ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Is It Safe to Reopen Schools? An Extensive Review of the Research
Author: Bailey, John
Date: 2021-03-00
Type: Information Analyses
Subjects: Public Schools,School Closing,COVID-19,Pandemics,Educational Change,Risk,Educational Policy,School Safety,Disease Control,Economic Impact,Costs,Well Being,Outcomes of Education,Incidence,Evidence,Risk Assessment,Foreign Countries,Program Effectiveness,Trend Analysis

By the end of March 2020, all public schools in the United States were closed to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. More than 50.8 million children stayed home as school systems scrambled to transition to remote or hybrid learning platforms. While the decision to close schools was difficult, the debate over when and how to reopen safely and responsibly has grown increasingly complex and politically fraught. Within local communities, many teachers expressed grave concern over the health risks, and parents worried about their children's safety. As a result, many school system leaders opted to continue with remote learning while the path to reopening remained uncertain. One year later, however, a growing body of medical research and the firsthand experiences of school systems worldwide can provide a sound basis for determining a reopening strategy. This report examines the collective findings of more than 130 studies and considers their implications for adapting current policies. These studies cover a wide array of topics, including risks for children, transmissibility concerns, and the impact of school re-openings on community spread. This report provides an overview of the available scientific research and the experience of schools that have reopened in Europe and throughout the United States. It is intended to serve as a reference for leaders to ground their decisions in the scientific literature, deepen their understanding of the risks and trade-offs, and develop their own conclusions. [This report was produced with the Evidence Project at the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), United States of Care, and Opportunity Labs.]
Uncommonly Popular: Public Support for Teaching the Success Sequence in School
Author: Malkus, Nat
Date: 2021-12-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Social Values,Success,Alienation,Teaching Methods,High School Graduates,Employment,Poverty,Marriage,Correlation,Public Opinion,Politics of Education,National Surveys,Political Attitudes,Racial Differences,Educational Attainment,Elementary Secondary Education,Age Groups,Parent Attitudes,Higher Education,Ethnicity,Marital Status,Employed Parents,Whites,African Americans,Hispanic Americans

Young people who graduate from high school, get a job, and get married before having children, in that order, are far less likely to be in poverty and far more likely to have a solid footing in the middle class later in life. This path to adulthood has been dubbed the &quot;success sequence.&quot; The cultural norms and values embedded in the success sequence are neither universal nor objectively good, and teaching it could alienate some, especially those who have deviated from it. However, proponents argue that whether you employ the success sequence as a normative argument about how young people should behave or as a pragmatic path that leads away from poverty, it would be a gross error to not teach young people about a sequence that is so strongly associated with avoiding poverty. Clearly, debates over the success sequence remain unsettled in rarified circles, but maybe that isn't important compared to public opinion on teaching the success sequence. Particularly in this season of contested views about what should and should not be taught in school and who should decide, a detailed description of what the public believes about teaching the success sequence should inform these discussions. In this report, Nat Malkus provides such a description using data from the August 2021 American Perspectives Survey (APS) conducted by the Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute.
Rethinking Teacher Certification to Employ K-12 Adjunct Teachers. Sketching a New Conservative Education Agenda
Author: Ingraham, Keri D.
Date: 2021-09-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Kindergarten,Elementary Secondary Education,Alternative Teacher Certification,Adjunct Faculty,Public Schools,Academic Achievement,Teacher Selection,Teacher Certification,Educational Legislation,Educational Change,Models,Political Attitudes,Specialists,Educational Benefits,Pedagogical Content Knowledge

America's public schools are in a crisis. Despite investing more money in K-12 education than most other countries (nearly $15,000 per student annually), educational performance levels are stagnant. One source of the problem is a rigid and deficient process for selecting and employing teachers. Teacher certification laws, intended to ensure good teachers lead classrooms, instead frequently keep highly qualified individuals out of the profession. And the COVID-19 pandemic will likely further exacerbate the preexisting teacher shortage. The crisis demands a new approach to hiring teachers: It's time for K-12 public education to modify teacher certification laws to follow the example of colleges and universities in leveraging the advantages of adjunct teachers. This report describes what an adjunct teacher is, lists some benefits of adjunct teachers, and discusses what must change in order to implement an adjunct teacher model for K-12 public education. The report also explains why conservatives should champion for adjunct teachers and provides some possible limitations for adjunct teaching.
How Noncredit Enrollments Distort Community College IPEDS Data: An Eight-State Study. The AIR Professional File, Fall 2021. Article 155
Author: Romano, Richard M.
Date: 2021-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Noncredit Courses,Enrollment,Community Colleges,Institutional Characteristics,Expenditure per Student,Full Time Students,Data Use,Data Analysis,Educational Finance,Comparative Analysis,Public Colleges

