ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Random Access: The Latino Student Experience with Prior Learning Assessment
Author: Klein-Collins, Rebecca
Date: 2014-10-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Access to Education,Higher Education,Hispanic American Students,College Credits,Prior Learning,Learning Experience,Outreach Programs,Educational Strategies,Institutional Role,Program Descriptions,Student Evaluation,Student Records,Experiential Learning,Adult Students,Educational Attainment,Partnerships in Education,Interviews,Student Attitudes,Administrator Attitudes,Work Experience

Many Latinos come to higher education as adults. One degree completion strategy that is particularly suited to adult students in higher education is prior learning assessment (PLA). PLA provides opportunities to evaluate a student&apos;s learning from work or life experience for the purpose of awarding college credit. For students whose experiential learning is demonstrably at the college level, PLA saves students time and money on their pathway to a degree. This report presents the findings from a new study by the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL), in partnership with Excelencia in Education, that examines the experience of Latino students with PLA at 10 postsecondary institutions in the U.S. between 2010 and 2013. Through analysis of more than 32,000 student academic records, as well as interviews with Latino students and PLA administrators, the study examines how Latino students engage with PLA in terms of methods used, number of credits earned, and areas of study for which credits are earned. It also investigates the role that institutions play in encouraging Latino students to take advantage of PLA. The study&apos;s findings suggest specific strategies for more effective outreach to Latino students, as well as other important target populations, on PLA. The methodology and technical notes are appended. [This report was written with Deborah Santiago. For the related report: &quot;Random Access: The Latino Student Experience with Prior Learning Assessment. Executive Summary,&quot; see ED547412.]
Customized, Outcome-Based, Relevant Evaluation (CORE) at Lipscomb University: A Competency-Based Education Case Study
Author: Klein-Collins, Rebecca
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Case Studies,Outcomes of Education,Competency Based Education,Educational Needs,Higher Education,Futures (of Society),Program Descriptions,Educational Attainment,Adult Students,Nontraditional Students,Economic Factors,Veterans,Access to Education,Statewide Planning,Professional Education,Learning Experience,Models,Bachelors Degrees,College Faculty,Online Courses,Tuition,Educational Trends,Accreditation (Institutions),Student Financial Aid

In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in competency-based degree programs at the postsecondary level. These programs are promising for the future of higher education because they establish clear expectations for what graduates must know and be able to do, and many models have been designed to allow students to learn and earn a degree at their own pace. The emphasis on learning acquired rather than seat time is particularly important for adult and non-traditional learners who bring learning from their work and life experiences to higher education. Competency-based models allow students to build on what they already know to obtain a post-secondary credential. In response to the shifting educational needs of the nation in general and Tennessee in particular, Lipscomb University began its first specialized adult program in 1990 in order to offer working adults without degrees flexibility in their educational options. Over the course of the next 15 years, the Adult Degree Program met with varying levels of success, but it has been growing steadily since the mid-2000s when economic factors and the new GI Bill encouraged many adults to return to seek their degrees. Lipscomb's stated commitment to non-traditional students, along with increased national and statewide focus on providing easier and more affordable access to higher education, led to the 2011 formation of the College of Professional Studies, meant to provide &quot;innovative, market driven and customizable programs primarily for adult students&quot; (Long &amp; Clark, 2013, pp. 120-121). It was through this newly founded college that Lipscomb's brand of competency-based education (CBE) was first formed, with the purpose of recognizing that certain students bring a &quot;pre-existing set of college-level competencies, knowledge, skills, and abilities acquired through out-of-class learning experiences&quot; (CORE for individual students, 2014). The new CBE program is called the Customized, Outcome-based, Relevant Evaluation (CORE), which is a CBE model that integrates the use of behavioral assessment, online competency development modules, faculty coaching, and traditional coursework that leads to a bachelor's degree. Students in the CORE program can potentially earn up to 30 credit hours through competency-based assessment, which can save them up to $11,770 (36%) off the total price of tuition. This presents the first of what will be a series of case studies of competency-based degree programs that have been emerging in recent years.
2013 CAEL Forum &amp; News: Competency-Based Education
Author: Council for Adult and Experiential Learning
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Competency Based Education,Postsecondary Education,Higher Education,Educational Quality,Success,Models,Competence,Community Colleges,Public Colleges,Private Colleges,Curriculum Design,Leadership Responsibility,Evaluation Methods,Teacher Placement,Barriers,Educational Policy,Prior Learning,Articulation (Education),College Transfer Students

