ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Peering around the Corner: Analyzing State Efforts to Link Teachers to the Programs That Prepared Them
Author: Mitchel, Ashley LiBetti
Date: 2016-02-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Teacher Education Programs,Outcomes of Education,Accountability,Program Effectiveness,Teacher Competencies,Educational Legislation,Federal Legislation,Higher Education,Grants,State Standards,College Graduates,Statistical Analysis,Reports,Evaluation Methods,Program Evaluation,Teacher Effectiveness,Teacher Placement,Employment Level,Teacher Persistence,Employers,Satisfaction,Teacher Attitudes,Measurement Techniques,Decision Making

States, programs, and schools have long focused on the inputs of teacher preparation--the rules for candidates and the preparation programs they attend--because inputs were thought to predict teacher effectiveness, and because they were often the best option available. But in the early 2000s, policymakers began trying to evaluate preparation programs on the basis of graduate outcomes. In 2011, the U.S. Department of Education took another step to encourage states to link preparation programs to outcomes. The department announced that it would begin the process of regulating Title II and Title IV of the Higher Education Act to address teacher-preparation accountability and reporting. Title II affects how states and institutions report on the quality of preparation programs and requires states to identify their low-performing programs. Title IV includes student-aid programs like TEACH Grants, a loan-forgiveness program for teachers attending &quot;high-quality&quot; preparation programs. During the rulemaking process, the department pushed to include completer outcomes in states' definitions of program quality, and to use those definitions to determine which programs were &quot;high-quality&quot; in the context of TEACH Grants. Researchers are still debating how to track results and define a successful preparation program, but preparation programs will never be able to improve unless states track their results. State policymakers considering this work would be wise to learn from early implementation efforts. This report reviews the challenges and trade-offs that states face in their efforts to link completer outcomes to preparation programs. After reviewing the challenges and trade-offs, the report looks at seven important questions for 11 states that have attempted to link outcomes to programs, based on the most recent information the authors could find. The 11 states include: Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Tennessee. Herein the authors present their distillation of lessons from these states and what policymakers can learn from these early adopters.
The Pension Pac-Man: How Pension Debt Eats Away at Teacher Salaries
Author: Aldeman, Chad
Date: 2016-05-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Retirement Benefits,Teacher Salaries,Educational Trends,Trend Analysis,Costs,Debt (Financial),Models,Compensation (Remuneration),Economic Factors,Public School Teachers

Why aren't teacher salaries rising? This puzzle can be explained by three trends eating into teachers' take-home pay: rising health care costs, declining student/teacher ratios, and rising retirement costs. Retirement costs are the most hidden of these three factors. The result is that most teachers are getting the worst of both worlds. Teachers are told they're accepting lower base salaries in exchange for higher future retirement benefits, but because existing pension plans backload benefits to the end of a teacher's career, that trade only works well for the small minority of teachers (about one in five) who remain teaching in the same retirement system for 25 or 30 years. Even these teachers may have preferred higher salaries at all stages of their career over waiting until retirement for a disproportionately large reward. Rather than face some hard choices, state policymakers are allowing retirement costs to eat up ever-larger shares of teacher compensation. Unless states adopt alternative retirement models, teachers will likely see retirement costs eat further and further into their take-home pay. This report discusses this dilemma in five sections: (1) Teacher Salaries Are Stagnating While Benefit Costs Rise; (2) Teacher Retirement Costs Are Rising, but Actual Benefits Are Not; (3) Pensions Aren't Serving All Teachers Equally Well; (4) Getting Pension Debt under Control Would Benefit Teachers; and (5) How to Actually Raise Teacher Salaries.
Pennies on the Dollar: How Illinois Shortchanges Its Teachers' Retirement
Author: Kan, Leslie
Date: 2016-02-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Retirement Benefits,Teacher Retirement,Debt (Financial),Educational Policy,State Policy,Educational Change,Sustainability,Finance Reform,Financial Policy,Retrenchment

