bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Putting Performance Pay to the Test: Effects of Denver ProComp on the Teacher Workforce and Student Outcomes
Authors: Atteberry Allison , Lacour Sarah E.
Published: November 2021

Context

In 2005-06, Denver became one of the first U.S. districts to implement a pay-for-performance (PFP) compensation system, and Denver's ProComp is now the longest-running PFP policy in the country. The national proliferation of PFP systems in education has been controversial, with mixed evidence and competing narratives about its impacts. During Denver's 2019 strike, disagreements arose about whether 13 years of ProComp have helped or harmed efforts to retain effective teachers to improve student outcomes. This article addresses this policy debate.

Research Questions

We use a 16-year panel to analyze the effects of ProComp on both student and teacher outcomes. We focus on the onset of the second version of the policy, ProComp 2.0, in 2008.

Intervention

The ProComp policy is a pay-for-performance teacher compensation system, which includes ten distinct financial incentives, some of which are awarded schoolwide. Annual payouts represented 12% of base-pay, on average, among full-time teachers.

Research Design

We use comparative interrupted time series (CITS) to examine pre/post ProComp trends in outcomes in DPS relative to similar districts across the same period. When CITS is not possible, we conduct interrupted time series (ITS) analysis in DPS using a panel up to five years pre-PC1 and up to ten years post-onset.

Results

ProComp may have had a positive effect on ELA, math, and writing achievement that was not evident in comparable districts with similar achievement trends prior to 2005-06. We also find descriptive evidence that more effective teachers were recruited to DPS once ProComp began and that the overall decline in teacher retention across districts in this time period was less precipitous among DPS’ highly effective teachers during ProComp.

Conclusions

Our results can help reflect on which of the hypothesized mechanisms undergirding PFP policies find empirical support in the field. The onset of ProComp shifted the composition of the DPS teacher workforce through recruitment and retention of certain kinds of teachers. These results at first appear to contradict teacher perceptions that the program coincided with a dramatic decline in teacher retention and was thus ineffective. However, retention did, in fact, decline throughout the period. Yet DPS retention patterns were not that different from other comparable Colorado districts during this period. Thus, while teachers’ perceptions of reduced teacher retention were accurate, it would be very difficult to see from within DPS that retention rates were not necessarily distinct from secular trends outside DPS.
Investing Time in Technology: Teachers’ Value Beliefs and Time Cost Profiles for Classroom Technology Integration
Authors: Vongkulluksn Vanessa W. , Xie Kui , Hawk Nathan A.
Published: November 2021

Background

Teachers’ value beliefs toward technology are important factors influencing their technology integration practices. Despite the complexity of value beliefs, past research in this area has tended to treat value beliefs as one monolithic factor. More work is needed to identify groups of teachers with different value belief patterns and how these groups of teachers use technology in the classroom. This understanding would help inform intervention strategies that can shift teachers’ value beliefs and technology use in specific and purposeful ways.

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to examine naturally occurring profiles comprising of teachers’ positive value beliefs and time cost perception toward technology integration, and how value belief profiles are linked to teachers’ classroom technology use.

Participants

The sample for this study consisted of 648 high school teachers teaching a variety of content domains from 16 schools in a Midwestern state in the United States.

Research Design

The study featured a nonexperimental survey research design.

Data Collection and Analysis

Teachers at participating schools were invited to take an online survey during the spring of the 2016–2017 academic year. We employed a person-centered, latent profile analysis of different types of value beliefs, including intrinsic value, attainment value, utility value, and time cost perception. We then used hierarchical linear modeling to test the ways in which value profile membership was linked to how teachers used technology in the classroom.

Findings

Results from latent profile analysis showed overall corresponding patterns of intrinsic, utility, and attainment value. On the other hand, perceived time cost was found to play an important role in differentiating profile groups. Two profiles of teachers had high positive value beliefs but differed in terms of their time cost perceptions. Importantly, technology value profile membership was shown to be salient in predicting how much teachers used technology for more central, high-impact tasks in the classroom, such as use of digital content and use of technology for differentiation and assessment purposes.

Conclusions

Our results suggest that teacher education and professional development programs should target shifting teachers to increasingly more adaptive value belief profiles. The present study further contributes to this effort by describing the typology of teachers’ value beliefs that can be used to inform specific intervention strategies. Such programs are needed because teachers’ value beliefs are central predictors of how they use technology, especially for instructional tasks that may matter most for improving student outcomes.
Toward Caring Language and Literacy Classrooms for Black Immigrant Youth: Combating Raciolinguistic Ideologies and Moral Licensing
Authors: Warrican S. Joel
Published: November 2021

Background

In recent years, there has been a shift in migration pattern to the U.S. such that most immigrants are now coming from regions outside of Europe. These new groups (particularly Black immigrant populations) face acts of discrimination and injustices when they display, for example, linguistic and cultural divergence.

