ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
An Uneven Path: Student Achievement in Boston Public Schools, 2007-2017
Author: O'Keefe, Bonnie
Date: 2019-02-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Academic Achievement,Public Schools,Urban Schools,School Districts,Barriers,Budgets,Academic Standards,Race,Ethnicity,Educational Improvement,Comparative Analysis,Educational Trends,Trend Analysis,Educational Policy,Educational Change,Achievement Gap,Futures (of Society),Strategic Planning,Equal Education,Disadvantaged Schools,Achievement Tests,Mathematics Tests,Reading Tests,Grade 8,Grade 4,Elementary Secondary Education,Governance,Educational Finance,Central Office Administrators,Teaching Methods,School Choice,Charter Schools,Educational Planning,Educational Facilities,Community Involvement,Stakeholders,Human Capital,Curriculum Development

In the past several decades, Boston has been a proving ground for new strategies such as mayoral control, charter schools, and expanded access to early childhood education. Located in a state known for rigorous standards and accountability, Boston Public Schools (BPS) has consistently ranked among the top-performing large public school districts in the country. At the same time, BPS currently faces significant challenges, including tight budgets, aging facilities, and persistent achievement gaps by race, ethnicity, native language, and special needs status. In this paper, the authors set out to inform the public dialogue about BPS' current performance and future direction. Through analysis of academic data and interviews with a variety of stakeholders in Boston's education community, they explore a set of key questions: How does the current pace of improvement in BPS compare to the district's past performance? Do BPS' trends in student outcomes track above, below, or alongside those of other urban districts? What policies do local stakeholders view as having contributed to or hindered progress on student learning and equity? And based on recent trends and stakeholder input, how might local leaders rethink or revise their efforts? The analysis of BPS performance trends finds that the district has consistently outperformed other large cities participating in the NAEP, across subjects and grade levels. Although it still trails the national average for all schools, BPS demonstrated particularly rapid improvement from 2003 to 2011, especially in eighth-grade math. After 2011, the rate of growth slowed, though Boston still leads other large cities. However, several urban district peers have instituted a variety of reforms in recent years and are closing the gap with Boston. The analysis of performance trends combined with lessons from stakeholder interviewees leads the authors to offer three recommendations for the next BPS leader to consider, as key strategies to accelerate performance in the near future: (1) Articulate a clear, concise theory of action and drive it through implementation; (2) Make tough choices to advance equity; and (3) Double down on areas of strength and bright spots.
User-Centered Design as a Pathway to Effective Policy: Lessons from the LCFF Test Kitchen. Policy and Practice Brief
Author: Knudson, Joel
Date: 2019-02-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Funding Formulas,Educational Finance,School District Autonomy,Elementary Secondary Education,Program Design,Educational Policy

Policy development is fundamentally a process of negotiation. Legislation or other regulatory guidance often requires the support of a range of stakeholders to actually become policy. The resulting policy is therefore a compilation of interests, all partially represented in a final product that sufficiently satisfies enough key stakeholders to earn support. Too often, however, that product is incoherent, inefficient, and ill designed to meet the needs of the end users--the people or organizations charged with putting the policy into action. The LCFF Test Kitchen set out to address key policy design and implementation challenges in a different way--by employing an approach called user-centered design. An accompanying brief, &quot;Improving LCFF Implementation Through User-Centered Design: Year 1 of the LCFF Test Kitchen,&quot; (ED596439) describes the LCFF Test Kitchen project, the process of user-centered design, and the products that have emerged from the work. This brief addresses a broader question: To what extent can user-centered design help us address these policy issues? This brief identifies lessons learned over the LCFF Test Kitchen's first year, and implications for a different approach to education policy. [Beginning in 2017, a project known as the LCFF Test Kitchen brought together a set of partners and three school district design teams to address the policy development and implementation process designed to foster innovation in local school districts as they implement LCFF. Azusa USD, Elk Grove USD, and Oceanside USD are the three local school district contributing partners to this project.]
Critical Mathematical Inquiry. Occasional Paper Series 41
Author: Boldt, Gail, Ed.
Date: 2019-03-00
Type: Collected Works - General
Subjects: Mathematics Education,Inquiry,Social Justice,Mathematics Activities,Cooperation,Educational Technology,Technology Uses in Education,Young Children,Preschool Education,Elementary School Mathematics,Racial Bias,Expectation,Whites,Power Structure

