ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Alternative Methods for Estimating Achievement Trends and School Effects: When Is Simple Good Enough?
Author: Warkentien, Siri
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Public Schools,Low Achievement,Value Added Models,Achievement Gains,Scores,Computation,Student Characteristics,Academic Persistence,Student Records,Urban Schools,School Districts,Elementary Secondary Education,Reading Achievement,Mathematics Achievement,Simulation,Racial Differences,Ethnic Groups,Disabilities,Parent Background,Educational Attainment,Socioeconomic Status

Public schools with impressive records of serving lower-performing students are often overlooked because their average test scores, even when students are growing quickly, are lower than scores in schools that serve higher-performing students. Schools may appear to be doing poorly either because baseline achievement is not easily accounted for or because changing demographic trends result in successive cohorts of students that are not comparable. These situations are common and problematic for practitioners, policymakers, and researchers who are increasingly tasked with identifying, replicating and communicating effective educational practice. The purpose of this study is to (1) explore alternatives to value-added models that are simple to calculate and easy to interpret; and (2) describe the conditions that must be met for such alternatives to provide results that are similar to those found with value-added methods. The authors focus on three alternative methods that have been the subject of prior reports (see Glazerman &amp; Potamites 2011; Castellano &amp; Ho 2013): average gain scores, calculated as the difference between a school's average score in a given grade in one year and that school's average score in the previous grade the previous year; average cohort differences, calculated as the difference between a school's average score in a given grade in one year and that school's average score in the &quot;same&quot; grade the previous year; and residual gain scores, calculated as the difference between the observed and expected average score in a given grade in one year given the previous year's average score. The study asks the following questions: (1) How similar are results obtained from average gain, cohort difference, and residual gain methods to results obtained using value-added methods? and (2) Under what conditions can results from average gain, cohort difference, or residual gain scores provide an acceptable substitute for value-added results? The authors focus on the relationship between student background characteristics and growth and student attrition (or student composition changes) across years. The first question is addressed through the use of empirical school district data and the second through simulation studies. The goal of this analysis is to provide practical evidence for districts and states that can inform analyses of achievement growth trends. Two tables and a figure are appended. [SREE documents are structured abstracts of SREE conference symposium, panel, and paper or poster submissions.]
Parent Adoption of School Communications Technology: A 12-School Experiment of Default Enrollment Policies
Author: Bergman, Peter
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Matched Groups,Academic Achievement,Parent Participation,Parent School Relationship,Access to Information,Student Records,Management Information Systems,Information Policy,Achievement Gains,Secondary School Students,Student Improvement,Urban Schools

Providing parents access to their child's grades, missing assignment information, or personalized teacher suggestions has been shown to improve parental engagement and increase student achievement for low-income, minority students. This project aims to test an automated, scalable text-message system designed to improve outcomes for low-income students in grades 6-12. More generally, this project has implications for how school districts target parent communications, and the policies districts adopt when deploying new technologies designed to improve student achievement. It also provides insight into whether the students of parents who explicitly request this service benefit more or less than students of parents who do not request it. The study involves 6,976 students enrolled in grades 6 to 12 in 12 schools in a large urban school district in the 2014-2015 school year. Students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (in unequal proportions decided ex ante). This study incorporated various data sets pulled directly from the administrative records of the school district. Data analyses were conducted using OLS regressions to generate treatment effect magnitudes. Findings show that empowering parents with actionable and timely information can improve student achievement, and that student outcomes are not maximized by asking parents to actively enroll in information programs; rather student outcomes are maximized by automatically enrolling parents in information programs and offering them the opportunity to opt-out. [SREE documents are structured abstracts of SREE conference symposium, panel, and paper or poster submissions.]
Can Principals Promote Teacher Development as Evaluators?
Author: Kraft, Matthew A.
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Principals,Teacher Evaluation,Urban Schools,Classroom Observation Techniques,Feedback (Response),Interviews,Administrator Attitudes,Evaluation Needs,Administrator Role,Administrator Education,Expertise,Teacher Improvement

