bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Informational Significance of A–F School Accountability Grades
Authors: Adams Curt M. , Forsyth Patrick B. , Ware Jordan , Mwavita Mwarumba
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Despite problems with accountability systems under No Child Left Behind, the policy has been widely commended for exposing the depth and breadth of educational inequality in the United States. As states implement new accountability systems, there is growing concern that attention to achievement gaps and the performance of marginalized children has faded. Many approved accountability plans no longer report achievement by student subgroups or include subgroup performance in the calculation of accountability indicators.

Research Purpose

This study examined the informational significance of Oklahoma's A–F accountability grades relative to the policy objective of achievement equity. Informational significance as explained in self-determination theory provided a framework to explore the usefulness of an A–F grade for understanding achievement differences within and between schools.

Research Design

We evaluated the informational significance of Oklahoma A–F school grades by analyzing reading and math test scores from over 25,000 students in 81 elementary and middle schools. The study was designed to address two questions: Do students in “A” and “B” schools have high average achievement and small achievement gaps compared to students in “D” and “F” schools? What is the difference in average achievement and achievement gaps between school grades when holding constant contextual school conditions?

Results

We found test score gaps attributed to Free and Reduced Lunch qualification and minority status. Free and Reduced Lunch and minority students average about one standard deviation lower in math and reading than their peers. Test score gaps varied across A–F school grades with the largest gaps existing in “A” and “B” schools. HLM results showed that A–F grades do not differentiate schools by effectiveness levels. For reading, we did not find statistically significant main effects attributed to letter grades. For math, the only statistically significance difference was between students in “A” and “B” schools and students in “F” schools. This difference had a small effect size. School grades did moderate achievement gaps, but gaps moved in a direction opposite from what would be desired of an accountability system that measured achievement equity.

Conclusions

Progress made under NCLB in exposing achievement inequity in the U.S. has taken a step back with Oklahoma's A–F school grades. Our evidence suggests that a composite letter grade provides very little meaningful information about achievement differences.
Transgender and Gender-Creative Students in PK–12 Schools: What We Can Learn from Their Teachers
Authors: Meyer Elizabeth J. , Tilland-Stafford Anika , Airton Lee
Published: November 2021

Context

A growing body of work refects the ways in which gender-creative and transgender students are ill-served by current social climates in the vast majority of public schools. Few studies have explored this topic from an educator's perspective.

Purpose

This study was designed to develop a conception of the barriers and supports that exist for educators working to create learning environments that affirm transgender and gender-creative students.

Participants

Twenty-six Canadian educators who all had direct experience working with gender-creative and transgender students in school settings with an average of 10 years’ experience in schools and mean age of 43. Research Design: This project is a Social Action Research (SAR) project designed to identify what are common challenges and why these challenges are present.

Data Collection and Analysis

Each educator was interviewed for 60–120 minutes using a flexible interview guide and audio recordings were transcribed for analysis. Data analysis was conducted via an ongoing and exploratory design. We also performed a cross-case analysis to compare experiences and perceptions across teachers in elementary and secondary schools as well as alternative and traditional schools.

Findings

We identified barriers and supports experienced by our participants. Barriers included: (1) the pervasiveness of transphobia; (2) high frequency of school transfers; (3) the propensity for gay and lesbian educators to take on an “expert” role; (4) ethnocentrism; (5) relying on a “pedagogy of exposure” and using certain students as “sacrificial lambs”; (6) the overlapping challenges of working with youth who also have behavioral and learning difficulties; and (7) the balancing act required to navigate complex issues with little training and support. Supports identified were: (1) alternative schools as sites of refuge and spaces where transgender and gender-creative students are reportedly thriving; (2) empowered transgender and gender-creative students; (3) vigilant and protective adults; and (4) best practices.

Recommendations

In order to address systemic barriers we advocate for an application of principles and best practices aligned with critical, queer, and anti-oppressive pedagogies. We recommend that schools: (1) develop a more student-centered, flexible curriculum; (2) promote interdisciplinary and project-based learning; (3) model and promote creativity; (4) establish restorative justice programs; (5) reduce or entirely remove sex-segregated activities and spaces; (6) integrate discussions of gender diversity as a social justice issue throughout the curriculum.
Whose Problem is It? Gender Differences in Faculty Thinking about Campus Service
Authors: O'Meara Kerryann
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Empirical evidence suggests women faculty spend more time in campus service than men, which perpetuates inequality between men and women because research is valued more than service in academic reward systems, especially at research universities.

