ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
The Effects of Placement and School Stability on Academic Growth Trajectories of Students in Foster Care
Author: Clemens, Elysia V.
Date: 2018-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foster Care,Academic Achievement,At Risk Students,Grade 4,Grade 5,Grade 6,Grade 7,Grade 8,Grade 9,Grade 10,Elementary Secondary Education,School Role,Student Needs,Child Welfare,Student Mobility,Achievement Gap

As a result of the Every Student Succeeds Act and its requirement that students in foster care be included in education report cards, states have a renewed sense of urgency surrounding accountability for the academic achievement of this vulnerable group of students. This study examined the effects of placement and school stability on students' academic growth before, during, and after out-of-home placements. The sample consisted of 7674 youth in 4th through 10th grades from one Mountain region state who were also in foster care at any point between 2008 and 2014. The findings from the current study underscore the importance of: (a) supporting &quot;catch-up&quot; growth when students initially enter the child welfare system; (b) considering the detrimental effects of co-occurring placement changes and school moves in case planning for students in foster care; (c) maintaining academic progress for those students who are meeting grade-level expectations; and, (d) implementing supports and services that extend beyond the duration of time that students are in foster care.
First 5 Kern Annual Report: Fiscal Year 2017-2018
Author: Wang, Jianjun
Date: 2019-02-06
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Early Childhood Education,Child Care,State Programs,Parent Education,Child Health,Wellness,Integrated Services,Family Programs,Program Effectiveness,State Aid

This report contains evaluation findings from 43 programs that received a total of around $10 million state investment through Proposition 10 to support early childhood services in Kern County, California during Fiscal Year 2017-2018. The Kern County Children and Families Commission (First 5 Kern) was established on December 15, 1998 by Ordinance G-6565 of the Kern County Board of Supervisors to administer the state trust funds from a 50 cent-per-pack tax on cigarette and other tobacco products. For justification of Outcome-Based Accountability, First 5 Kern is expected to provide an annual report on the return to state investment in Child Health, Family Functioning, Child Development, and Systems of Care. A five-chapter structure has been incorporated in this report to evaluate the funding impact on child well-being this year: Chapter 1 highlights features of First 5 Kern support at the Commission level; Chapter 2 provides program-specific findings that impact children ages 0-5 and their families; Chapter 3 describes results of partnership collaboration to strengthen the system building for service integration; Chapter 4 includes longitudinal results from the Core Data Elements (CDE) survey and Family Stability Rubric (FSR) to describe sustainable accomplishments through the ongoing service improvements. This report ends with Chapter 5: Conclusions and Future Directions to review past recommendations and introduce new recommendations for next year. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were taken to address three key questions: (1) How much has been done in local child support; (2) How well did the programs perform this year? (3) Are any children and families better off? The report includes two appendices, 31 figures, 78 tables, and 129 reference items. [For &quot;First 5 Kern Annual Report: Fiscal Year 2016-2017,&quot; see ED582032.]
Automated Speech Act Categorization of Chat Utterances in Virtual Internships
Author: Gautam, Dipesh
Date: 2018-07-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Speech Acts,Classification,Automation,Synchronous Communication,Internship Programs,Electronic Learning,Artificial Intelligence,Mentors,Engineering Education,Undergraduate Students,Computer Simulation

This work is a step towards full automation of auto-mentoring processes in multi-player online environments such as virtual internships. We focus on automatically identifying speaker's intentions, i.e. the speech acts of chat utterances, in such virtual internships. Particularly, we explore several machine learning methods to categorize speech acts, with promising results. A novel approach based on pre-training a neural network on a large set of (and noisy) labeled data and then on expert-labeled data led to best results. The proposed methods can help understand patterns of conversations among players in virtual internships which in turn could inform refinements of the design of such learning environments and ultimately the development of virtual mentors that would be able to monitor and scaffold students' learning, i.e., the acquisition of specific professional skills in this case. [For the full proceedings, see ED593090.]
The Teacher&apos;s Quest for Progress: How School Leaders Can Motivate Instructional Innovation
Author: Arnett, Thomas
Date: 2018-09-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Instructional Leadership,Instructional Innovation,Leaders,Learner Engagement,Educational Improvement,Teacher Motivation,Active Learning,Student Projects,Blended Learning,Mastery Learning,Educational Change,Educational Technology,Technological Advancement

