ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
America's Leaky Pipeline for Teachers of Color: Getting More Teachers of Color into the Classroom
Author: Ahmad, Farah Z.
Date: 2014-05-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Minority Group Teachers,Diversity (Faculty),Barriers,Underachievement,Educational Policy,Federal Government,State Government,Local Government,Government Role,Racial Bias,Racial Differences,Ethnic Groups,Elementary Secondary Education,Higher Education,Equal Education,Community Colleges,Enrollment Trends,Achievement Gap,Teacher Certification,Teacher Competencies

To prepare American students for lives of high achievement, America's schools need a teaching corps that is not only highly effective but also racially and ethnically diverse. Progress has been made in recent decades in attracting people of color to the teaching profession. But major barriers--including a scarcity of high-quality, teacher-training programs targeted at teachers of color; the educational debt students of color must shoulder; and the general lack of esteem in our society for teaching--stand in the way of producing an optimal pool of teachers. Without vigorous policy innovations and public investment, the demographic gap will only widen to the detriment of children's education. This report will describe how the shortcomings of today's education system and the underachievement of many of today's students of color shrink the future supply of teachers of color. Furthermore, it will offer policy recommendations through which federal and state education agencies and local school districts can address this critical problem. [This report was produced under Progress 2050: New Ideas for a Diverse America, a project within the Center for American Progress.]
A Teacher's Exploratory Inquiry of Language Awareness: Language Learner Perceptions from Oral Presentations
Author: Leichsenring, Andrew
Date: 2015-04-01
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Foreign Countries,English (Second Language),Metalinguistics,Second Language Learning,Public Speaking,Inquiry,Qualitative Research,Questionnaires,Postsecondary Education,Student Attitudes,Oral Language,Error Analysis (Language),Language Research,Evaluation Criteria,Case Studies,Japanese,Language Usage

This paper presents a teacher-led inquiry into learner language awareness and learner perceptions of: oral presentations using first language (L1) support when using a second language (L2); and L2 learner and user identity. The quantitative-based results of this preliminary inquiry represent a source of understanding for the researcher, who later, intends to undertake a qualitative-based study of learner oriented language awareness and speaking assessment. A questionnaire was distributed to 144 Japanese first and second year tertiary students who completed a semester course in general and academic English. A cross-sectional analysis was applied to the questionnaire results which aimed to gather student perceptions of the use of and identity with a L2, that is, English. Key findings from the exploration of learner perceptions in this research included the acceptance of spoken errors when giving oral presentations and a sense of ownership of English among the participants. This research presents learner perceptions that may prompt teachers to consider conducting language awareness research with their students with the aim of reflecting upon the modification of traditional speaking assessment practices.
Teacher Learning through Assessment: How Student-Performance Assessments Can Support Teacher Learning
Author: Darling-Hammond, Linda
Date: 2013-09-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Common Core State Standards,Teacher Competencies,Faculty Development,Student Evaluation,Academic Standards,Performance Based Assessment,Interviews,Foreign Countries,Scoring,Evaluation Methods,Teacher Participation,Teacher Collaboration,Scoring Rubrics,Communities of Practice

As the internationally benchmarked Common Core State Standards, or CCSS, are adopted in states across the country, educators are seeking ways to support an increasingly diverse student population to meet these more demanding expectations. The likelihood that students will achieve the aims of the standards will be substantially shaped by how well teachers teach these challenging academic skills in ways that support a wide range of learners. Teachers' understanding of the standards and their grasp of how to teach them will also influence whether the new assessments provide useful insights, rather than harmful side effects, particularly for those students who have historically been least well served by their schools. This paper describes how teacher learning through involvement with student-performance assessments has been accomplished in the United States and around the world, particularly in countries that have been recognized for their high-performing educational systems. The authors discuss how teachers' engagement with performance assessments influences their understanding of the standards and their students' abilities. This discussion includes comments from teachers about their experiences with performance assessments as provided through interviews conducted for this report as well as in previously published research. Finally, the authors recommend how these kinds of performance-assessment opportunities can be planted and scaled up as states and districts implement CCSS and deepen their efforts to teach 21st-century skills.
The Rise of Networks: How Decentralized Management Is Improving Schools
Author: Kelleher, Maureen
Date: 2014-05-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Administrative Organization,School Districts,Institutional Autonomy,Governance,Public Schools,Urban Schools,School Administration,Networks,Elementary Secondary Education