Purpose/Focus of Study

In this study I apply insights from research on gender inequality to examine whether women and men faculty at a research university were thinking about their campus service differently. I add to the literature by (1) making faculty thinking about campus service visible, (2) examining how this thinking is constrained by gender, and the gendered nature of organizations, and (3) revealing how individualistic and cosmopolitan orientations, and communal and local orientations appear together in faculty thinking about campus service.

Research Design

My research assistants and I conducted 60–75 minute-long, semistruc-tured interviews with 88 faculty including 34 men and 54 women on their work environment experiences. Interview questions focused on choices that faculty had made to emphasize different kinds of work (teaching, research, service), balance work priorities, and succeed.

Findings/Results

Overall, more women framed campus service in communal terms and expressed local orientations toward campus service; more men positioned service as a campus problem, and noted their own interests to avoid or minimize involvement in campus service so as not to hurt their career. In a smaller group of cases, (e.g., four men and five women) the faculty member expressed the dominant pattern for the other gender; however, even in these cases participants provided examples of the dominant pattern for their gender as well. In all cases, women and men were influenced by gendered ways of thinking about work, and gendered organizational practices that permeated their socialization and work environments.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Findings suggest that interventions are needed to affect thinking about campus service within university environments, as thinking shapes gendered divisions of labor. Sharing campus service data transparently, developing department consensus about appropriate levels of service contributions, and developing a sense of collective ownership for academic programs are examples of organizing practices that could generate change toward more gender neutral divisions of labor. Addressing the complex issue of inequality in campus service is not only about counting the numbers of service activities, although this is important. It is also critical to understand how faculty may be approaching the issue, the forces shaping their thinking, and the consequences of their thinking for individual careers and the future of the academic community.
The Transformation of Schools’ Social Networks during a Data-Based Decision Making Reform
Authors: Keuning Trynke , Geel Marieke Van , Visscher Adrie , Fox Jean-Paul , Moolenaar Nienke M.
Published: November 2021

Context

Collaboration within school teams is considered to be important to build the capacity school teams need to work in a data-based way. In a school characterized by a strong collaborative culture, teachers may have more access to the knowledge and skills for analyzing data, teachers have more opportunity to discuss the performance goals to be set, and they also can share effective teaching strategies to achieve those goals. Although many studies on data-based decision making (DBDM) foreground the importance of teacher collaboration, our knowledge of what such collaboration looks like and how such collaboration may change during a DBDM reform remains limited.

Objective

The current study uses a social network perspective to explore how collaboration in 32 elementary schools in the Netherlands takes shape in the interactions among teachers as they engage in a DBDM reform project.

Research Design

Schools’ social networks were examined at the start of the intervention and after having participated 1 year in the DBDM reform. Social networks regarding three DBDM topics are examined: (1) discussing student achievement; (2) discussing achievement goals; (3) and discussing instructional strategies. The density, reciprocity, and centralization of these networks were calculated, and multivariate multiple regression analysis was used to analyze changes over time.

Conclusion

Findings suggest that teachers’ DBDM related networks transform during the intervention, especially regarding the discussion of student achievement data: although the number of relationships remains stable, more reciprocal relationships are formed, and this network becomes less centralized around one or a few influential staff members.
Formative Justice: The Regulative Principle of Education
Authors: McClintock Robbie
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Concepts of justice relevant to making personal and public decisions about education.

Purpose

To clarify a concept of formative justice that persons and the public often ignore in making decisions about educational effort.

Setting

“The windmills of your mind.”

Research Design

Reflective essay.

Conclusions/Recommendations

• Problems of justice arise whenever persons and polities cannot have it all, whenever they must choose between competing “goods,” positive or negative. • Different types of justice arise because persons and polities have to make constrained choices between different types of goods—with distributive justice, they allocate scarce material goods and benefits among many claimants; with social justice, they reconcile conflicting rights and responsibilities; with retributive justice, they determine sanctions and punishments; and with formative justice, they channel effort to pursuing particular possibilities out of the many open to them. • Problems of formative justice arise because persons and polities always face the future and find more potentialities unfolding before them than they have the energy, time, ability, and wherewithal to fulfill. They must choose among their purposes and allocate effort and attention to pursuing their potentials. In doing so, they form their unfolding lives. • Conceptions of formative justice concern principles with which persons and polities choose their controlling aspirations and allocate effort towards their fulfillment. • Formative justice is difficult because persons and polities always face an indeterminate future, one fraught with uncertainties. In the face of indeterminacy, they must irrevocably make their formative choices, hoping these will prove both successful and sustainable. • Formative justice is important because persons and polities will suffer or enjoy, as the case may be, the capacities for feeling, thought, and action by which they live.
Rethinking Discussions of Justice in Educational Research: Formative Justice, Educational Liberalism, and Beyond
Authors: Thompson Winston C.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Educational research tends to borrow accounts of justice from scholarship embedded within the structures and commitments of other disciplines or fields of study. This has created a body of educational research that largely responds to the “justice” goals of those disciplines rather than education qua education.