In 2012, CAEL released the report &quot;Competency-Based Degree Programs in the U.S.: Postsecondary Credentials for Measurable Student Learning and Performance,&quot; which examined the current state of competency-based postsecondary education in the U.S., profiling the various types of competency-based, or competency-focused, models that currently exist, the extent to which these programs assess for student competencies or learning outcomes, and the extent to which these programs operate outside of a credit-based system. Since the release of that publication, there has been what CAEL has called a &quot;tidal wave&quot; of activity, including white papers, summits, new program development, and real movement in terms of public policies. Therefore, this 2013 issue of the &quot;CAEL Forum and News&quot; presents some of those developments in three sections titled: Setting the Stage; Approaches to Competency-Based Education and Assessment; and Accreditation and Federal Policy. [For the full report: &quot;Competency-Based Degree Programs in the U.S.: Postsecondary Credentials for Measurable Student Learning and Performance&quot; see ED547416.]
Competency-Based Degree Programs in the U.S.: Postsecondary Credentials for Measurable Student Learning and Performance
Author: Klein-Collins, Rebecca
Date: 2012-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Competency Based Education,Higher Education,Educational Quality,Success,Postsecondary Education,Models,Competence,College Credits,Community Colleges,Public Colleges,Private Colleges,Curriculum Design,Leadership Responsibility,Evaluation Methods,Teacher Placement,Barriers,Educational Policy,Prior Learning,Articulation (Education),College Transfer Students

Today the U.S. higher education system is facing a crisis regarding its perceived quality. One model for improving quality is competency-based education, in which an institution clearly defines the specific competencies expected of its graduates. A key challenge is how to help more people, particularly adults, succeed at the post¬secondary level and earn degrees. This paper examines the current state of competency-based postsecondary education in the U.S., profiling the various types of competency-based, or competency-focused, models that currently exist, the extent to which these programs assess for student competencies or learning outcomes, and the extent to which these programs operate outside of a credit-based system. These programs can help inform other institutions interested in developing a stronger focus on competencies, whether by demonstrating the possibilities of high-quality programs or by facilitating the recognition of learning acquired outside of traditional instruction. Included in the report are 11 appendices: (A-1) University of Maryland University College Computer and Information Science Program Outcomes Guide; (A-2) University of Maryland University College Institutional Level Learning Outcomes: Student Learning Expectations; (A-3) Alverno College Social Science Example of Relationships among Outcomes; (A-4) Brandman University&apos;s Degree Qualifications; (A-5) Marylhurst University&apos;s Liberal Arts Core Outcomes: (A-6) Westminster College Consumers and Markets Sequence; (A-7) Southern New Hampshire University Year One Modules, Themes, and Integrating Experiences; (A-8) Southern New Hampshire University Year One Competency Reinforcement Plan; (A-9) Western Governors University Domain for Bachelor of Science in Accounting; (A-10) Western Governors University Subdomains and Competencies for Accounting Domain;, and (A-11) DePaul University School for New Learning&apos;s Master of Arts in Applied Professional Studies (MAAPS). [See the follow-up report: &quot;2013 CAEL Forum &amp; News: Competency-Based Education&quot; in ERIC at ED547415.]
Ready, Willing and Able? Kansas City Parents Talk about How to Improve Schools and What They Can Do to Help
Author: Johnson, Jean
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Elementary Secondary Education,Parent Attitudes,Educational Improvement,Parent Role,Public Schools,Parent School Relationship,Educational Change,Change Strategies,Help Seeking,Telephone Surveys,Statistical Analysis,Knowledge Level,Charter Schools,Volunteers,Racial Differences,Ethnic Groups,School Policy,Educational Quality,Role of Education,Teacher Competencies,Administrator Qualifications,Communication Strategies,Parent Participation,Focus Groups,Barriers,Child Rearing,College Preparation