School districts across the country are shifting away from their traditional management paradigm--a central office that directs its schools through uniform mandates and policies--toward a new vision where district leaders support autonomous schools while holding them accountable for student performance. The advent of new governance mechanisms between districts and schools that have come with the rise of charter schools, contract schools, and various systems that allow district-managed schools greater freedom of action in hiring, budgeting, and instructional planning has transformed the command-and-control relationships that were long the hallmark of public school management. As a consequence, school-district leaders increasingly recognize that greater school autonomy requires rethinking their models of district-level management and support. In 2006, New York City pioneered the transformation of the relationship between the central office and its schools by launching an initiative that gave autonomy to all schools regardless of their performance. Today, New York City's public schools are affiliated in networks based on a common interest: a similar type of school, such as an all-elementary-school network; a common instructional approach; or a similar target population, such as English language learners. This report describes the current state of school networks in New York City and outlines the successes and challenges the city has faced in implementing school networks. It also explores how networks have been implemented in other cities--Baltimore, Maryland; Chicago, Illinois; and Denver, Colorado--to show how the school-network concept has been adapted to a variety of local contexts. Educational researchers note that few, if any, urban public school districts consistently provide their schools with effective supports to improve instruction for disadvantaged children. As districts struggle to improve their supports for schools, especially those serving large numbers of disadvantaged students, school networks show promise as an emerging strategy to help schools improve student learning and to solve the operational problems that can suck time and energy away from a focus on instruction.
Meeting Students Where They Are: Profiles of Students in Competency-Based Degree Programs
Author: Klein-Collins, Rebecca
Date: 2013-11-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Competency Based Education,Profiles,Educational Policy,Postsecondary Education,Knowledge Level,Educational Change,Transfer of Training,Reentry Students,Academic Degrees,Peer Relationship,Mentors,Student Financial Aid,Credits,Academic Standards,Educational Assessment,Business Administration Education,Labor Force Development,Education Work Relationship

An educated workforce is one of the bedrocks not just of a strong American middle class, but also of a strong U.S. economy. To ensure that America has the most competitive global workforce, President Barack Obama articulated a goal that, by 2020, every American should continue their educational training after high school so that the United States will increase its proportion of college graduates. This ambitious policy objective will require our postsecondary education system to embrace changes and find new ways to improve student success while maintaining affordability and quality. One way that some postsecondary institutions are innovating is by focusing more on what students learn, rather than where or how long the learning takes place. This can be a more efficient way for students to progress toward a degree, yet it is a very different way for higher education to operate. For more than 100 years, postsecondary education has been designed around the credit hour, a measure of how much time students spend in the classroom. Although it was not originally designed for this purpose, the credit hour is used in higher education as a proxy for student learning, with the student progressing toward a degree by accumulating a prescribed number of these time-based units. An alternative approach is competency-based education, which makes student learning--not time--the focus. This report catalogues stories of average Americans--some who went to college directly after high school, some who are returning to postsecondary education after many years in the workforce, and others who are pursuing graduate studies. All of these students have one thing in common: They are participating in a competency-based education program that tracks their progress by measuring the knowledge and skills they have acquired. This report demonstrates the positive qualities of competency-based learning and identifies commonalities among student experiences that can inform the policy priorities for those looking to expand and reform postsecondary educational offerings.
Help Wanted: Flexibility for Innovative State Education Agencies
Author: Murphy, Patrick
Date: 2014-06-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: State Departments of Education,Federal Aid,Federal State Relationship,Barriers,Educational Improvement,Innovation,Resource Allocation,Government Role,Federal Government,Government Employees,Capacity Building,Elementary Secondary Education,Administrative Organization,Incentives

