, research staff at the Texas Education Agency examined how a subset of students who remained in Texas fared academically after four years in the Texas public schools.

The study looked at Katrina students who were in grades 3, 5 and 8 in 2006 and still enrolled in Texas schools in 2009, and compared them to students enrolled in Texas schools who matched the group based on gender, ethnicity, economic background, and by geographic region. Additionally, the researchers looked for Texas students who had Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) scores similar to the evacuees in 2006. Along with this matched student comparison, the researchers also compared the Katrina students to all Texas test takers.

The students’ performance on the TAKS was tracked and studied from 2006 to 2009.

In 2006, the percentage of Katrina students in the study passing the TAKS reading test was 80 percent for the third-grade group, 63 percent for the fifth-grade students and 71 percent for the eighth-grade students.

After four years of Texas education, the percentages of Katrina students in the study who were passing the TAKS reading tests rose to 93 percent for the third-grade cohort, 94 percent for the fifth-grade cohort and 91 percent for the eighth-grade cohort.

In 2006, the percent of Katrina students who passed the TAKS math test was 67 percent for the third-grade cohort, 61 percent for the fifth-grade cohort and 48 percent for the eighth-grade cohort. By 2009, the percentage of these student groups passing TAKS math tests was 75 percent for the third-grade cohort, 73 percent for the fifth-grade cohort and 69 percent for the eighth-grade cohort.

Results indicated that, in general, the performance of Katrina students across the four years in which those students were educated in Texas was slightly better than the performance of the comparable set of Texas students.

The timing of the hurricane may have resulted in many of the Katrina students being educated less than a full year in Texas and the stress of the experience may have led those students to perform poorly that first year, the study said.

“The improved performance of the Katrina students over the last three years of the study relative to their matched peers may also reflect the recovery of these students, the increased stability in their schooling, the commitment of additional state and federal funding to meet the needs of students and families impacted by Hurricane Katrina and the focused attention of Texas educators on this specific population of students,” according to the study.

Over the four years of the study, the average reading performance of Katrina students increased so that the passing rates for these students was similar to or better than the average performance for all test takers in 2009. In mathematics, the achievement gap between the Katrina students and the Texas students in 2006 was larger than the performance gap in reading. By 2009, the gap in mathematics performance narrowed substantially but lagged behind the performance of all test takers.

“These students have made remarkable gains over the past four years. All Texans can be proud of our service to these students,” Scott said.
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Do more effective teachers earn more outside of the classroom?

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This report examines earnings records for more than 90,000 classroom teachers employed by Florida public schools between the 2001–02 and 2006–07 school years, roughly 20,000 of whom left the classroom during that time. A majority of those leaving the classroom remained employed by public school districts. Among teachers in grades 4–8 leaving for other industries, a 1 standard deviation increase in estimated value-added to student math and reading achievement is associated with 6–9 percent higher earnings outside of teaching. The relationship between effectiveness and earnings is stronger in other industries than it is for the same groups of teachers while in the classroom, suggesting that current compensation systems do not fully account for the higher opportunity wages of effective teachers.
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School districts across the country are shortchanging low-income students

A new report from The Education Trust documents how budgeting practices in school districts across the country are shortchanging low-income students and undermining the power of federal investments in high-poverty schools.


Close the Hidden Funding Gaps in Our Schools” shines a light on these widespread and unjust accounting practices and offers Congress a straightforward legislative path: Fix the so-called comparability provisions of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).


Title I requires federal funds to be added to an equal base of state and local funds in order to buy the extra supports that low-income kids need to achieve at high levels. But when districts don’t provide schools receiving federal Title I funds with an equitable share of state and local resources, federal Title I money ends up filling local funding gaps at these schools, rather than buying the extras that it is intended to purchase and that low income kids need.


“Shortchanging students living in poverty is plain wrong and too easy in far too many school districts,” said Kati Haycock, president of The Education Trust. “Congress can and should stop it. And stop it now.”


The authors of the report examined per-student expenditures in New York City and uncovered big differences between spending in some of the city’s high-poverty and low-poverty schools.


For example, in 2007-08:



  • Half of the city’s nearly 500 Title I schools received less state and local funding than non-Title I schools.

  • At P.S. 251 in Brooklyn, 86 percent of the school’s 668 students are from low-income families. The school received $14,762 in state and local funds per pupil, which is almost $2,000 lower than the average in the district’s lower poverty schools. This gap added up to about $1.3 million in lost revenue for P.S. 251.

But New York City is far from alone. Research conducted over the past decade has uncovered district-level budgeting practices nationwide that frequently favor schools serving the fewest poor students. 


“New York City is just one example of an all too common practice. High-poverty schools across the country are often shortchanged when it comes to funding,” said Natasha Ushomirsky, K-12 policy analyst at The Education Trust and coauthor of the report.