Purpose

This article explored the effects of raciolinguistic ideologies and moral licensing on the linguistic, literate, and broader cultural identities of Black immigrant youth and the subsequent impact on their academic achievement.

Method

I proposed a theory that links raciolinguistic ideologies with the concept of moral licensing to flesh out how the interconnection between these two concepts may be applied to explain seemingly helpful actions that are in fact harmful.

Findings

This exploration yielded a number of insights, but the standout point is that there seems to be a White Eurocentric way of being (that seems even present in schools) that has adverse effects on Black immigrants.

Conclusions

Under the guidance of caring teachers, Black immigrant students can be encouraged to feel valued and respected, and this should help to foster and increase their participation in classroom activities.
Practice-Driven Data: Lessons from Chicago's Approach to Research, Data, and Practice in Education
Authors: Moeller Eliza , Seeskin Alex
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

There is a body of evolving research on how educators use data for improvement, with many examples in the literature about how educators learn to use a routine of data-driven cycles of inquiry to make smart improvements to their practice. This article is not an alternative structure for engaging in cycles of inquiry, but rather a series of critical considerations for school leaders about how, why, and with what supports they can best organize their schools to use data for improvement.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

The study addresses the research question, “What are the conditions necessary for school leaders to use data to improve student outcomes?” To demonstrate our concept of practice-driven data, we use Chicago Public Schools as a case study of school district that worked and continues to work with its research and practice partners to implement a process using data-based indicators with the goal of improving practice and ultimately student outcomes.

Research Design

In this article, as authors we are participant observers of the work of bringing data to schools across various projects and many years. We write this article as leaders that are based in the University of Chicago and work with Chicago Public Schools, but are independent of the district. We rely on notes from our daily practices, observations from our experiences, and documents from the practices supporting Chicago Public School leaders.

Conclusions/Recommendations

We build the article around five lessons that form an approach to the use of practice-driven data: First, it is important to build capacity to facilitate hard conversations that use data to spur collective action, which requires an emphasis on trust, collaboration, and culture. Second, the preponderance of available data and the scarce resource of time require that educators and leaders prioritize research-based indicators that matter most for student success. Third, educators at all levels of the school system can use relevant research evidence to make meaning of the data to guide their practice, and to develop shared ownership over the implications of the research on improving student outcomes. Fourth, using data effectively to guide practice requires that educators and leaders use the right data at the right time of the school year. Finally, there is no more important use of data in public schools than as a tool to identify and stop inequities that continue to leave the most vulnerable students further and further behind.
Keeping Students on Track to Postsecondary Success: Learnings from the Pathways to Adult Success (PAS) Initiative
Authors: Fox Joanna Hornig , Balfanz Robert
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Over the past decade early warning systems which use predictive indicators to identify students in need of additional supports to stay on track to high school graduation have spread from a few schools to most states. There is now a growing interest in extending the utility of early warning systems from high school graduation to post-secondary readiness.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

Report on initial findings and insights from a three year effort to build a learning community of early adopters of early warning systems for high school graduation to figure out how they can be extended to keep students on track to post-secondary success.

Intervention/Program/Practice

A key outcome of the learning community which included 150 representatives of K-12 local and state school systems, as well as non-profits and institutions of higher education was the development a framework for keeping students on track to post-secondary success, called Pathways to Adult Success which has four main components (1) how to use Early Warning Systems to support postsecondary success, (2) how to provide better postsecondary navigation and guidance supports to all students, (3) how to develop cross-sector collaborations, and (4) how to improve data use and data systems.

Research Design

Participant-observation supported by interviews and surveys

Conclusions/Recommendations

The PAS learning community assembled a multi-part framework of recommendations and guideposts to help states, schools, and districts increase and improve pathways to adult success for all youth. This framework extends the early warning approach to support bridges to postsecondary outcomes, while acknowledging the need to improve and expand navigation and guidance supports for all students, and to increase cross-sector collaborations to improve and expand existing pathways. Finally, it stresses the power of and need for data, data systems, and data use to drive all elements of the Framework. The remaining challenge will be creating the conditions which enable its widespread implementation.
Supporting Use of Data and Evidence from Early Warning Indicator Systems in Research–Practice Partnerships
Authors: Penuel William R. , Farrell Caitlin C. , Daniel Julia
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Research on data and evidence use suggest that productive use depends on interactive processes, including sustained interactions between educators and researchers. Recent research on research-practice partnerships (RPPs) has examined conditions under which these sustained collaborations support evidence use. Findings from these studies can inform research on early warning indicators, helping interpret implementation studies of productive use and creating conditions for use of data from early warning indicator systems.