Purpose/Focus of Study

Responding to the context, this article questions whether educational research might be able to forward its own account of justice. This educational form of justice (formative justice) would allow educational researchers to pose questions that are primarily concerned with education on its own terms.

Research Design

This philosophical work provides a conceptual analysis of an account of justice within educational research.

Conclusions/Recommendations

This article finds that educational researchers can indeed pursue an educational account of justice. By detailing the benefits and general shape of a theory of educational justice (“justice as preservation”) embedded within educational liberalism, this article suggests that educational researchers can utilize their unique insights and expertise to pose educational questions within previously under-explored areas.
Reasons for Becoming a Postdoc: Differences by Race and Foreign-Born Status
Authors: Huang Ying , Cantwell Brendan , Taylor Barrett J.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The postdoctorate has become an important component of research careers in a growing number of science and engineering (S&E) fields. However, a tight academic job market, the growing number of postdocs, and the heightened internationalization of the position in the United States call the traditional definition of the position into question.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

Doctorate recipients who aspire to research careers may be forced to remain postdocs while waiting for their desired permanent position to become available. We hypothesize that foreign-born doctoral recipients, particularly those who are female and/or non-White, are more likely than their U.S.-born, male, or White counterparts to become a postdoc for reasons not related to professional training and development.

Research Design

To explore these hypotheses, we have analyzed individual-level data from the 2006 administration of the U.S. National Science Foundation's Survey of Doctorate Recipients using multinomial logistic regression.

Findings/Results

We find that the reasons for working as a postdoc differ by race, foreign-born status, and the interaction of these two factors. In particular, foreign-born Asians are much more likely than their White U.S. counterparts to accept a postdoc job because no other options are available.
A Formative Experiment to Align Middle-School History Instruction with Literacy Goals
Authors: Colwell Jamie , Reinking David
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Recent curricular trends based on new standards emphasize the centrality of reading and studying texts in history instruction. That trend suggests a closer alignment between middle-school history instruction and goals for developing literacy. Yet potential obstacles identified in the literature, particularly a teacher's stance toward teaching history, imply challenges to instantiating that alignment. Relatively little research has addressed how relevant conceptual positions such as disciplinary literacy might be realized in authentic practice.

Purpose/Objective

The objective was to investigate how middle-school history instruction could be transformed to align with the literacy goals addressed in new curricular standards and to better understand within a typical instructional context the pedagogical influences and outcomes associated with such a transformation. The intent was to lay the groundwork for an emerging pedagogical theory that could guide efforts to align history instruction and literacy goals.

Intervention/Program/Practice

The researchers and the teacher collaboratively planned the instructional intervention that entailed three essential elements: (a) reading primary and secondary historical texts, (b) scaffolding strategies for reading such texts, and (c) writing blog reflections about readings. The teacher implemented the intervention in five topical history units taught during 10 consecutive weeks.

Research Design

We employed a formative experiment to determine what factors enhanced or inhibited the intervention's success in achieving its aim, how it could be modified in light of those factors, what unanticipated outcomes were observed, and the extent to which the teaching and learning environment was transformed.

