ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Pandemic Planning for Distance Learning: Scenarios and Considerations for PreK-12 Education Leaders
Author: Ishmael, Kristina
Date: 2020-05-26
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Preschool Education,Elementary Secondary Education,Pandemics,COVID-19,School Districts,Disease Control,School Closing,Distance Education,Online Courses,Planning,Educational Technology,Administrator Role,Faculty Development,Policy,Standards,Evaluation,Social Emotional Learning,Academic Support Services,Instructional Materials,Special Needs Students,Parent Participation

PreK-12 districts are currently considering multiple options for the 2020-21 school year and beyond. Recent guidance from the Centers for Disease Control lists the many safeguards that would need to be in place before buildings reopen and students are back to classrooms that resemble what they had before. It is clear that some type of distance learning--as well as efforts to ensure all students can get online--must be a part of districts' planning for the next school year and beyond. The authors have created this resource to clarify the various types of distance learning that will likely take place, as well as propose four possible scenarios for PreK-12 during and in the wake of the pandemic. In addition, the authors provide categorized lists of questions and considerations that school and district leaders will need to keep in mind.
Culturally Responsive Teaching: A Reflection Guide
Author: Muñiz, Jenny
Date: 2020-09-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Culturally Relevant Education,Cultural Awareness,Teacher Expectations of Students,Student Diversity,Family School Relationship,Social Bias,Teacher Attitudes,Social Justice,Curriculum Development,Educational Resources,Language Usage

This is an unprecedented time for U.S. schools: a pandemic has upended education for millions of students and families in the midst of nationwide protests for Black lives. These crises have put a spotlight on disparities that have long plagued the education system. These enormous challenges cannot be addressed without culturally responsive teachers. There are many frameworks and ways to think about culturally responsive teaching. Building on this scholarship, New America developed a set of eight core competencies that describe what culturally responsive teachers know and do. This resource offers a set of reflection questions that make self-appraisal, goal setting, and critical conversations across the eight culturally responsive teaching competencies more concrete. This resource also shares research evidence that describes the benefits of culturally responsive teaching. This resource is intended to enable teachers and those who support them to promote rigorous and relevant learning that leads to the engagement, achievement, and empowerment of all learners.
Thinking about Useful School Metrics: Comparing &apos;Like&apos; Schools
Author: Wohn, Christopher
Date: 2018-12-00
Type: Reports - Research-practitioner Partnerships
Subjects: School Effectiveness,Institutional Evaluation,Urban Schools,Public Schools,Student Characteristics,Academic Achievement,Institutional Characteristics,Low Income Students,Special Education,English Language Learners,Elementary Secondary Education

Large urban school districts, such as Baltimore City Public Schools, are often faced with many data points and contexts in which to evaluate their students, schools, and programs. Schools can have widely varying proportions of students of different races, socioeconomic statuses, and disability levels. There are also many risk factors that can be associated with outcomes such as assessment performance, graduation, or college readiness. Given the large number of characteristics that can be measured about schools and students, it can quickly become difficult to recognize patterns or relationships within educational data sets. A major issue in ranking schools based on student performance is that it fails to take into account underlying demographic or economic issues. Schools with high proportions of low-income students will tend to perform poorly in comparison to more economically advantaged schools. Given this, how can districts evaluate school performance while considering demographic and economic conditions that may explain differences in student performance? The goal of this paper is to outline available and viable techniques for school evaluation given unique demographic conditions. While no individual technique is perfect, each one can help adjust for underlying factors that schools may not have direct control over. The authors examine how Baltimore City Public Schools took student demographic characteristics into consideration when implementing its School Performance Measure (SPM).
The COVID-19 Slide: What Summer Learning Loss Can Tell Us about the Potential Impact of School Closures on Student Academic Achievement. Brief
Author: Kuhfield, Megan
Date: 2020-04-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: COVID-19,Pandemics,Academic Achievement,School Closing,Educational Opportunities,Elementary School Students,Middle School Students,Achievement Tests,Comparative Analysis,School Schedules,Mathematics Achievement,Reading Achievement