Purpose

This chapter presents results of a review of studies of data and evidence use within RPPs. It investigates the claim that RPPs can support productive data and evidence use only under certain conditions, conditions that are relevant to studying and supporting the implementation of early warning indicator systems in education.

Research Design

The synthesis focused on identifying studies published between 2013 and 2019 as journal articles, book chapters, and technical reports that focused on data and evidence use in RPPs. To be included, studies had to be empirical and related to the focal topics. A total of 114 studies met criteria for inclusion. For all studies, members of the research team developed summaries, which the team then discussed. Themes emerged from summaries, grouped by RPP, and from team discussions.

Findings

The review found six supportive conditions were needed for productive use of data and evidence to guide decision-making and action. These were (1) valuation of knowledge, experience, and perspectives of partners; (2) processes for identifying sources of evidence needed to answer questions that are priorities for educators and community partners; (3) complementarity of knowledge of partners; (4) adoption of a learning perspective on systems change; (5) routines for sensemaking and collaboration; (5) synchrony with decision-making processes; and (6) a commitment to developing and using evidence among partner organizations.

Conclusions

Developers of early warning indicator systems should consider ways an RPP can support the creation of conditions for productive use of data from systems. Effective systems likely will depend on making room for educator voice and valuing of practitioner perspectives at all stages of design and implementation of systems. They will also require allocation of time and skill for structuring opportunities to make sense of data and developing a culture where evidence plays an important role in decision-making.
A Meta-Synthesis of Qualitative Research on Reading Intervention Classes in Secondary Schools
Authors: Frankel Katherine K. , Deanna Brooks Maneka , Learned Julie E.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context:

In the past two decades there have been at least 10 quantitative reviews, syntheses, or meta-analyses focused on literacy interventions in secondary schools. To date, much of this research has focused on quantifiable outcomes such as reading test scores, and few efforts have been made to synthesize studies of adolescent literacy interventions that attend to how students themselves experience those interventions and what mediates their experiences, which previous adolescent literacy research suggests should be considered alongside other outcomes.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study:

This meta-synthesis of qualitative research highlights additional factors that are overlooked when evidence of effectiveness is defined predominantly through assessment outcomes. It contributes insights from two decades of research on reading intervention classes (RICs), which are a long-standing approach to adolescent literacy intervention. We define RICs as compulsory, yearlong courses that supplement content-area classes with the goal of improving adolescents’ reading. Grounded in sociocultural theories of literacy and learning, our research question was: How do students experience and perceive RICs?

Research Design:

We conducted a qualitative meta-synthesis of 21 studies published between 2000 and 2020 that (1) focused on secondary (grades 6–12) RICs in the United States and (2) included data related to students’ experiences and perspectives.

Data Collection and Analysis:

We followed best practices in qualitative meta-synthesis, including assembling an author team composed of researchers with expertise in RICs, identifying a research meta-question, conducting a comprehensive search, selecting and appraising relevant studies, and coding and presenting findings using qualitative techniques.

Findings/Results:

We found that youth’s own diverse understandings of themselves as readers and writers, combined with the extent to which they viewed their RICs as relevant, agentive, and facilitative of relationships, mediated students’ experiences and perceptions of their RICs. In addition, students across studies described placement policies and practices as confusing, frustrating, and embarrassing.

Conclusions/Recommendations:

By providing a perspective that extends beyond test scores, the findings highlight some of the consequences of intervention placement policies and practices for adolescents. They also address the need for educational stakeholders to expand definitions of what counts as evidence of effectiveness to inform the future development of re-mediated literacy learning opportunities for adolescents that (1) rethink curriculum and instruction to affirm students’ literacy identities, histories, and capacities, and (2) reposition youth as literacy knowers and doers.
Colonizing the Mind: Hawaiian History, Americanization, and Manual Training in Hawaiʻi’s Public Schools, 1913–1940
Authors: Taira Derek
Published: November 2021

Background/Context:

Current historical understanding of Hawaiʻi’s territorial period celebrates American education as a crucial influence on the islands’ political development. In particular, the territory’s public school system represents an essential institution for spreading democratic freedom, fostering social mobility, and, more importantly, establishing America’s presence as a positive influence on Hawaiʻi’s political destiny. There has yet, however, to be a critical look at how White territorial school leaders used the public school system as a settler colonial institution with the intent of producing a compliant non-White population accepting of the nation’s racially stratified social, political, and economic systems of inequality.