A commonly used metric for measuring college costs, drawn from data in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), is expenditure per full-time equivalent (FTE) student. This article discusses an error in this per FTE calculation when using IPEDS data, especially with regard to community colleges. The problem is that expenditures for noncredit courses are reported to IPEDS but enrollments are not. This exclusion inflates any per FTE student figure calculated from IPEDS, in particular expenditures and revenues. A 2021 IPEDS Technical Review Panel (TRP #62) acknowledged this problem and moved campus institutional research offices a step closer to reporting noncredit enrollment data (RTI International, 2021). This article is the first to provide some numbers on the magnitude of this problem. It covers eight states--California, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Data on noncredit community college enrollments were made available from system offices in all states. In addition, discussions were held at both the system level and the campus level to verify the data and assumptions. Figures provided by states were merged with existing IPEDS data at the campus and state levels, and then were adjusted to account for noncredit enrollments. The results provide evidence that calculations using IPEDS data alone overestimate the resources that community colleges have to spend on each student, although distortions vary greatly between states and among colleges in the same state. The results have important implications for research studies and college benchmarking.
Alternative Paths to Improved Word-Problem Performance: An Advantage for Embedding Pre-Algebraic Reasoning Instruction within Word-Problem Intervention
Author: Powell, Sarah R.
Date: 2021-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Word Problems (Mathematics),Mathematics Instruction,Problem Solving,Intervention,Teaching Methods,Algebra,Learning Problems,Thinking Skills,Schemata (Cognition),Comparative Analysis,Correlation,Visual Aids,Grade 3,Elementary School Students,Elementary School Teachers,Urban Schools,Evaluators,Pretests Posttests,Mathematics Tests,Outcomes of Education

The purpose of this study was to explore the paths by which word-problem intervention, with versus without embedded pre-algebraic reasoning instruction, improves word-problem performance. Students with mathematics difficulty (MD; n = 304) were randomly assigned to a business-as-usual condition or one of two variants of word-problem intervention. The pre-algebraic reasoning component targeted relational understanding of the equal sign as well as standard and nonstandard equation solving. Intervention occurred for 16 weeks, 3 times per week, 30 min per session. Sequential mediation models revealed main effects, in which each intervention condition significantly and substantially outperformed the business-as-usual condition, corroborating prior research on the efficacy of schema word-problem intervention. Yet despite comparable effects on word-problem outcomes between the two word-problem conditions, the process by which effects accrued differed: An indirect path via equal-sign understanding and then equation solving was significant only for the word-problem intervention condition with embedded pre-algebraic reasoning instruction. Additionally, the effect of this condition on equal-sign reasoning was strong. Given the link between equal-sign reasoning for success with algebra and the importance of algebra for success with advanced mathematics, results suggest an advantage for embedding pre-algebraic reasoning instruction within word-problem intervention. [This paper was published in &quot;Journal of Educational Psychology&quot; v113 n5 p898-910 2021.]
Examining Vocabulary, Reading Comprehension, and Content Knowledge Instruction during Fourth Grade Social Studies Teaching
Author: Capin, Philip
Date: 2020-11-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Vocabulary Development,Reading Comprehension,Elementary School Teachers,Reading Instruction,Social Studies,Grade 4,Teaching Methods,Content Area Reading

Teaching vocabulary and reading comprehension during social studies instruction is critical for reading development and the acquisition of content knowledge. This study systematically investigated how elementary teachers integrate vocabulary and reading comprehension instruction during social studies teaching, as well as the extent to which this instruction aligned with evidence-based practices. Thirty-three fourth grade teachers from 12 schools across three school districts recorded their social studies instruction for a total of 2429 min. Findings revealed that two-thirds of social studies instructional time integrated practices for developing vocabulary and reading comprehension. Yet, the approaches for teaching comprehension and methods for instructional delivery (e.g., explicit instruction, high-quality feedback) teachers used infrequently aligned with those identified as effective in previous research. We present opportunities for improving content-area instruction and future research. [This is the online version of an article published in &quot;Reading and Writing.&quot; For the final published version of this article, see?EJ1295536.]
The Distribution of School Resources in the United States: A Comparative Analysis across Levels of Governance, Student Sub-Groups, and Educational Resources. EdWorkingPaper No. 21-443
Author: Shores, Kenneth A.
Date: 2021-07-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Governance,Resource Allocation,Educational Resources,Minority Group Students,Low Income Students,Expenditures,Educational Finance,Class Size,Teacher Effectiveness,Elementary Secondary Education,Equal Education