As the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic closes schools across the nation, education systems are scrambling to meet the needs of schools, families, and 55.1 million students. The economic impacts and trauma of recent events will also have far reaching effects that will likely exacerbate long-standing opportunity gaps. While it is difficult to speculate on what missing months of school may mean for student achievement, research on seasonal learning and summer learning loss can offer some insights that can help educators, policy makers, and families understand, plan for, and address some potential impacts of this extended pause in classroom instruction when students return to school. To provide preliminary estimates of the potential impacts of the extended pause of academic instruction during the coronavirus crisis, the authors leverage research on summer loss and use a national sample of over five million students in grades 3-8 who took the Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) Growth™ assessments in 2017-2018. They examined how the observed typical average growth trajectory by grade for students who completed a standard-length school year compares to projections under two scenarios for the closures: a COVID-19 slide, in which students showed patterns of academic setbacks typical of summers throughout an extended closure and COVID-19 slowdown, in which students maintained the same level of academic achievement they had when schools were closed (modeled for simplicity as March 15, with school resuming in fall).
Transportation Access and Equity in San Francisco Unified School District: A Route to Success
Author: Hayes, Julian
Date: 2019-00-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Student Transportation,Access to Education,School Choice,Educational Policy,Bus Transportation,Elementary Secondary Education

A research report on the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) student assignment policy, which was designed to help with school choice to reverse the trend of racial isolation and the concentration of underserved students in the same school, and to provide equitable access to programs offered in the district.
Considering an Online Program Management (OPM) Contract: A Guide for Colleges
Author: Acosta, Alejandra
Date: 2020-09-04
Type: Guides - General
Subjects: Distance Education,Contracts,Program Administration,Online Courses,Outsourcing,Higher Education,School Business Relationship

The novel coronavirus pandemic sparked change overnight for millions of students and thousands of professors at thousands of colleges around the United States as it began to spread during the spring semester in 2020. Face-to-face instruction ground to a halt and students and schools had to navigate a rapid and chaotic move to remote learning. While many colleges were already developing and expanding online education programs prior to the pandemic, for others, the move to online education is new. To establish an online presence, many colleges are looking for support from outside companies that specialize in the business. In looking to the future, many colleges appear to be considering online program management companies (OPMs). Online program managers are third-party companies--contractors to the institution--that agree to develop and maintain online programming. While some OPMs provide just the technology platform and perhaps support in translating in-person courses to online ones, others are full-service, handling everything from the course design to faculty training to recruitment of students. This report warns that as schools consider how to address distance learning, they should also consider the not-insignificant risks of partnering with OPMs. Contracts are often long, difficult to escape, and expensive. Colleges that see online programs as a financial salvation may learn that the reality is far less rosy. And the reputational risk if things go south could damage the university far beyond any potential upside of the programs. This brief identifies many of the key questions that an institution should ask of itself and its potential online program management contractors before they decide to pursue such an arrangement.
Looking at School Performance from a Different Perspective: A Maryland Report Card Reflecting Students Served
Author: Wohn, Christopher
Date: 2019-06-00
Type: Reports - Research-practitioner Partnerships
Subjects: Accountability,School Effectiveness,Federal Legislation,Educational Legislation,Elementary Secondary Education,Socioeconomic Status,Academic Achievement,Poverty,Economically Disadvantaged,Rating Scales,Teacher Effectiveness,Student Characteristics

The federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) that passed in 2015 changed many aspects of school accountability across the United States. Under ESSA states had to interpret new requirements and create accountability plans. As part of Maryland's ESSA plan, a new school report, the Maryland Report Card, was developed to evaluate school performance across multiple metrics, including assessment performance, student growth, school climate, and implementation of a well-rounded curriculum. Schools across the state were ranked according to how many points they earned by meeting performance expectations on these indicators, and each school received a summative &quot;star&quot; rating, from one to five stars. Schools are complex entities and any measurement of overall school performance can be attributed to multiple inputs: quality of teachers, socio-economic background of students, involvement of parents in the school community, resources of the governing school district, and so on. Summative school evaluation systems, such as the Maryland Report Card, often take a blunt approach to judging school success and can fail to recognize outstanding instruction and academic gains in school communities that exist in high poverty. Accountability metrics with no consideration of students served may end up in large part representing the socio-economic level of students' families rather than the quality of each school. This brief explores how school rating systems can represent the effectiveness of educators as opposed to the characteristics of their students.
Teaching Together: Pilot Study of a Tiered Language and Literacy Intervention with Head Start Teachers and Linguistically Diverse Families
Author: Zucker, Tricia A.
Date: 2021-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Early Intervention,At Risk Students,Poverty,Language Skills,Reading Skills,Literacy Education,Language Acquisition,Family Involvement,Preschool Education,Program Effectiveness,Academic Language,Vocabulary,Low Income Students,Parent Child Relationship,Parent School Relationship,English Language Learners,Inferences,Oral Language

