bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Challenges in Identifying High-Leverage Practices
Authors: Cohen Julie 
Published: November 2021

Background The current accountability climate prioritizes identifying features of “effective teaching.” One approach has to been to outline a set of “high-leverage practices,” defined as teaching moves that are research-based, have the potential to improve student achievement, and support students in learning central academic concepts. But which practices qualify as “high leverage,” and based on what criteria? This article raises several issues involved in identifying “high-leverage” teaching practices based on their relationships with different types of student outcome measures. Purpose The study addresses the following research questions: What practices are associated with student achievement gains on high- and low-stakes assessments? How do teachers use these teaching practices in their classrooms? Population Participants in this study were 103 fourth grade teachers from a single district who volunteered to have their classroom instruction recorded as part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project. Research Design The research involved analysis of multiple data sources: video records of practice, qualitative observation notes, quantitative measures of math teaching, and student outcomes on two math assessments, one high stakes comprised entirely of multiple-choice questions and the other low stakes and focused on open-ended problem solving. Data Analysis A standardized observation tool designed to code language arts instruction, PLATO, was modified for reliable scoring of math teaching. More than 300 math lessons were scored using four PLATO scales. Logistic regressions were used to look at relationships between PLATO scores and teacher value-added measures computed from high- and low-stakes student assessments. A stratified, purposive sample of lessons was analyzed qualitatively. Findings/Results Scores on two practices, modeling and procedural strategy instruction, predicted value-added based on the high-stakes state test, but had no relationship with value-added on the low-stakes test. Qualitative analyses demonstrate instruction was explicitly oriented toward success on the state test. Teachers taught test-taking strategies and modeled how to eliminate “silly” answers listed in multiple-choice format. Two other practices, orchestrating classroom discourse and conceptual strategy instruction, had no relationship with value-added on either test. Scores on these two scales were positively skewed, with very few instances of high-scoring instruction. Conclusions/Recommendations Discussion focuses on potential limitations of labeling teaching practices as “high leverage” based on their relationship with high-stakes standardized assessments and the importance of sampling teachers with a full range of enactment of high-leverage practices.
Brilliant, Bored, or Badly Behaved? Media Coverage of the Charter School Debate in the United States
Authors: Rooks Daisy , MuÑOz Carolina Bank 
Published: November 2021

Background In recent years, charter schools have received a great deal of media attention, appearing in documentary films, newspaper articles, magazine profiles, television news programs, and even sitcoms and feature films. The media is not alone in its interest in charter schools; researchers in the public and for-profit arenas have also focused their attention on charter schools in recent years. Questions This paper employs qualitative content analysis to answer the following questions: What information have journalists contributed to the charter school debate in the United States? And how might this information have shaped or influenced the debate? Research Design To answer these questions, we conducted a qualitative content analysis of print media coverage of the early years of the charter school debate. We analyzed 145 articles about public charter schools and public alternative schools that appeared in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times between 1994 and 2006. We developed two types of coding categories: descriptive and interpretive. The descriptive coding categories captured the following information about each article in our dataset: the publisher, the type of school described and the student population. The interpretive coding categories captured reporters’ descriptions of the students, teachers, resources, and institutional cultures of charter and alternative schools. Findings Our analysis uncovered several interesting themes. First, we found that print media depictions of charter and alternative school teachers tended to be more positive than media depictions of teachers in traditional public schools. This was especially true of print media coverage of charter schools that serve low-income students and/or students of color. Our analysis also cast doubt on a core assumption of the charter school debate; that charter schools’ approach to educating their students differs significantly from that of traditional public schools and public alternative schools. In their articles about charter schools that serve middle-income students, reporters described institutional cultures and pedagogical strategies identical to those found in alternative schools with similar student populations. When reporting on alternative schools that serve low-income students and/or students of color, reporters described pedagogical strategies that mirrored those found in charter schools with similar student populations. Recommendations Further research is needed to determine whether charter and alternative schools are educating their low- and middle-income students differently. If future research confirms this, we warn that charter and alternative schools could be preparing their low-income students and/or students of color inadequately for higher education and work in professional environments.
