ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
The Achievement Consequences of the No Child Left Behind Act. Working Paper
Author: Dee, Thomas S.
Date: 2009-08-12
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: Federal Legislation,Reading Achievement,Academic Achievement,National Competency Tests,Grade 8,Grade 4,Accountability,Student Evaluation,Standardized Tests,Educational Legislation,Scores,Comparative Analysis,State Standards,Effect Size,Mathematics Achievement,Public Schools,Catholic Schools,Racial Differences,African American Students,White Students,Hispanic American Students,Poverty,At Risk Students,Teacher Student Ratio

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act has compelled states to design school accountability systems based on annual student assessments. The effect of this Federal legislation on the distribution of student achievement is a highly controversial but centrally important question. This study presents evidence on whether NCLB has influenced student achievement based on an analysis of state-level panel data on student test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This study identifies the impact of NCLB by relying on comparisons of the test-score changes across states that already had school accountability policies in place prior to NCLB and those that did not. Results indicate that NCLB generated statistically significant increases in the average math performance of 4th graders (effect size = 0.22 by 2007) as well as improvements at the lower and top percentiles. However, the authors do not find consistent evidence that NCLB generated similarly broad improvements in reading achievement or achievement among 8th graders. (Contains 11 tables and 6 footnotes.) [This paper was presented at the &quot;NCLB: Emerging Findings Research Conference&quot; at the Urban Institute, Washington, D.C. on August 12, 2009.]
Achievement Trade-Offs and No Child Left Behind. Working Paper
Author: Ballou, Dale
Date: 2009-08-12
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Sanctions,Federal Legislation,Educational Assessment,Educational Improvement,Federal Programs,Educational Indicators,Scores,Educational Legislation,State Standards,Academic Achievement,Program Effectiveness,Achievement Gains,Grades (Scholastic),Accountability,At Risk Students,Disabilities,English (Second Language),Disadvantaged Youth,Minority Group Children,Public Education,Low Achievement,High Stakes Tests,Elementary School Students,Middle School Students,Junior High School Students,Probability

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, states have been required to set minimum proficiency standards that virtually all students must meet by 2014. Sanctions of increasing severity are to be applied to schools that fail to meet interim targets, known as Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). The authors examine the effect of this legislation using longitudinal, student-level test score data from seven states (N greater than 2,000,000) between 2002-03 and 2005-06 school years. This paper addresses the following research questions: (1) Has NCLB increased achievement among lower-performing students?; (2) Have these gains come at the expense of students that are already proficient or that are far below the proficiency target? Identification is achieved by exploiting the fact that in the early years of NCLB, not all grades counted for purposes of determining AYP. The estimate of the NCLB effect is therefore based on a comparison of outcomes in high-stakes vs. low-stakes years. The authors find consistent evidence of an achievement trade-off in the hypothesized direction, though the effects on any given student are not large. Unlike some other researchers, they find mixed evidence at best that students far below the proficient level have been harmed by NCLB; indeed, at higher grade levels they appear to have benefited. Effects of NCLB on efficiency, while positive, appear to be modest. NWEA Score Alignment Studies is appended. (Contains 12 figures, 7 tables and 16 footnotes.) [This paper was presented at the &quot;NCLB: Emerging Findings Research Conference&quot; at the Urban Institute, Washington, D.C. on August 12, 2009.]
Supplemental Education Services under No Child Left Behind: Who Signs up, and What Do They Gain? Working Paper
Author: Heinrich, Carolyn J.
Date: 2009-08-12
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Educational Indicators,Federal Programs,Academic Achievement,Elementary Secondary Education,Low Income,Federal Legislation,Supplementary Education,Parent School Relationship,Parent Student Relationship,Focus Groups,Student Surveys,Perception,Eligibility,Public Schools,Tutoring,Enrollment,Qualitative Research,Educational Improvement,Achievement Gains,Reading Achievement,Mathematics Achievement

Schools that have not made adequate yearly progress in increasing student academic achievement are required, under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), to offer children in low-income families the opportunity to receive supplemental educational services (SES). In research conducted in Milwaukee Public Schools, the authors explore whether parents and students are aware of their eligibility and options for extra tutoring under NCLB, and who among eligible students registers for SES. Using the best information available to school districts, the authors estimate the effects of SES in increasing students' reading and math achievement. They find no average impacts of SES attendance on student achievement gains and use qualitative research to explore possible explanations for the lack of observed effects. Appendices include: (1) Supplemental Education Services Evaluation Focus Group Protocol; and (2) Milwaukee Public Schools 2006-2007 Supplemental Education Services Student Survey. (Contains 8 tables and 19 notes.) [This paper was presented at the &quot;NCLB: Emerging Findings Research Conference&quot; at the Urban Institute, Washington, D.C. on August 12, 2009.]
Credits and Exemptions for Children. Tax Facts from the Tax Policy Center. Tax Notes[R]
Author: Maag, Elaine
Date: 2009-09-28
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Taxes,Tax Credits,Family Income,Federal Aid,Welfare Services,Eligibility

The Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit (CTC), Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC), and the dependent exemption all provide benefits to families with children. In 2009, a single mom (or dad) with two children can receive benefits ranging from $0 to about $7,500--depending on her income, age of the children, and where the children live. While this assistance is extremely important to many low-income families, they must navigate a bewildering set of rules to take full advantage of the credits. A brief description of how credits are computed from these benefits is presented.
Prospects for Reducing Uninsured Rates among Children: How Much Can Premium Assistance Programs Help? Timely Analysis of Immediate Health Policy Issues
Author: Kenney, Genevieve
Date: 2009-01-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Eligibility,Health Insurance,Children,Parents,State Programs,Federal Programs,Federal Aid,Program Costs,Public Policy

With the reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) under consideration in early 2009, an important question is the extent to which uninsured children could be covered under employer-sponsored insurance through premium assistance programs, which use public funding under Medicaid and SCHIP to subsidize employer-sponsored insurance (ESI). New data indicate that just 4.6 percent of all Medicaid-eligible uninsured children and 15.9 percent of all SCHIP-eligible uninsured children have a parent with ESI coverage, suggesting that premium assistance programs may not make a substantial dent in the uninsured problem facing children since, as a practical matter, they would target at most only an estimated 440,000 uninsured children who are eligible for public coverage. The fact that so few uninsured children have parents with ESI coverage highlights the importance of increasing take-up in Medicaid and SCHIP among eligible children. (Contains 2 figures and 34 notes.)
Research and Improvement of One's Own Practice--A Way to the Development of Teachers'/Preschool Teachers' Practical Competence
Author: Vujicic, Lidija
Date: 2008-05-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Preschool Education,Preschool Teachers,Reflective Teaching,Reggio Emilia Approach,Educational Facilities Improvement,Preschool Children,Student Attitudes,Teacher Attitudes,Educational Practices,Theory Practice Relationship,Action Research

Within the context of research called &quot;Changing the culture of educational institutions--a way to qualitative changes in preschool education&quot;, implemented within a three year period and, because of the needs of this work, this paper reports the results of the research performed in the first year. The work was carried out with emphases on preschool teachers' training for the process of research and improvement of their own practice by creating a stimulating environment of an educational institution which is attended by children ranging from one to six/seven years of age (preschool period). This practice should be in accordance with children's nature and should change continuously, being in coordination with children's needs, environment and education. We hold that there is no theory that identifies only the needs to be learned and then applies that in practice, but rather, that a stimulating  environment is also being created and built jointly by doing and participating in continuous research of educational practice. The emphasis is on shared direct research, its discussion, continuous changing of one's own environment and providing children with more freedom, games and learning, which constitutes qualitative living. [Paper published in the proceedings of the Association for Teacher Education in Europe Spring University, &quot;Teacher of the 21st Century: Quality Education for Quality Teaching&quot; (May 2-3, 2008), University of Latvia Press, 2008 (ISBN 978-9984-825-51-9).]
Listen to Me! An Exploration of the Students' Voices Regarding Homework
Author: Landing-Corretjer, Gladys
Date: 2009-10-00
Type: Dissertations/Theses - Doctoral Dissertations
Subjects: Homework,Critical Theory,Student Attitudes,Measures (Individuals),Educational Change,Grade 6,Teacher Attitudes,Questionnaires,Interviews,Grade 5,Case Studies,Comparative Analysis,Predictor Variables