This study examines blending of classroom- and family-based supports within a Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS). The present study focuses on a sample of Head Start children who are both experiencing poverty and scoring below early language and literacy screening benchmarks. This study begins to explore which combination of resources are the most parsimonious, yet effective for improving language and literacy skills for such learners. We examine a model that first establishes Tier 1 and 2 supports in the classroom and then adds two aligned tiers of family engagement supports called Teaching Together. This study occurred in a large, metropolitan area in the southcentral region of the United States. It included 33 classrooms from three Head Start agencies (20 school sites). Pre-K classrooms were eligible to participate if: (a) instruction was predominantly in English, and (b) the teacher had not participated in PD projects offered by the university researchers in the past five years. These data suggest that Teaching Together holds promise as a school- and home-based intervention for increasing language skills amongst pre-K children at risk for later reading difficulties and eligible for Tier 2 services. Academic language is an essential skill for later reading and success in school. An aligned approach to explaining sophisticated vocabulary and engaging in extended, inferential conversation across the classroom and home could help close the vocabulary gap observed for DLLs and children from low-income backgrounds. Yet we found heterogeneity in response with greater vocabulary benefits mostly for children at the higher end of the distribution, suggesting future efforts should continue to examine for whom and under what conditions such academic language interventions are most beneficial.
Returning to School: A Toolkit for Principals
Author: Benton, K.
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Guides - Non-Classroom
Subjects: Principals,School Schedules,COVID-19,Pandemics,Disease Control,Hygiene,Sanitation,Space Utilization,Curriculum,Teaching Methods,Administrator Role,Participative Decision Making,Cooperative Planning,Family Involvement,Family Needs,Mentors,Peer Teaching,Teacher Collaboration,Anxiety,Student Behavior,Stress Management,Trauma,Social Services,Information Dissemination,Interpersonal Communication,English Language Learners,American Indians,Students with Disabilities

This toolkit was developed to assist principals in structuring their thinking about the return to school, in whatever form it takes. It offers tools and tip sheets, the context for using them, and suggestions for actions principals might consider. The toolkit is organized around four sections: (1) Change (staying current in understanding changes from the outside (states, Federal Government, school boards, districts, community organizations, and for schools located in tribal communities, their tribes) and taking the changes into account when planning); (2) Communication (planning how to welcome back students, families, teachers, and staff, whether in person or by other means); (3) Collaboration (engaging teachers, staff, families, and students, vested stakeholders and community groups in preparation for the return to school); and (4) Care (addressing common fears and anxieties, addressing the needs of students experiencing chronic stress and trauma, preparing personnel to meet various student needs, and preparing social service agencies for work with school personnel, students, and families). [This toolkit is based on the toolkit developed for the Principal Leadership Academy (PLA) at the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE), supported by the Region 13 Comprehensive Center. It was prepared with the assistance of the Systemic Technical Assistance Team (STAT) project at the National Comprehensive Center. Cover title varies: &quot;Returning to School Toolkit for Principals.&quot;]
Identifying and Serving English Learners in Gifted Education: Looking Back and Moving Forward
Author: Mun, Rachel U.
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: English Language Learners,Academically Gifted,Talent Identification,Gifted Education,Best Practices,Screening Tests,Referral,Disproportionate Representation,Cognitive Tests,Intelligence Tests

The underrepresentation of English learners (ELs) in gifted and talented programs is a societal and research problem that merits investigation. Three state departments of education and their state directors of gifted programs supported our access to 16 schools across nine districts. In these three states with gifted identification and programming mandates, ELs were proportionally represented in gifted and talented programs in the 16 schools we visited. Interview data from 225 participants revealed four themes: adopting universal screening procedures, creating alternative pathways to identification, establishing a web of communication, and using professional development as a lever for change. [This paper was published in &quot;Journal for the Education of the Gifted&quot; v43 n4 p297-335 2020 (EJ1274124).]
A Mixed Methods Pilot Study of an Equity-Explicit Student-Teacher Relationship Intervention for the Ninth-Grade Transition
Author: Gaias, Larissa M.
Date: 2020-12-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Equal Education,Teacher Student Relationship,Grade 9,Student Promotion,Intervention,Student School Relationship,Minority Group Students,Student Behavior,Student Motivation,Grade Point Average,Culturally Relevant Education,Bias,High School Students,High School Teachers