Are parents an untapped resource in improving and reimagining K-12 education in Kansas City? What do they think would enhance student learning and what are they willing to do to help their children get the education they deserve? These are among the questions explored in an in-depth survey of 1,566 parents with children now in public school in the Kansas City metropolitan area. This study finds the majority of parents in the Kansas City area ready, willing, and able to be more engaged in their children's education at some level. For communities to reap the most benefit from additional parental involvement, it is important to understand that different parents can be involved and seek to be involved in different ways. The results of this research, detailed in this report, show that nearly a third of the region's parents may be ready to take on a greater role in shaping how local schools operate and advocating for reform in K-12 education. These parents say they would be very comfortable serving on committees focused on teacher selection and the use of school resources. Their sense of &quot;parental engagement&quot; extends beyond such traditional activities as attending PTA meetings, coaching sports, volunteering for bake sales, chaperoning school trips, and seeing that their children are prepared for school each day. Yet, despite their broad interest in a deeper, more substantive involvement in shaping the region's school systems, relatively few of these &quot;potential transformers&quot; have actually participated in policy-oriented activities in the past year. Moreover, this survey finds that even though the majority of parents seem less inclined to jump into school policy debates, many say they could do more to support local schools in the more traditional school parent roles. This report portrays three distinct groups of parents: (1) Potential transformers; (2) School helpers; and (3) Help seekers.
&quot;Will It Be on the Test?&quot; a Closer Look at How Leaders and Parents Think about Accountability in the Public Schools
Author: Johnson, Jean
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Accountability,Public Schools,Parent Attitudes,Teacher Attitudes,Focus Groups,Administrator Attitudes,Public Opinion,Definitions,Educational Quality,Educational Change,Educational Improvement,Academic Achievement,Social Influences,Testing,Neighborhood Schools,School Closing,School Choice,Charter Schools,Minority Groups,At Risk Students,Elementary Schools,Secondary Schools

Over the past 15 years, federal, state, and local officials have pursued a broad range of reforms aimed at ensuring that the nation's public school system is more accountable--that it delivers a rich, full education for children in communities across the country. New research from the Kettering Foundation and Public Agenda suggests that there are important differences between the way most leaders and most parents define and think about accountability in public education. It will be shown in these pages that most parents--and most Americans generally--applaud the goals of the accountability movement, and they support some of what it has accomplished. At the same time, many see it as profoundly incomplete because it provides so few answers to problems they see as pivotal--too many irresponsible parents, too many unmotivated students, too little support from the community, and messages from society that undermine learning and education. The research also suggests that there may be a fundamental divide between leaders and parents on whether it is more important to preserve neighborhood public schools, even those that are struggling, or whether it is more important to give parents more choice. &quot;Will It Be on the Test?&quot; is a summary of this research, which included focus groups held in Washington, DC; Detroit; New Orleans; Westchester County, New York; Birmingham; and Denver. Although this is a small-scale, qualitative study, its findings are buttressed by recent survey research from Public Agenda and others. The results here suggest that it might be useful to examine how teachers, administrators, employers, community leaders, and others think about accountability in public schools and the degree to which their definitions mesh with either leadership or parental views. Even more important, &quot;Will It Be on the Test?&quot; raises important questions about the trajectory of education reform and whether the way we think and talk about &quot;education&quot; is too narrow. [Jeremy Hess assisted in the preparation of this report.]
Design and Data in Balance: Using Design-Driven Decision Making to Enable Student Success
Author: Fairchild, Susan
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Data Analysis,Decision Making,Academic Achievement,Teamwork,Teacher Collaboration,High Schools,Faculty Development,Educational Environment,Technology Integration,Telecommunications,Technology Education,Outcomes of Education,Student Needs,Graduation,College Preparation,Educational Improvement,Core Curriculum,Communities of Practice

Data-driven approaches to school decision making have come into widespread use in the past decade, nationally and in New York City. New Visions has been at the forefront of those developments: in New Visions schools, teacher teams and school teams regularly examine student performance data to understand patterns and drive classroom- and school-level improvements. Since 2007, the New Visions in-house data team has produced an extensive array of data and analytic frameworks, intended to give educators a clear picture of what's happening in their schools and the detailed information they need to improve their practice. New Visions also recognizes the importance of school design. Since 2001, they have guided dozens of teams of educators through the process of designing small high schools, helping them to create coherent, complex school organizations--each one unique while also adhering to a set of common design principles, such as personalized learning environments, school-based professional development, and integration of technology into teaching and learning. To gain a better understanding of the dynamic between data and design, the New Visions data team took a closer look at schools that have used thoughtful approaches to achieve impressive results. This study describes how teachers and school leaders at New York City's High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology (familiarly known as Telly) used data and design to strengthen programming for students in grades 9 and 10, thereby improving outcomes for all students. The report begins by clarifying the school's vision and its essential mental models--particularly its belief that investing in students' success in grades 9 and 10 pays off powerfully for the entire school. It then looks at how that mental model is expressed in programmatic and organizational structures that help meet students' needs and enable meaningful transactions among educators. Finally, it examines student performance data and describes how, through design-driven analysis of those data, the school has thoughtfully engineered structures that help students make steady progress toward meeting the demands of high school graduation and postsecondary readiness. The report concludes with lessons for supporting student success. Two appendices present: (1) additional information about how the New York City Department of Education identifies peer schools and Telly's performance on various measures; and (2) additional information on New Visions' student performance metrics. [Foreword by Carmen Fariña.]
easyCBM Norms. 2014 Edition. Technical Report #1409
Author: Saven, Jessica L.
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: Curriculum Based Assessment,Test Norms,Geographic Regions,Sex,Race,Tables (Data),Kindergarten,Grade 1,Grade 2,Grade 3,Grade 4,Grade 5,Grade 6,Grade 7,Grade 8,Mathematics Tests,Reading Tests,Academic Standards,State Standards