Why do these gaps exist? Most districts allocate teaching positions to schools instead of dollars to spend on salaries. So a school with a first-year teacher with a bachelor’s degree is considered to have the same resource as a school with a 10-year veteran who earned a master’s degree, even though the district pays a higher salary to the more experienced teacher with a more advanced degree. Research shows that high-poverty schools tend to employ less experienced teachers with fewer credentials.


Here are examples of gaps in average teacher salaries between high-poverty and low-poverty elementary schools:



  • $2,637 per teacher in Cincinnati

  • $2,668 per teacher in Austin, Tex.

  • $3,160 per teacher in Fresno, Calif.

Closing teacher salary gaps would be a big step forward, but it would not fully close the spending gap. School districts often allocate other resources inequitably as well. And all of these inequities add up to big financial disadvantages for the schools serving the students facing the steepest challenges. These district-created inequities undermine the intent of federal Title I spending.


“Imagine the professional development, enhanced curriculum, or even school building improvements a low-income school could afford if inequitable local spending practices were halted,” said Daria Hall, director of K-12 policy at The Education Trust and coauthor of the report.


When Congress reauthorizes ESEA later this year, the comparability loophole must be closed. Congress can, and should, require districts to do the following:



  • Spend at least the same amount per student in Title I schools as they do in non-Title I schools.

  • Count all school-level expenditures in dollars, including teacher salaries, to demonstrate equitable funding across a school district.

  • Publicly report per-student expenditures by funding source (local, state, and federal) and by school building.

“I commend the work of The Education Trust in creating this report. Once again we see glaring inequities in funding that disadvantage students with the greatest need,” said Representative Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.). When Congress reconvenes, I will be introducing legislation to address the very challenges raised here by The Education Trust and look forward to working with education advocates, my colleagues in Congress, and the president to see that comparability is addressed in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.”


“If we measured funding logically—rather than allowing things like headcounts of teachers to pass for a demonstration of equitable spending—resources would dramatically increase in thousands of low-income schools across the country,” said Amy Wilkins, vice president of The Education Trust. “With one long-overdue change, Congress can end unfair budgeting practices that treat poor children like second-class citizens and help federal funds have their intended impact.”

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Hybrid learning studied

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Creating a new educational model to serve dropouts and at-risk students


Full report

In the fall of 1999, Wichita Public Schools launched a dropout-recovery and credit-recovery program, called the Learning Centers, in response to the district’s low graduation rate. The program used a disruptive innovation—computer-based learning—to enable high school dropouts of all ages to work toward earning high school diplomas and current high school students to make up lost credits so they could graduate.

By 2010, the district was operating four dropout-recovery centers and seven credit-recovery centers. The program served 946 students in 3,904 half-credit courses and had a waiting list of more than 300 students during the 2008–09 school year.

Educating nonconsumers_The program serves two distinct groups of people who would otherwise be nonconsumers. The first consists of adults and youth who dropped out of school for a variety of reasons and previously had no options to earn high school diplomas. The majority are between ages 18 and 21, but adults up to the age of 60 also enroll. The second consists of students still enrolled in high school who failed a course and previously had no convenient or timely way to retake it, which hurt their chances of graduating on time.

Hybrid learning

The program uses a hybrid model, which combines elements of virtual learning and a traditional classroom setting. Students complete computer-based courses at dropout-recovery and credit- recovery centers under the direction of certified teachers. The program does not follow a daily class schedule. Instead, students may go to the centers to work on their courses at any time during the hours of operations.

Computer-based courses are the primary source of the learning content, which is advantageous for several reasons as it:

• Allows students to learn at their own pace and preferred time;
• Permits students to enroll or finish the program at any time during the year and not follow a traditional school calendar;
• Offers students a wide range of courses and course levels without requiring a dedicated teacher for each level and subject;
• Enables the use of a mastery-based curriculum that ensures students are learning as they progress through a course;
• Provides rapid, unbiased feedback that allows teachers to intervene as soon as students begin struggling with a concept.

The computer-based curriculum frees teachers from lesson planning and lecturing so that they can spend the bulk of their time providing students with individualized help with coursework on a need-by-need basis. Teachers also are responsible for making sure students stay on task and for grading essays and written assignments.

Funding

In disruptive fashion, the program is significantly less expensive per student than traditional schools in the district. It receives only state per-pupil funding for dropout-recovery students, state at-risk funding for students who are eligible to receive free or reduced-price lunches, registration and tuition fees, and some outside grants. It does not receive state funds for credit-recovery students, nor does it receive district funds obtained from property taxes for any students. During the 2008–09 school year, the program cost roughly $7,307 less than the district’s per-pupil expenditure for the 2007–08 school year, the latest year for which this data was available.