Focus of Study:

Making Hawaiʻi American was about controlling the islands’ past and determining its future. Cultivating consent, as this article contends, was a critical strategy to reach this end. White school officials used their uncontestable authority to uproot local history and social systems and replace them with narratives affirming American exceptionalism and racial segregation. Throughout the territorial period (1900–1959), they designed and supported formal and informal schooling practices and policies to inculcate Hawaiʻi’s majority nonwhite students with American values, norms of behavior, and political beliefs to socially engineer acceptance of White American authority and racial hierarchy. Through repetition and enforcement of these practices and policies, they sought to replace the unfavorable local memory of American involvement in the forced 1893 overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani and Native protests over U.S. annexation in 1898 with an affirmative, progressive narrative justifying America’s presence and jurisdiction as a beneficent enterprise.

Research Design:

This article brings historical inquiry to this topic and uses archival materials from the University Archives and Pacific-Hawaiian Collections at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Those include the entire collection of the Hawaii Educational Review, correspondence and memos produced by schoolmen (White male school officials and administrators), and newspaper clippings. It also draws on secondary literature to help further contextualize this topic.

Conclusions/Recommendations:

The history of White educators in territorial Hawaiʻi reveals how public education under their leadership constituted a colonizing project designed to limit student opportunities and determine their futures. The challenge for scholars and educators is not to consign such histories to mere reflections on past mistakes but to identify how forms of oppressive education continue to manifest in schools today and impact student lives.
A Spatial Analysis on Charter School Access in the New York Metropolitan Area
Authors: Lee Jin , Lubienski Christopher A.
Published: November 2021

Background

Extant literature has consistently indicated that access to charter school markets is shaped by social geography. Given interest in location shown by charter schools and parents, estimating potential spatial access to charter schools has become instrumental in understanding equal opportunities for charter school enrollment in metropolitan areas with preexisting residential segregation.

Purpose

By considering the increasing significance of sociogeography, this article asks whether students have equal opportunities for potential spatial access to charter schools across communities and how disparities in charter school access are related to housing patterns.

Setting

This study focuses on 122 charter schools in the New York metropolitan region, a highly segregated metropolitan area in the United States where charter schools are a primary component of education reform.

Research Design

The first part of this study illustrates patterns of spatial accessibility of the area's charter schools, within a 20-minute commuting time, to students aged 5–13 years by employing the enhanced two-step floating catchment area method using a Gaussian function. The next part of the study tests the hypothesis that students are able to access charter schools equitably and irrespective of their place of residence. The spatial lag regression model is used to compare distributions of potential spatial accessibility with 15 demographic and socioeconomic variables.

Findings

Even after controlling for disproportionate population sizes by census tract, the potential need for charter schools is matched inequitably with the supply of educational service providers. The spatial lag regression results indicate that children in areas less accessible to charter schools within a convenient travel period tend to be exposed to communities with more populations of color, higher unemployed groups, and less expensive housing.

Conclusions

The findings offer empirical evidence that access to charter school differs depending on demographic and socioeconomic attributes, in significant combination with geography, illuminating charter school location strategies in real-world contexts. Though charter schools have been promoted as a vehicle to offer significant equity advantages across politically designed and strictly operated school attendance boundaries, charter schools in metropolitan New York exercise a distinct and profound form of pseudo-zoning by use of location strategies to exclude certain children who may be considered less desirable.
“Stone Steppers” and “Place Makers”: Community College Students’ Transfer Aspirations and Perceptions of Time
Authors: Ippolito Mary
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Sociologists of education have studied how community colleges’ institutional authorities and organizational barriers stratify students’ postsecondary aspirations. Notions of how students might diverge in their pursuits are less understood. This study builds on imagined futures and postsecondary aspiration literature to demonstrate how students’ agency and institutional barriers interconnect, creating two different transfer approaches based on patterns in students’ sense of place and time.

Research Questions

(1) How do community college students who aspire to transfer perceive campus as a place? (2) How do students see their time at community college as part of their plans?

Setting

Tutoring center, campus events, classrooms, and surrounding areas at a community college in Southern California.