Research on students' voices and perspectives regarding homework is absent from the literature. This qualitative case study explored the perspectives of 5th and 6th grade students and ten teachers' perceptions regarding homework completion. The literature review revealed 3 trends in homework, including support homework, support against homework, and homework reform. However, most of this research considers the adults' perspective. The researcher administered 46 questionnaires and conducted 12 in-depth interviews using a stratified purposive sample and extreme case sampling. The questionnaires and interviews educed the participants' perceptions and practices regarding homework. The students represented 4 distinct groups: English language learners, general education, gifted and talented, and special education. The teachers instruct 5th and 6th grade. The researcher analyzed the data using critical pedagogy framework, constant comparison method and a transcript based analysis. The findings of this study revealed that students do not complete their homework because they find it too hard, boring, or they do not understand it. The participants expressed liking research projects because they afford flexibility and creativity. The results also suggest no substantial difference in the students' responses from various groups. The teachers' responses revealed that 90% of the participants assign incomplete classwork as homework, disclosing a lack of training in designing homework. This study contributes to the existing literature and enhances social change initiatives by taking the students' perception into consideration and echoing their voice in the literature. Teachers and administrators can use the results of this study to develop homework practices that would increase homework completion and student learning. The following are appended: (1) Student Questionnaire; (2) Teacher Questionnaire; (3) Parental Consent Form; (4) Parent Letter; (5) Letter to Superintendent and School Principal; (6) Consent Form; (7) Consent Letter Form; (8) Letter of Cooperation; (9) Guiding Questions for Student Interview; (10) Guiding Questions for Teacher Interview; (11) Teachers' Voices; and (12) Students' Voices. (Contains 10 tables and 1 figure.)
Federal Expenditures on Infants and Toddlers in 2007
Author: Macomber, Jennifer
Date: 2009-04-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Expenditures,Toddlers,Infants,Federal Government,Federal Aid,Financial Support,Child Health,Wellness,Resource Allocation,Early Intervention,Child Development,Well Being,Child Welfare,Nutrition,At Risk Persons,Poverty,Stress Variables,Environmental Influences,Disadvantaged Youth,Access to Health Care,Access to Education,Outcomes of Education,Program Effectiveness,Housing,Income,Federal Programs,Social Services,Tax Credits,Taxes,Health Insurance,Child Care,Foster Care,Budgets,Low Income Groups

Research suggests that investing in young children can help build a strong future workforce, improve children's educational success and health, and potentially reduce some of the social ills that drain the nation's resources and will. To have an informed conversation about future investments, it is important to start from an understanding of the baseline: What investments does this nation currently make in young children? Which programs and purposes are currently supported by federal investments, and which are not? This report provides such a baseline understanding and informs a national conversation about how best to invest the country's resources by examining federal expenditures on infants and toddlers, defined as children under age 3. The report looks at more than 100 programs through which the federal government spends money on children and calculates the amount spent on this population. These baseline estimates provide a place to start in gauging the priority the nation places on investing in very young children and in comparing the expenditure patterns to researchers' findings about investments that work. Furthermore, this report provides valuable information to a new presidential administration and Congress that will make critical budgetary decisions in troubled economic times. Given the developmental importance of children's early years, the interest in investing in young children (especially the most vulnerable), and the potential for return on this investment, the well-being of young children may figure more prominently in these future decisions. To inform these discussions, this report estimates federal expenditures on infants and toddlers and differentiates the key sources and types of funding that support them. In doing so, it brings into clearer focus the choices the nation faces in deciding how much to invest in its youngest citizens and how to make that investment. Data appendix with footnotes and references is included. (Contains 2 tables, 5 figures and 10 notes.) [This research was sponsored by the Irving Harris Foundation and The Buffett Early Childhood Fund.]
A Detailed Picture of Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital
Author: Nichols, Austin
Date: 2009-05-22
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Human Capital,Retirement,Outcomes of Education,Children,Probability,Inferences,Educational Attainment,Parent Background,Salaries,Health,Advantaged,Disadvantaged,Persistence,Regression (Statistics),Correlation,Individual Characteristics,Social Mobility,Family Characteristics

Using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), the authors consider how parental education relates to four separate outcomes in the children's generation: education, lifetime earnings, health and (financial) wealth. They relate parents' educational ranks to children's ranks on these four outcomes. By focusing on ranks, they are able to see full distributions of outcomes and can pick up within-group differences that even a relatively disaggregated analysis, like a quintile-based transition matrix, can obscure. They particularly focus on the tails of the children's distribution--the 10th and 90th percentiles--plus the median. The "children" in this study are Americans who have recently retired or are approaching retirement age. The authors find a mixed story. For a wide swath of the middle of the parental education distribution, the distribution of children's outcomes is extremely broad: for a given level of parental education, the most successful children (that is, those at the 90th percentile) end up at the top of the overall education, wealth, health and earnings distributions, and the least successful children (that is, those at the 10th percentile) for that same level of parental education end up at the bottom. This suggests a fluid and mobile society since children in the middle do not just end up in the middle: they end up at all points in the distribution in nearly equal measures. At both tails of the parental distribution, however, they see far closer correspondence between parents' and children's outcomes. The most successful children of parents with low educational ranking (that is, the 90th percentile of the children whose parents have the least education) have only average wealth, health or education; they attain about the median outcome. This pattern seems to be more pronounced for education, health and wealth than for lifetime earnings, which is arguably a poorer measure because of data limitations, most notably top-coding in the administrative earnings history data. The top-coding is quite pronounced for part of the period. To provide a preliminary look at educational outcomes for three generations, the authors include the eldest children of the near-retiree HRS children in the first analysis. They find that persistence in the tails across three generations is higher than they would expect if they assumed that transition probabilities stayed the same across both generations. This suggests the need to caution when making inferences about how many generations it takes to overcome the effects of parental privilege or disadvantage based on measures estimated using data from just two generations. Distributions of Children's Characteristics is appended. (Contains 17 figures, 6 tables and 23 footnotes.)
Health Care Reform for Children with Public Coverage: How Can Policymakers Maximize Gains and Prevent Harm? Timely Analysis of Immediate Health Policy Issues
Author: Kenney, Genevieve M.
Date: 2009-06-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Health Needs,Health Insurance,Health Care Costs,Access to Health Care,Change Strategies,Policy Analysis,Public Policy,Child Health,Low Income Groups,Welfare Recipients,Welfare Services,Performance Factors,Children,Public Health