Student performance

The district’s graduation rate has risen by more than eight percentage points since the program first began in 1999. According to the district’s numbers, an increase in the graduation rate of minorities has driven much of this increase._The four dropout-recovery centers have collectively helped 974 students earn their high school diplomas since 1999. During the 2008–09 school year, the mean adjusted graduation rate for the dropout-recovery centers was 81 percent. However, 38 percent of the students enrolled in dropout-recovery centers withdrew for a variety of reasons before earning high school diplomas that year.
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Problems inhibiting permanent change in low-performing schools

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The story of America’s failed efforts to turn around the lowest-performing schools can be summed up in the tale of Markham Middle School. Located in the Watts neighborhood of Southeastern Los Angeles, Markham’s student body is predominantly low-income Latino and African American students. In 1997, the state of California labeled the school a low-performing school. In that year, the average Markham student scored at the 16th percentile in math and the 12th percentile in reading. Since then, the situation has only gotten worse.

Under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law, school districts are supposed to take dramatic action when a school like Markham continues to show such low student performance. Yet in the new Education Sector report Restructuring 'Restructuring': Improving Interventions for Low-Performing Schools and Districts, Senior Policy Analyst Rob Manwaring finds that school districts and states often avoid making the hard choices that might lead to real reform.

Manwaring documents how few states and districts use the tools provided to them by NCLB. Instead of closing schools or replacing personnel, districts and states most often choose other, less aggressive actions. So they hire consultants. They redesign the curriculum. They create smaller learning communities.

Markham Middle School has tried most of these reforms with no success. It has also received over $3 million in state and federal remediation funds. According to Manwaring:

"Markham Middle School is still, educationally speaking, a wreck. Sixteen percent of teachers are working under an emergency credential, 30 percent of classes in core academic subjects are taught by teachers who are not 'highly qualified' … only 3 percent of students scored proficient in math, and only 11 percent met that goal in English."

The Obama administration has made "turnaround" a major priority—vowing to fundamentally restructure and reshape the nation’s lowest-performing schools. And, with $3 billion in the stimulus and more promised through the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, there is a unique opportunity in the months and years ahead to dramatically improve our country’s lowest-performing schools.

Not all turnaround efforts will be successful, but allowing the status quo to continue in these lowest-performing schools is also not acceptable, argues Manwaring. Improvement funding is already being distributed to states, and it will be largely up to states to ensure that districts use this funding to support sustainable reform at their lowest-performing schools. Granting the funding is only the first step. States must follow through and ensure that districts meet the commitments that they are making by receiving these funds.

Restructuring 'Restructuring' lays out a series of specific policy changes that can be made at the local, state, and federal levels. As the federal government begins the reauthorization of ESEA, this new Education Sector report provides an excellent opportunity to broaden awareness of this issue—and to lay the groundwork for policy changes at all three levels.
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Understanding Teachers Contracts

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Whether it's the contentious multi-year negotiations over the teachers contract in Washington, D.C., or the debates in many states over competing for Race to the Top funds, teachers contracts are at the center of the education reform debate today. Once of interest only to education insiders, contract issues and calls for reform are now widespread.

But often, the public has no idea what a typical teachers contract looks like. Even though contracts are public documents, most are not easily found on the Web sites of school districts or teachers unions. Newspapers and local media do not ordinarily publish them (and often offer only cursory coverage of the issues being discussed during collective bargaining negotiations). Meanwhile, those negotiations are often held out of public view, and the deals cut late at night. The documents themselves can be cumbersome, lawyerly, heavily influenced by side agreements and addendums, and generally hard for non-experts to figure out.

A new Education Sector explainer, Understanding Teachers Contracts seeks to bring greater transparency and understanding to the issue of teacher contracts. The interactive explainer offers a side-by-side comparison of common provisions found in contracts. It points out the differences and similarities of two contracts along key dimensions, such as teacher pay, evaluation, the rights of the teachers union, and teacher transfers. It also includes a short, interactive quiz to enable readers to see where they personally fit into the major contours of the debate about teachers contracts today.

The two contracts illustrated are the contract between the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) in Southern California and the San Diego Education Association, which was ratified in 2006 (a traditional contract), and an early contract used by Green Dot Public Schools in Los Angeles. The Green Dot contract is an example of what is sometimes called a "thin" contract—that is, it is silent on many issues that are covered in the more traditional SDUSD contract.
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U.S. Commitment to Gifted Students Severely Lacking

The U.S. education system neglects the needs of our gifted and talented students, leaving the nation ill-prepared to identify and effectively serve high-potential students, a survey reports.

