ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Redefining the School District in Michigan. Part Two of a Three-Part Series
Author: Smith, Nelson
Date: 2014-10-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: School Districts,Elementary Secondary Education,Educational Change,School Turnaround,Governance,School Choice,Public Schools,State School District Relationship,Charter Schools,Urban Schools,Competency Based Education,Blended Learning,Federal Legislation,Educational Legislation,Federal Programs,Federal Aid

What happens when policymakers create statewide school districts to turn around their worst-performing public schools? In Louisiana and Tennessee, Recovery School Districts (RSDs) have made modest-to-strong progress for kids and serve as national models for what the future of education governance might hold. In the Great Lakes State, the story is more complicated. In &quot;Redefining the School District in Michigan,&quot; Nelson Smith examines the progress of the Education Achievement Authority (EAA). The EAA shares basic features with its brethren in Louisiana and Tennessee in that all three are charged with resuscitating the state's worst schools within the confines of a separate, autonomous school district. But unlike the RSD in the Bayou State--which comprises over eighty schools statewide--the EAA is so far a smaller effort; it is responsible for just fifteen schools, all in Detroit, with further expansion stymied. Like Tennessee's Achievement School District (ASD), the EAA was created in response to the Race to the Top competition. Yet it is an interesting hybrid of both existing models, combining the governance reforms of the RSD and ASD with a big push for competency-based learning. States that want to embrace this approach to school turnarounds need to create conditions that are essential to success, Fordham's report concludes. Michigan's effort--though laudable and in many ways heroic--was hobbled from the start from too many compromises and too little political support. [For &quot;Redefining the School District in Tennessee. Part One of a Three-Part Series,&quot; see ED560000; and for &quot;Redefining the School District in America. Part Three of a Three-Part Series,&quot; see ED559998]
2014 Fordham Sponsorship Annual Report
Author: Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Annual Reports,Philanthropic Foundations,Donors,Private Financial Support,Accountability,Institutional Mission,Institutional Characteristics,Educational Policy,Educational Research,Charter Schools,Academic Achievement,State Regulation,State Departments of Education,Directories,Employees,Research Projects,School Effectiveness,Organizational Theories,Organizational Objectives,Elementary Secondary Education

The 2014 Fordham Sponsorship Annual Report is our opportunity to share the Fordham Foundation's work as the sponsor of eleven schools serving 3,200 students, and our related policy work in Ohio and nationally. We are fortunate as an organization that our policy work benefits our sponsorship efforts; and, that our lessons from sponsorship inform our policy and advocacy strategies. In the pages of this report, you will see that Fordham as a whole is committed to increasing the number of quality seats available to children--both as a policy and as a concrete goal within our portfolio of schools. We report candidly on the performance of our portfolio, our approach to sponsorship, and key policy publications from 2014. An Academic and Organizational Accountability Plan is appended.
Plato's Philosophy of Education and the Common Core Debate
Author: Murphy, Madonna M.
Date: 2015-04-25
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Educational Philosophy,Academic Standards,State Standards,Greek Civilization,Role of Education,College Readiness,Career Readiness,Vocational Education,Equal Education,Teacher Role,Individual Development,Educational Theories,Teaching Methods,Questioning Techniques,Problem Solving

This paper examines Plato's Philosophy of Education asking what he would say about the current Common Core initiative which is to better help students to become college and career ready. Plato would be in favor of the common core in as much as the standards are tied to specific skills needed in various career jobs as he was a proponent of &quot;vocational education&quot; or getting the education that you need in order to do a particular job; but Plato would not support the common core since he feels that education should be different for those who possess more ability and not just be the same learning for all. [Contains reference notes and a bibliography.]
Redefining the School District in America. Part Three of a Three-Part Series
Author: Smith, Nelson
Date: 2015-06-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: School Districts,Elementary Secondary Education,Educational Change,School Turnaround,Governance,School Choice,Public Schools,State School District Relationship,Charter Schools,Activism,Educational Policy,Federal Legislation,Educational Legislation,Federal Programs,Federal Aid

