ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Small Mammal Jointed Models to Make, Description Cards, and a Menu of Follow-on Activities in Different Intelligence Areas
Author: Rule, Audrey C.
Date: 2012-07-27
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Multiple Intelligences,Learning Processes,Animals,Wildlife,Anatomy,Models,Learning Activities,Environmental Education,Lesson Plans,Natural Resources,Manipulative Materials,Visual Aids,Teaching Methods,Science Instruction

Instilling an appreciation of nature in our youth is an important precursor to environmental protection and support for sustainability. Research has shown that involving students in environmental projects improves their motivation, skills, and achievement on standardized tests, This document contains images of the body parts of small mammals with directions for reproducing, cutting, gluing, and assembling them (with paper fasteners) into life-size jointed models of the animals. There are two distinct versions (different color phases and poses) of each of 11 small mammals that generally live in grasslands, along creeks/ponds, or woodland edges of Midwestern habitats: Eastern Chipmunk, Franklin's Ground Squirrel, Eastern Mole, Plains Pocket Gopher, Thirteen Lined Ground Squirrel, Northern Short Tailed Shrew, Southern Bog Lemming, Meadow Vole, Meadow Jumping Mouse, Deer Mouse, and Northern Grasshopper Mouse. A set of card fronts and backs gives facts about each of the animals (to be matched to the corresponding jointed models) with an image of the correct animal on the reverse side for self-checking. The main lesson activity is explained and presented as a learning cycle. A menu of authentic activities that would make meaningful follow-on activities in the last phase of the learning cycle, the expansion phase, is presented. These are sorted into different multiple intelligence areas to provide student choice and differentiation of instruction. Each activity is accompanied with objective, instructions, rationale of how the activity is an authentic task, criteria for evaluation and an example correct response to the activity. An appendix presents "Small Mammals of Iowa: Match the Jointed Animals to Their Brief Descriptions." (Contains 14 figures.)
The Legacy of &quot;A Nation at Risk&quot;
Author: Burdick, Jonathan
Date: 2012-02-12
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Educational Change,Relevance (Education),Change Strategies,Educational Development,Educational History,Educational Improvement,Educational Innovation,Educational Needs,Educational Objectives,Social History,Politics of Education,Educational Quality,Research Reports,Position Papers,Educational Philosophy,Educational Indicators,Performance Factors

Nearly thirty years after the Cold War era commission's report titled &quot;A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform,&quot; educators and historians must evaluate its relevance and its contribution to the shifting educational paradigm in the United States.
Breaking New Ground: An Impact Study of Career-Focused Learning Communities at Kingsborough Community College. NCPR Brief
Author: Visher, Mary G.
Date: 2011-11-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Community Colleges,Outcomes of Education,College Credits,Program Effectiveness,Communities of Practice,College Students,Program Implementation,Seminars,Demonstration Programs,Models

Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, New York, is a leader in the learning community movement. The college has run learning communities for many years, and more than half of its incoming freshmen were enrolled in one as of 2010. This Brief summarizes findings from an evaluation of the same title of Kingsborough's &quot;Career-Focused Learning Communities&quot; program, the latest iteration in a series of learning community models designed and implemented by the college. Unlike more typical programs, it targeted continuing rather than first-semester students and it consisted of three courses--two courses required for a specific major and a third course called the &quot;integrative seminar,&quot; designed to reinforce the learning in the other two courses as well as to expose students to information about careers in their selected major. Findings include: (1) Kingsborough's learning communities program was based on a sophisticated and ambitious model; (2) The implementation experience was characterized by several start-up problems and, as a result, the program never achieved a &quot;steady state&quot; during the demonstration; (3) The learning communities program did not have meaningful impacts overall on educational outcomes during the semesters in which students enrolled in the learning community (the &quot;program semester&quot;); (4) The learning communities program did not have meaningful impacts on students' outcomes following the program semester; and (5) Although the program did not have meaningful impacts on credit accumulation overall, it had a modest but positive impact on credits earned during the program semester for students who had recently transferred from another college and were therefore new to Kingsborough. [This paper was written with Phoebe Richman. For &quot;Breaking New Ground: An Impact Study of Career-Focused Learning Communities at Kingsborough Community College,&quot; see ED522631.]
Evaluating Institutional Efforts to Streamline Postsecondary Remediation: The Causal Effects of the Tennessee Developmental Course Redesign Initiative on Early Student Academic Success. An NCPR Working Paper
Author: Boatman, Angela
Date: 2012-06-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Remedial Programs,Academic Achievement,Remedial Instruction,Teaching Methods,Statistical Significance,Curriculum Development,Curriculum Enrichment,Curriculum Implementation,Curriculum Evaluation,Cutting Scores,Achievement Gains,Enrollment Rate,Enrollment Trends,Academic Persistence,Program Evaluation,Program Effectiveness,Developmental Studies Programs,Developmental Programs,Academic Records,Student Records,Data Analysis