Data Collection and Analysis

We collected qualitative data from multiple sources. During the intervention, we used an embedded case study to frame data collection and analysis. We conducted a retrospective analysis after the intervention phase in order to generate pedagogical assertions as a first step in establishing an emergent pedagogical theory.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Three key assertions emerged that mediated the teacher's efforts to align her history instruction with literacy goals: (a) the influence of her beliefs grounded in her previous, imagined, and enacted practice; (b) blogging as a motivational catalyst; and (c) instructional enhancements that occurred when she observed the intervention's positive effects on achieving her pedagogical goals for students. These assertions comprise an emerging theory of how history instruction might be aligned with literacy goals and, as such, inform the literature on disciplinary literacy and how it might be achieved in authentic practice.
A Multilevel Analysis of Community College Students’ Transfer to Four-Year Institutions of Varying Selectivity
Authors: Wang Xueli
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Transfer from community colleges to selective four-year institutions is an issue that assumes great importance for the democratization of postsecondary education. Yet research on what influences transfer to selective four-year institutions is surprisingly sparse. Transfer research typically lumps four-year schools receiving community college transfers into one group. This approach neglects heterogeneity in institutional selectivity and fails to study forces underlying the varied pathways to four-year institutions.

Purpose

This research fills the gap in the literature by exploring the following question: What student and institutional factors are associated with transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions of varying selectivity? This study is aimed at identifying beneficial experiences to support community college students’ pathway to the baccalaureate, especially at selective institutions.

Research Design

This study drew upon several national data sources and a nationally representative sample of all first-time postsecondary students beginning at a public two-year college in 2003–2004. Based on the study's conceptual framework that depicts the relationship between transfer and various individual and institutional factors, I analyzed the hypothesized relationships using a multilevel path model.

Findings

The study shows that few community college students transferred to highly selective institutions. In terms of individual factors that distinguish those who transfer to highly selective institutions from their counterparts who transfer to moderately or less selective schools, holding baccalaureate expectations and transfer intent seems to benefit those who transfer to selective institutions much more strongly than those who transfer to less selective ones. Similarly, rigorous course-taking distinguishes not only those who transfer from those who do not, but also those who transfer to highly selective institutions from their transfer counterparts headed toward moderately or less selective colleges. However, integrative experiences and first-term GPA show no significant relationship with upward transfer. As for institutional characteristics, percentage of certificates and vocational associate degrees awarded is negatively associated with transfer to highly and moderately selective institutions, while it does not particularly affect chances of transfer to less selective institutions. Furthermore, employment of part-time instructional faculty and staff does not benefit or hurt community college students’ chances of transfer, and, overall, proximity to selective institutions does not appear to be influential either.

Conclusions

This study's findings reinforce persistent issues associated with access and transfer to selective institutions for community college students. Both education policy and research must continue to tackle challenges and create opportunities to help broaden community college student access to four-year institutions.
Spatializing Student Learning to Reimagine the “Place” of Inclusion
Authors: Naraian Srikala
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The goal of inclusive education is universally recognized as the fundamental restructuring of schools to engage hospitably with all forms of difference, including ability. However, inclusion, at least in practice, has come to mean the physical placement of students with disabilities in general education classrooms. The conundrum of inclusion as currently implemented is that its entanglement with place weakens the possibility of the required large-scale transformation of school spaces. Additionally, analyses of place and disability/inclusion generally assume the concept of place to represent a fixed, stable entity with determinate boundaries, making it difficult to disrupt the linkage between place and disability.

Purpose/Objective

This article is an attempt to explore a new conception of place that would permit educators to engage with student learning differences without associating them with fixed environments. Rather than consider place as a fixed, naturalized entity, I draw on theorists who develop the spatial dimension of human experience alongside the social and temporal. Within this theoretical perspective, school places are not merely containers within which events take place; rather, they are formed in the interaction of webs of ideas and people. The research questions for this article, therefore, were as follows: How is place constructed within the discourse of teachers? To what extent do such constructions reflect prevailing notions of special education or inclusion as a place?

Research Design

Data for this article drew primarily on 19 interviews I conducted with nine educators during the course of a series of ethnographically-oriented studies conducted between 2005 and 2014. Each of the studies addressed in this article was conducted in schooling sites in the U.S. where general and special education teachers were supporting students with a range of disabilities in inclusive classrooms. Teacher interview data from a nine-month professional development sequence in inclusive practices were also used for this article. The development of categories during data analysis for this article emerged from triangulating interview data with extensive field notes maintained for each site.

Findings

Data analysis disclosed that teachers participated in maintaining the boundaries of places through their conceptions of students as learners, even as their own professional identities were produced via the historically mediated beliefs and practices that were implicated within those places. As educators struggled to create places of inclusion, the identities of such places differed depending on the logic in which they were anchored: student connectedness or learning need.