Research Design

Drawing on combined data from 11 months of participant observation (approximately 185 hours), eight semistructured interviews with key participants, and a novel timeline approach, this study analyzes how students’ mental boundary work and interactions with others reveal distinct interpretations of being a transfer-bound student.

Findings/Results

In noting patterns in students’ sense of place and time, I found two “lived pathways”: students act as “stone steppers” or “place makers.” Stone steppers had tighter boundaries around what on-campus activities they defined as academic or work and a detailed plan for their future. Place makers were less segmented in their view of academic or work activities and more open-ended in their plan for the future.

Conclusions/Recommendations

This study offers a contextual and process-focused examination of the pursuit of postsecondary aspirations based on students’ lived experiences and narratives. In focusing on the interplay between students’ agency and community college context, this study provides several key takeaways for community college personnel and other stakeholders to use in serving students and best connecting their goals to their pathways and movement through college.
Show, Don't Tell: Multimodal Story Feedback in a K–1 Play-Based Writing Unit
Authors: Powell Christy Wessel
Published: November 2021

Background

With standardization ever squeezing creative curricula in K–1 classrooms, creating time for a play-based multimodal writing curriculum that leverages children's strengths as storytellers is revolutionary. Due in part to accountability policy pressures, print-based writing and verbocentric writing feedback are still often privileged in school curricula. And yet, children are natural whole-body storytellers who will be asked to write and present ideas in all sorts of forms. In order to leverage children's storytelling strengths, we need to teach writing through multiple modes: This means expanding both writing instruction and the types of feedback offered to writers in primary classrooms.

Research Questions

This study examines two questions: How is feedback being given, and what impact does it have on children's storytelling? How is play/storying being sanctioned?

Setting & Participants

The study took place in a K–1 classroom in an inquiry-based, project-based school in the U.S. Midwest during a month-long storytelling workshop unit. Participants included two co-teachers and 46 children aged 5 to 7.

Research Design

This qualitative study used ethnographic methods and participant observation.

Data Collection & Analysis

Video data were collected during workshop each day for one month, including minilessons, writing time, and share time, which is the focus of this article. Discourse analysis and a multimodality theoretical lens were used to analyze how children gave one another feedback on their stories through embodied demonstration, gesture, acting, out, or copying one another's storytelling devices.

Findings

Findings indicate that children's acting/embodiment, humor/parody, and copying all worked as effective forms of multimodal feedback, which ultimately functioned as teaching for developing peers’ storytelling strategies and skills. However, teachers inadvertently privileged language alone via narration, or language with demonstration in feedback sessions.

Conclusions

Teacher/researcher collaborations should explore ways to reimagine forms of writer's feedback that include and account for demonstration, copying, and impromptu performance and that, ultimately, open up the definition of what counts as writing at school. Um, you should work on making your story, like, real. Because, um, you're going all over the place [wiggles entire body to illustrate]—Allen, age 6
Writing as a Minecrafter: Exploring how Children Blur Worlds of Play in the Elementary English Language Arts Classroom
Authors: Brownell Cassie J.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Educators have considered how Minecraft supports language and literacy practices in the game and in the spaces and circumstances immediately surrounding gameplay. However, it is still necessary to develop additional conceptualizations of how children and youth's online and offline worlds and experiences are blurred by and through the games. In this study, I take up this call and examine how the boundaries of the digital were blurred by one child as he wrote in response to a standardized writing prompt within his urban fourth-grade classroom.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

Through snapshots of Jairo's writing, I illuminate how he muddled the lines between his physical play experiences and those he had in the virtual world of Minecraft. In doing so, I argue that he carried over his personal interest as a fan of Minecraft into the writing curriculum through creative language play. As Jairo “borrowed” his physical play experiences in the virtual world of Minecraft to complete an assigned writing task, he exemplified how children blur playworlds of physical and digital play in the elementary ELA classroom.

Research Design

Drawing on data generated in an 18-week case study, I examine how one child, Jairo, playfully incorporated his lived experiences in the virtual world of Minecraft into mandated writing tasks.