Exploiting a statewide cutoff point on the placement examination used to assign students to remedial courses in Tennessee, this study employs a regression discontinuity research design to provide causal estimates of the effects on student outcomes of recently redesigned remedial courses at three Tennessee colleges. Moreover, using data on student outcomes prior to the course redesigns, the study also tests whether the redesigned remedial programs were more effective in preparing students for success in postsecondary education than the remedial programs they replaced. The findings indicate that, among students on the margins of the cutoff score, the effects of enrollment in developmental mathematics were positive and statistically significant on early student persistence as well as on the number of credits attempted but not completed in the first semester. However, these effects did not persist over time, as the results show no statistically significant differences between groups after two years. Yet the study also finds that students who were exposed to redesigned developmental math courses had more positive outcomes than did their peers in non-redesign institutions during the same period and also when compared with students who were exposed to the previous version of traditional remediation within their institution in prior years. Students appear to have benefited from redesigned courses at two of the three institutions. The results of this analysis provide insight into the extent to which the particular instruction and delivery methods of remedial courses affect subsequent student academic outcomes, thus informing administrators and policymakers as to how best to help underprepared students. Summarizing Course Redesign at Each Campus is appended. (Contains 7 tables, 4 figures and 22 footnotes.)
The Irreplaceables: Understanding the Real Retention Crisis in America's Urban Schools. Executive Summary
Author: TNTP
Date: 2012-00-00
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: Urban Schools,Teacher Persistence,Faculty Mobility,Teacher Transfer,Teacher Administrator Relationship,Principals,Teacher Discipline,School Culture,Institutional Characteristics,Needs Assessment,Educational Policy,Compensation (Remuneration),Teacher Salaries,Teacher Employment Benefits,Professional Recognition

Discussions of teacher turnover usually focus on "how many" teachers leave schools each year, without regard for their performance in the classroom. This oversimplification masks the real teacher retention crisis: not only a failure to retain enough teachers, but a failure to retain the "right" teachers. This executive summary presents findings of a study that examined the real retention crisis through the experiences of a group called the "Irreplaceables": teachers who are so successful that they are nearly impossible to replace. Teachers of this caliber provide more engaging learning experiences for students and help them achieve five to six more months of learning each year than students of low-performing teachers--academic results that can be life-changing. (Contains 5 figures.) [For the main report, "The Irreplaceables: Understanding the Real Retention Crisis in America's Urban Schools," see ED533959. For related report, "5 Ways Principals Can Keep More Irreplaceable Teachers. The Irreplaceables: Understanding the Real Retention Crisis in America's Urban Schools," see ED533961.]
The Irreplaceables: Understanding the Real Retention Crisis in America's Urban Schools
Author: Jacob, Andy
Date: 2012-00-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Urban Schools,Teaching (Occupation),Teacher Effectiveness,Teacher Persistence,School Culture,Institutional Characteristics,School Districts,Educational Testing,Scores,Achievement Gains,Teacher Evaluation,Academic Achievement,Work Attitudes,Teacher Attitudes,Faculty Mobility,Teacher Transfer,Interprofessional Relationship,Teacher Administrator Relationship

"Irreplaceables" are teachers who are so successful they are nearly impossible to replace, but who too often vanish from schools as the result of neglect and inattention. To identify and better understand the experience of these teachers, the authors started by studying 90,000 teachers across four large, geographically diverse urban school districts. They also examined student academic growth data or value-added results for approximately 20,000 of those teachers. While these measures cannot provide a complete picture of a teacher's performance or ability on their own--and shouldn't be the only measure used in real-world teacher evaluations--they are the most practical way to identify trends in a study of this scale, and research has demonstrated that they show a relationship to other performance measures, such as classroom observations. They used the data to identify teachers who performed exceptionally well (by helping students make much more academic progress than expected), and to see how their experiences and opinions about their work differed from other teachers'--particularly teachers whose performance was exceptionally poor. The neglect of Irreplaceables and tolerance for poor performance are two symptoms of an even larger problem, one that undermines the teaching profession itself: a near-total indifference to which teachers stay and which ones leave, no matter how well or poorly they perform. Schools retain their best and least-effective teachers at strikingly similar rates. Taken together, these findings reveal the extent to which teacher retention has been misunderstood and misrepresented for decades. The real teacher retention crisis is not simply the failure to retain enough teachers; it is the failure to retain the "right" teachers. A technical appendix is included. (Contains 15 figures and 91 notes.) [Additional funding for this paper was provided by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. For "The Irreplaceables: Understanding the Real Retention Crisis in America's Urban Schools. Executive Summary," see ED533958. For related report, "5 Ways Principals Can Keep More Irreplaceable Teachers. The Irreplaceables: Understanding the Real Retention Crisis in America's Urban Schools," see ED533961.]
Understanding and Improving Full-Time Virtual Schools: A Study of Student Characteristics, School Finance, and School Performance in Schools Operated by K12 Inc. [with Appendices]
Author: Miron, Gary
Date: 2012-07-00
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: School Administration,Student Characteristics,Educational Finance,School Effectiveness,Elementary Secondary Education,Electronic Learning,Virtual Classrooms,Race,Ethnicity,Economically Disadvantaged,Special Education,English Language Learners,Enrollment,Income,Expenditures,Cost Effectiveness,Educational Indicators,Federal Programs,Reading Achievement,Mathematics Achievement,Graduation Rate,School Holding Power