With support from the Fremont Street Fund, a national nonprofit philanthropy dedicated to catalyzing and scaling educator-led innovation in public schools, the authors of this report embarked on a research effort to understand the underlying causes that drove teachers to adopt new teaching practices--such as blended learning, mastery-based learning, or project-based learning. What they discovered supports the research that we have done in other fields. Teachers, like anyone else, look for better alternatives when the status quo isn't working. They change their habits and behavior when circumstances in their lives cause them to find new approaches to accomplishing the things they are already trying to get done. By understanding these motivations through what the authors call the &quot;Jobs to Be Done&quot; framework, they pieced together four different Jobs that cause teachers to make instructional changes in their classrooms. In essence, different teachers find themselves in different circumstances. Sometimes they want their schools to improve. Sometimes they are looking for practical strategies and tools to make the classroom experience more engaging. Sometimes they struggle with feeling powerless to meet the individual needs of every student. And sometimes they want to keep from falling behind on a school-wide initiative that has little appeal to them otherwise. This paper is a guide for any school leaders, district administrators, technical assistance providers, policymakers, and foundations whose reform initiatives hinge on whether teachers decide to embrace new practices. This report offers an overview of the Jobs to Be Done framework, then dives into the authors' research findings and recommendations. [This research was made possible by a generous grant from Fremont Street.]
Educational Stability Policy and the Interplay between Child Welfare Placements and School Moves
Author: Clemens, Elysia V.
Date: 2017-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Child Welfare,Foster Care,At Risk Students,Student Mobility,Federal Legislation,Adoption,Educational Legislation,Program Effectiveness,Children,Youth,Educational Policy,Public Policy

Despite recent improvements in child welfare placement stability, youth in foster care still experience high rates of school moves. Although these findings are well documented in the literature, few studies have considered the interplay between child welfare placements and school moves. The purpose of this study was to determine the proportion of school moves that can be reduced through implementation of the educational stability provisions of the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act (FCA, 2008) and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2015), and to identify opportunities to minimize the number of transitions that children and youth in foster care experience. Findings indicate that implementation of the FCA and the ESSA is a critical, but partial, solution for ensuring the educational stability of students in foster care. This article provides an empirical rationale for states and local jurisdictions to incorporate non-regulatory recommendations in order to fill the gaps in federal regulations.
The Relationship between School Mobility and Students in Foster Care Earning a High School Credential
Author: Clemens, Elysia V.
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Student Mobility,Foster Care,Educational Attainment,Correlation,High School Graduates,High School Equivalency Programs,Predictor Variables,Probability,Instructional Program Divisions,Child Welfare,At Risk Students,Student Characteristics

This study examined the relationship between school mobility for Colorado students in foster care and educational attainment outcomes, specifically earning high school diploma, a high school equivalency diploma (e.g., through examination such as a GED), or exiting the K-12 system without a credential. Multinomial logistic regression was utilized to analyze the predictive role of school mobility related to high school educational attainment within a statewide sample of four cohorts of students who experienced out-of-home placements during high school. Results indicated that students in the foster care cohorts changed public schools an average of 3.46 times during their first four years of high school. As the average number of school changes increased, the odds of earning a high school diploma decreased and the odds of earning an equivalency diploma (e.g., GED) or exiting without a credential increased. Grade level analysis suggests that educational stability in ninth and twelfth grades may be particularly important to closing the high school graduation gap for students in foster care. A more comprehensive child welfare profile that includes frequency of residential moves, types of placements, and mental or behavioral health indicators was not included in analyses, and this limitation must be considered when using the results of this study to inform policy or practice.
Teaching Academic Vocabulary to Sixth Grade Students with Disabilities
Author: O'Connor, Rollanda E.
Date: 2019-02-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Vocabulary Development,English Language Learners,Grade 6,English for Academic Purposes,Program Effectiveness,Disabilities,Special Education,Language Arts,Learning Disabilities,Middle School Students,Teaching Methods