State education agencies, or SEAs, are being asked-and in some cases, forced-to make operational changes in the name of school improvement. New laws and expectations are pushing them to play a greater role in managing school performance, displacing to a significant degree their decades-old responsibility for monitoring local school districts for compliance with federal and state programs. Moving toward school improvement, however, requires a new way of doing things, often involving reconfigured priorities, staff positions, and processes within these agencies. This transition is taking place while overall state education department funding has remained flat, at best, or declined in many states. Consequently, SEAs are looking for ways to do more with less, shifting resources within the agency to align with new priorities. Ironically, the most visible force pushing SEAs to play a more substantive role in managing and improving school performance is also one of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of efforts to realign funds for that purpose-the federal government. Two factors combine to create this situation. First, federal grants supply a surprisingly large share of the resources that support state-level education administration. Second, those funds come to the state with a number of strings attached-namely, reporting requirements and restrictions about how the funds are used. State education administrators looking to combine similar responsibilities and focus resources for school improvement are beginning to bump up against these restrictions. This paper examines what the federal government might do to get out of SEAs' way as they work to reinvent themselves. In doing so, it attempts to answer three questions: (1)What role do federal dollars play in supporting the work of SEAs; (2) What are the constraints that SEAs face in using or repurposing federal resources as they look to innovate and support improved student outcomes; and (3) What could be done to facilitate more flexibility from the federal level? To answer these questions, state and federal documents, were reviewed, state administrators and education regulatory law experts, were reviewed and prior research was studied. The paper first provides a context for understanding how SEAs have been forced to shift out of the role of compliance monitor and into that of performance manager. It then describes how state agencies allocate their resources and the critical role that the federal government plays in that distribution.
Common Strategies for Uncommon Achievement: How Districts Enable and Support High-Performing Schools
Author: Hanna, Robert
Date: 2013-07-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Educational Improvement,Academic Achievement,High Achievement,School Districts,Counties,Geographic Location,Socioeconomic Status,Low Income Groups,Urban Schools,Rural Schools,School District Size,Interviews,Teacher Attitudes,Change Strategies,Coaching (Performance),Models,Communities of Practice,Educational Methods,Administrator Role,Teaching Methods,Best Practices

What does it take to improve a school? What kinds of programs, systems, and people need to be in place for educational outcomes to improve overall? These and other questions continue to vex policymakers who--along with researchers, reformers, and advocates--pour over data and case studies looking for tools to transform schools into places where all students achieve. There are features and structures of schools that have shown improvement that can help educational leaders see a path forward. One way to consider how to design plans for school improvement is to start with the success stories--focusing on how educators brought about positive change. This report intends to do just that by considering the performance of districts and schools of an entire state--in this case, North Carolina--focusing on some of those that improved and then teasing out the approaches that leaders in these districts used to foster success. The report features three effective school districts in North Carolina. The districts vary in terms of the types of students they serve, where they are located, and the number of schools they oversee. The districts include: (1) Catawba County, a rural district serving a student population of more than 17,000 students, around half of which were income eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches in the 2011-12 school year; (2) Montgomery County, also rural but with a smaller student population than Catawba (around 4,000 students), and where more than 70 percent of its students were eligible for subsidized lunches in the 2011-12 school year; and (3) Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, an urban district, with one of the largest student populations in the state (around 50,000 students), and where about half of the students were eligible for subsidized lunches in the 2011-12 school year. A list of the educators interviewed for the featured districts is appended.
Giving Every Student Access to Excellent Teachers: A Vision for Focusing Federal Investments in Education
Author: Center for American Progress
Date: 2013-11-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Teacher Effectiveness,Access to Education,Federal Aid,Educational Finance,Federal Government,Government Role,Public Education,Educational Change,Grants,Funding Formulas,Research and Development,Educational Research,Civil Rights,Educational Policy,Competition,Elementary Secondary Education,Federal Legislation,Educational Legislation,Interviews