Classroom, School, and District Impacts on Diverse Student Literacy Achievement
Authors: Wilcox Kristen Campbell , Lawson Hal A. , Angelis Janet 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context Prior research has investigated the literacy achievement gap with particular focus on ethnically and linguistically diverse students’ performance. This study extends that research by examining the relationships among classroom instructional practices, school priorities, and district policies in higher performing schools. Purpose/Research Question The purpose of the study was to identify differences between schools with typical literacy performance among diverse students and schools where diverse students exceeded predicted performance. Primary research questions were: What qualities of literacy instruction are characteristic of elementary schools with higher literacy achievement among ethnically and linguistically diverse students? Compared to schools with average literacy achievement among diverse students, what are the proximal and distal factors that describe and explain significantly different diverse student literacy achievement outcomes? Setting Fifteen elementary schools in New York State provided the sample. All serve ethnically and/or linguistically diverse students. Ten of these schools were classified as higher performing based on three years of state assessment data for diverse students; five were classified as average performing based on the same assessments. Research Design This study was a comparative multiple case study using mixed methods. Data Collection/Analysis Two researchers visited each school for two days interviewing 12–15 teachers and administrators using a semistructured interview protocol. They also collected documents (e.g., district goals, curriculum, lesson plans), and constructed interpretive memos. All interviews and memos were coded using HyperResearch software and documents were used to triangulate findings. Axial coding and matrices were used to identify salient proximal and distal contrasts between cases. Findings Practices between the two sets of schools differed at three levels: classrooms, schools, and district office. Differences included the extent and effectiveness of differentiated and technology-enriched literacy instruction and how coherently school and district policies and practices supported and sustained effective classroom practices. Higher performing schools showed evidence of the use of at least 90-minute balanced literacy blocks that embedded support (e.g., ESL and Special Education). Also in these schools, teachers reported relevant professional development and supports for collaborative work and instructional coaching. Conclusions Factors and forces in the classrooms, schools, and district offices, and especially in their relations help to account for differences in the two sets of schools. These forces and factors are malleable and actionable, i.e., ones that school and district leaders can do something about in their quest to improve the literacy achievement levels of diverse students.
Dialogic and Direct Instruction: Two Distinct Models of Mathematics Instruction and the Debate(s) Surrounding Them
Authors: Munter Charles , Stein Mary Kay , Smith Margaret S. 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context Which ideas should be included in the K–12 curriculum, how they are learned, and how they should be taught have been debated for decades in multiple subjects. In this article, we offer mathematics as a case in point of how new standards-related policies may offer an opportunity for reassessment and clarification of such debates. Purpose/Objective Our goal was to specify instructional models associated with terms such as “reform” and “traditional”—which, in this article, we refer to as “dialogic” and “direct”—in terms of perspectives on what it means to know mathematics, how students learn mathematics, and how mathematics should be taught. Research Design In the spirit of “adversarial collaboration,” we hosted a series of semi-structured discussions among nationally recognized experts who hold opposing points of view on mathematics teaching and/or learning. During those discussions, the recent consensus regarding what students should learn—as represented by the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM)—was taken as a common goal, and additional areas of agreement and disagreement were identified and discussed. The goal was not to reach consensus but to invite representatives of different perspectives to clarify and come to agreement on how they disagree. Findings/Results We present two instructional models that were specified and refined over the course of those discussions and describe nine key areas that distinguish the two models: (a) the importance and role of talk; (b) the importance and role of group work; (c) the sequencing of mathematical topics; (d) the nature and ordering of mathematical instructional tasks; (e) the nature, timing, source, and purpose of feedback; (f) the emphasis on creativity (i.e., authoring one's own learning; mathematizing subject matter from reality); (g) the purpose of diagnosing student thinking; (h) the introduction and role of definitions; and (i) the nature and role of representations. Additionally, we elaborate a more nuanced description of the ongoing debate, as it pertains to particular sources of difference in perspective. Conclusions/Recommendations With this article, we hope to advance ongoing debates in two ways: (a) discrediting false assumptions and oversimplified conceptions of the “other side's” arguments (which can obscure both the real differences and real similarities between different models of instruction), and (b) framing the debates in a manner that allows for more thoughtful empirical investigation oriented to understanding learning in the discipline.
Technology and the New Professionalization of Teaching
Authors: Shaffer David Williamson , Nash Padraig , Ruis A. R. 