Background: Student-teacher relationships are associated with the social and emotional climate of a school, a key domain of the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child Model. Few interventions target student-teacher relationships during the critical transition to high school, or incorporate strategies for enhancing equitable relationships. We conducted a mixed-methods feasibility study of a student-teacher relationship intervention, called Equity-Explicit Establish-Maintain-Restore (E-EMR). Methods: We tested whether students (N = 133) whose teachers received E-EMR training demonstrated improved relationship quality, school belonging, motivation, behavior, and academic outcomes from pre- to post-test, and whether these differences were moderated by race. We also examined how teachers (N = 16) integrated a focus on equity into their implementation of the intervention. Results: Relative to white students, students of the color showed greater improvement on belongingness, behavior, motivation, and GPA. Teachers described how they incorporated a focus on race/ethnicity, culture, and bias into E-EMR practices, and situated their relationships with students within the contexts of their own identity, the classroom/school context, and broader systems of power and privilege. Conclusions: We provide preliminary evidence for E-EMR to change teacher practice and reduce educational disparities for students of color. We discuss implications for other school-based interventions to integrate an equity-explicit focus into program content and evaluation. [This article was published in &quot;Journal of School Health&quot; (EJ1274285).]
A Comparison Study of NAEP-TEL and ICILS
Author: Wang, Yan
Date: 2020-07-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: National Competency Tests,International Assessment,Computer Literacy,Information Literacy,Technological Literacy,Grade 8,Test Items,Test Content,Computer Assisted Testing,Comparative Analysis,Test Format

In 2018, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) administered two assessments--the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Technology and Engineering Literacy (TEL) assessment and the International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS)--to two separate nationally representative samples of 8th-grade students in the United States. TEL was administered in January-March to 15,400 students, while ICILS was administered in March-May to 9,000 students. Because of some similarities in content and item formats, NCES commissioned a study to explore the similarities and differences between the two assessment frameworks as well as the characteristics of the assessment items. The results of the comparison study showed that the framework targets and design features underlying the scenario-based tasks (SBTs) used in both assessments have many similarities. Both assessments have a focus on information and communication technologies, and both are digital-based assessments that use interactive features in item design. However, there are differences between the two assessments in framework scope and item characteristics. About half of the TEL framework targets are beyond the scope of ICILS; TEL evaluates students' knowledge and skills in analyzing general systems, while ICILS limits its evaluation to computer systems. ICILS uses some response modes (e.g., flowcharts) that are not used in TEL. Forty-two percent of the ICILS items do not allow students to go back to the previous item to change their answers, compared with 85 percent of the TEL SBT items. About two-thirds of ICILS items assess procedural knowledge, while only about one-third of TEL SBT items do that.
How You Say It Matters: Communicating Predictive Analytics Findings to Students
Author: Acosta, Alejandra
Date: 2020-07-06
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Prediction,Learning Analytics,Higher Education,Information Dissemination,College Students,Academic Advising,Counseling,Behavior Change,Identification,At Risk Students,Communication Strategies,Electronic Mail

Predictive analytics has taken higher education by storm, with its promise of closing equity gaps, raising student retention rates, and increasing tuition revenue by keeping students enrolled. Many colleges and universities have made an investment in predictive analytics for student success initiatives, and even more are looking into implementing, expanding, and strengthening the technology. However, getting advisers and other end users to communicate the predictive system findings to students is a vital step in successfully using predictive analytics and doing so equitably is of utmost importance. This report offers research-based guidelines to colleges for engaging in effective, ethical, and equitable communication about predictive analytic system findings to students. It covers how to approach the first engagement with students: how an early alert end user, such as a counselor or adviser, can tell students that a problem has been identified, connect them with resources, and create the behavior change needed for success. It is also a guide for institutional leadership to consider when working with students, faculty, and staff to implement predictive analytics at their institution.
Proficiency and Giftedness: The Role of Language Comprehension in Gifted Identification and Achievement
Author: Hamilton, Rashea
Date: 2020-00-18
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: English Language Learners,Language Proficiency,Academically Gifted,Talent Identification,Academic Achievement,Classification,Demography,Socioeconomic Influences,Time,Race,Ethnicity,Income,Elementary School Students

English learners (ELs) are the fastest-growing population of students in the United States and currently represent nearly 10% of public school enrollment; however, they also constitute less than 3% of gifted program enrollment in these schools. Although an increasing number of studies explore this underrepresentation, research that specifically examines the role of language proficiency in gifted identification is limited. This study explored the role of several factors on ELs' time to reclassification (the point at which students are considered to have reached language proficiency and are no longer classified as ELs) and, in turn, being identified for gifted services. The findings suggested notable demographic and socioeconomic influences on the time to reclassification of ELs. Students who were reclassified earlier tended to be enrolled in schools with more gifted students and had a greater probability of being identified as gifted. [This paper was published in &quot;Journal for the Education of the Gifted&quot; v43 n4 p370-404 2020 (EJ1274080).]