Illinois' pension plans have sent the state on a downward spiral. One out of every four dollars that state taxpayers send to Springfield goes toward pensions, and the vast majority of these contributions go toward paying down large pension debt, not the actual retirement benefits given to state and local workers like teachers. The teacher pension system alone makes up over half of the debt, with a total unfunded liability of $57.9 billion. The existing pension structure backloads benefits and disproportionately favors teachers who stay for 30 or 35 years, at the expense of everyone else. The state plan assumes, and depends upon, the fact that the majority of teachers will not stay long enough to collect full benefits. This brief examines how and why Illinois teachers are negatively affected by the current system, and it concludes with recommendations for what policymakers can do to ensure &quot;all&quot; teachers--not just some of them--are given a path to a secure retirement. By adopting a different retirement plan for teachers, the state could better maintain its own finances &quot;and&quot; provide better benefits for teachers. In the face of growing pension debt that eats away at state resources, Illinois direly needs reform. Rather than fight to preserve a system that leaves the majority of its members without adequate retirement benefits, Illinois should use this time of financial unrest to carefully consider its options for sustainable and equitable pension reform.
4 Formative Assessment Practices That Make a Difference in Classrooms
Author: Northwest Evaluation Association
Date: 2016-03-00
Type: Guides - Non-Classroom
Subjects: Formative Evaluation,Educational Practices,Educational Strategies,Program Implementation,Teacher Effectiveness,Educational Quality,Teaching Methods,Learner Engagement,Cooperative Learning,Educational Benefits

Teachers know they need to focus on practices that can make the biggest difference to their students--but which practices have a track record of improving learning and growth? Read the second article in our five-part series to discover specific classroom formative assessment practices proven to take students from zoned out to tuned in. You'll learn: (1) what highly successful teachers do; (2) 14 strategies and tools to explore within the four practices; and (3) implementation tools and tips. [For the first article in this series, &quot;3 Reasons Savvy District Leaders Prioritize Formative Assessment,&quot; see ED567812.]
3 Reasons Savvy District Leaders Prioritize Formative Assessment
Author: Northwest Evaluation Association
Date: 2016-02-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Formative Evaluation,Educational Benefits,Evidence Based Practice,School Districts,Educational Objectives,Feedback (Response),Achievement Gains,College Readiness,Career Readiness,Response to Intervention,Individualized Instruction

Teachers and leaders who say &quot;yes!&quot; to classroom formative assessment practice find it's a fast, proven, sustainable way to collect and act on key information while engaging ALL students. It's also an ideal complement to MAP and other data. Curious about which research-based practices get the most raves? Then check out the first article in our five-part formative assessment series. You'll discover why formative assessment: (1) fits in with key district priorities; (2) places a premium on incorporating quality feedback; and (3) leads to significant gains in student growth. You'll also find how these proven practices support common district priorities, including College and Career Readiness Standards, RTI, and individualizing instruction.
No Guarantees: Is It Possible to Ensure Teachers Are Ready on Day One?
Author: Aldeman, Aldeman
Date: 2016-02-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Teacher Competencies,Teacher Effectiveness,Teaching Experience,Teacher Education,Program Effectiveness,Educational Finance,College Admission,Barriers,Program Content,Faculty Development,Outcomes of Education,Teacher Influence,Elementary School Mathematics,Secondary School Science,Value Added Models

The single best predictor of who will be a great teacher next year is who was a great teacher this year. Some great teachers are seasoned veterans, while some are new to the field. Experience matters, of course, particularly in the early years of a teaching career, but it's no guarantee of teacher effectiveness. There is a wide variation in performance, even among teachers with the same amount of experience. This concept--that a great teacher cannot be identified on the basis of a résumé--should be liberating. For some reason however, it's largely ignored in the education field. Instead, without worrying too much about whether requirements will make teachers more effective, each state imposes myriad conditions on potential teachers and the programs they must attend to be eligible to teach. The result is requirements that amount to little more than barriers-new ways to keep potential teachers out of schools. This paper attempts to trace what is known about identifying and training successful teachers. It starts with a sobering conclusion: Although candidates spend billions of dollars and thousands of hours on teacher preparation courses, there still is no body of evidence justifying those requirements. Nor does anyone know how to measure and define a successful teacher training program. This paper suggests that policymakers should invest much more time and resources into learning about the science of teaching and how individual teachers develop their skills; and in the meantime, perhaps policies should reflect the fact that far more is known about a teacher after he or she enters the classroom, than beforehand. The authors propose and discuss four strategies for ensuring that schools and students have access to the best teachers possible.
Testing the Immediate and Long-Term Efficacy of a Tier 2 Kindergarten Mathematics Intervention
Author: Clarke, Ben
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Mathematics Instruction,Kindergarten,Intervention,Sustainability,Numbers,Numeracy,Algebra,Computation,Control Groups,Experimental Groups,Randomized Controlled Trials,Mathematics Achievement,Pretests Posttests,Followup Studies,Achievement Gap,Achievement Gains,Program Effectiveness

