ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
The Many Facets and Applications of Text Structure in Supporting Educational Trajectories of Elementary and Middle Grade Children in Content Area Reading Comprehension and Writing
Author: Albro, Elizabeth
Date: 2015-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Text Structure,Elementary School Students,Middle School Students,Content Area Reading,Content Area Writing,Reading Comprehension,Grade 4,Grade 5,Grade 7,Grade 8,Reading Improvement,Instructional Effectiveness,Rural Schools,Suburban Schools,Pretests Posttests,Hierarchical Linear Modeling

Content area reading comprehension and writing have been a challenge for children in the U.S. schools for many years as evidenced by state and national assessments. One promising solution to the problem is text structure based instruction that promotes strategic selection, encoding, retrieval, and use of information for myriads of activities within the learning environment and beyond. The text structure based instruction has been researched extensively since 1975 (Meyer, 1975; Meyer, Brandt, and Bluth 1980; Meyer, Middlemiss, Theodorou, Brezinski, McDougall, and Bartlett 2002; Meyer, Wijekumar, Middlemiss, Higley, Lei, Meier, and Spielvogel 2010; Williams, Hall, Lauer, Stafford, DeSisto, and deCani 2005; Williams, Stafford, Lauer, Hall, and Pollini 2009) and has received considerable attention with the adoption of the Common Core State Standards by many states. The goal of this panel presentation is to showcase how text structure instruction can be designed for early and upper elementary school children and middle grade students. Brief descriptions of each presentation are provided and all other sections of the structured abstract presenting information about the large scale randomized controlled efficacy trials on the web-based intelligent tutoring system for the structure strategy (ITSS). ITSS is a web-based intelligent tutoring system designed to provide modeling, practice, assessment, scaffolding, and feedback to the learner. The study also posed exploratory questions to study whether the effect of ITSS delivered instruction about the structure strategy on reading comprehension varies depending on other factors, such as gender, initial reading comprehension proficiency, and locale. Children in the ITSS classrooms at all grade levels statistically significantly outperformed the children in control classrooms on all researcher designed measures of reading comprehension (e.g., comparison main idea quality, signaling word knowledge). Tables and figures are appended.
Targeting the Transition to Kindergarten: Academic and Social Outcomes for Children in the Gearing up for Kindergarten Program
Author: Brotherson, Sean E.
Date: 2015-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Early Childhood Education,Kindergarten,School Readiness,Transitional Programs,Child Development,Individual Characteristics,Parent Attitudes,Teacher Attitudes,Program Effectiveness,Academic Ability,Reading Aloud to Others,Parent Role,Experimental Groups,Control Groups,Comparative Analysis,Preschool Education,Learning Activities,Parent Education,Parent Surveys,Questionnaires

In the world of early childhood care and education, the preparation of children to enter school successfully and perform well in their learning environments has become a subject of significant interest and concern (McLanahan, 2005). The term &quot;school readiness&quot; is generally used to describe the process of ensuring that children are prepared by parents and society for a successful school experience. Clearly defined, school readiness embraces the combination of knowledge, skills, and behaviors that a child should learn and be able to do as they enter the school environment. Areas of a child's growth and well-being that receive attention in school readiness include physical abilities and motor development; social and emotional development; motivation and desire for learning; cognitive development and early academic skills; creativity and imagination; and language and literacy development (Minnesota Department of Education, 2007). While a variety of early education programs exist ranging from Head Start to other models, the authors are interested in the outcomes associated with a family-centered intervention that brings parents and pre-kindergarten children together to advance school readiness and parent education. This program is entitled the Gearing Up for Kindergarten program and to date only a single study has examined its influence on parent outcomes. The purpose of this study was to gather information on basic demographics of program participants, parent perceptions of the general value and impacts of the program related to child school readiness, and teacher perceptions of the impacts of the program related to child school readiness. The essential question for study was how program participants in Gearing Up for Kindergarten compare to children in a non-experimental group on selected school readiness outcomes as assessed by both parents and teachers. Results indicate that the Gearing up for Kindergarten program appears to be effective at increasing the academic skills of children, making them better prepared to start kindergarten. The program is also related to increases in the amount of reading parents do with their children, which undoubtedly plays a role in the increased academic readiness seen in their children. Figures are appended.
Synthesizing Evidence: Synthesis Methods for Evidence Clearinghouses
Author: Valentine, Jeff
Date: 2015-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Educational Research,Clearinghouses,Synthesis,Evidence,Meta Analysis