District- and state-level efforts to remake teacher evaluation systems are among the most substantial and widely adopted reforms that U.S. public schools have experienced in decades. Research on these next generation of evaluation systems has focused overwhelmingly on policy goals, program designs, and performance measures. However, still very little is known about how these policies are interpreted and enacted by school leaders. In this study, the authors examine the perspectives and experiences of principals as evaluators in a large urban school district in the northeastern United States that recently implemented sweeping reforms to its teacher evaluation system. The study focuses on principals' perspectives and experiences with classroom observation and feedback because this process is a primary mechanism through which evaluation is intended to promote teacher development. Principals' abilities to rate teachers accurately, to facilitate teachers' own self-reflection, to make specific actionable recommendations, and to communicate this feedback effectively are central to any evaluation process intended to improve instruction. The district studied is an urban district in the northeast that serves a racially and linguistically diverse student population. Interviews were conducted with principals lasting 45 to 60 minutes in July and August of 2013, the summer after the first year the new evaluation system was implemented district-wide. It was found that the quality of feedback teachers receive through the evaluation process depends critically on the time and training evaluators have to provide individualized and actionable feedback. Districts that task principals with primary responsibility for conducting observation and feedback cycles must attend to the many implementation challenges associated with this approach in order for next-generation evaluation systems to successfully promote teacher development. A table is appended. [SREE documents are structured abstracts of SREE conference symposium, panel, and paper or poster submissions.]
Can Successful Schools Replicate? Evidence from Boston Charter Schools
Author: Cohodes, Sarah
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Charter Schools,School Turnaround,Grants,Educational Legislation,State Legislation,Outcomes of Education,Federal Programs,Educational Change,Middle Schools,Academic Achievement,Human Capital,Scores,Achievement Gains

Can successful schools replicate? In a climate of school turnarounds, charter conversions, and new school openings, an important question is whether schools that have demonstrated success with in one or several schools can replicate their success with additional schools. The federal government's Investing in Innovation (i3) grant program has been provided over $650 million to scale up successful programs, with two of the largest grants going to school creation and replication through the KIPP network of charters schools and school turnaround through the whole school reform efforts Success for All. Of course, the idea of replicating successful schools is not a new one, with major (though largely unsuccessful) efforts in the 1990s to scale up whole school reform models to large numbers of schools (Berends, et al. 2002). In this paper, the authors use a change in the Massachusetts law that authorizes charter schools to examine whether charters deemed by the state as &quot;proven providers&quot; do indeed have the largest impacts on student outcomes and whether their replication campuses are similarly successful. Using a sample of 16 charter middle schools (4 &quot;proven providers&quot; by the state, 7 replicate campuses, and 3 schools that did not seek to replicate) in Boston (including 7,851 charter middle school lottery applicants), the authors seek to answer three questions: (1) do the charter schools that are allowed to replicate under Massachusetts law have larger impacts than other charter schools? In other words, are &quot;proven providers&quot; indeed proven? (2) do the new replication campuses produce similar test score gains to their parent campuses? and (3) how has the demand for charter schools changed over the time period when these new schools were introduced? Two tables are appended. [SREE documents are structured abstracts of SREE conference symposium, panel, and paper or poster submissions.]
The Effects of a Schoolwide Data-Based Decision Making Intervention on Elementary Schools' Student Achievement Growth for Mathematics and Spelling
Author: Keuning, Trynke
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Evidence Based Practice,Decision Making,Intervention,Elementary School Students,Mathematics Achievement,Spelling,Student Improvement,Achievement Gains,Program Evaluation,Program Effectiveness,Outcomes of Education,Low Income Students