Conclusions/Recommendations

My examination of his writing is meant to challenge writing scholars, scholars of play, and those engaged in rethinking media's relation to literacy. I encourage a rethinking of what it means for adults to maintain clear lines of what is digital play and what is not. I suggest adults might have too heavy a hand in bringing play into classrooms. Children already have experiences with play—both physical and digital. We must cultivate a space for children to build on what was previously familiar to them by offering scaffolds to bridge these experiences between what we, as adults, understand as binaries. Children do not necessarily see distinctions between “reality” and play worlds, or between digital and physical play. For children, play worlds and digital worlds are perhaps simply worlds; it is we as adults who harbor a desire for clear boundaries.
Painting and Podcasting as Play: Assemblages (With)in Classroom-Situated Multimodal Design
Authors: Rust Julie
Published: November 2021

Background

Researchers interested in more playful literacy practices often abandon school-related contexts to instead follow young people to after-school settings, community spaces, social spaces, home environments, and online hangouts. However, play also makes itself visible, even (and sometimes especially) in more formalized learning spaces. Sometimes it emerges subversively in much the same way that flowers grow through cracks in concrete. Other times, teachers deliberately carve out experiences for students to make space for humor, creativity, laughter, and social imagining.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question

This inquiry examines two questions: What assemblages of play emerge when youth engage in multimodal composition in classroom spaces? What did these assemblages of play produce?

Participants

Participants included youth and teachers from two very different classrooms engaging in a diverse set of multimodal composition projects: one 6th-grade class in an independent school engaging in the creation of podcasts, and one 8th-grade class in a rural public school painting a scene from a recently read novel.

Research Design

This inquiry was designed as a qualitative case study.

Data Collection

Data sources gathered for this project included descriptive fieldnotes taken during approximately 3 hours of classroom observation during multimodal design, audio recordings during class sessions, photographs taken at the school sites, digital products produced by youth, reflective interviews with teachers, follow-up focus groups with 6th-graders, and reflective surveys filled out by all 8th-grade participants.

Findings

Two focal assemblages emerged from various participant/researcher vantage points. Youth conceptualized play as craft, and the researcher observed work-play flows.

Conclusions

Recommendations include (a) better recognizing play across age groups and places/spaces, (b) conceptualizing play as a complicated assemblage of materials, humans, emotions, technologies, and space-times, and (c) embracing work-play flows.
Does Delivery Location Matter? A National Study of the Impact of Dual Enrollment on College Readiness and Early Academic Momentum
Authors: Hu Xiaodan , Chan Hsun-Yu
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Although dual enrollment (DE) programs have indicated positive impact on various high school and postsecondary outcomes, access to DE programs remains unequal; historically marginalized students are less likely than other students to attempt college credits in high school. Despite DE being a widely adopted program at the state level, these programs vary greatly by eligibility criteria, funding models, delivery location, and modality.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

Guided by prominent learning theories, we hypothesize that the influence of early DE on later educational pathways and outcomes may vary by the location in which DE is delivered. This study examines whether the delivery location of DE (i.e., on a college campus or otherwise) influences students’ college readiness and first-year academic momentum in college, with a special focus on its heterogeneous effect among students of diverse racial and socioeconomic background.

Research Design

Using the restricted-use data from High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09), we use a quasi-experimental approach (i.e., inverse probability weighting models) with a nationally representative sample of students who have taken at least one DE course by 11th grade.

Findings/Results

The findings reveal that students who took at least one DE course on a college campus do not differ in their cumulative high school GPA, in their probability of attending college, in whether they took developmental courses, in whether they attended college immediately after high school graduation, and in their probability of full-time enrollment when compared with those who took DE course(s) elsewhere. However, the findings are not applicable to all students of varying background defined by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status.

Conclusions/Recommendations

This study provides several implications: (1) Because DE courses taken on a high school or college campus equally fuel students’ college readiness and early academic momentum, advising practices should acknowledge the benefits of DE courses regardless of delivery location. (2) DE participation with college exposure may particularly benefit students of higher socioeconomic status (SES), so interventions that offer holistic college experiences beyond academic work are needed to effectively prepare lower SES students for college life and accumulate academic momentum are needed. (3) States and educational entities should be mindful about the potential disparate effect of DE programs and provide regulation, oversight, and quality assurance so that these programs can narrow the postsecondary achievement gap.
White Privilege and Power in the NYS Opt-Out Movement
Authors: Rivera-Mccutchen Rosa L.
Published: November 2021

Background

Part of a special issue on the high-stakes testing opt-out movement, this article focuses its analysis on the movement within New York State, and examines white privilege and power within one specific organization, the NYS Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE). Specifically, I examine how the public-facing work of NYSAPE addressed (or ignored) race and/or racism in their efforts to resist high-stakes testing. I also ask, in what ways do their public stances affirm and reinforce white privilege and power?