Previous norms for the easyCBM assessment system were computed using scores from all students who took each measure for every grade and benchmark season (fall, winter, and spring). During the 2013-­14 school year, new national norms were developed to more accurately (proportionately) represent reading and mathematics performance by two variables: region and student demographic. Five hundred students were proportionately and randomly sampled from each of four regions of the country (Midwest, West, Northeast, and Southeast). Percentiles by region are displayed in tables at the top of each page (pp. 15-­170) for every season, grade, and measure available on easyCBM. To assist in navigating through all of the tables in the document, each page contains a heading at the top right listing the season, grade, and measure. In addition, the index of all measures found on pages 6­-7 serves as a guide through the document. A set of norms using a stratified random sample of students by gender and ethnicity-race (white female, white male, non-white female, non-white male) was also developed. Race and ethnicity were aggregated, as the count of students with complete data for both categories was insufficient for disaggregation. In this process, Hispanic students were counted as &quot;non-­white&quot; even when lacking a race designation other than &quot;white.&quot; Ethnicity-­race codes from the most recent Common Core Data published by the National Center on Education Statistics (2010-­11) were used in this process. Like the norms developed by region, these norms based on gender and ethnicity-­race are displayed in tables at the bottom of each page by season, grade, and measure. In order to provide a deeper look at scores for every region and/or gender­-ethnicity-­race included in the norming process, tables providing summary statistics (mean and standard deviation) for each region and each demographic group included in the stratified random samples used to generate norms are included at the center of each page. All the literacy norms included in this document were calculated based on score values present in 2012­-2013. The mathematics measures changed for 2013-2014, so the norms for both the CCSS [Common Core State Standards] and NCTM [National Council of Teachers of Mathematics] aligned math measures were calculated using 2013-­2014 data. For those who seek a more detailed explanation of how all norms were calculated, a detailed explanation is included in a technical report along with the norm summary tables on pages 8-­14. This document serves as an extension of the summary tables presented in that section.
Technical Manual: easyCBM. Technical Report #1408
Author: Anderson, Daniel
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Guides,Reading Tests,Mathematics Tests,Spanish,Language Tests,Literacy,Reading Fluency,Multiple Choice Tests,Reading Comprehension,Alphabets,Phonemes,Student Characteristics,Construct Validity,Kindergarten,Elementary School Students,Phoneme Grapheme Correspondence,Information Systems,Response to Intervention,Benchmarking,At Risk Students,Identification

Since the easyCBM© learning system was first published in 2006, over $8 million of federal funding (both from the Office of Special Education Programs and more recently from the Institute of Education Sciences) has been used to develop, study, and refine the assessments available on the system. This Technical Manual summarizes the ongoing research that is the foundation of the easyCBM© assessments in reading, mathematics, and Spanish literacy. It addresses the need for a single document that summarizes the results of all previously published technical reports, highlighting the key findings from each. For ease of access, the Technical Manual is organized by chapter, with Chapter 2 providing information on the analytic procedures referenced in subsequent chapters, and each measure discussed in its own chapter, beginning with the Reading measures, then moving on to the Mathematics measures, and finally ending with the Spanish literacy measures. (Individual chapters contain references.)
Roster of Astronomy Departments with Enrollment and Degree Data, 2012: Results from the 2012 Survey of Enrollments and Degrees. Focus On
Author: Nicholson, Starr
Date: 2013-08-00
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: Astronomy,Bachelors Degrees,Departments,Masters Degrees,Doctoral Degrees,Academic Degrees,Enrollment Trends,National Surveys,College Science,Educational Attainment,Undergraduate Students,Graduate Students,Foreign Students,Majors (Students),Physics

The U.S. has experienced a sharp increase in the number of bachelor astronomy degrees awarded in recent years with about twice as many degrees now being awarded than a decade ago. There were 385 astronomy bachelor&apos;s degrees awarded in the 2011-12 academic year. The number of astronomy PhDs awarded in recent years is up about 50% from a decade earlier. This roster contains detailed data from the annual Survey of Enrollments and Degrees. The survey was conducted in the fall of 2012 and covers all degree-granting astronomy departments in the United States.