ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Leveraging Service Blueprinting to Rethink Higher Education: When Students Become &quot;Valued Customers,&quot; Everybody Wins
Author: Ostrom, Amy L.
Date: 2011-10-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Higher Education,Educational Change,Services,Visual Aids,College Administration,Student Role,Student Experience,College Students,Case Studies,Blended Learning,Curriculum Design,Student Financial Aid,Student Personnel Services,Public Policy,Educational Policy

There is much discussion today about the need to transform higher education. Experts and researchers list numerous challenges: low student retention and graduation rates, the increasing cost of higher education, and concerns that graduates don't possess the skills required to compete successfully in today's interconnected, global marketplace. These are just a few of the issues facing higher education that point to the need for new thinking and innovative approaches. Although advances in technology and online learning have the potential to help address some of these concerns and challenges, technology itself is not the answer. The authors believe a key to the solution to many of the issues lies in designing and delivering student-focused educational experiences that meet their needs and desired outcomes while concurrently considering the needs of other stakeholders such as employers, government, and society more broadly. In this paper the authors take the position that higher education is a service, or a service system, and that transformative initiatives aiming to address the types of problems noted earlier will benefit from viewing them through a service lens. A service lens puts the customer at the center of improvement and innovation initiatives, considers the customer experience to be a foundation for analyzing and making enhancements, and assumes the customer is a co-creator of value. The authors focus on one specific technique, service blueprinting, which facilitates collaboration among key contributors and stakeholders involved across a broad customer experience to create a visual depiction, or blueprint, of a service. The service blueprint highlights the steps in the process, the points of contact that take place, and the physical evidence that exists from the customer's point of view. In the paper the authors introduce the philosophy that underlies service blueprinting and then describe the technique itself and how it has been used in practice. Two case studies that highlight how blueprinting can be used to improve and redesign services are presented. Implementing the service blueprinting technique is appended. (Contains 6 figures and 49 endnotes.)
Getting Better at Teacher Preparation and State Accountability: Strategies, Innovations, and Challenges under the Federal Race to the Top Program
Author: Crowe, Edward
Date: 2011-12-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Teacher Effectiveness,Profiles,Accountability,Disclosure,Public Education,Teacher Education,Federal Programs,Federal Aid,Educational Improvement,Administrator Effectiveness,Teachers,Principals,Educational Objectives,Goal Orientation,Teacher Education Programs,Academic Achievement

A key focus of the Obama administration's Race to the Top initiative in public education is to support states that implement plans for &quot;recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most.&quot; Race to the Top asked states to adopt more vigorous teacher-education accountability mechanisms and to establish or expand programs &quot;that are successful at producing effective teachers.&quot; Since the Center for American Progress published &quot;Race to the Top and Teacher Preparation: Analyzing State Strategies for Ensuring Real Accountability and Fostering Program Innovation&quot; in March 2011, the 12 states funded by Race to the Top program in 2010 continued to implement their ambitious agendas. This paper discusses new information about the specifics of these states' goals, activities, and challenges as part of the profiles of the commitments made by these states to improve teacher education and to strengthen public disclosure and accountability of program performance. The paper describes the key findings in separate profiles of the 12 winners: Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and the District of Columbia. Then based on analysis of the winning strategies, this paper makes policy recommendations directed to the U.S. Department of Education, the winners, and others interested in teacher quality. Definition of Race to the Top program terminology in the charts of this report is appended. (Contains 58 endnotes.)
Lightening the Load: A Look at Four Ways that Community Schools Can Support Effective Teaching
Author: Chang, Theodora
Date: 2012-01-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Instructional Effectiveness,Change Strategies,Educational Change,Community Schools,Educational Improvement,Instructional Improvement,Disadvantaged Environment,Disadvantaged Schools,Integrated Services,Teacher Improvement,Self Efficacy,Parent Teacher Cooperation,Health Promotion,Comprehensive School Health Education,Student Mobility,School Holding Power,Stress Management