Issue 41 of Bank Street's Occasional Paper Series features a collection of papers by authors with a shared affinity for the work of critical mathematical inquiry (CMI). Essays in this issue include: (1) Teaching for Social Justice through Critical Mathematical Inquiry (Steven Greenstein and Mark Russo); (2) Re-designing Mathematics Education for Social Justice: A Vision (Fahmil Shah); (3) Quantitative Civic Literacy (Mary Raygoza); (4) Cultivating a Space for Critical Mathematical Inquiry through Knowledge-Eliciting Mathematical Activity (Debasmita Basu &amp; Steven Greenstein); (5) Collaboration and Critical Mathematical Inquiry: Negotiating Mathematics Engagement, Identity, and Agency (Frances K. Harper); (6) The World in Your Pocket: Digital Media as Invitations for Transdisciplinary Inquiry in Mathematics Classrooms (Lynette DeAun Guzmán and Jeffrey Craig); (7) Power to Change: Math as a Social-Emotional Language in a Classroom of Four- and Five-Year-Olds (Elinor J. Albin and Gretchen Vice); (8) Mathematics for Whom: Reframing and Humanizing Mathematics (Cathery Yeh and Brande M. Otis); (9) Elementary Mathematics and #BlackLivesMatter (Theodore Chao and Maya Marlowe); and (10) The &quot;Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations&quot; and Its Role in Maintaining White Supremacy through Mathematics Education (Laurie Rubel and Andrea McCloskey).
Pursuing Equity and Excellence in Mathematics: Course Sequencing and Placement in San Francisco. Policy and Practice Brief
Author: Knudson, Joel
Date: 2019-04-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: School Districts,Educational Policy,Mathematics Education,Middle School Students,Heterogeneous Grouping,Grade 6,Grade 7,Grade 8,Board of Education Policy,Equal Education,Racial Differences,Mathematics Achievement,Algebra,Secondary School Mathematics,Ethnicity,High School Students,College Readiness

In the face of stagnant achievement and persistent achievement gaps in mathematics, school districts have enacted a variety of changes to varying levels of success. On the heels of an Algebra for All model that failed to generate desired outcomes of students, San Francisco Unified School District adopted a policy in 2014 that dramatically changed its sequence of mathematics courses. The district completely de-tracked its middle school classes, enrolling all students in the same heterogeneously grouped courses for Grades 6, 7, and 8. San Francisco's policy represents a significant departure from traditional approaches to organizing mathematics courses, and early outcomes appear to validate this approach. This brief describes the rationale behind the district's decision, the nature of the new policy, and the promising results the district has experienced so far.
Making the Most of the Governor&apos;s Budget Proposal: Recommendations for Aligning Reporting Requirements from the LCFF Test Kitchen. Policy and Practice Brief
Author: Taylor, Tia
Date: 2019-04-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Funding Formulas,Educational Finance,School District Autonomy,Elementary Secondary Education,Information Systems,Program Design,Educational Policy

In the January 2019-20 State Budget Proposal, Governor Gavin Newsom introduced a K-12 education spending plan with an all-time high of $80.7 billion dollars. The budget proposal makes significant investments in the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), special education, state preschool, and partial relief for pension liabilities. In addition, it includes a $10 million investment to plan and develop a state-of-the-art longitudinal data system that would link &quot;student information from early education providers, K-12 schools, higher education institutions, employers, other workforce entities, and health and human services agencies&quot; (Newsom, 2019, p. 41). The stated intent of the data system is to improve coordination across multiple, disparate data systems; improve collaboration between agencies; and collect relevant data on public education and its impact on workforce capacity. Based on lessons learned through the LCFF Test Kitchen, the authors offer four recommendations in this brief for making the most of the Governor's proposal: (1) Articulate the goals and desired outcomes of a single web-based reporting platform to align reporting structures; (2) Engage end users throughout the development process; (3) Foster competition to generate an innovative, single web-based reporting platform design; and (4) Create structures and supports to build trust between school districts and their communities. [Beginning in 2017, a project known as the LCFF Test Kitchen brought together a set of partners and three school district design teams to address the policy development and implementation process designed to foster innovation in local school districts as they implement LCFF. Azusa USD, Elk Grove USD, and Oceanside USD are the three local school district contributing partners to this project.]
Improving LCFF Implementation through User-Centered Design: Year 1 of the LCFF Test Kitchen. Policy and Practice Brief
Author: Knudson, Joel
Date: 2019-02-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Funding Formulas,Educational Finance,School District Autonomy,Elementary Secondary Education,Program Implementation,Program Design,Budgeting,Organizational Communication,Educational Cooperation