Levels of governance (the nation, states, and districts), student subgroups (racial and ethnic minoritized and economically disadvantaged students), and types of resources (expenditures, class sizes, and teacher quality) intersect to represent a complex and comprehensive picture of K-12 educational resource inequality. Drawing on multiple sources of the most recently available data, we describe inequality in multiple dimensions. At the national level, racial and ethnic minoritized and economically disadvantaged students receive less K-12 expenditures per pupil than White and economically advantaged students (between $400 to $1,200 less per pupil). At the state and district levels, racial and ethnic minoritized and economically disadvantaged students receive more K-12 expenditures per pupil than white and economically advantaged students (between $200 to $400 more). The notable exception is Hispanic students, who receive no additional funding per pupil than white students, on average, at the state level. Among districts, minoritized and economically disadvantaged students have smaller class sizes than their subgroup counterparts, but these students also have greater exposure to inexperienced teachers. About 20 percent of additional teacher hires favoring traditionally disadvantaged student subgroups is for novice teachers. We see no evidence that district-level spending in favor of traditionally disadvantaged subgroups is explained by district size, average district spending, teacher turnover, or the size of the special education population.
Unifying Your District: Collaborating to Support Student Career Development
Author: Akos, Patrick
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: School Districts,Cooperation,Career Development,Vocational Education,Communities of Practice,Student Development,Faculty Development

Collaboration is a bit amorphous, but research has highlighted important strategies and promising practices. Along with understanding the collaborative process, a deep understanding of school counseling and career and technical education (CTE) in each district is needed. For example, contemporary school counselors focus on the American School Counselor Association Mindsets and Behaviors, which include career development and competencies very similar to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) career readiness competencies. However, they also receive explicit and implicit messages on &quot;college for all&quot; (Nicola, 2020), and school counselors have minimal experience in CTE (Grewe, 2019), unaware that CTE is career and college preparation (Todd, 2017). They also may have less time with students than teachers due to student-counselor ratios. The 2018 Advance CTE report on the state of career advising and development highlighted the challenges for counselors making connections to CTE coursework and the connections between CTE and work-based learning. For example, only 27% of middle school counselors reported making connections to CTE coursework, even though they find value in doing so. While coordination does occur at the national (e.g., ASCA position statement and ACTE Counseling and Career Development Division) and state levels (e.g., Missouri Connections or Nebraska Career Education), the focus in this article is on promising practices in collaboration for unifying CTE educators and school counselors in your district and local school building.
Alabama State Department of Education Quick Facts, 2021
Author: Alabama State Department of Education (ALSDE)
Date: 2021-00-00
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: Public Schools,Enrollment Trends,Educational Finance,Elementary Secondary Education,Vocational Education,School Personnel,Taxes,Electronic Learning,Academic Achievement,Mathematics Achievement,Reading Achievement,Science Achievement,College Entrance Examinations,Racial Differences,Ethnicity,English Language Learners,Student Characteristics,Teacher Characteristics,Gender Differences,Student Transportation,Breakfast Programs,Lunch Programs,STEM Education,Educational Technology,Special Education,Gifted Education

This Quick Facts document provides a snapshot of facts about Alabama school systems and public schools; school personnel; student and educator profiles; financial data; pupil transportation; national school lunch, breakfast and after school snack programs; Alabama Math, Science, and Technology Initiative (AMSTI); access to virtual learning; special education and gifted enrollment; English Learner (EL) students; 2020 ACT scores; and career and technical education enrollment. [For &quot;Alabama Education Quick Facts, 2018-2019,&quot; see ED596192.]
EFL Speaking Practice in Distance Learning during the Coronavirus Pandemic 2020-2021
Author: Al-Jarf, Reima Saado
Date: 2021-07-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,COVID-19,Pandemics,Distance Education,English (Second Language),Second Language Instruction,College Students,Online Courses,Language Skills,Speech Communication,Listening Skills,Speech Skills,Assignments,Learner Engagement,Public Speaking,Debate,Questioning Techniques,Handheld Devices,Audio Equipment,Information Dissemination,Learning Activities,Student Attitudes,Teacher Attitudes,College Faculty