The job of a teacher these days seems to stretch beyond the walls of a classroom, especially in primary and secondary schools in high-poverty communities. There are stories of teachers purchasing food for hungry students, going door to door in neighborhoods to boost parent involvement in school, and referring students and families to health services. Teachers in these communities know how important these types of nonclassroom activities are to improving the educational performance of their students. So, too, do education experts and policymakers, who call for including these "wraparound services" in high-poverty schools. While there is research on the potential for wraparound services, including health care services, family involvement programs, and expanded food assistance programs to eliminate barriers to student learning, there is little known about the possible connection between wraparound services and teacher efficacy. This report examines specific examples of schools where wraparound services are benefiting teachers in addition to students. The authors explore the ways in which wraparound services help teachers in high-poverty schools focus on student achievement by addressing the nonacademic needs of students. They conclude with their detailed recommendations--steps that they believe would help teachers and students alike perform to the best of their ability. (Contains 1 table and 48 endnotes.) ["Lightening the Load: A Look at Four Ways that Community Schools Can Support Effective Teaching" was written with Calyssa Lawyer.]
Movin' It &quot;and&quot; Improvin' It! Using Both Education Strategies to Increase Teaching Effectiveness
Author: Jerald, Craig D.
Date: 2012-01-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Teacher Effectiveness,Teacher Recruitment,Teacher Persistence,Tenure,Teacher Dismissal,Job Layoff,Teacher Improvement,Inservice Teacher Education,Faculty Development,Coaching (Performance),Educational Research,Alignment (Education),Program Effectiveness,Expenditures,Personnel Management,Educational Administration

Fueled in part by the U.S. Department of Education's Race to the Top program, a massive effort to overhaul teacher evaluation is underway in states and districts across the country. The aim is to ensure that evaluations provide a better indication of &quot;teaching effectiveness,&quot; or the extent to which teachers can and do contribute to students' learning, and then to act on that information to enhance teaching and learning. But as states and districts actually begin to adopt policies to measure teaching effectiveness, another kind of debate is now raging: How exactly should school systems use the results of their new teacher-evaluation systems? More broadly, once states and districts begin to measure effectiveness, what kinds of strategies should they adopt to &quot;increase&quot; the amount of measured effectiveness in the teacher workforce over time? Underneath the confusion about what the reforms are really about lie two very different types of strategies for boosting teaching effectiveness in the workforce. The first strategy can be called &quot;movin' it&quot; because it treats a teacher's effectiveness as fixed at any given point in time, then uses selective recruitment, retention, and &quot;deselection&quot; to attract and keep teachers with higher effectiveness while removing teachers with lower effectiveness. In contrast, &quot;improvin' it&quot; policies treat teachers' effectiveness as a mutable trait that can be improved with time. When reformers talk about providing all teachers with useful feedback following classroom observations or using the results of evaluation to individualize professional development for teachers, they are referring to &quot;improvin' it&quot; strategies. In reality, there is nothing about either strategy that precludes the other. Therefore, instead of treating them as &quot;either/or&quot; choices, smart school systems would combine &quot;movin' it&quot; and &quot;improvin' it&quot; policies to maximize increases in teaching effectiveness. In fact, evidence suggests that high-improving and high-performing schools manage to do just that. (Contains 8 figures and 54 endnotes.)
How School Principals Influence Student Learning
Author: Dhuey, Elizabeth
Date: 2012-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Academic Achievement,Principals,Elementary School Students,Administrator Role,Administrator Effectiveness,Educational Policy,Correlation,Achievement Gains,Scores,Educational Testing,Longitudinal Studies,Input Output Analysis,Measurement,Data Analysis,Economics,Predictor Variables,Outcome Measures,Federal Programs,Educational Indicators

In recent decades, much attention has been focused on student achievement in the United States. Many policy initiatives have been attempted in an effort to bolster achievement, including increasing school revenue, decreasing class size, expanding early childhood programs, and introducing vouchers and charter schools, to name a few, but not all of these initiatives have had the desired impact. Research has shown that other, less tangible factors such as teacher quality and the characteristics of a student's peers may play a much greater role. This research focuses on one of these less tangible factors: principal quality. This paper has two main goals. The first is to measure principal quality by estimating principal value added to student achievement. The authors estimate a set of principal fixed effects from test score gains with data on North Carolina students between third and eighth grade. The second goal is use the estimated principal value added to determine what makes a principal better than another at raising test score value added. (Contains 1 footnote.)
Middle-Class Societies Invest More in Public Education: A Stronger Middle Class Is Associated with Higher Levels of Spending on Education
Author: Madland, David
Date: 2011-11-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Futures (of Society),Economic Opportunities,Role of Education,Economic Development,Human Capital,Middle Class,Resource Allocation,Public Education,Power Structure,Relationship,Fiscal Capacity,Educational Finance,Expenditures,Educational Change