Moving toward universal coverage has the potential to increase access to care and improve the health and well-being of uninsured children and adults. The effects of health care reform on the more than 25 million children who currently have coverage under Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) are less clear. Increased parental coverage will help these children since many have uninsured parents with unmet health needs. However, proposals to move children from Medicaid and CHIP into a new health insurance exchange could make these children worse off through the potential loss of benefits and legal protections and possible exposure to higher cost-sharing. At the same time, if reimbursement rates are higher in the exchange than paid under Medicaid and CHIP, children's access to providers could improve. This brief provides background information on current coverage and access to care for low-income children and considers the potential implications of shifting children with public coverage into exchange plans. It closes with a discussion of how health care reform could be structured to take these implications into account. (Contains 2 tables and 56 notes.)
The Benefits and Challenges of Registered Apprenticeship: The Sponsors' Perspective
Author: Lerman, Robert
Date: 2009-03-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Apprenticeships,Enrollment,Employer Attitudes,Program Evaluation,Competency Based Education,Educational Attainment,Student Recruitment,Human Capital,Employment

The Employment and Training Administration (ETA) of the U.S. Department of Labor oversees the registered apprenticeship system by issuing standards, monitoring state agencies, and promoting registered apprenticeship. Registered apprenticeship program "sponsors" are individual employers or groups of employers (sometimes in collaboration with unions) who play a critical role. To better understand the perspective of sponsors, who are mainly employers, ETA commissioned a survey to learn more about what sponsors value, dislike, or would like to see changed about registered apprenticeship. The survey of sponsors was conducted in 2007 with a random stratified sample drawn from 90 percent of eligible sponsors nationally. Sponsors were asked about characteristics of their program and about their views on the value, benefits, and drawbacks of registered apprenticeship, its integration with the workforce investment systems, apprentice completion and reasons for non-completion, and suggestions for possible improvement. There were a total of 974 responses (for an estimated response rate of just over 70 percent). Key findings of the survey include: (1) Nearly nine of every 10 sponsors would "strongly recommend" registered apprenticeship to others; (2) Competitor firms' bidding away trained apprentices (commonly called "poaching") was a concern but not a deterrent to providing apprenticeship training; (3) Completion rates reported by sponsors were very high with 54 percent saying that at least 80 percent of their apprentices completed their program; (4) Sponsors often use current employees to recruit new apprentices but the second most frequently cited source was community colleges and public technical schools; (5) Many sponsors say they want help in finding and screening applicants, as well as in finding related instruction; (6) Sponsors generally gave high marks to their State Apprenticeship Agencies; (7) The majority of sponsors wanted to know more about competency-based approaches; and (8) Sponsors' interactions with the Workforce Investment System were generally quite limited. Appendices include: (1) Additional Tables; (2) Methodology; and (3) Survey Responses with Weighted Sample Sizes and Standard Errors. (Contains 13 footnotes and 63 tables.)
Infants and Toddlers in State and Federal Budgets: Summary Report from Urban Institute Roundtable
Author: Castaneda, Rosa Maria
Date: 2009-00-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Expenditures,Toddlers,Infants,Change Strategies,Budgets,Program Budgeting,Focus Groups,State Federal Aid,Role Perception,Nutrition,Health Programs,Health Promotion,Role of Education,Fundamental Concepts,Infant Care

This report summarizes the roundtable "Infants and Toddlers in State and Federal Budgets: Yesterday's Choices, Today's Decisions, Tomorrow's Options" conducted by the Urban Institute, with support from the A.L. Mailman Family Foundation, on March 30, 2009. The roundtable's focus grew out of the widely perceived mismatch between sharply limited public investments on infants and toddlers and an accumulated body of research demonstrating the significance of the earliest years of life. The authors describe the group's diverse perspectives and wide-ranging discussion of strategies to address this mismatch. This executive summary highlights selected points from the full report, with a focus on actionable next steps. It summarizes key facts about federal and state expenditures on young children, draws out five themes from the discussion, and identifies selected short-term action steps for each. These action steps were proposed during the discussion but do not necessarily reflect all participants' views, since the discussion was not designed to reach consensus. (Contains 1 footnote and 3 boxes.)