More than 5 years after the passage of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), California school districts continue to develop and refine strategies to act on the opportunities and expectations associated with the state's school finance system. A new project called the LCFF Test Kitchen has enabled three school districts to make progress by leveraging the power of user-centered design. LCFF fundamentally altered the way the state allocates resources to school districts and the expectations for how districts should report on the use of those resources. As the California education community began navigating this new territory, the Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) became the vehicle through which a range of policymakers, advocates, and others sought to achieve their goals for the new policy. However, the process suffered from many of the flaws of traditional approaches to policymaking, and in trying to serve many interests, the resulting LCAP template served none well. Beginning in 2017, a project known as the LCFF Test Kitchen brought together a set of partners and three school district design teams to address the policy development and implementation process in a new way. This brief describes progress in Year 1 of the LCFF Test Kitchen and the solutions it has generated. [Azusa USD, Elk Grove USD, and Oceanside USD are the three local school district contributing partners to this project.]
Reskilling America&apos;s Workforce: Exploring the Nation&apos;s Future STEM Workforce Needs. Recommendations for Federal Agency Engagement
Author: Business-Higher Education Forum
Date: 2019-00-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: STEM Education,Labor Force Development,Job Skills,Leadership Responsibility,Government Role,College Role,Higher Education,Partnerships in Education,Technological Literacy,Thinking Skills

This report from a workshop funded by the National Science Foundation recommends how federal agencies can more effectively support STEM workforce needs. Business executives and CEOs, college and university presidents, professional associations, state leaders, and heads of federal agencies recognize that developing a STEM-capable workforce is critical for the nation. Innovation is occurring on a daily basis to create and understand the best methods to train, reskill, and educate our nation's workforce, with stakeholders moving rapidly in the same direction. At this critical juncture, there is an even more important role for federal agencies to serve as amplifiers, investors, and leaders in propelling the development of our nation's workforce now and in the future. As such, we call on leaders in the federal government along with business and academia to build the pathways, partnerships, and programs that will help us reach scale and meet the evolving needs of the future workforce in the digital economy.
Preparing Teachers for Diverse Schools: Lessons from Minority Serving Institutions
Author: Marchitello, Max
Date: 2019-03-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Teacher Education Programs,Student Diversity,Minority Group Students,Racial Factors,Gender Differences,Social Class,Culturally Relevant Education,Multicultural Education,Experiential Learning,Diversity (Faculty),Cultural Awareness

While most teacher preparation schools and programs inadequately prepare teacher candidates to serve students of color effectively, many minority serving institutions (MSIs) have a long history of successfully preparing teachers to provide high-quality education to students of color. This paper examines the experience of MSIs and other institutions that are working with intention to grapple with how race, gender, and class impact education. The authors draw lessons that may be applicable across programs and types of institutions to better prepare teachers to educate today's students. To understand how schools of education and teacher preparation programs can better prepare teacher candidates to work effectively in increasingly racially diverse schools, they conducted a comprehensive literature review and interviews with nearly 20 experts and practitioners, with an emphasis on those from MSIs. Based on this research, they found three key areas of focus to help schools of education and teacher preparation programs better prepare teacher candidates to serve students of color: (1) Incorporate well-designed courses dedicated to culturally relevant pedagogy as well as multicultural education and work to embed those principles throughout the program; (2) Design field experiences intentionally to ensure candidates engage with diverse students, contexts, and other educators; and (3) Increase diversity in program faculty and in the teacher candidates themselves. These recommendations are applicable not only to teacher preparation programs, but also to colleges and universities more generally.
Nuance in the Noise: The Complex Reality of Teacher Shortages
Author: McVey, Kaitlin Pennington
Date: 2019-01-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Teacher Shortage,Educational Policy,State Policy,Preservice Teacher Education,Public School Teachers,Elementary Secondary Education,Alternative Teacher Certification,Institutional Characteristics,Urban Schools,Rural Schools,Suburban Schools,Minority Group Students,Public Schools,High School Teachers,Low Income Students,Diversity (Faculty),Minority Group Teachers,Special Education Teachers,Mathematics Teachers,Science Teachers,Language Teachers,English Teachers,English (Second Language),Vocational Education Teachers,Art Teachers,Librarians,School Libraries,Teacher Recruitment,Teacher Persistence,Elementary School Teachers,Early Childhood Teachers,School Nurses,Physical Education Teachers,Computer Science Education,Social Sciences,Middle School Teachers,School Counselors,Administrators,Elective Courses,Daily Living Skills,Reading Consultants