Purpose

I explore the opt-out movement in New York State, and argue that it is a movement that has been largely dominated by white privilege and power. Employing critical race theory as analytical and methodological tools, I briefly examine the development and policy positions of NYSAPE, a coalition of grassroots parent, educator and community organizations.

Research Design

This qualitative case study focuses on NYSAPE and employs critical race theory as a methodological and analytical framework, with specific emphasis on whiteness as property (power) and interest convergence.

Conclusions/Recommendations

The paper aims to engage the opt-out movement in considering how its (in)actions are shaped by racism, a deeply entrenched element in our society, and pushes the movement to take a more liberatory stance for all children. Leaders within the opt-out movement, particularly in predominantly white and middle- to upper-class communities, have to examine their complicity in perpetuating racial inequities.
The Promise of Private Education: A Case Study of Racialized, Gendered, and Socioeconomic Disparities in Achievement in One Private School
Authors: Harris Kelly M. , Marcucci Olivia
Published: November 2021

Background

Private schools have a big part in the educational landscape in the United States, both in terms of the number of students they educate and in the number of resources they command. That said, despite expectations to increase equity and access to opportunity for all students, little is known about racial, gender, or socioeconomic achievement trends in this setting. Unlike public schools, there is very limited national-level achievement data infrastructure for private schools. Analyses of individual schools can begin to illuminate trends in particular contexts.

Purpose of Study

This study examines how achievement differs by race, gender, and socioeconomic status in one private school in the United States, Gardenview Preparatory School (GPS; a pseudonym).

Setting

GPS is a traditional private school serving students pre-kindergarten to 12th grade, located in a wealthy, predominantly White suburban area of a larger metropolitan region. Leadership in the school have attempted to prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work. One of their attempts was to seek a research collaboration with the authors of this article.

Participants

The primary focus of this article included a quantitative sample of all students graduating from GPS between the years of 2010 to 2017 (N =1216).

Research Design

While the larger research collaboration included mixed methods, this article presents multivariable regression models using secondary data. Significant features of the regression models include (1) achievement measures at both admissions to GPS and graduation from GPS, (2) multiple measures of achievement at graduation, and (3) intersectional analyses.

Findings

A key takeaway from this analysis is that demographics are not largely predictive of admissions test performance at GPS. A second key takeaway, however, is that once GPS students reached high school graduation, larger and more widespread racial, gendered, and socioeconomic disparities emerged. The third major takeaway from the analysis is that intersections of race and gender do impact achievement upon graduation from GPS.

Conclusions

This study is one of the first of its kind to use advanced multivariable regression to map achievement disparities—at multiple timepoints in a student's career and using multiple measures of achievement—in a traditional, private school. Without understanding the existence, nature, and extent of achievement disparities, stakeholders cannot act intentionally to promote equity in private schools and beyond.
Cultivating a Queer Mindset: How One Elementary School Teacher is Rattling Common Sense
Authors: Leonardi Bethy , Staley Sara
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

A significant body of research on gender and sexual diversity in education has called on teachers to “move beyond inclusion” of LGBTQ+ voices in curriculum by queering their practice and “disrupting cis-heteronormativity.” Few studies have focused on the ways that disrupting cis-heteronormativity is challenging work for teachers to engage.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

In this case study, we focus on patterned moves that Laura, a first-grade teacher, made to disrupt cis-heteronormativity by supporting her students in cultivating what we call a “queer mindset”—a way of thinking, feeling, and doing that “rattles” her students’ common sense.

Research Design

The qualitative study reflects a nested case study design in which Laura represents an individual case within the broader case. Specifically, we use instrumental case study methodology.

Conclusions/Recommendations

To make good on the goal of disrupting cis-heteronormativity, we encourage educators to cultivate in their students ways of thinking, feeling, and doing that upend common sense and that challenge the status quo. We encourage educators to support their students in developing queer mindsets. This way, not only can educators support individual students, but they can also propel the kind of social transformation we want to see.
Chapter 5: Establishing Teacher Allies through Critical Multicultural Coursework
Authors: Kolano Lan , Gutierrez Leslie , Sanczyk Anna
Published: November 2021

Background

Contemporary dominant discourses surrounding (un)documented migration in the United States are commonly divided into two polarized frames: those immigrants who are hard workers seeking a better life, and others who are border-crossing criminals. For teachers in the Southeast, developing an understanding of immigrants becomes critically important as new demographic trends and anti-immigration rhetoric have resulted in the implementation of restrictive laws, policies, and practices. In this article, we move beyond pedagogical strategies that address students’ linguistic needs and explore what teachers know and say about immigration, along with what they know about undocumented and DACAmented students.