Adolescents with disabilities have great difficulty with academic content in middle school, and their teachers have difficulty teaching them to understand and use academic language. We taught teachers of 6th grade students with Learning Disabilities, over half of whom were also English Language Learners (ELL), to implement about 15 minutes of daily interactive vocabulary instruction in their intact special education English/Language Arts classes. Three schools were assigned randomly to treatment (2 schools) or control conditions (1 school; 52 students total). We developed instructional routines to introduce four new words per week in three 4-week units to test for replicability. ANCOVAs (with each cycle's pretest and intelligence quotient (IQ) as covariates) were conducted on taught vocabulary, all of which favored the treatment condition with effect sizes ranging 0.6 to 0.7 per cycle. Near-transfer effects to vocabulary usage were weaker, with significant effects in the last two cycles. Effects were similar for students with disabilities who were ELL and native English speakers. Treated students maintained their knowledge of words 4 to 24 weeks following the close of treatment. [This article will be published in &quot;Learning Disability Quarterly.&quot;]
An Empirical Research on Identifiability and Q-Matrix Design for DINA Model
Author: Xu, Peng
Date: 2018-07-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Test Items,Accuracy,Test Construction,Skills,Matrices,Identification,Test Length

In most contexts of student skills assessment, whether the test material is administered by the teacher or within a learning environment, there is a strong incentive to minimize the number of questions or exercises administered in order to get an accurate assessment. This minimization objective can be framed as a Q-matrix design problem: given a set of skills to assess and a fixed number of question items, determine the optimal set of items, out of a potentially large pool, that will yield the most accurate assessment. In recent years, the Q-matrix identifiability under DINA/DINO models has been proposed as a guiding principle for that purpose. We empirically investigate the extent to which identifiability can serve that purpose. Identifiability of Q-matrices is studied throughout a range of conditions in an effort to measure and understand its relation to student skills assessment. The investigation relies on simulation studies of skills assessment with synthetic data. Results show that identifiability is an important factor that determines the capacity of a Q-matrix to lead to accurate skills assessment with the least number of questions. [For the full proceedings, see ED593090.]
Alumni Perspectives Survey Report, 2016
Author: Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC)
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Alumni,Business Administration Education,Graduate Study,Attitudes,Business Schools,Outcomes of Education,Employment Level,Females,Employed Women,Job Skills

Individuals interested in a graduate management education are seeking one of three career outcomes--to take their current career to the next level, to switch careers, or to launch their own business. The decision to earn an MBA or other graduate business degree is a big undertaking. It requires weighing the full cost of such an investment--the time, energy, and money (tuition costs and foregone wages) required to earn a degree--against the potential return on investment (ROI). The findings in the &quot;2016 Alumni Perspectives Survey Report&quot; showcase the experiences of more than 14,000 business school alumni who decided to take on the challenge of earning a graduate business degree. These individuals realized quantifiable returns on their investment, which they report in terms of high employment rates, post-degree salary growth, advancement in their chosen fields, and career satisfaction. The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) conducted the Alumni Perspectives Survey in October and November 2015. The 14,279 alumni who participated in this survey represent more than 275 graduate business programs at 70 universities in 20 locations worldwide that partnered with GMAC in this study. In addition to alumni contacts that business schools supplied, the survey sample was supplemented with business school alumni who had participated in past GMAC surveys. Survey respondents graduated from various program types, currently work in 122 countries around the globe, and represent graduating classes going back at least five decades. [For the 2015 report, see ED555866. The following individuals from the Research Services Department in the School Products Division of GMAC made significant contributions to the publication of this report: Rhonda Daniel, Gregg Schoenfeld, Rebecca Estrada Worthington, Paula Bruggeman, Devina Caruthers, Alex Chisholm, Matthew Hazenbush, Tacoma Williams, and Robert Alig.]
Modeling the Effects of Students&apos; Interactions with Immersive Simulations Using Markov Switching Systems
Author: Hoernle, Nicholas
Date: 2018-07-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Computer Simulation,Student Behavior,Interaction,Markov Processes,Time Management,Models,Simulated Environment,Computer Uses in Education,Visual Aids,Science Instruction

Simulations that combine real world components with interactive digital media provide a rich setting for students with the potential to assist knowledge building and understanding of complex physical processes. This paper addresses the problem of modeling the effects of multiple students' simultaneous interactions on the complex and exploratory environments such simulations provide. We work towards assisting educators with the difficult task of interpreting student exploration. We represent the system dynamics that result from student actions with a complex time series and use switch based models to decompose the time series into individual periods that target interpretability for teachers. The model learns the transition points between successive periods in the time series as well as the internal dynamics that govern each period. This model differs from other switch based models in that it decomposes the time series in a way that is human interpretable. This approach was applied to data that was obtained from an existing multi-person simulation with pedagogical goals of teaching sustainability and systems thinking. A visualization of the model was designed to validate the interpretability of the generated text-based descriptions when compared to a movie representation of the system dynamics. A pilot study using this visualization indicates that the switch based model finds relevant boundaries between salient periods of student work. [For the full proceedings, see ED593090.]
Strategies for Classroom Physical Activity in Schools
Author: National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (DHHS/CDC)
Date: 2018-11-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Educational Strategies,Physical Activities,Physical Education,Comprehensive School Health Education,Recess Breaks,Class Activities,After School Programs,Family Involvement,Guidance,Time Factors (Learning)