K12 Inc. enrolls more public school students than any other private education management organization in the U.S. Much has been written about K12 Inc. (referred to in this report simply as &quot;K12&quot;) by financial analysts and investigative journalists because it is a large, publicly traded company and is the dominant player in the operation and expansion of full-time virtual schools. This report provides a new perspective on the nation's largest virtual school provider through a systematic review and analysis of student characteristics, school finance, and school performance of K12-operated schools. Using federal and state data, this report provides a description of the students served by K12 and the public revenues received and spent by the company at the school level. Further, the report presents evidence from a range of school performance measures and strives to understand and explain the overall weak performance of these virtual schools. While the authors share the excitement of new technologies and the potential these have to improve communication, teacher effectiveness, and learning, they recommend that policymakers move forward cautiously and only after piloting and thoroughly vetting new ideas. The authors express hope that their findings will help inform policymakers and motivate researchers to carefully study various aspects of full-time virtual schools. They conclude that a better understanding of virtual schools can serve to improve this new model and help ensure that full-time virtual schools can better serve students and the public as a whole. Appended are: (1) Demographic Characteristics of Students Enrolled in K12 Schools, 2010-11; (2) Details on Publicly Reported Revenues and Expenditures for Schools Operated by K12 Inc., 2008-09; (3) State Performance Ratings, Adequate Yearly Progress Status, and Reasons for Not Meeting AYP; (4) Performance of K12 Schools on State Reading Assessments, 2010-11; (5) Performance of K12 Schools on State Math Assessments, 2010-11; and (6) Questions about Online Learning for Policymakers and School Leaders from the Center for Public Education Study. (Contains 14 figures, 6 tables, 83 notes and references, and 1 footnote.)
5 Ways Principals Can Keep More Irreplaceable Teachers. The Irreplaceables: Understanding the Real Retention Crisis in America's Urban Schools
Author: TNTP
Date: 2012-00-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Principals,Urban Schools,School Culture,Institutional Characteristics,Persuasive Discourse,Motivation Techniques,Educational Quality,Teacher Effectiveness,Teacher Persistence

This paper presents five ways principals can keep more irreplaceable teachers. These tips are: (1) Start the school year with great expectations; (2) Recognize excellence publicly and frequently; (3) Treat your irreplaceables like they are irreplaceable; (4) Start having "stay conversations" by Thanksgiving; and (5) Hold the line on good teaching. [For the main report, "The Irreplaceables: Understanding the Real Retention Crisis in America's Urban Schools," see ED533959. For "The Irreplaceables: Understanding the Real Retention Crisis in America's Urban Schools. Executive Summary," see ED533958.]
Author Reply to K12 Inc. Response
Author: University of Colorado at Boulder, National Education Policy Center
Date: 2012-00-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Evidence,Private Education,Elementary Secondary Education,Educational Finance,Accountability,Student Attrition,Student Characteristics,Electronic Learning,Virtual Classrooms,Web Based Instruction,Corporations,Criticism,Program Effectiveness,Organizational Effectiveness,Program Evaluation,Vendors,Educational Indicators,Federal Programs,Learning Problems,Teacher Effectiveness,Academic Persistence,School Holding Power,Surveys,Disabilities,Special Needs Students,Inclusion,Low Income Groups,School Effectiveness,Public Education,Outcomes of Education,Educational Testing,Educational Policy,Expenditures,Charter Schools,Teacher Attitudes