Despite constraints on federal resources and authority in education policy, the federal government has a pivotal role to play in identifying a compelling, high-impact focal point that aligns policy priorities at the federal, state, and local levels. The federal government could play a critical role in expanding students' access to excellent teaching. Federal policies could also help transform teaching into a profession that attracts and keeps even more talented people and provides rich opportunities for on-the-job development and sustainably paid advancement for all teachers. This report presents the following four principal levers that the federal government can employ to focus the nation on dramatically increasing student access to excellent teaching: (1) Structure competitive grants to induce districts and states to shift to transformative school designs that reach more students with excellent teachers and the teams that these teachers lead; (2) Reorient existing formula grants to encourage transition to new classroom models that extend the reach of great teachers, both directly and through leading teaching teams; (3) Create a focal point for federal research and development efforts; and (4) Create and enforce a new civil right to excellent teachers. This report outlines an initial set of ideas that, taken in whole or in part, could position federal policy and programs to better assist state and local education agencies that put excellent teachers in charge of student learning by implementing transformative school models and accelerating the development of the tools necessary to support them. [The Public Impact team members who contributed to this report are Christen Holly, Gillian Locke, Bryan C. Hassel, and Emily Ayscue Hassel. ]
Size Matters: A Look at School-District Consolidation
Author: Boser, Ulrich
Date: 2013-08-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: School District Reorganization,School District Size,Educational Finance,Costs,Public Schools,Expenditure per Student,Elementary Secondary Education

When it comes to education, not all spending is equal. Some education dollars are spent more productively than others. In a time of lagging revenues and flat achievement in many districts, policymakers have increasingly started to pay greater attention to the question of whether education systems are getting the most out of every education dollar. Policymakers have begun to rethink the fundamental design of the education system. Two strains of work--productivity and governance--have led policymakers to ask: Could the structure of the education system be reformed in ways that might increase student achievement? With this question in mind, this report looks at the widespread existence of small school districts--defined here as districts with fewer than 1,000 students, that are not classified by the U.S. Census Bureau as &quot;rural remote&quot; or &quot;town remote&quot;--and specifically at the extra education costs associated with these districts. Over the years many have argued that small school districts have unnecessary costs because they lack economies of scale.
Student Perceptions of Their Doctoral Programs: Case Study
Author: Moffett, David W.
Date: 2015-11-04
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Graduate Students,Student Attitudes,Doctoral Programs,Case Studies,Mixed Methods Research,Questionnaires,Student Satisfaction,Interviews,College Faculty

The Investigator studied three Doctor of Philosophy program concentrations for a two year period, 2013-2015. The intent of the confidential study was to determine factors affecting program participants' perceptions most. A mixed methods embedded study was applied, with the quantitative portion representing the secondary data source and the qualitative portion primary. Questionnaires were provided to the doctoral students and 42 of 165 were completed and received. Quantitative results revealed average to above average program satisfaction, but a substantial range of perceptions regarding quality of the program, connectedness to advisors and other students, most useful courses, and least useful courses. Qualitative results revealed 27 areas of concern possessed by the study participants regarding their doctoral journeys. Of the 27, four were selected for further analysis: concerns regarding too few students completing the dissertation process, concerns with lack of meaningful formative and summative assessments occurring across courses, retribution among some faculty for students expressing opinions regarding courses and their programs, and faculty and advisor turnover. Follow up interviews of both study participants and program faculty, beyond the initial survey, provided greater illumination regarding the four selected items. Study results can be applied to the particular program, in the spirit of continuous improvement. The results can also be considered by others designing program evaluations of participant perceptions of education programs. The merit of using mixed-methods embedded study design in program evaluation became obvious.
New York City's Children First: Lessons in School Reform
Author: Kelleher, Maureen
Date: 2014-01-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Urban Schools,Public Schools,Educational Change,Institutional Autonomy,Accountability,Small Schools,School Choice,School Closing,Charter Schools,Budgets,Educational Equity (Finance),City Government,Public Officials,Governance,Teacher Recruitment,Teacher Persistence,Academic Achievement,Graduation Rate,College Readiness,Program Effectiveness,Teacher Selection,Elementary Secondary Education

Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City's education system embarked on a massive change effort, known as Children First, that produced significant results: new and better school options for families, more college-ready graduates, and renewed public confidence in New York City's schools. New York City's reform effort has also produced significant change beyond the city's own schools and has helped to set a national agenda for reforming education. Over the past 12 years, other districts, especially in large urban centers, have looked to New York City for ideas as they work to improve outcomes for their students. New York City's central administrators have also gone on to lead districts elsewhere in the nation, spreading not just particular reform strategies but also a mindset focused on bold and rapid system change to improve student achievement. This report tells the story of how Children First reforms evolved over the course of Bloomberg's mayoralty and synthesizes research on the effectiveness of those reforms. Urban district leaders can learn from both the successes and challenges of New York City's ambitious reform effort.