Less than one-third of children and adolescents in the United States are meeting the recommendation from the &quot;2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans&quot; to get 60 minutes or more of physical activity each day. Schools can help students meet this national recommendation because close to 60 million children and adolescents attend school. Schools have also shown that they are capable of helping students get up to 20 to 60 minutes of physical activity during the school day. This finding underscores that schools are the most strategic and practical place for students to learn about and practice being physically active. The Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child model can help schools strategically identify and promote policies, practices, and programs that increase physical education and physical activity. Within the context of this model, schools can develop, implement, and evaluate a Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program. This program involves coordination across multiple components, including: (1) Physical education as the foundation; (2) Physical activity during the school day (recess and classroom physical activity); (3) Physical activity before and after school; (4) Family and community engagement; and (5) Staff involvement. This report describes strategies for promoting and planning classroom physical activity. It also provides a list of practical resources to help school staff implement the strategies identified. [The writing team for this report includes: Brittany H. Chen, Mary Juergens, Kelly Hughes, Lina Jew, Kate Holmes, and Shannon L. Michael. This document was prepared in collaboration with Springboard to Active Schools, an initiative of the National Network of Public Health Institutes (NNPHI) and Health Resources in Action (HRiA) through a cooperative agreement.]
Strategies to Improve Outcomes for American Indian Students
Author: Center on Standards and Assessments Implementation (CSAI)
Date: 2019-00-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Educational Strategies,Educational Improvement,Outcomes of Education,American Indian Students,Academic Achievement,Alaska Natives,Achievement Gap,Barriers,Transformational Leadership,Principals,Mentors,Advocacy,Educational Quality,After School Programs,Teacher Effectiveness,Cultural Awareness,Culturally Relevant Education,Family Involvement,Community Involvement,At Risk Students,Educational Facilities Improvement,Educational Environment

This brief is designed to support states, districts, and schools in developing strategies to support the academic achievement of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) students. The brief overview discusses strategies for addressing achievement barriers that AI/AN students might face in school, as well as how school leaders can develop a master plan to best support AI/AN students.
2018 California Children&apos;s Report Card: A Review of Kids&apos; Well-Being &amp; Roadmap for the Future
Author: Children Now
Date: 2018-00-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Infants,Toddlers,Early Childhood Education,Kindergarten,Preschool Teachers,Bilingual Students,English Language Learners,Educational Finance,Elementary Secondary Education,Academic Achievement,STEM Education,Teacher Education,Teacher Placement,Educational Environment,Discipline,Attendance Patterns,After School Programs,Summer Programs,Higher Education,Access to Education,Child Health,Child Development,Screening Tests,Home Visits,Health Insurance,Access to Health Care,Mental Health,Dental Health,School Health Services,Hunger,Food,Child Welfare,Child Abuse,Child Neglect,Placement,Foster Care,Student Needs,Juvenile Justice

Lack of progress for improving the lives of kids is unacceptable. All children need stability and a path to opportunity. This is true for nearly half of California's children who live in low-income families, where caregivers struggle to afford the quality support and services they need for their kids. This is also true for the approximately three-fourths of kids of color and just under half of kids growing up in immigrant families who face significant structural barriers to their stability and often highly stressful experiences that disrupt their healthy development. As the &quot;2018 California Children's Report Card&quot; shows, the vast majority of the state's children face extraordinary challenges to reaching their full potential. Yet, the success of California's economy and civil society ultimately depends on policies that tear down these barriers and give all kids access to the quality support they need to succeed--from quality, affordable child care to a rigorous education to health coverage to safety. Public policy change is the fastest and most efficient way to scale innovative, high-impact programs, and secure the needed resources and reforms. The report card is organized into the following sections: (1) Education; (2) Health; and (3) Child Welfare.