Students at languages and translation departments at Saudi universities take listening and speaking courses. Before the pandemic, the students used to complete the activities in the textbooks which required them to engage in many real-life, face-to-face individual and/or collaborative small-group activities in the classroom such as role-playing, dramatization, inviting a guest, conducting interviews and others. However, due to the Coronavirus Pandemic, there was an emergency shift to distance learning at Saudi universities starting March 2020 onwards, where all courses are being delivered online. Several platforms are being used in distance education such as Blackboard, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and others. The current study explores the types of online speaking activities that a sample of college instructors at some language and translation departments are currently using in distance education and how they engage students online in the absence of face-to-face activities, interaction, and communication. Survey results showed that EFL college instructors are using a variety of online speaking activities such as: (i) assigning a topic which the students research and prepare at home and then give an online oral presentation about it online through the platform; (ii) using online debates about some issues; (iii) answering problem-solving questions; (iv) student-created podcast on a topic of their choice and publishing them in a Speaking Center on Twitter; (v) combining listening and speaking activities; (vi) using Vicaroo, a free online audio recording creator to record conversations and presentations; and (vii) using the Kahoot app and others. Students and instructors' views on the effects of the online speaking activities on students' speaking skill development in the distance learning environment are reported.
Mobile Audiobooks, Listening Comprehension and EFL College Students
Author: Al-Jarf, Reima
Date: 2021-04-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: College Students,English (Second Language),Second Language Instruction,Listening Comprehension,Reading Material Selection,Telecommunications,Handheld Devices,Foreign Countries,Listening Skills,Program Effectiveness,Teaching Methods,Educational Technology,Technology Uses in Education,Audio Books

This article proposes the integration of mobile audiobooks (MABs) to develop EFL college students' listening comprehension skills. It aims to show the following: (i) The advantages of integrating MABs in listening instruction; (ii) sources of MABs; (iii) how to search for MABs; (iv) criteria for selecting MABs; (v) examples of MABs; (vi) listening comprehension skills and literary appreciation skills that can be developed through supplementary MABs; (vii) phases of teaching and learning with MABs and types of tasks that can be used with MAB; (viii) evaluation and assessment; (ix) the effect of MABs on listening comprehension skill improvement and attitudes as perceived by the students; and (x) recommendations for the effective use of MABs.
To Attend or Not Attend Class: That Is the Question
Author: Soiferman, L. Karen
Date: 2021-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Attendance,COVID-19,Pandemics,Learning Motivation,Student Attitudes,Barriers,Internet,Access to Computers,Student Employment,College Freshmen,Foreign Students,Grades (Scholastic),School Closing,Online Courses,Distance Education,Teacher Student Relationship,Time,Peer Influence,Health,Foreign Countries

Once students get to university attendance is no longer mandatory as it was in their secondary classrooms. This leads to students being able to make their own decisions regarding attendance and it is important, as instructors, to understand the reasoning behind their decisions to attend or not attend their classes. In an informal survey of 33 international students, during the pandemic, I asked students to articulate some of the reasons why they attend class and also some reasons that keep them away from attending class. I have found, over the past year, that some students are always in class and other students pretend to be in class by logging on but then disappear so when called upon they are not there to answer questions. The answers varied among students, as expected, but there were some similarities attached to their reasons for attendance and nonattendance. The most common reasons for attending had to do with the students desire to learn and be up to date with the information presented in class. They stressed that attending class allowed them to ask questions of their instructors in real time. The reasons for non-attendance revolved around illness, work commitments, other assignments due, lack of interest in the topic, and the fact that some of their lecturers did not engage the students in discussions making the class boring.
The Bottom Line on College Advising: Large Increases in Degree Attainment. EdWorkingPaper No. 21-481
Author: Barr, Andrew C.
Date: 2021-10-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Academic Advising,High School Students,College Students,Educational Attainment,Bachelors Degrees,Educational Counseling,Low Income Students,College Attendance,Student Characteristics,Racial Differences,Ethnicity,First Generation College Students,Grade Point Average,Family Income,College Entrance Examinations,Scores,Enrollment,Program Effectiveness,Faculty Advisers,Gender Differences

We combine a large multi-site randomized control trial with administrative and survey data to demonstrate that intensive advising during high school and college leads to large increases in bachelor's degree attainment. Novel causal forest methods suggest that these increases are driven primarily by improvements in the quality of initial enrollment. Program effects are consistent across sites, cohorts, advisors, and student characteristics, suggesting the model is scalable. While current and proposed investments in postsecondary education focus on cutting costs, our results suggest that investment in advising is likely to be a more efficient route to promote bachelor's degree attainment.