This study examined the efficacy of a kindergarten mathematics intervention program, ROOTS, focused on developing whole-number understanding in the areas of counting and cardinality and operations and algebraic thinking for students at risk in mathematics. The study utilized a randomized block design with students within classrooms randomly assigned to treatment or control conditions. Measures of mathematics achievement were collected in the fall (pretest) and spring (posttest) in kindergarten and in the winter of first grade (delayed posttest). Significant differences between conditions favoring treatment students were found on four of six measures at posttest. Treatment students reduced the achievement gap with their not-at-risk peers. No effect was found on follow-up first-grade achievement scores. Implications for Tier 2 mathematics instruction in a Response to Intervention model are discussed. [At time of submission to ERIC this article was in press with the &quot;Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness.&quot;]
What Languages to Include in Curriculum for Muslim Children
Author: Musharraf, Muhammad Nabeel
Date: 2015-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Muslims,Curriculum Development,Language Research,Language Skills,Languages,Languages for Special Purposes,Relevance (Education),Educational Needs,Semitic Languages,English (Second Language),Educational Practices,Multilingualism

Languages are tools that connect people globally and help them acquire knowledge. It is a highly critical decision to choose a language or a set of languages for inclusion in curriculum in a manner that would be most productive at personal, community and national level. What we need to see in our next generation has to be &quot;sowed the seeds for&quot; today. Our study presents an overview of choices related to languages inclusion in curriculum for Muslim children from the perspective of acquiring &quot;local languages,&quot; &quot;Arabic,&quot; &quot;English and other international languages.&quot; Findings suggest that learning this set comprising of 4 languages is already practiced in different cultures and institutions. However selection of languages to be included in mix needs be carefully considered. Paper also highlights factors that govern influence of a particular language globally or for communities and recommend a set of languages that can be adopted for curriculum with further research. An appendix further explains the points highlighted in this paper.
Explicit Instructional Interactions: Exploring the Black Box of a Tier 2 Mathematics Intervention
Author: Doabler, Christian T.
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Mathematics Activities,Intervention,Kindergarten,Structural Equation Models,Mathematics Achievement,Feedback (Response),Achievement Gains,Mathematics Instruction,Instructional Innovation,Educational Principles,Fidelity,Curriculum Implementation,Pretests Posttests,Curriculum Based Assessment,Statistical Analysis,Classroom Observation Techniques

A critical aspect of intervention research is investigating the active ingredients that underlie intensive interventions and their theories of change. This study explored the rate of instructional interactions within treatment groups to determine whether they offered explanatory power of an empirically validated Tier 2 kindergarten mathematics intervention. Direct observations were conducted in 46 interventions groups, involving approximately 228 students. Multilevel structural equation models revealed that fall mathematics achievement significantly and negatively predicted the rate of academic feedback. Specifically, intervention groups with lower student mathematics achievement at the start of the kindergarten year received higher rates of academic feedback. Analyses also suggested that latent rates of instructional interactions were not significantly correlated with gains on student mathematics outcomes. Implications are discussed in relation to specifying the underlying mechanisms to intensify mathematics interventions, documenting local adaptation of intervention implementation, and examining possible threshold effects of instructional interactions. [At time of submission to ERIC this article was in press with &quot;Remedial and Special Education&quot; (EJ1134119).]
Linking the Pennsylvania PSSA Assessments to NWEA MAP Tests
Author: Northwest Evaluation Association
Date: 2016-02-00
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: Scores,Inferences,Academic Achievement,Achievement Tests,Reading Achievement,Mathematics Achievement,Cutting Scores,Benchmarking,Probability,Tables (Data),Computer Assisted Testing,Common Core State Standards,Classification,Statistical Analysis,Standardized Tests,Language Arts,Summative Evaluation

Northwest Evaluation Association™ (NWEA™) is committed to providing partners with useful tools to help make inferences from the Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) interim assessment scores. Recently, NWEA completed a concordance study to connect the scales of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) reading and math with those of the MAP Reading and MAP for Mathematics assessments. This report presents the 3rd through 8th grade cut scores on MAP reading and mathematics scales that correspond to the benchmarks on the PSSA reading and math tests. Information about the consistency rate of classification based on the estimated MAP cut scores is also provided, along with a series of tables that predict the probability of receiving a Level 3 (i.e.,&quot;Proficient&quot;) or higher performance designation on the PSSA assessments, based on the observed MAP scores taken during the same school year. A detailed description of the data and analysis method used in this study is provided in the Appendix.
Linking the New York State NYSTP Assessments to NWEA MAP Tests
Author: Northwest Evaluation Association
Date: 2016-03-00
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: Scores,Inferences,Academic Achievement,Achievement Tests,Reading Achievement,Mathematics Achievement,Cutting Scores,Benchmarking,Probability,Tables (Data),Computer Assisted Testing,Common Core State Standards,Classification,Statistical Analysis,Standardized Tests,Language Arts,Summative Evaluation