In &quot;Redefining the School District in America,&quot; Nelson Smith reexamines existing recovery school districts (RSDs)--entities in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Michigan charged with running and turning around their state's worst schools--and assembles the most comprehensive catalog of similar initiatives underway and under consideration elsewhere. Among more than twenty recommendations gleaned from both failed and successful attempts to create and implement RSDs, Smith recommends that those who go down the turnaround path should: (1) Call your lawyer. A close reading of the state constitution is essential. Some states are so wedded to traditional forms of &quot;local control&quot; that setting up a state district will require fancy legal footwork, if not a constitutional amendment; (2) Decide the endgame--for both schools and the turnaround district. Apart from setting goals for school performance, other decisions must be addressed--and the earlier the better; (3) Expect course corrections. Running a statewide district is a huge, complex undertaking full of political, financial, and logistical challenges--not to mention the myriad crises and complications that always arise in institutions serving real children. Sometimes even turnaround efforts need to turn around; and (4) Give the locals a chance. After taking over failing schools, reformers sent by the state may want to clean house and start fresh with a whole new cast of characters. Yet incumbent staff should be given the opportunity to apply for work under the new arrangement and prove that, under different circumstances, they can shine. As with everything in education reform, when it comes to the design of turnaround districts, details truly matter. [For &quot;Redefining the School District in Tennessee. Part One of a Three-Part Series,&quot; see ED560000; and for &quot;Redefining the School District in Michigan. Part Two of a Three-Part Series,&quot; see ED559995.]
Knowledge at the Core: Don Hirsch, Core Knowledge, and the Future of the Common Core
Author: Finn, Chester E., Jr., Ed.
Date: 2014-01-00
Type: Collected Works - General
Subjects: State Standards,Academic Standards,Language Arts,Elementary Schools,Curriculum Development,Knowledge Level,Transformative Learning,Critical Thinking,Teacher Attitudes,Elementary School Students,Elementary School Teachers,Middle School Students,Middle School Teachers

Children cannot be truly literate without knowing about history, science, art, music, literature, civics, geography, and more. Indeed, they cannot satisfactorily comprehend what they read unless they possess the background knowledge that makes such comprehension possible. Yet most American primary schools have been marching in the opposite direction: treating reading only as a &quot;skill&quot; and pushing off history, science, art, and music &quot;until later.&quot; This problem grows more serious with the advent of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts, which take for granted that children expected to meet those standards are being supplied with a content-rich curriculum. In far too many U.S. schools, however, that is simply not happening. So what can be done? Commit to implanting a sequential, content-rich curriculum in the country's elementary and middle schools. The essays in &quot;Knowledge at the Core: Don Hirsch, Core Knowledge, and the Future of the Common Core&quot; restate the case for such a curriculum and chart a course for the future. They also pay tribute to the decades of scholarship, service, and reform commitment of E. D. (Don) Hirsch, Jr., author of &quot;Cultural Literacy&quot; (and three other prescient books on education reform) and founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation. Five of the essays presented herein were first presented at a December 2013 conference in Washington, D.C., cohosted by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Manhattan Institute. (Two more pieces by Don Hirsch, Jr., &quot;Romancing the Child&quot; and &quot;Why I'm for the Common Core,&quot; are also included to flesh out further his ideas and insights.) Essays include: (1) Sustaining the American Experiment (E. D. Hirsch, Jr); (2) Romancing the Child: Curing American Education of its Enduring Belief that Learning Is Natural (E. D. Hirsch, Jr.); (3) Me, My Sons, and E. D. Hirsch (Sol Stern); (4) Complex Texts Require Complex Knowledge: Will the New English Standards Get the Content Curriculum They Need? (Ruth Wattenberg); (5) There Are No Shortcuts: Mending the Rift between Content Knowledge and Deeper Learning (Robert Pondiscio); (6) Building Teacher Enthusiasm for Core Knowledge (Steve Farkas and the FDR Group); and (7) Why I'm for the Common Core (E. D. Hirsch, Jr). [Additional support for both the conference and this volume was provided by the Challenge Foundation and Amplify.]
Redefining the School District in Tennessee. Part One of a Three-Part Series
Author: Smith, Nelson
Date: 2013-04-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: School Districts,Elementary Secondary Education,Educational Change,School Turnaround,Governance,School Choice,Public Schools,State School District Relationship,Charter Schools,Educational Finance,Federal Programs,Federal Legislation,Educational Legislation,Federal Aid