Around the world during the last decade, policymakers increasingly emphasize the use of data in education to enhance student achievement. As a result, the number of reform initiatives to promote &quot;data-based decision making&quot; (DBDM) or &quot;data-driven decision making&quot; (DDDM) has increased rapidly. At the University of Twente in the Netherlands, a DBDM intervention was developed in which whole school teams participate in the training. In 2011, a first group of 53 elementary schools participated in this DBDM intervention and showed promising results. In 2012, a new cohort of schools started the intervention. The study reported on in this abstract was aimed at evaluating the intervention effects of this new cohort of schools. Data for this study were gathered from 40 elementary (K-6) schools in the Netherlands which participated in the DBDM intervention from August 2012 until July 2014. Student achievement data covering the period August 2010 until July 2014 were retrieved from schools' student monitoring systems. A multiple single-subject design was used to investigate the effect of this DBDM intervention on student achievement growth, and to investigate patterns in DBDM effectiveness based on background variables at both the school and the student level. Each school was measured repeatedly over time, before the intervention period (the control phase) and during the intervention period (the treatment phase). Findings revealed that a significant intervention-effect was found for both spelling and mathematics. This study revealed that mathematic outcomes improved especially for low-SES schools. Tables and figures are appended. [SREE documents are structured abstracts of SREE conference symposium, panel, and paper or poster submissions.]
Researcher-Practitioner Collaboration Supporting the Florida College and Career Readiness Initiative
Author: Mokher, Christine
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: College Readiness,Career Readiness,State Legislation,Educational Legislation,High School Students,College Preparation,Required Courses,Grade 11,Grade 12,Program Implementation,Program Effectiveness,Partnerships in Education,State Surveys,School Visitation,Teacher Attitudes

There is a nationwide concern that too many students leave high school unprepared for college-level coursework and that students lack awareness of their level of preparation. Florida enacted Senate Bill 1908 creating a statewide program, the Florida College and Career Readiness Initiative (FCCRI), to reduce the need for postsecondary remediation. The FCCRI consists of testing 11th-graders statewide to determine their college readiness and requiring those not college ready to take one or more of five college readiness and success (CRS) courses in grade 12. This presentation describes practitioner feedback on program implementation over three years (school years 2012-13 to 2015-16), as well as how collaboration between researchers and practitioners improves the initiative's effectiveness. The authors describe findings from a qualitative evaluation that includes small group discussions with CRS teachers (year 1), two statewide surveys of CRS teachers (years 1 and 2), site visits in six counties (year 2), and professional development forums for educators in three cities (year 3). The findings provide lessons learned about researcher-practitioner partnerships that can inform practice, and also provide additional information that can help states and districts in determining how to structure supports for similar programs. Figures are appended. [SREE documents are structured abstracts of SREE conference symposium, panel, and paper or poster submissions.]
Inequalities in Parental Spending on Young Children: 1980-2010
Author: Kornrich, Sabino
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Young Children,Parent Financial Contribution,National Surveys,Census Figures,Data Analysis,Expenditures,Statistical Distributions,Family Income,Comparative Analysis,Longitudinal Studies,Preschool Children

Using 1972-2000 data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES), a nationally representative survey of spending conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this paper investigates changes in the income-based gap in monetary investments in children under the age of six, when most children typically have entered school in the United States. The article finds that inequality across the income distribution in parental spending on young children has grown steadily over the years since the early 1970s, and that greater gaps between households at the top of the income distribution and other portions of the income distribution result from greater spending by the rich. Results from a decomposition analysis suggest that small growth in spending occurred because of changes in wives' role in the household and parental education, but that the largest share of change is attributable to increased income at the top of the income distribution. High-income parents today have higher incomes and are more likely to use those high incomes to spend on their young children. Tables and figures are appended. [SREE documents are structured abstracts of SREE conference symposium, panel, and paper or poster submissions.]
In the Pen of the Author or Eye of the Beholder? A Measurement Framework for Understanding Peer Evaluation in Writing Assignments
Author: Branum-Martin, Lee
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Peer Teaching,Peer Evaluation,Writing (Composition),Writing Assignments,Intervention,Undergraduate Students,Essays,Cognitive Psychology,Self Evaluation (Individuals),Measurement,Student Evaluation

Peer learning is often used in classrooms to help and support knowledge and skill acquisition. One form of peer learning, peer assessment, involves the quantitative (i.e., peer ratings) or qualitative (i.e., peer feedback) evaluation of a learner's performance by another learner among students. While we might be concerned about the quality of the author's writing in the assignment, we might also be concerned about the quality of the evaluation given by peers. Importantly, the effectiveness of peer assessment could be diminished or obscured by how well peers can evaluate their classmates' work. In addition, instructional or intervention effects might also be affected by how well peer feedback is given and received. Each evaluation in such a design represents two sources of variability: that of the author and of the peer. A multilevel structural equation framework can clarify these sources of variability as well as other important questions. This presentation gives an example of how this modeling framework can clarify the substantive questions important to effective instruction and intervention in writing assignments, with implications for peer assessment designs more generally. Two figures are appended. [SREE documents are structured abstracts of SREE conference symposium, panel, and paper or poster submissions.]
Gathering Teacher's Perceptions of Evaluator Feedback
Author: Cherasaro, Trudy L.
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Feedback (Response),Teacher Attitudes,Teacher Effectiveness,Teacher Evaluation,Relevance (Education),Accuracy,Credibility,Test Construction,Teacher Surveys,Elementary Secondary Education,Educational Legislation,Federal Legislation,Interviews