America's economic future depends in large part on the quality of the nation's public education. Education increases productivity, sparks innovation, and boosts the economic competitiveness. Not surprisingly, the American public thinks that there should be greater investments in education, with polls showing strong and growing support for increased spending. There are of course many reasons but a key, though often overlooked, piece of the explanation is the decline of the American middle class. Societies with a strong middle class make greater investments in public goods such as education, which helps fuel their future economic success. To help quantify the importance of a strong middle class to making investments in education, the authors examined in detail educational spending in all 50 states over the past two decades--the entire period for which complete data are available. They find that a weaker middle class is associated with significantly lower levels of education spending, controlling for other factors that affect education spending such as state income levels, the percentage of minorities in a state, and the age distribution of the state. This paper argues that a stronger middle class is likely to be good for the nation's educational system. And improving education in the United States would be good for the economy. Appended are: (1) Data; (2) Models; and (3) Results. (Contains 73 endnotes.)
Life-Span Trajectory of Self-Esteem Development: A Myth or Reality
Author: Badayai, Abdul Rahman bin Ahmad
Date: 2012-09-26
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Self Esteem,Developmental Stages,Individual Development,Ethnicity,Age Differences,Differences,Gender Differences,Children

Self-esteem has been regarded as one of the most pivotal component in almost every day human daily activities. Trajectory of self esteem development means that on the average, one's self-esteem is relatively high in childhood, then drops during adolescence, later to arise gradually throughout adulthood, and then declines sharply in old age. The purpose of this research is to study the trajectory of self-esteem development in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood during their developmental stages. The research had been conducted on 150 respondents, in which 63 males and 87 females participated in this study. Cross-sectional design and convenience sampling had been selected for the above proposed study. However, the findings of this research shows a gradual increase of one's self-esteem in old age which is in sharp contradiction to the present trajectory indicating that self esteem declines significantly during old age as stated in literature reviews of earlier researchers, but holds the same views on childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Despite the general developmental age differences across the human lifespan, an individual tends to maintain his/her ordering relative to one another; whereby individuals who have relatively high self-esteem at one point in time tend to have relatively high self-esteem years later on.  Keywords: life-span development, self-esteem. (Contains 3 figures.)
Cut and Run: House Republicans' Education Plan Would Shortchange Disadvantaged Students and Schools
Author: Ayers, Jeremy
Date: 2012-02-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Teacher Effectiveness,Disadvantaged,Elementary Secondary Education,Federal Legislation,Disadvantaged Schools,Disadvantaged Youth,Change Strategies,Educational Change,Educational Legislation,Low Income Groups,Educational Responsibility,Performance Factors,Educational Finance,Policy Analysis,Educational Improvement,Improvement Programs,Program Effectiveness

In January Rep. John Kline (R-MN), chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, released two draft discussion bills to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA. The Student Success Act and the Encouraging Innovation and Effective Teachers Act would increase state and local control over education. In the process, however, the proposals would weaken equity provisions in the law designed to ensure historically disadvantaged students get a fair shot at a good education. This brief outlines specific ways the Kline bills would undermine how historically disadvantaged students are treated and how schools with low-income students are funded. The brief concludes with a progressive vision for how ESEA could be reauthorized in ways that do promote equity. (Contains 1 table and 8 endnotes.)
Achieving Results through Community School Partnerships: How District and Community Leaders Are Building Effective, Sustainable Relationships
Author: Blank, Martin J.
Date: 2012-01-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Stakeholders,Social Services,Unions,Community Development,Community Leaders,Local Government,Community Resources,Community Schools,School Community Relationship,Partnerships in Education,School Districts,Public Agencies,Community Organizations,Organizational Communication,Sustainability,Capacity Building,Financial Support,Educational Policy,Educational Improvement,Improvement Programs,Program Effectiveness,Program Evaluation,Educational Change,Family Involvement,Program Descriptions,Interviews,Content Analysis