Following the theme of the first two presentations, this presentation will focus on the choices available for research synthesis when summarizing research evidence. The presenters will describe the current research synthesis practice of the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) as well as several alternative models, including inverse-variance weighted fixed effect and random effects meta-analysis and Bayesian meta-analysis. The presenters will begin with an overview of the context of the WWC's intervention reports, with specific attention to the method used to synthesize the results of multiple studies and the context in which synthesis occurs. The data used for the illustration will be derived from published WWC intervention reports in which at least one synthesis across two or more studies was reported. Given that most of the syntheses that the public-policy clearinghouses do involve only a very small number of studies, they could consider not doing any syntheses at all unless the number of studies reaches some minimum threshold (e.g., five studies). However, consumers really would like to know something about the typical effect, even if the number of studies is small, and are likely to adopt idiosyncratic rules to help them do this. Alternatively, the clearinghouses could take a different approach to synthesis either in place of or as an adjunct to current practice.
The SEA of the Future: Building Agency Capacity for Evidence-Based Policymaking. Volume 5
Author: Gross, Betheny, Ed.
Date: 2015-11-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: State Departments of Education,Educational Improvement,Performance,Organizational Effectiveness,Strategic Planning,Elementary Secondary Education,Public Education,Capacity Building,Evidence Based Practice,Educational Policy,Educational Research,Technical Assistance

&quot;The SEA of the Future&quot; is an education publication series examining how state education agencies can shift from a compliance to a performance-oriented organization through strategic planning and performance management tools to meet growing demands to support education reform while improving productivity. This volume, the fifth in the series, draws on the experiences of state agency staff from Massachusetts, Michigan, and Tennessee, as well as the work of the Regional Comprehensive Centers, to explore how state education agencies can bolster their ability to use research and data to drive key spending, policy, and program decisions. Volume 5 includes practical tools state agencies can use to assist with research and data. Following an introduction by Ashley Jochim, this report contains the following essays: (1) Better Policy through Research: Pursuing High-Impact Research in State Education Agencies (Carrie Conaway)--features a sample policy analyst job description and a research office organizational chart; (2) Making Research Matter for the SEA (Nathaniel Schwartz)--describes how to build a research team within the SEA, and provides a framework and practical guidance on how research fits in the policy cycle; (3) Building Productive Research Partnerships (Venessa Keesler)--includes a case study of a research partnership: the Michigan Consortium for Educational Research; and (4) Technical Assistance to Support Evidence-Based Policymaking: A Conversation with the Regional Comprehensive Centers (facilitated by Bethany Gross)--provides a sample blueprint for states looking to create a research office, and Comprehensive Center leaders Kathleen Dempsey, Caitlin Howley, and Paul Kohler discuss their experiences in building evidence-based policy. [For &quot;The SEA of the Future: Leveraging Performance Management to Support School Improvement. Volume 1,&quot; see ED562516. For &quot;The SEA of the Future: Prioritizing Productivity. Volume 2,&quot; see ED562514. For &quot;The SEA of the Future: Building the Productivity Infrastructure. Volume 3,&quot; see ED562515. For &quot;The SEA of the Future: Uncovering the Productivity Promise of Rural Education. Volume 4,&quot; see ED562510.]
The SEA of the Future: Uncovering the Productivity Promise of Rural Education. Volume 4
Author: Gross, Betheny, Ed.
Date: 2015-05-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: State Departments of Education,Educational Improvement,Performance,Organizational Effectiveness,Strategic Planning,Elementary Secondary Education,Public Education,Rural Education,Productivity,Rural Schools,Technology Uses in Education,State School District Relationship,Special Education

&quot;The SEA of the Future&quot; is an education publication series examining how state education agencies can shift from a compliance to a performance-oriented organization through strategic planning and performance management tools to meet growing demands to support education reform while improving productivity. This is the fourth volume in the series. Like their urban counterparts, rural schools and districts are being asked to stretch their dollars further but with limited economies of scale, difficult teacher labor markets, and inadequate access to time and money-saving technologies. While rural schools and districts educate millions of American students, they do so with less support and attention than their urban and suburban counterparts. Regardless, there are examples of rural districts and schools that are innovating how they deliver services to students, recruit teachers, use technology, and serve special populations. This volume details those efforts, provides potential solutions to challenges, and compels state leaders to keep the unique needs of rural education in mind when crafting policies that are designed with urban and suburban districts in mind. Following an introduction by Betheny Gross and Ashley Jochim, this report contains the following essays: (1) States Could Do More for Rural Education (Paul T. Hill); (2) Promoting Productivity: Lessons from Rural Schools (Marguerite Roza); (3) How Technology Can Boost Productivity in Rural School Systems (Rural Education and Technology Consensus Panel); and (4) How States Can Help Rural LEAs Meet the Needs of Special Populations (Tessie Rose Bailey and Rebecca Zumeta). [For &quot;The SEA of the Future: Leveraging Performance Management to Support School Improvement. Volume 1,&quot; see ED562516. For &quot;The SEA of the Future: Prioritizing Productivity. Volume 2,&quot; see ED562514. For &quot;The SEA of the Future: Building the Productivity Infrastructure. Volume 3,&quot; see ED562515. For &quot;The SEA of the Future: Building Agency Capacity for Evidence-Based Policymaking. Volume 5,&quot; see ED562509.]
The SEA of the Future: Prioritizing Productivity. Volume 2
Author: Gross, Betheny, Ed.
Date: 2013-11-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: State Departments of Education,Educational Improvement,Performance,Organizational Effectiveness,Strategic Planning,Productivity,Government Role,Teacher Evaluation,Teacher Effectiveness,Teacher Retirement,Retirement Benefits,Elementary Secondary Education