The report – 2008-2009 State of the States in Gifted Education by the National Association for Gifted Children and the Council of State Directors of Programs for the Gifted finds a fragmented collection of policies and resources that vary greatly between states and local districts and that are almost universally underfunded and underresourced.

More than a quarter of all states provided no funding for gifted students during the last school year, and most high-potential students are taught by teachers with little to no training in gifted education, the report concludes.

"At a time when other nations are redoubling their commitment to their highest potential students, the United States continues to neglect the needs of this student population, a policy failure that will cost us dearly in the years to come," said Dr. Ann Robinson, President of the National Association for Gifted Children and Director of the Center for Gifted Education at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

"The solution to this problem must be a comprehensive national gifted and talented education policy in which federal, state, and local districts work together to ensure all gifted students are identified and served by properly trained teachers using appropriate curriculum," Robinson added.

A Nationwide Lack of Commitment

Of the states that reported funding for gifted students, per-pupil expenditure varied sharply from $2 to $750 for the 2008-2009 school year.

Only 5 states require teachers to receive any preparation on gifted students before entering the classroom. Even for instructors teaching in specialized gifted programs, only 5 states require annual professional development for them.

"Most gifted students spend the majority of their school days in general education classrooms, receiving little specialized instruction per week. The fact that most states do not require classroom teachers to have any exposure to the unique learning needs of gifted children means the majority of high-potential students are not being taught by appropriately trained teachers," Robinson noted.

Uneven Services

The report also found that in most states, even those that define giftedness and mandate services, key policies pertaining to gifted education are set exclusively at the local district level.

"The lack of leadership and failure to hold districts accountable for serving gifted students by Washington and the states has produced a largely uneven and inconsistent delivery system, said Nancy Green, NAGC Executive Director. "For every local district making an outstanding commitment to gifted learners, we have scores of districts doing nothing."

Impact on the Nation

The ramifications of the nation's underinvestment in gifted education is evidenced in many areas including continued underperformance on international benchmarks, particularly in math, science, and engineering, and in the shortage of qualified workers able to enter professions that require advanced skills.

"Forty years ago, we realized the impact of a sustained commitment to academic excellence when we celebrated the landing of a man on the moon. Future breakthroughs and discovery in science, medicine, and technology will be impossible if we fail to identify and serve today's brightest young minds. The time to act is now," Robinson said.
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Guidelines for Developing an Academic Acceleration Policy

Guidelines for Developing an Academic Acceleration Policy provides guidance and encourages the systematic adoption and practice of acceleration in schools across the nation. The Guidelines document can assist schools in writing and modifying acceleration policy that is suited to local needs and adheres to research-based best practices.

Guidelines is co-authored by the Institute for Research and Policy on Acceleration, the National Association for Gifted Children, and the Council of State Directors of Programs for the Gifted.
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How Schools Hold Back America's Brightest Students

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A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America's Brightest Students
Nicholas Colangelo, Susan G. Assouline, Miraca U. M. Gross

America's schools routinely avoid academic acceleration, the easiest and most effective way to help highly capable students. While the popular perception is that a child who skips a grade will be socially stunted, fifty years of research shows that moving bright students ahead often makes them happy.

Acceleration means moving through the traditional curriculum at rates faster than typical. The 18 forms of acceleration include grade-skipping, early-entrance to school, and Advanced Placement (AP) courses. It is appropriate educational planning. It means matching the level and complexity of the curriculum with the readiness and motivation of the student.

Students who are moved ahead tend to be more ambitious, and they earn graduate degrees at higher rates than other students. Interviewed years later, an overwhelming majority of accelerated students say that acceleration was an excellent experience for them. Accelerated students feel academically challenged and socially accepted, and they do not fall prey to the boredom that plagues many highly capable students who are forced to follow the curriculum for their age-peers.

For the first time, this compelling research is available to the public in a bold new initiative to get these findings into the hands of parents, teachers, and principals. The report is available at no cost to schools, the media, and parents requesting copies.

You'll find information about entering school early, skipping grades in elementary school, the Advanced Placement program, and starting college ahead of time. You'll read the comments of accelerated students, Deans of Colleges of Education, a school superintendent, and a school board member.

With all this research evidence, why haven't schools, parents, and teachers accepted the idea of acceleration? A Nation Deceived presents these reasons for why schools hold back America's brightest kids:

• Limited familiarity with the research on acceleration
• Philosophy that children must be kept with their age group
• Belief that acceleration hurries children out of childhood
• Fear that acceleration hurts children socially
• Political concerns about equity
• Worry that other students will be offended if one child is accelerated.

This report shows that these reasons are simply not supported by research. By distributing thousands of copies and launching a public-awareness campaign, the Nation Deceived report provides teachers and parents the knowledge, support, and confidence to consider acceleration.
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