As the challenges of education governance loom ever larger and the dysfunction and incapacity of the traditional K-12 system reveal themselves as major roadblocks to urgently needed reforms across that system, many have asked, &quot;What's the alternative?&quot; Part of the answer is the Recovery School District, a new state-created entity that that has the potential to turn around schools that have--often for decades--produced dreadful results under district control. This is both a governance innovation and an imaginative response to pressure (from No Child Left Behind, from Secretary Arne Duncan, and from many other sources) to transform the nation's most egregious &quot;dropout factories&quot; into providers of quality education and sources of worthy school choices for children who urgently need them. &quot;Redefining the School District in Tennessee,&quot; by Nelson Smith, examines the progress of the Tennessee Achievement School District (ASD), a statewide model for school turnarounds based on Louisiana's pioneering Recovery School District. The ASD is now leading the charge in developing talented building and classroom leaders, luring high-quality charter-management organizations to The Volunteer State, and incubating new school-choice networks. It runs some schools directly and entrusts others to external charter operators. But the goal remains the same: turn the bottom 5 percent of schools into high-achieving ones (top 25 percent) within five years. Will this happen? ASD is too new to have produced definitive evidence. But its forerunner in New Orleans, where the percentage of students performing on grade level continues to rise, demonstrates what's possible. This is the first of a three-part series focused on recovery school districts. The second will target similar efforts in Michigan and Virginia; the third will review and distill national lessons from all of these endeavors. [For &quot;Redefining the School District in Michigan. Part Two of a Three-Part Series,&quot; see ED559995; and for &quot;Redefining the School District in America. Part Three of a Three-Part Series,&quot; see ED559998.]
State Accountability in the Transition to Common Core. Updated
Author: Sears, Victoria
Date: 2014-05-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Academic Standards,State Standards,Alignment (Education),Core Curriculum,Accountability,Program Implementation,Educational Policy,Educational Assessment,Program Effectiveness,Professional Development,High Stakes Tests,Federal Legislation,Educational Legislation,Elementary Secondary Education,Educational Change

The Common Core is at a critical juncture. While many surveys show that support for the standards themselves remains strong, implementation has not been without major challenges. &quot;State Accountability in the Transition to Common Core,&quot; a new policy brief from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, provides cautionary advice about what key policymakers and influentials in a handful of states now see as transition challenges. In August and September 2013, the research team at Fordham interviewed officials and policy advocates in five states (Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, and New York) to glean how they are approaching accountability in the transition to the Common Core. While we found nuances in each state, four trends emerged: (1) The accountability moratorium is here. Punitive consequences associated with accountability are largely being put on hold during the transition to the Common Core; (2) Overall, states are treading carefully and strategically with assessments, since the quality of the forthcoming tests is still unknown; (3) While state education agencies express conviction that teachers are being adequately prepared to teach the new standards, the quality and effectiveness of Common Core trainings and professional development is unclear; and (4) Though ESEA waivers were granted to give states additional flexibility, states are now finding themselves locked into a set of new, yet still restrictive federal policies.
The Investment Case for Education and Equity
Author: Wils, Annababette
Date: 2015-01-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Access to Education,Equal Education,Role of Education,World Problems,Elementary Secondary Education,Children,Adolescents,Educational Attainment,Poverty,At Risk Persons,Educational Quality,Socioeconomic Influences,Barriers,Academic Persistence,Educational Finance,Resource Allocation,Educational Equity (Finance),Financial Support,Cost Effectiveness,Intervention,Developing Nations,Developed Nations,Childrens Rights,Foreign Countries

Education is in crisis worldwide. Millions of children, especially the most marginalized, are excluded from school. Many millions more attend school, but they do not learn basic reading and math skills. In addition, international funding for education is on the decline. &quot;The Investment Case for Education and Equity&quot; explains the global education crisis and outlines solutions. It establishes three essential ingredients to revive progress in increasing the number of children who can go to school and learn: more funding for education, an equitable approach to resource allocation and more efficient spending on quality education. The report is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 examines the wide-reaching impact of education, economically and socially. One key message is that not all education levels are equally important--both from an equity perspective and as a means to maximize the benefits of education in developing countries. Chapter 2 analyses which children remain excluded from education, considering access, completion and learning. Chapter 3 explores the barriers to education, including education funding levels (domestic resources and external aid), how it is distributed and how efficiently it is used. Finally, Chapter 4 recommends ways of addressing the challenges highlighted in Chapter 3, including improved data and increased, more equitable and cost-effective investment. Nine appendices are included: (1) Human development benefits of education; (2) Age and dropout (3) Per pupil expenditures in secondary and tertiary vs. primary education; (4) Geographical distribution of funding and teachers per child; (5) Reasons for not being in school; (6) The SEE [imulations for Equity in Education] Database; (7) Interventions to increase access; (8) Interventions to increase learning: Full interventions list and cost estimates; and (9) ICEF's Strategic Plan 2014-2017 and results framework for education. A list of references and resources is provided. [For the executive summary, see ED560008.]
Learning System of Web Navigation Patterns through Hypertext Probabilistic Grammars
Author: Cortes Vasquez, Augusto
Date: 2015-06-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Navigation (Information Systems),Information Retrieval,Pattern Recognition,Web Sites,Hypermedia,Probability,Grammar,Computational Linguistics