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to explore the ways in which exposure to counternarratives of undocumented or DACAmented youth and families altered the frames in which teachers viewed immigration and undocumented and DACAmented immigrants.

Research Design

The researchers used qualitative methods to collect a series of narratives in the form of I-essays from 71 preservice teachers over four semesters. The narratives were then used as a tool of communication in exploring two research questions: (1) What were teachers’ perceptions of undocumented immigrants, given the racialized context in the Southeast? (2) How did counternarratives presented in multiple formats challenge the dominant essentialized view of undocumented immigrants? Narrative data from participants were analyzed using an inductive analysis approach.

Findings

The findings support how the use of critical conversations around immigration and exposure to the lives of youth and families through the use of film and narratives can support the development of teachers as undocumented allies.

Conclusions

We argue that preservice (ESL) teachers need to be knowledgeable about immigration laws, statuses, policies, and practices in order to be prepared to serve their students’ needs and to aid them in mapping out alternative routes/resources. For our participants, their views were challenged to reflect a deeper understanding of immigration, particularly around what it means to be an undocumented immigrant in an area of the United States that has experienced new immigrant growth. This study has significant implications for teacher preparation programs and further research.
Chapter 6: “I Have Gotten Braver”: Growing and Sustaining Critical Mathematics Pedagogies through a Teacher Community of Praxis
Authors: Gargroetzi Emma , Hendry Izzy , Jeffreys Angela , Patel Andrew , Wei Gina
Published: November 2021

Background

Mathematics education is not often identified as the locus of radical social change work, with these topics assumed instead as fodder for social studies or language arts lessons. As such, teachers of mathematics can struggle to find avenues for their commitments to social and educational justice in their mathematics teaching spaces.

Purpose

This study examined the practice and experiences of 10 math educators participating in a voluntary teacher learning community focused on critical pedagogies and math. The purpose was to identify the core learnings and challenges made possible through this learning community.

Setting and Participants

The Critical Mathematics Teacher Collaborative (CMTC) consists primarily of preservice and early career K–12 teachers, all of whom teach math and seek to develop their own math teaching practices through frameworks of critical pedagogy and social justice. An informal, nonhierarchical learning community, CMTC uses a cycle of critical reflection and action: We read and discuss theory to inform visions for critical mathematics teaching, and we workshop participant-designed lesson plans to support moving from vision to action.

Research Design

The study was collaboratively designed among members of the group as a self-study. Bidirectional interviews were conducted among 10 participants, transcribed, and analyzed.

Conclusions

Four core insights were identified. Participating teachers (1) desired to be able to engage in critical work in mathematics teaching spaces, (2) were nurtured by accountability to a community that supports putting ideals into practice and continuing to examine these ideals, (3) benefitted from praxis—having a space to connect theory to the practices of daily classroom teaching, and (4) provided allyship to each other in the face of challenges to teaching for social justice, shaping not only their mathematics teaching but also teaching in spaces beyond mathematics. Examples of critical mathematics pedagogies in action in the classrooms of participating teachers are included, as well as appendices with readings and a sample agenda for use by teachers wishing to model a learning community of their own after this one.
Migrainous infarction of the eye: Two cases of monocular ischemic complications associated with retinal migraine
Authors: Chhabra Nikita , Chiang Chia-Chun , Di Nome Marie A , Houghton Odette , Carlin Rachel E , O’Carroll Cumara B , Dodick David W , Dumitrascu Oana M
Published: November 2021

Background

Retinal migraine is defined by fully reversible monocular visual phenomena. We present two cases that were complicated by permanent monocular vision deficits.

Cases

A 57-year-old man with history of retinal migraine experienced persistent monocular vision loss after one stereotypical retinal migraine, progressing to finger-count vision over 4 days. He developed paracentral acute middle maculopathy that progressed to central retinal artery occlusion. A 27-year-old man with history of retinal migraine presented with persistent right eye superotemporal scotoma after a retinal migraine. Relative afferent pupillary defect and superotemporal visual field defect were noted, consistent with ischemic optic neuropathy.

Conclusion

Retinal migraine can complicate with permanent monocular visual loss, suggesting potential migrainous infarction of the retina or optic nerve. A thorough cerebrovascular evaluation must be completed, which was unrevealing in our cases. Acute and preventive migraine therapy may be considered in retinal migraine patients, to mitigate rare but potentially permanent visual loss.