&quot;The SEA of the Future&quot; is an education publication series examining how state education agencies can shift from a compliance to a performance-oriented organization through strategic planning and performance management tools to meet growing demands to support education reform while improving productivity. This volume, the second in the series, examines how state leaders, challenged with having to make decisions on how to use limited resources, are faced with an uneasy zero-sum game: every dollar they put into one program is a dollar not spent in another. When state education agency (SEA) chiefs suggest that public funds can be better spent, they are criticized, often unfairly. In short, leaders need to talk about how to better spend money in schools and districts; they need to prioritize productivity. Following an overview by Betheny Gross, this volume contains the following essays: (1) Leveraging Productivity for Progress: An Imperative for States (Marguerite Roza); (2) Getting Beyond the Data: The State Role in Fostering Continuous Improvement (Data Quality Campaign); (3) Next-Generation Teacher Evaluation Reform: Taking on Teacher Quality from the Statehouse (Betheny Gross and Ashley Jochim); and (4) Teacher Retirement Benefits: Defining a More Active Role for SEAs and Their Chiefs (Marguerite Roza and Michael Podgursky). [For &quot;The SEA of the Future: Leveraging Performance Management to Support School Improvement. Volume 1,&quot; see ED562516. For &quot;The SEA of the Future: Building the Productivity Infrastructure. Volume 3,&quot; see ED562515. For &quot;The SEA of the Future: Uncovering the Productivity Promise of Rural Education. Volume 4,&quot; see ED562510. For &quot;The SEA of the Future: Building Agency Capacity for Evidence-Based Policymaking. Volume 5,&quot; see ED562509.]
The SEA of the Future: Building the Productivity Infrastructure. Volume 3
Author: Gross, Betheny, Ed.
Date: 2014-05-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: State Departments of Education,Educational Improvement,Performance,Organizational Effectiveness,Strategic Planning,Productivity,Educational Innovation,School Districts,State School District Relationship,Educational Finance,Financial Support,Institutional Autonomy,State Aid,Information Systems,Elementary Secondary Education,Public Education

&quot;The SEA of the Future&quot; is an education publication series examining how state education agencies can shift from a compliance to a performance-oriented organization through strategic planning and performance management tools to meet growing demands to support education reform while improving productivity. This volume, the third in the series, introduces the &quot;productivity infrastructure.&quot; The productivity infrastructure constitutes the building blocks for an SEA committed to supporting productivity, innovation, and performance--from the state chief to the classroom. Following an introduction by Betheny Gross, this volume contains the following essays: (1) How State Education Agencies Can Help Districts and Schools Become More Productive (Paul T. Hill); (2) Funding for Students' Sake: How to Stop Financing Tomorrow's Schools Based on Yesterday's Priorities (Larry Miller, Marguerite Roza, and Suzanne Simburg); (3) Accelerating Productivity through Autonomy (Kelly Hupfeld); and (4) A State Information System to Support Improvements in Productivity (Marguerite Roza). [For &quot;The SEA of the Future: Leveraging Performance Management to Support School Improvement. Volume 1,&quot; see ED562516. For &quot;The SEA of the Future: Prioritizing Productivity. Volume 2,&quot; see ED562514. For &quot;The SEA of the Future: Uncovering the Productivity Promise of Rural Education. Volume 4,&quot; see ED562510. For &quot;The SEA of the Future: Building Agency Capacity for Evidence-Based Policymaking. Volume 5,&quot; see ED562509.]
The SEA of the Future: Leveraging Performance Management to Support School Improvement. Volume 1
Author: Gross, Betheny, Ed.
Date: 2013-05-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: State Departments of Education,Educational Improvement,Performance,Organizational Effectiveness,Strategic Planning,Elementary Secondary Education,Public Education,Resource Allocation,State Officials,Legislators,State School District Relationship