One issue of real interest in the area of web data mining is to capture users' activities during connection and extract behavior patterns that help define their preferences in order to improve the design of future pages adapting websites interfaces to individual users. This research is intended to provide, first of all, a presentation of the methodological foundations of the use of probabilistic languages to identify relevant or most visited websites. Secondly, the web sessions are represented by graphs and probabilistic context-free grammars so that the sessions that have the highest probabilities are considered the most visited and most preferred, therefore, the most important in relation to a particular topic. It aims to develop a tool for processing web sessions obtained from a log server represented by probabilistic context-free grammars.
Improving Children's Lives, Transforming the Future--25 Years of Child Rights in South Asia
Author: United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
Date: 2014-09-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Childrens Rights,Living Standards,Trend Analysis,Foreign Countries,Futures (of Society),Gender Bias,Nutrition,Immunization Programs,Sanitation,Marriage,Infant Mortality,Access to Education,Child Labor,Dropouts,Educational Attainment,Social Change,Poverty,International Law,Treaties

Despite rapid economic growth in South Asia, strong inequalities persist and children pay a heavy price. This publication examines latest trends and data on children in the eight countries of the region. It highlights what has been achieved in the 25 years since the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child--and what remains to be done.
The Hidden Half: School Employees Who Don't Teach
Author: Richmond, Matthew
Date: 2014-08-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: School Personnel,Nonprofessional Personnel,Comparative Analysis,Educational Trends,Trend Analysis,Teacher Aides,School Districts

From 1970 to 2010, the number of non-teaching staff in the United States (those employed by school systems but not serving as classroom teachers) grew by 130 percent. Today, non-teachers comprise a robust half of the public-school workforce (totaling roughly three million individuals), and their salaries and benefits absorb one-quarter of current education expenditures. Even as states and communities face inordinate budgetary stress, the increase in the numbers of non-teachers has attracted very little attention. This report delves into several data sets to better understand how school staffing has changed over the last half-century. The aim is not to determine whether these changes are &quot;good&quot; or &quot;bad,&quot; but to document the changes so that decision makers begin asking better questions about these trends--and in so doing, also do better both by their students and their bottom line. The study resulted in five key findings: (1) Since 1950, school staffing has increased nearly 400 percent, and non-teaching personnel have played a major part in that growth; (2) The United States spends far more on non-teaching staff (as a percentage of education spending) than do most of our economic peers in the OECD; (3) States are far from homogeneous in how their schools are staffed, but much of that variation is due to differences &quot;within&quot; their borders; (4) Over the last forty years, the biggest driver of growth in non-teachers has been in the teacher-aide category; and (5) School districts vary greatly relative to their number of employed personnel, but those differences likely stem from staffing decisions made by leaders. Based on these findings, and drawing on previous research, recommendations for district leaders regarding staffing policies include: (1) Know both the expanse and limits of the authority provided to them via state, district, and local policies; (2) Be creative when solving staffing needs; and (3) Evaluate the necessity--and cost benefit--of hiring additional staff members versus reorganizing existing ones or adopting other solutions. The following are appended: (1) Sources and Methods; (2) Data Used to Calculate Non-Teaching Ratios for States; (3) Calculating Non-Teaching Personnel (Example); (4) Non-Teaching Staff-to-Student Ratio (2010); (5) Aide-to-Student Ratio (2010); (6) Change in Non-Teaching Staff-to-Student Ratio (2000-2009); (7) Change in Aide-to-Student Ratio (2000-2009); (8) Number of Personnel per 1,000 Students, by Urbanicity; and (9) Position Glossary. [Foreword by Chester E. Finn, Jr.]
Using Rasch Modeling to Explore Students' Understanding of Elementary School Ideas about Energy
Author: Herrmann Abell, Cari F.
Date: 2015-04-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Energy,Science Education,Elementary School Students,Middle School Students,High School Students,Comprehension,Misconceptions,Probability,Knowledge Level,Demography,Models

Energy plays a central role in our society, so it is essential that all citizens understand what energy is and how it moves and changes form. However, research has shown that students of all ages have difficulty understanding these abstract concepts. This paper presents a summary of elementary, middle, and high school students' understanding of elementary school energy ideas. This work is part of a larger project to develop three vertically equated instruments to measure how students make progress in their understanding of the energy concept. The data presented here are from a field test of distractor-driven, multiple-choice items aligned to elementary-level ideas about the forms of energy and energy transfer. These items were tested with students in all three grade bands, even though they explicitly test elementary ideas. A total of 3,037 4th- through 12th-grade students in the U.S. participated, and Rasch modeling was used to analyze the data. Option probability curves were used to represent the distribution of correct answers and misconceptions across the range of student knowledge levels. The shapes of the curves and where they occur as a function of knowledge level suggest that specific misconceptions appear and disappear in sequence as students become more knowledgeable about energy.