Conclusions

Supported by an alternate conceptualization of learning need, I draw on the linkage between teacher identity and place to propose that a diasporic sensibility can enable different relations between the two, making inclusion a spatially fluid project involving changing networks of people and experiences.
Inclusive Reform as a Response to High-Stakes Pressure? Leading toward Inclusion in the Age of Accountability
Authors: Theoharis George , Causton Julie , Tracy-Bronson Chelsea P.
Published: November 2021

Students identified with disabilities are increasingly being educated with the assistance of support services within heterogeneous (i.e., general education) classrooms. Yet, in this era of high-stakes accountability, students are labeled, sorted, and differentially treated according to their academic achievement as reflected on standardized tests. We engaged in a project to better understand how educators grapple with these externally imposed pressures as they work to change the organizational structure of their schools to be able to implement greater inclusion of their students served by special education. We spent four years in two elementary schools engaged in inclusive school reform (shifting from exclusionary model to an inclusive one) specifically as a response to the pressures of test-based accountability mandates. Our work was guided by the following questions. In this era of high-stakes testing accountability:

• What does school-wide inclusive reform for students with disabilities involve?

• What kinds of changes can result from inclusive reform?

• What role does leadership play in inclusive reform?

The article focuses on what inclusive reform involved, the resulting changes, and the role distributed leadership played in moving toward more inclusive service in the age of high-stakes accountability.
Promoting Access through Segregation: The Emergence of the “Prioritized Curriculum” Class
Authors: Bacon Jessica , Rood Carrie E. , Ferri Beth A.
Published: November 2021

The continuously evolving standards-based reform (SBR) movement is one of the most prominent features of today's educational policy landscape. As SBR has continued to drive educational policy, local schools and districts have adopted many approaches to comply with legal mandates. This article critically examines one particular resultant phenomenon of the SBR movement—the emergence of a new track of self-contained classes called Prioritized Curriculum classes, designed to provide students with disabilities access to standards-based general education curriculum, but in a segregated class. In this article we document the emergence of such courses and critically analyze the rationales and policy loopholes that have led to their creation.
Test-Based Education for Students with Disabilities and English Language Learners: The Impact of Assessment Pressures on Educational Planning
Authors: Martin Peter Clyde
Published: November 2021

The article presents a longitudinal study of an urban charter middle school to examine the impact testing pressures can have on the education of students with disabilities and English language learners, and how this may lead to a narrowing of the content they are taught. The study examines various sources of data, including the school's evolving language, literacy, and math programs, high-stakes test results, school improvement plans, and written IEP goals. Over several years, as low test scores and failure to make AYP had an increasing impact on school life, skills specifically targeted on annual state tests became the guide for how math and literacy and language development were addressed. In effect, instruction in these areas became equated with test preparation. As ranges in proficiency led to ability grouping in pertinent courses, there was a narrowing of skills addressed in the lower-level classes that were entirely populated by students categorized as limited-English proficient and/or having a disability. In effect, this turned test preparation into the math and literacy curricula for these students, which in turn affected decisions regarding which skills would be addressed in students’ IEPs. Implications for schools, policy, and further research are suggested.
A Dream Deferred: A Retrospective View of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
Authors: Seriki Vanessa Dodo , Brown Cory T.
Published: November 2021

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over—

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

—Langston Hughes (1951)
Tomorrow's EdTech Today: Establishing a Learning Platform as a Collaborative Research Tool for Sound Science
Authors: Ostrow Korinn , Heffernan Neil , Williams Joseph Jay
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Large-scale randomized controlled experiments conducted in authentic learning environments are commonly high stakes, carrying extensive costs and requiring lengthy commitments for all-or-nothing results amidst many potential obstacles. Educational technologies harbor an untapped potential to provide researchers with access to extensive and diverse subject pools of students interacting with educational materials in authentic ways. These systems log extensive data on student performance that can be used to identify and leverage best practices in education and guide systemic policy change. Tomorrow's educational technologies should be built upon rigorous standards set forth by the research revolution budding today.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

The present work serves as a call to the community to infuse popular learning platforms with the capacity to support collaborative research at scale.