Published: November 2021

Background By 2009, 99% of U.S. classrooms had access to computers, with an average ratio of 1.7 students per computer, and 40% of teachers report using computers often in their classrooms. However, while K–12 schools are investing more heavily in digital technologies, only a small fraction of this investment is going to instructional software (7%) and digital content (5%). Education policy leaders have called for increased investment in and use of digital learning technologies in K–12 education, which has significant professional implications for the 40% of teachers who use computers often and, perhaps more importantly, for the 60% who do not. Objective This article explores for a broad audience the changing landscape of education in the digital age, the changing roles of teachers in a technology-rich education system, and the skills, knowledge, values, and ways of thinking that teachers will need to have to support students’ social, emotional, and intellectual development in a digital learning environment. Research Design This analytic essay reviews and synthesizes research on learning in a digital environment, providing theoretical framework for understanding the changing landscape of learning in technology-rich environments and the consequent changes in teacher preparation that this may entail. Conclusion We explore the influence of educational technologies on teaching and teacher preparation by looking at three kinds of learning technology: digital workbooks that help students learn basic skills through routine practice; digital texts, such as ebooks, virtual museums, and learning games, that provide students with mediated experiences; and digital internships that simulate real-world practices, helping students learn how to solve problems in the ways that workers, scholars, and artists in the real world do. We examine the extent to which these technologies can assume different aspects of teachers’ traditional functions of assessment, tutoring, and explication. We argue that increased use of these and other digital learning technologies could allow teachers to provide more nuanced curricula based on their students’ individual needs. In particular, teachers will likely assume a new role, that of a coordinator who provides guidance through and facilitation of the learning process in individual students’ social, intellectual, and emotional contexts. We suggest this may require changes to teacher preparation and in-service professional development to help both new and experienced teachers succeed in an ever-changing digital learning environment, as well as new methods of evaluating teacher performance that account for more than student achievement on standardized tests. Interesting things happen along borders—transitions—not in the middle where everything is the same. —Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
Challenging Boundaries, Changing Fate? Metropolitan Inequality and the Legacy of Milliken
Authors: Holme Jennifer Jellison , Finnigan Kara S. , Diem Sarah 
Published: November 2021

Background This article examines the contemporary implications of the Milliken v. Bradley (1974) decision for educational inequality between school districts in U.S. metropolitan areas. We focus upon four metropolitan areas that were highly segregated in the 1970s but which met different fates in court: We first examine Detroit and Philadelphia, where plaintiffs sought but ultimately failed to obtain a metropolitan-wide desegregation ruling. We then examine St. Louis, where a court imposed a metropolitan desegregation remedy. We finally include Jefferson County, where the court order resulted in a merger of city and suburban schools. Objective Through this comparative analysis we seek to tease out the effects of the ruling on patterns of inequity between urban and suburban school districts over time. We specifically examine how districts within these metro areas differed over time in terms of patterns of school segregation, fiscal resources, and academic performance. Research Design We employed qualitative case study methodology. We purposively selected three case study districts within each of the four metro areas (total of 12 school districts) based on their contextual status in 1970, i.e., whether they were in each of these three categories: urban, segregated suburban, or affluent suburban. We compared them along three dimensions: patterns of segregation, academic outcomes, and fiscal resources. Conclusions We found that the segregated and high poverty districts in the three metro areas where courts left districts intact (Detroit, Philadelphia, and St. Louis) have been, since Milliken, increasingly hemmed in by their boundaries: struggling with growing concentrations of need, low resources to meet those needs, and as a result falling into fiscal and academic decline. In contrast, the maintenance of district boundaries by the courts has allowed the affluent suburbs in these contexts, over time, to benefit from a number of policies and practices that allowed them to accrue and protect advantage through exclusionary zoning policies and housing discrimination. Together, these policies have promoted and protected the affluence and advantage in each of these contexts, which has in turn attracted investment and allowed these districts to maintain strong financial standing over time. Our study suggests that socially constructed political boundaries, like school district boundary lines, by carving up political geography along the lines of race and class, can take on an active role in the reproduction of inequality.