Northwest Evaluation Association™ (NWEA™) is committed to providing partners with useful tools to help make inferences from the Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) interim assessment scores. Recently, NWEA completed a concordance study to connect the scales of the New York State Testing Program (NYSTP) reading and math with those of the MAP Reading and MAP for Mathematics assessments. This report presents the 3rd through 8th grade cut scores on MAP reading and mathematics scales that correspond to the benchmarks on the NYSTP reading and math tests. Information about the consistency rate of classification based on the estimated MAP cut scores is also provided, along with a series of tables that predict the probability of receiving a Level 3 (i.e.,&quot;Proficient&quot;) or higher performance designation on the NYSTP assessments, based on the observed MAP scores taken during the same school year. A detailed description of the data and analysis method used in this study is provided in the Appendix.
Linking the PARCC Assessments to NWEA MAP Tests for Illinois
Author: Northwest Evaluation Association
Date: 2016-03-00
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: Scores,Inferences,Academic Achievement,Achievement Tests,Reading Achievement,Mathematics Achievement,Cutting Scores,Benchmarking,Tables (Data),Classification,Standardized Tests,Probability,Common Core State Standards,Computer Assisted Testing,Language Arts,Summative Evaluation,Statistical Analysis,Grade 3,Grade 4,Grade 5,Grade 6,Grade 7,Grade 8

Northwest Evaluation Association™ (NWEA™) is committed to providing partners with useful tools to help make inferences from the Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) interim assessment scores. One important tool is the concordance table between MAP and state summative assessments. Concordance tables have been used for decades to relate scores on different tests measuring similar but distinct constructs. These tables, typically derived from statistical linking procedures, provide a direct link between scores on different tests and serve various purposes. Aside from describing how a score on one test relates to performance on another test, they can also be used to identify benchmark scores on one test corresponding to performance categories on another test, or to maintain continuity of scores on a test after the test is redesigned or changed. Concordance tables are helpful for educators, parents, administrators, researchers, and policy makers to evaluate and formulate academic standing and growth. Recently, NWEA completed a concordance study to connect the scales of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) English language arts (ELA) and math with those of the MAP Reading and MAP for Mathematics assessments for Illinois (IL). In this report, presented are the 3rd through 8th grade cut scores on MAP reading and mathematics scales that correspond to the benchmarks that Illinois adopted for its PARCC ELA and math tests. Information about the consistency rate of classification based on the estimated MAP cut scores is also provided, along with a series of tables that predict the probability of receiving a Level 4 (i.e., &quot;Proficient&quot;) or higher performance designation on the PARCC assessments, based on the observed MAP scores taken during the same school year. A detailed description of the data and analysis method used in this study is provided in the appendix.
Linking the PARCC Assessments to NWEA MAP Tests for New Mexico
Author: Northwest Evaluation Association
Date: 2016-03-00
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: Scores,Inferences,Academic Achievement,Achievement Tests,Reading Achievement,Mathematics Achievement,Cutting Scores,Benchmarking,Tables (Data),Classification,Standardized Tests,Probability,Common Core State Standards,Computer Assisted Testing,Language Arts,Summative Evaluation,Statistical Analysis,Grade 3,Grade 4,Grade 5,Grade 6,Grade 7,Grade 8

Northwest Evaluation Association™ (NWEA™) is committed to providing partners with useful tools to help make inferences from the Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) interim assessment scores. One important tool is the concordance table between MAP and state summative assessments. Concordance tables have been used for decades to relate scores on different tests measuring similar but distinct constructs. These tables, typically derived from statistical linking procedures, provide a direct link between scores on different tests and serve various purposes. Aside from describing how a score on one test relates to performance on another test, they can also be used to identify benchmark scores on one test corresponding to performance categories on another test, or to maintain continuity of scores on a test after the test is redesigned or changed. Concordance tables are helpful for educators, parents, administrators, researchers, and policy makers to evaluate and formulate academic standing and growth. Recently, NWEA completed a concordance study to connect the scales of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) English language arts (ELA) and math with those of the MAP Reading and MAP for Mathematics assessments for New Mexico (NM). In this report, presented are the 3rd through 8th grade cut scores on MAP reading and mathematics scales that correspond to the benchmarks that Illinois adopted for its PARCC ELA and math tests. Information about the consistency rate of classification based on the estimated MAP cut scores is also provided, along with a series of tables that predict the probability of receiving a Level 4 (i.e., &quot;Proficient&quot;) or higher performance designation on the PARCC assessments, based on the observed MAP scores taken during the same school year. A detailed description of the data and analysis method used in this study is provided in the appendix.