Research Design

This article defines how educational technologies can be leveraged for use in collaborative research environments by highlighting the research revolution of ASSISTments ( www.ASSISTments.org ), a popular online learning platform with a focus on mathematics education. A framework described as the cycle of perpetual evolution is presented, and research exemplifying progression through this framework is discussed in support of the many benefits that stem from infusing EdTech with collaborative research. Through a recent NSF grant (SI2-SSE&SSI: 1440753), researchers from around the world can leverage ASSISTments’ content and user population by designing and implementing randomized controlled experiments within the ASSISTments TestBed ( www.ASSISTmentsTestBed.org ). Findings from these studies help to define best practices within technology-driven learning, while simultaneously allowing for augmentation of the system's content, delivery, and infrastructure.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Supplementing educational technologies with environments for sound, collaborative science can result in a broad range of benefits for students, researchers, platforms, and educational practice and policy. This article outlines the successful uptake of research efforts by ASSISTments in hopes of advocating a research revolution for other educational technologies.
Social Harmony and Diversity: The Affordances and Constraints of Harmony as an Educational Goal
Authors: Ho Li-Ching
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

There is a pressing need to consider how citizens should live together, especially in societies that are increasingly ethnically and politically diverse. Even though multicultural education is constructed very differently and serves very different purposes in different national contexts, relatively little attention has been paid to how education systems of countries such as China, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates give greater emphasis to the concepts of harmony and social cohesion.

Purpose/Objective

This study explores some of the ways in which multicultural education is defined and conceptualized in East Asian countries. This paper draws on the case study of Singapore to interrogate the concept of harmony, investigate the implications of the state incorporating this concept as an educational goal for the public education system, and examine teachers’ understandings of multicultural education.

Research Design

The study adhered to the qualitative case study design. The data consisted primarily of semistructured individual interviews with 24 Singapore secondary social studies teachers, as well as relevant curricular and political documents such as the national Social Studies curriculum, political speeches, and official government publications. Guided by the literature, the interviewers asked questions to surface the participants’ understandings of the definition, purposes, and practices of multicultural education. Subsequently, the interviewers used follow-up questions to probe further and elicit additional description of how the teachers arrived at these understandings. The data analysis, shaped largely by the constant comparative method, was data-driven and inductive.

Conclusions/Recommendations

By illustrating some of the affordances and constraints of incorporating harmony as an educational goal, this study offers multicultural education scholars and teacher educators an opportunity to better understand some of the ways in which multicultural education is conceptualized in East Asian countries with strong Confucian traditions. The findings from this study suggest that a focus on harmony as an educational goal may help facilitate a move away from programs that emphasize the development of individual students’ social and political competencies towards programs and policies designed to promote communal trust and social cohesion. Finally, this study illustrates some of the challenges teachers face when balancing the goals of building trust and harmony within society and interrogating entrenched interests, institutional inequality, and unequal power relations.
Contradictions Resolved: An Analysis of Two Theories of the Achievement Gap
Authors: Yeh Stuart S.
Published: November 2021

Background

Value-added modeling (VAM) has been used to rank teachers and assess teacher and school quality. The apparent relationship between value-added teacher rankings and gains in student performance provide a foundation for the view that the contribution of teachers to student performance is the largest factor influencing student achievement, suggesting that differences in teacher quality might explain the persistence of the gap in student achievement as students advance throughout the K–12 years. However, several studies raise questions about the reliability and validity of VAM.

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to reconcile the evidence that the contribution of teachers to student achievement is large with the evidence that value-added rankings are unreliable and possibly invalid.

Design

The method involves an analytical review of the available evidence, development of a theoretical explanation for the contradictory results, and a test of this explanation using path analysis with three longitudinal datasets involving nationally representative samples of schools and students.

Conclusion

The hypothesis that the contribution of teachers to student performance is the strongest factor influencing student achievement is not supported. A stronger factor is the degree to which students believe that they are proficient students. This is consistent with the view that the persistence of the achievement gap is better explained as the outcome of structural factors embedded in the conventional model of schooling that undermines the self-efficacy, engagement, effort, and achievement of students who enter kindergarten performing below the level of their more advantaged peers.
The Garcetti Effect and the Erosion of Free Speech Rights of K–12 Public Education Employees: Trends and Implications
Authors: Wasserman Lewis M. , Connolly John P.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Pickering v. Board of Education, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1968, is considered the high-water mark in the constitutional protection of public employee free speech. Two significant decisions issued by that Court since Pickering have limited public employees’ expressive rights: Connick v. Myers and Garcetti v. Ceballos.

Purpose/Objective

The principal research questions which were the focus of this study are: is the adverse effect on free speech presumed by legal analysts following Connick and Garcetti having real effects in terms of judicial voting behavior and, if so, how has this occurred?