In response to initiatives to increase educator effectiveness states throughout the nation are placing greater emphasis on teacher evaluation tools that differentiate teacher effectiveness and include timely and constructive feedback. One of the three principles of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) flexibility waivers requires that states develop and implement teacher evaluation and support systems that &quot;provide clear, timely, and useful feedback, including feedback that identifies needs and guides professional development&quot; (U.S. Department of Education, 2012, p. 6). As states and districts begin to develop and implement new teacher evaluation systems, they need to identify ways to use evaluation findings to provide individualized feedback that will facilitate professional development (Kane &amp; Staiger, 2012). In response to these needs REL Central developed a research project in collaboration with members of the educator effectiveness research alliance to examine perceptions of evaluator feedback. This presentation will describe efforts to develop and test a survey to gather teacher's perceptions of the feedback they receive from their evaluators, specifically their perceptions of usefulness, accuracy, and credibility of the feedback. The presentation provides information on the iterative process used to develop and test the survey and will also describe how the survey is being used in research and evaluation efforts. One table and two figures are appended. [SREE documents are structured abstracts of SREE conference symposium, panel, and paper or poster submissions.]
Impact Evaluation of the National Writing Project's College-Ready Writing Project in High Poverty Rural Districts
Author: Gallagher, H. Alix
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Program Evaluation,Program Effectiveness,Writing Instruction,National Programs,College Readiness,Poverty Areas,Rural Schools,School Districts,Professional Development,Secondary School Teachers,Common Core State Standards,Writing Skills,Program Implementation,Fidelity,Educational Practices,Persuasive Discourse,English Teachers,Language Arts,Writing Improvement,Instructional Improvement,Randomized Controlled Trials,Writing Tests,Writing Evaluation,Prompting,Scoring Rubrics,Statistical Significance,Outcomes of Education

Writing is an essential skill for participating in modern American society. Although it is crucial to careers and civic engagement, student writing falls far short of national expectations (College Board, 2004; NCES, 2012; Persky, Daane, &amp; Jin, 2003). The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) seek to increase the rigor of writing instruction students receive and also to increase the proportion of instruction focused on students' abilities to write argument and informational text because of their importance for success in college and careers (Calkins, Ehrenworth, &amp; Lehman, 2012; Rothman, 2011; Cutler &amp; Graham, 2008). With these new and loftier goals for student writing outcomes, practitioners and program developers are seeking guidance on how to help teachers work with students to obtain them. Teacher professional development is a logical approach. Well developed theory about instructional capacity (e.g., Cohen and Ball, 1999) suggests that student learning is produced by the interactions between teachers, students, and educational material. As a result, programs that combine professional development and aligned curriculum may be more likely to change teacher practice enough to improve student outcomes. In this context, the National Writing Project (NWP) won an Investing in Innovation (i3) grant to provide professional development to secondary teachers in rural districts with the goal of improving teachers' ability to teach to Common Core writing standards and ultimately students' writing proficiency. This paper presents a district-randomized controlled trial that found positive impacts of the NWP's College-Ready Writers Program (CRWP) using a validated measure of students' text-based argument writing as the outcome measure. This study adds rigorous experimental evidence to a body of literature that indicates that professional development that focuses on more than one aspect of instructional capacity--in this case, CRWP attended to both teachers and instructional materials--is more likely to lead to meaningful student learning. As such, the findings presented here have important implications for practitioners, policymakers, and program developers. Tables and figures are appended. [SREE documents are structured abstracts of SREE conference symposium, panel, and paper or poster submissions.]