K12 Inc. enrolls more public school students than any other private education management organization in the U.S. Much has been written about K12 Inc. (referred to in this report simply as &quot;K12&quot;) by financial analysts and investigative journalists because it is a large, publicly traded company and is the dominant player in the operation and expansion of full-time virtual schools. Using federal and state data, Gary Miron and Jessica Urschel provided a description of the students served by K12 and the public revenues received and spent by the company at the school level. Further, they presented evidence from a range of school performance measures and strives to understand and explain the overall weak performance of these virtual schools. The National Education Policy Center (NEPC) sent a copy to K12 Inc. and invited them to send the authors a response to their evaluation report. Although the authors did not receive a response, &quot;K12 Inc. Public Affairs&quot; did prepare a document that was posted on their website that had fourteen bullet points, currently available on the K12 Inc website at http://k12choice.com/images/stories/K12_Response_to_NEPC_1.pdf. In this paper, the authors provide a brief response to these points. The following concerns of K12 Inc. are answered in this report: (1) Objection to the report's use of the term &quot;falling behind&quot;; (2) Pointing to K12 Inc.'s data concerning results of a &quot;Scantron Performance Series exam&quot;; (3) Pointing out new initiatives undertaken by K12 Inc. to support struggling students; (4) Contesting spending evidence from the report; (5) Attempting to minimize the importance and strength of the CREDO study; (6) Concerning the weakness of AYP measures; (7) Defending the company's teachers; (8) Concerning student attrition; (9) Concerning the company's internal &quot;customer satisfaction surveys&quot;; (10) Concerning students with disabilities; and (11) Concerning inclusion and exclusion of the company's schools and concerning data on free- and reduced-price lunch. [For the main report, &quot;Understanding and Improving Full-Time Virtual Schools: A Study of Student Characteristics, School Finance, and School Performance in Schools Operated by K12 Inc. [with Appendices],&quot; see ED533960.]
The Prediction Use of English Language Learning Strategies Based on Personality Traits among the Female University Level Learners
Author: Fazeli, Seyed Hossein
Date: 2012-08-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Majors (Students),Personality Traits,Learning Strategies,Prediction,Personality,Metacognition,Foreign Countries,English (Second Language),Second Language Learning,Measures (Individuals),Predictor Variables,Regression (Statistics),Questionnaires

The current study aims to explore the prediction use of English language learning strategies based on personality traits among female university level learners of English language as a university major subject at Islamic Azad University in Iran. Four instruments were used, which were the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) of Rebecca L. Oxfords, A Background Questionnaire, the NEO-Five Factors Inventory (NEO-FFI), and the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). Two hundred and thirteen Iranian female students volunteered to participate in this research study. The intact classes were chosen. The obtained results in this study show that the Conscientiousness trait and the Extraversion trait best predicted the overall use of Memory strategies of the students, and the Openness to Experiences trait and the Conscientiousness trait best predicted the overall use of Cognitive strategies, Compensation strategies, Metacognitive strategies, Affective strategies, and Social strategies of the learners. (Contains 18 tables.)
Turkish Higher Education at the Crossroads: Critical Issues of Systemic and Institutional Structures
Author: Celik, Servet
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Graduate Study,Educational Change,Foreign Countries,Study Abroad,Colleges,Access to Education,College Faculty,Barriers,Power Structure,Educational Objectives,Goal Orientation,Public Agencies,Governance,College Administration,Public Colleges,Financial Support,Educational Finance,Institutional Autonomy,Educational Quality,Academic Standards,Accreditation (Institutions),Quality Assurance

To boost the social and economic outlook of the country, Turkey has recently initiated educational reform at all levels and especially higher education, including organizational restructuring and expansion for increased accessibility. The swift increase in the number and size of universities has resulted in a challenge to find trained faculty. One important programme to meet this challenge has been the government's sponsorship of students for graduate study abroad in exchange for future service in higher education institutions. This study explores the organisation of the Turkish higher education system and reports the systemic barriers and oppressive structures in the system that stand as solid blocks against any change and transformation the returning scholars could potentially instil. The author argues that sending students abroad to return to their country to improve higher education, without carefully reviewing and eliminating the repressive structures and the domination of power holders at both national and institutional levels, is not enough to attain the higher educational goals that Turkey aspires toward.
Turkey's Ministry of National Education Study-Abroad Program: Is the MoNE Making the Most of Its Investment?
Author: Celik, Servet
Date: 2012-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Expertise,Graduate Study,Research Design,Qualitative Research,Foreign Countries,Scholarships,Study Abroad,College Faculty,Public Agencies,Program Effectiveness,Colleges,Educational Legislation,Negative Attitudes,Barriers,Educational Finance,Financial Support,Educational Environment,Brain Drain,Researchers,Credibility,Interviews

To answer an overwhelming demand for university faculty, Turkey's Ministry of National Education (MoNE) developed a scholarship program to sponsor graduate study abroad. After completion, program recipients are expected to serve in Turkey's universities. However, the cost of the program relative to the contributions of returning scholars has led to tremendous criticism. In order to explore whether this program is truly worth the investment, the author chose a qualitative research design to investigate the experiences of two program  beneficiaries. The results revealed that their contributions were minimized by numerous institutional barriers; consequently, the system was unable to fully benefit from their expertise. The author concluded that the elimination of obstacles inherent in Turkish higher education was necessary to realize the goals of MoNE's graduate study program.