Research Design

We set up legal precedent and the judge's ideology as predictors of judicial voting behavior. The legal precedent variable delineates three intervals, namely the Pickering era [1968–1983], the Connick era [1983–2006) and the Garcetti era [2006–2014]. Two different measures of ideology are considered: party affiliation and the judge's DW-NOMINATE score. The dependent variable is the judge's individual vote in each case. Votes are categorized as pro-employer or pro-employee.

Data Collection and Analysis

Because our interest is specific to K–12 settings we analyze 507 judicial votes drawn from the 169 U.S. Courts of Appeals employer-employee free speech cases brought by school employees between the issuance of Pickering in 1968 and the post-Garcetti period into 2014. Since our dependent variable is dichotomous the statistical estimates are obtained via logistic regression.

Conclusions/Recommendations

We find that employee-plaintiffs are prevailing at lower rates at the U.S. Courts of Appeals in free speech claims against public school districts following the Garcetti decision. Since Garcetti, Courts of Appeals judges—those appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents—have voted in an increasingly pro-employer direction. We contend this results from “doctrinal signaling,” here, the progressive curtailment in the Supreme Court of public employees’ free speech rights from Connick v. Myers in 1983 to Garcetti. We suggest this “signaling” is used by Courts of Appeals judges as an interpretive tool to give meaning to apparently ambiguous decisions such as Garcetti. Finally, the impact and implications of this negative trend for K–12 employees, as well as possible solutions, are considered.
A Systematic Review of Student Self-Report Instruments that Assess Student-Teacher Relationships
Authors: Phillippo Kate L. , Conner Jerusha , Davidson Shannon , Pope Denise
Published: November 2021

Background

A large body of survey-based research asserts that the quality and strength of student-teacher relationships (STRs) predict a host of academic and nonacademic outcomes; however, advances in survey design research have led some to question existing survey instruments’ psychometric soundness. Concurrently, qualitative research on STRs has identified important developmental and sociocultural variation in the ways students define, understand, and react to relationships with their teachers. The questions raised by survey methodologists, together with the conceptual elaboration of STRs, suggest that survey instruments used to assess STRs are due for a systematic review.

Purpose/Research Questions

This review of survey instruments examines the strengths and shortcomings of existing measures of STRs. Specifically, we ask: How do student self-report survey instruments assess STRs? We examined the extent to which these instruments reflect current survey design principles and existing knowledge about how STRs work, particularly for adolescents.

Research Design, Data Collection, and Analysis

A systematic search of peer-reviewed journal articles that (a) focused on North American middle- or high-school students, (b) linked STRs to student outcomes, and (c) used a student-report measure of STRs yielded 66 studies for which we could obtain the full instrument. Instruments were analyzed using a literature-informed protocol and an iterative process that resulted in strong inter-rater agreement. We used tables and matrices to examine patterns, themes, and outliers in our coded data.

Findings

The 66 studies varied considerably with respect to how they operationalized STRs and how they addressed the validity of their instruments. Similar survey items were used to measure different constructs, and constructs with the same names were measured inconsistently across studies. Many instruments were limited by (a) items that included words with ambiguous meanings, (b) inconsistent identification of instruments’ focal students and teachers across instruments, and (c) the use of negatively worded items to measure STRs’ strength.

Conclusions and Recommendations

If STR research is to meet its promise to guide and inform teachers’ efforts to develop and sustain effective relationships with their students, the field needs to properly identify those behaviors that make a difference for different students and those that do not. The next generation of student-report STR survey instruments requires more stringent attention to construct specification and validity, as well as to item generation (specifically, language use), in order to most effectively measure and identify aspects of STRs that affect student performance and well-being.
Toward a Positive Explanation of Student Differences in Reading Growth
Authors: Adams Curt M. , Palmer Anna H.
Published: November 2021

Background

Education has much in common with professions that are using positive psychology and positive organizational scholarship to transform practice, yet the science behind peak human and group functioning has been slow to displace deficit-based framing of reform policies and improvement strategies in education.

Purpose of the Study

This study used self-determination theory to identify a general type of instructional environment that has positive consequences for learning outcomes. We hypothesized that a self-regulatory climate is related to school-level differences in student reading growth and that student perceptions of autonomy-supportive instruction are related to student differences in reading growth.

Setting

Data were collected during the 2013–2014 school year from a city school system, located in a metropolitan area of about 900,000 residents that serves approximately 42,000 students in 88 school sites. During the 2013–2014 school year, 80% of the students qualified for free or reduced-priced lunch (FRL); 26% were Black, 27% White, 30% Hispanic, 6% Native American, 9% multiracial, and 1% Asian. For this study, data come from students and teachers at all 51 elementary schools in the school system that have a 5th grade.