&quot;The SEA of the Future&quot; is an education publication series examining how state education agencies can shift from a compliance to a performance-oriented organization through strategic planning and performance management tools to meet growing demands to support education reform while improving productivity. This inaugural edition of &quot;The SEA of the Future&quot; examines how SEAs can better manage their relationships with districts and schools, identifies strategies for aligning resources with goals, and considers how outsiders--governors, legislators, philanthropies, and reform advocates--can support the transition. The following essays provide the basis of this examination: (1) Building a Better System of Support (Sam Redding); (2) Doing More with Less: Three Strategies for Improved Resource Alignment (Patrick Murphy and Ashley Jochim); and (3) Where to Start? What Governors, Legislators, and Others Can Do (Paul Hill). Individual essays contain references. [For &quot;The SEA of the Future: Prioritizing Productivity. Volume 2,&quot; see ED562514. For &quot;The SEA of the Future: Building the Productivity Infrastructure. Volume 3,&quot; see ED562515. For &quot;The SEA of the Future: Uncovering the Productivity Promise of Rural Education. Volume 4,&quot; see ED562510. For &quot;The SEA of the Future: Building Agency Capacity for Evidence-Based Policymaking. Volume 5,&quot; see ED562509.]
Promoting Innovation to Improve College Access and Completion: Testimony Submitted to the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance
Author: Mayer, Alexander K.
Date: 2015-09-11
Type: Legal/Legislative/Regulatory Materials
Subjects: Access to Education,Graduation,Higher Education,Academic Achievement,Student Financial Aid,Work Study Programs,Federal Programs,Federal Aid

MDRC is pleased to provide testimony on college access and completion to the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance. Access to college has increased substantially over the last 50 years, but student success--defined as the combination of academic success and degree or certificate completion--has not kept pace. Student success, moreover, generally correlates with students' financial resources: Students from high-income families attend and complete college at higher rates than low-income students. It is challenging to determine whether financial aid does in fact improve student success, because the factors associated with financial need, such as low family income, are also associated with a lack of academic success, making it difficult to isolate the effect of additional financial aid on student achievement. The authors recommend encouraging financial aid innovation paired with evaluation research, especially randomized controlled trials. This testimony focuses on: (1) Year-round financial aid: The authors describe existing research that suggests year-round financial aid could improve access and completion. They also describe strategies to test such a change rigorously before implementing it more broadly. (2) Federal Work-Study and satisfactory academic progress requirements: The authors briefly describe two other innovations that could help improve access and completion, namely, retargeting and realigning Federal Work-Study and restructuring the notification of &quot;satisfactory academic progress&quot; (SAP) requirements in the Pell Grant program. (3) Clarifying opportunities for innovation: The Department of Education could grant waivers more readily if innovations were paired with evaluation research and could clarify where institutions currently have flexibility that does not require a waiver. Financial aid is an important tool with great potential to improve academic success and postsecondary completion, but there is much to learn about whether new innovations will prove effective. A growing body of work, however, demonstrates that randomized controlled trials--the most reliable method to determine a program or policy's effectiveness--can be effectively applied to financial aid programs to inform policy. Using this type of rigorous evaluation is critical to ensuring that new innovations in the financial aid system are effective, before investments are made to extend new practices more broadly.
Weathering the Great Recession with Human Capital? Evidence on Labor Market Returns to Education from Arkansas. A CAPSEE Working Paper
Author: Belfield, Clive
Date: 2015-11-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Outcomes of Education,Education Work Relationship,Economic Climate,Labor Market,Longitudinal Studies,Case Studies,Income,Educational Attainment,Employment,College Graduates,High School Graduates,Human Capital

The Great Recession was one of the sharpest economic downturns of the past century, with significant impacts across the U.S. labor market. Over past decades, one key feature of the U.S. labor market has been the high and stable returns to education. In this paper I estimate the returns to education for large samples of young workers in Arkansas over the period before, during, and after the Great Recession. I use linked education and Unemployment Insurance earnings data on almost 1 million individuals within the state. From both cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis, I find very modest effects of the Great Recession on the earnings gaps of workers with different levels of education. Over the period 2001 to 2012, there were large and stable returns to postsecondary education relative to high school completion, and these gaps were largely unaffected by the Great Recession. I do find employment shocks that differ by education level: for persons without a college education, employment shocks were stronger and they persisted beyond the end of the recession. Adjusting for these employment shocks, earnings gaps by education level increased over the period after 2007. I also find evidence that those who graduated from college during the Great Recession gained less than those who graduated before 2007. As with earlier recessions, postsecondary education served as an effective buffer against labor market shocks. The following are appended: (1) Tables; and (2) Figures.