Implementing Response to Intervention: Challenges of Diversity and System Change in a High-Stakes Environment
Authors: Cavendish Wendy , Harry Beth , Menda Ana Maria , Espinosa Anabel , Mahotiere Margarette 
Published: November 2021

Background The Response to Intervention (RTI) approach involves the use of a dynamic model built around the systematic documentation of students’ response to research-based instructional interventions. Although there has been widespread implementation of RTI models for early intervention and in some cases, as a means to identify students with learning disabilities (LD), little has been published on teacher implementation of RTI in naturalistic school settings. Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine the RTI implementation process in two culturally diverse, urban schools. The authors describe the process of large-scale RTI implementation through the lens of Systems Change Theory. Research Design This study of RTI in a naturalistic setting used grounded theory research methods to provide an in-depth description and qualitative analysis of challenges and successes experienced by RTI teams and teachers in schools required by state mandate to implement RTI. Data collection included semi-structured interviews and observations with 30 participants in two urban schools. Transcripts of interviews and field notes of direct observations were analyzed inductively through a four-tiered interpretive coding process that moved from the most concrete to more abstract levels of interpretation. Conclusions The present study highlights challenges related to changes in procedures for monitoring student responsiveness in an RTI system used for special education identification. The emergence of themes from observation and interview data revealed how professional development gaps, school personnel's assumptions about culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) learners and families, and external pressures from district and state accountability systems affected RTI implementation across two schools. Our observations revealed confusion over the components for practice in RTI as well as a lack of understanding related to the purpose of RTI to potentially improve outcomes and reduce referrals to special education for CLD youth. The issues that emerged as barriers to implementation serve to identify the systemic change factors needed to support large-scale RTI implementation.
From the Faculty Perspective: Defining, Earning, and Maintaining Legitimacy across Academia
Authors: Gonzales Leslie D. , Terosky Aimee Lapointe 
Published: November 2021

Background Research shows that the academic profession is largely held together by cultural rules and norms imparted through various socialization processes, all of which are viewed as sensible ways to orient rising professionals. In this paper, a critical perspective is assumed, as we utilized the concept legitimacy and legitimation to better understand the implications of various socialization tactics within academia. Purpose Specifically, the purpose of this paper was to study how faculty members, employed across different types of institutions, defined legitimacy and what it takes to be deemed legitimate in the context of the academic profession. Research Design A critical qualitative research design guided this study. Specifically, we collected fifty in-depth, semistructured, conceptual interviews from faculty members employed across two community colleges, two regional comprehensive universities, one liberal arts college, and one high activity research university. Data Analysis Our analysis of interview transcripts was largely guided by Saldaña's suggestions for affective, pattern, and elaborative coding. Findings We found that all faculty members, regardless of institution type, discipline, or tenure status, held ideas as to what constitutes legitimate work/legitimacy within academia. We interrogated these findings further through the lens of New Institutionalism and determined that professors spent most of their time describing professional legitimacy. Professional legitimacy seemed to be contingent on (1) research and (2) institutional type. However, faculty also described what can be understood as normative legitimacy, which is an endorsement granted when one conforms to implicit cultural rules and ideals held by any community of relevance (e.g., governmental leaders, administrators, tax payers/public). Normative legitimacy seemed to be granted to professors who presented themselves as selfless, ideal workers who could account for and maximize their productivity. Conclusions/Recommendations A number of specific policy and practice related recommendations are gleaned from this work. In terms of faculty preparation and socialization, it is imperative that faculty members acknowledge that both processes are steeped in relations of power, as they engender notions of who and what fits into academia. Several specific questions and small adjustments in terms of practice are noted in the paper. Also, in terms of faculty evaluation, a return to Boyer's work and newer iterations of Boyer's work by Henderson (2013) could be helpful.
The Education of the Third Class in the Republic: Plato and the Locus Classicus of Formative Justice
Authors: Mintz Avi I. 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context In one of the classics of educational philosophy, a key issue is remains unsettled. In Plato's Republic, Socrates makes a case for the importance of a comprehensive education. Socrates is unclear, however, about whether the producer class is eligible for this comprehensive education. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study Previous scholars have attempted to settle this question either on the side of exclusion or inclusion of the third class in the program of education in Plato's Republic. I ask whether Plato may have intentionally crafted this ambiguity. Research Design A philosophical analysis of Plato's Republic with reference to its historical context. Conclusions/Recommendations I offer an alternative interpretation of the eligibility of the third class for the program of education in The Republic. I endorse neither the position that Socrates designs the education for the guardian class alone nor, on the other hand, that Socrates’ call for class transfers logically requires the children of all classes to be educated together. Instead, I suggest that Plato's conflicting and confusing treatment of the third class's education in The Republic is a provocation for his readers—that is, there is reason to believe that Plato may have intentionally drawn readers into an inquiry about participation in common education in a just society.