Data Analysis

Hypotheses were tested using a three-level linear growth analysis in HLM 7.0. The first step was to estimate the average reading growth for fifth-grade students using an unconditional growth model. The second step was to test a controlled-effects growth model, with FRL and racial/ethnic minority status included as student controls and FRL rate and percentage of White students enrolled in the school as school-level controls; self-regulatory climate was entered as a school-level predictor in this model. The final step was to add student-perceived autonomy-supportive instruction as a student-level explanatory variable.

Findings

Results showed that students in schools with self-regulatory climates achieved a higher reading growth rate than other students. Similar results were found with autonomy-supportive instruction: Students who experienced classroom instruction as autonomy-supportive had higher average reading growth than other students.

Conclusions

The aim of positive education is to develop a body of scientific evidence capable of explaining sources of exceptional teaching and learning. Self-regulatory climate and autonomy-supportive instruction appear to be two positive school conditions that enable students to flourish.
A Single Voice in the Crowd: A Case Study of One Student's Determination to Challenge Top down School Reform
Authors: Pazey Barbara , Cole Heather , Spikes Daniel
Published: November 2021

Background

Set against the backdrop of accountability reform and the dire consequences imposed upon “failing” schools, this study focuses on the advocacy of one student leader determined to resist the political direction to close his school. While a few studies have documented student voice in reform resistance, none have documented the voice of a student with a dis/ability.

Objective

Using a theoretical framework that weaves together self-determination theory and resiliency theory, the study seeks to understand the motivation and the conditions for that motivation driving a student to take action and the potential role of young people in current educational reform.

Setting

The study takes place in a large, urban city in central Texas. The high school slated for closure is in a poor, minority neighborhood and has been the subject of various reform efforts over the last two decades.

Population

As a single case study, the sole subject is EJ, a young black male with a dis/ability. EJ is the president of his student body and a leader in the reform resistance for his school.

Research Design

This case study is qualitative and uses narrative inquiry to document the story of EJ over a two-year period, following his initial involvement in reform resistance at his school to his key role as student body president during a volatile year of reform decisions by his school district.

Data Collection and Analysis

The study relies on data collected as part of a larger study examining the impact of school turnaround efforts on students with dis/abilities. Centering on the personal accounts of EJ and his own description of what occurred at his school and his leadership role, his narrative in analyzed through the theoretical lens of self-determination and resiliency theory. Data from the larger study is used to triangulate EJ's account.

Findings

The study finds that students, and particularly students historically marginalized in school settings, can be extremely effective voices for change.

Conclusions

The paper concludes with implications for accountability reform and a discussion of the potential of expanding approaches of student engagement in reform efforts to include student voice, particularly, the voices of students with dis/abilities. There's a lot of good things going on at this school and we just want people to understand that we're coming, we're coming, a change is going to come. Just like the song says. And it might not be tomorrow, it might not be the next day, but HHS is going to be known. We're going to make sure HHS is known—for something. (EJ, Special Education Student, Student Body President, Heritage High School, 2012–2013)
A Technology-Enhanced Intervention for Self-Regulated Learning in Science
Authors: Berglas-Shapiro Tali , Eylon Bat-Sheva , Scherz Zahava
Published: November 2021

This article describes the development of a technology-enhanced self-regulated learning (Te-SRL) environment designed to foster students’ SRL of complex science topics. The environment consists of three components, one of which is a specially designed computerized system that offers students a choice between different types of scaffolding and encourages them to make multiple choices regarding the paths that they take when planning their learning. We describe a three-year mixed-methods study aimed at observing learners’ use of SRL processes when learning in the Te-SRL environment. This article focuses on nine case studies that were selected from 630 seventh-grade students who participated in the study. Data were obtained from assessment tasks, self-evaluation forms, think-aloud protocols, and interviews; data were traced from the computerized system. The findings suggest that students can improve over time in regulating their learning and in utilizing learning skills in a computerized system when provided with opportunities to practice, along with scaffolding. Many students, however, did not take full advantage of these scaffolding opportunities and seemed to lack the high-level skills needed for seeking information on the Internet. These findings underscore the importance of developing a culture of learning with technology-enhanced learning environments and scaffolding SRL in such environments.