Teacher shortages have real impact on schools, students, and communities. A gap of one teacher in a school means diminished opportunities for students. And, like many challenges in public education, the pain of teacher shortages is not distributed equitably: The communities that suffer the most from teacher shortages are often low-income and under-resourced. To get a clearer picture of trends in teacher subject-area shortages across the country, the authors analyzed national data on teacher shortage areas submitted by states and territories to the U.S. Department of Education. Like many other data sets used to track and better understand teacher shortages, this one has limitations. The analysis details the years for which each state submitted data and relies on a framework the authors created to categorize states' submissions based on trends revealed in the data. Additionally, it identifies where and in which subject areas shortages exist with the most consistency over time; it does not detail where there are the highest number of shortages. Nonetheless, their findings add depth and breadth to existing teacher shortage data analyses and further demonstrate that there is no generic, national teacher shortage. Specifically, the report confirms trends in states' most dire teacher shortage subject areas that other data analysis has shown: States consistently report trouble staffing special education, mathematics, science, foreign language, and English as a second language classrooms. Also similar to other reporting on the topic, career and technical education emerges as a significant teacher shortage area. Yet states' experiences with shortages in these subject areas vary widely. Some states struggle to fill mathematics classrooms, while others have a more serious need in science. Outside of these trends, states' reporting on subject area shortages is extremely variable.
Creating Purposeful Partnerships: Business and Higher Education Working Together to Build Regional Talent Ecosystems for the Digital Economy
Author: Business-Higher Education Forum
Date: 2019-00-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Partnerships in Education,School Business Relationship,Higher Education,Teamwork,Job Skills,Models,Industry,Information Security,Computer Security,Data Collection,Data Analysis,Urban Areas,Sustainability

&quot;Creating Purposeful Partnerships&quot; offers insights into business-led regional talent ecosystems that facilitate access, alignment, and development of a prepared workforce with the skills necessary for companies' long-term success. The findings of this report serve as a playbook for CEOs and their executive teams for establishing purposeful and strategic partnerships with higher education leaders to meet the need for diverse digital-skills talent. This report builds upon the Business-Higher Education Forum's (BHEF) work, supported by a five-year grant from the National Science Foundation, to develop, replicate, and evaluate a successful model for such partnerships between businesses and higher education institutions. These partnerships begin with industry and higher education working together to deeply understand, articulate, and translate the workforce needs of a particular region. This level-setting activity, aided by a third-party facilitator (in this case, BHEF), creates the necessary foundation for developing partnerships that lead to new educational pathways, job credentials, and talent-acquisition strategies--and, ultimately, employees with the skills that companies need. This report focuses on the deployment, development, and learning across the five sites supported through the NSF grant.
Teacher Pension Reform: Lessons and Warnings from West Virginia
Author: Marchitello, Max
Date: 2019-06-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Retirement Benefits,Teacher Retirement,Finance Reform,State Programs,Misconceptions

West Virginia's attempt to reshape its teacher retirement system in the 1990s and early 2000s is often cited as a cautionary tale to block other teacher pension reform efforts across the country. Critics argue that because West Virginia replaced its pension fund with a defined contribution (DC), 401(k)-style plan in the early nineties, and then reverted back to the original pension plan in 2005, that pension reform can't work. But that version of West Virginia's story is misleading and incomplete. In Bellwether's new report, &quot;Teacher Pension Reform: Lessons and Warnings From West Virginia,&quot; we modeled the wealth accumulation for teachers in the pension fund, before and after the reform, as well as the intervening DC plan. We found that all of the plans were poorly constructed from the outset and fail to provide a significant retirement benefit to a majority of West Virginia's educators. The problem was not that pension reform cannot work, or that DC plans are inherently a better option. Rather, the key takeaway is that states should carefully examine their current retirement system and consider what reforms are necessary to ensure they provide high-quality retirement options to all educators in the plan. Teacher pensions present a growing financial crisis across the country, to the tune of $500M. West Virginia's experiences with reform can be instructive for states as they seek to navigate their pension problems. When states consider incorporating DC plans, they should consider including five key features: Automatically enroll employees into the program; Set the shortest possible vesting period for teachers to qualify fully for their retirement benefits; Establish employer and employee contribution rates that, at minimum, total between 10 and 15 percent of salary; Provide low-cost options and life cycle funds that adjust an employee's portfolio as she gets closer to retirement; and Create an actionable and accountable plan to pay down unfunded liabilities. Pension reform is not an escape from the obligations owed to current and retired teachers; rather, it is a change that allows state the opportunity to re-think how to provide tomorrow's teachers with a more valuable benefit than they could have hoped for under existing plans. Failing to learn the lessons from West Virginia will, in the end, come at great cost to teachers and states alike.