A community school is a place and a set of partnerships connecting a school, the families of students, and the surrounding community. A community school is distinguished by an integrated focus on academics, youth development, family support, health and social services, and community development. The community school strategy is central to efforts to improve America's public schools. Community schools use partnerships to align school and community resources in order to produce successful students, strong families, and engaged communities. This paper outlines how school and community leaders develop a common vision for a community schools strategy and explores six key strategies that successful community school initiatives use to build effective partnerships with local government agencies, teachers' unions, and other organizations. It begins by describing the elements of a community school strategy, then draws on the experiences of several community school initiatives that use the following strategies to form and maintain key relationships: (1) Ensure that all partners share a common vision; (2) Establish formal relationships and collaborative structures to engage stakeholders; (3) Encourage open dialogue about challenges and solution; (4) Engage partners in the use of data; and (5) Create and empower central-office capacity at the district level to sustain community school work; and (6) Leverage community resources and braid funding streams. (Contains 1 figure and 12 endnotes.)
Designing High Quality Evaluation Systems for High School Teachers: Challenges and Potential Solutions
Author: Tyler, John H.
Date: 2011-11-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Teaching Methods,Educational Change,Teacher Evaluation,Teacher Competencies,Secondary School Teachers,Barriers,Performance Factors,Evaluation Methods,Educational Quality,Change Strategies,Best Practices,Academic Achievement,Outcome Measures,Achievement Rating,Rating Scales,Teacher Effectiveness,Evaluation Research,Measurement Techniques,Program Design

A central part of education reform today is the wide-ranging and unprecedented effort to either revamp existing teacher evaluation systems or develop and implement entirely new systems. High-quality teacher evaluation systems are seen as one lever for improving the teacher workforce and hence the outcomes of students, including high school students. The current degree of consensus around efforts to improve teacher evaluation is striking for the world of kindergarten-through-12th-grade education. This paper examines the challenges and potential solutions to evaluating high school teachers, looking first at practice-based evaluation and then turning to student performance as the basis for evaluation. In each case the stage is first set with a brief discussion of the overarching, across-grade issues that accompany each method. (Contains 59 endnotes.)
Increasing Teacher Diversity: Strategies to Improve the Teacher Workforce
Author: Bireda, Saba
Date: 2011-11-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Academic Achievement,Teacher Effectiveness,Minority Group Teachers,Teacher Shortage,Employment Opportunities,Diversity (Faculty),Educational Improvement,Improvement Programs,Teacher Improvement,Change Strategies,Educational Change,African American Teachers,Teacher Recruitment,Teacher Persistence,Case Studies,Fellowships,Performance Factors,Formative Evaluation,Outreach Programs

The lack of diversity in the teaching force is troubling for several reasons. Fewer minority teachers may indicate that few minorities are interested in pursuing a career in teaching. The low number of minority teachers also may indicate that there are fewer minority candidates with the skills and qualifications to enter the field. The inability to retain highly effective minority teachers, like all teachers, is also a challenge for many schools and districts and may indicate high turnover of certain teachers. Increasing the number of teachers of color is not only a matter of a philosophical commitment to diversity in career opportunities. Teachers of color provide real-life examples to minority students of future career paths. In this way, increasing the number of current teachers of color may be instrumental to increasing the number of future teachers of color. And while there are effective teachers of many races, teachers of color have demonstrated success in increasing academic achievement for engaging students of similar backgrounds. However, recruitment alone will not solve the minority teacher shortage, but highly effective strategies may increase the number of entering teachers to a rate that outpaces turnover. Finely tuned recruitment efforts that seek teachers who are likely to succeed and provide support while in the classroom, even in challenging schools, can help in increasing retention. This paper highlights elements of these innovative recruitment strategies, presents brief case studies of programs, and suggests recommendations for state and local policy to support such programs and strategies. (Contains 38 endnotes.)
Young Children's Use of a Shortcut to Solve Addition Problems
Author: Paliwal, Veena
Date: 2012-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Computer Assisted Instruction,Arithmetic,Mental Computation,Mathematics Instruction,Educational Technology,Learning Strategies,Intervention,Instructional Effectiveness,Numbers,Mathematical Concepts,Grade 1,Elementary School Mathematics,Mathematics Achievement

The primary purpose of the study was to determine if computer-based training programs promoted fluent and flexible use of reasoning strategies to solve addition problems using different tasks. Specifically, does participation in strategy training result in the fluent application of the target strategy on a traditional mental arithmetic task? Does participation in strategy training result in the flexible application of the target strategy on an alternative shortcut task? The research was conducted in five schools in two districts serving a mid-sized midwestern community. The findings of this study reveal the importance of near-doubles and make-ten strategies in achieving fluency with addition of single-digit number combinations. The intervention was effective in helping participants to move from developmental phase 1 (counting) to developmental phase 2 (reasoning) with near-doubles number combinations and developmental phase 3 (recall of specific facts or automatic reasoning strategies) with make-ten number combinations. In order to understand what constitutes the use of a shortcut strategy, there is a need to understand the foundation of these strategies. (Contains 1 figure and 4 tables.)