ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Findings from the National Study of the Implementation of Reading First
Author: Boulay, Beth
Date: 2009-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Reading Programs,Academic Achievement,Reading Instruction,Program Implementation,Intermode Differences,Reading Strategies,Disadvantaged,Low Achievement,Emergent Literacy,Intervention,Educational Practices,Mail Surveys,Administrator Attitudes,Teacher Attitudes,Program Effectiveness

The primary objective of this study is to describe how reading programs are implemented in Reading First schools and in a group of schools serving similar populations of students. The surveys collected detailed information about reading programs from nationally representative samples of schools to illustrate how this billion dollar a year program is rolling out in schools and classrooms. The study asks several broad research questions, two of which are the focus of this particular paper: (1) How is the Reading First program implemented in districts and schools; and (2) How does reading instruction differ between reading First schools and non-RF Title I schools? (Contains 4 tables.)
Ed School Essentials: Evaluating the Fundamentals of Teacher Training Programs in Texas. Executive Summary
Author: Greenberg, Julie
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Preservice Teacher Education,Teacher Education Programs,National Standards,Program Effectiveness,Educational Quality,State Regulation,Teacher Education Curriculum,Educational Change,Elementary School Teachers,Secondary School Teachers,Middle School Teachers,Special Education Teachers

In this report, the National Council on Teacher Quality evaluates key features of 67 undergraduate institutions elementary, secondary and special education teacher preparation in the state of Texas. The authors apply 25 standards that bear directly on the capacity of those programs to attract talented individuals and prepare them to teach effectively. In the course of their two year study of 67 education schools in Texas, they learned much about the policies at these institutions, as well as how those policies play out in practice, particularly in the coursework requirements that indicate whether a teacher has been adequately prepared. Their findings, which now fill a 500-page report, can be mercifully condensed into five general observations, relevant not only to the institutions in the study but for Texas policymakers as well. These observations are: (1) The most consistent feature of teacher education in Texas is a lack of consistency; (2) Regulation and monitoring of education schools come up short; (3) At all levels, in spite of relatively strong regulatory policy, the content preparation of Texas teachers is inadequate; (4) Institutions patronize their own students, placing a high value on &quot;edu-tainment&quot; at the expense of rigor and intellectual engagement; and (5) An inattention to output data suggests too little reflection on program improvement. (Contains 17 endnotes.) [For the full report, see ED509439.]
Inference on Peer Effects with Missing Peer Data: Evidence from Project STAR
Author: Sojourner, Aaron
Date: 2009-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Academic Achievement,Peer Groups,Classrooms,Peer Influence,Grade 1,Inferences,Elementary School Students,Kindergarten,Age Differences,Racial Differences,African American Students,Class Size,Teacher Characteristics,Teaching Experience,Attendance Patterns

This paper contributes empirically to the literature on peer effects in first-grade classrooms. The paper examines peer effects on academic achievement among first graders randomly assigned to their classrooms and to their teachers as part of Tennessee's Project STAR, America's largest ever education experiment. The analysis draws on previously unexploited measures of kindergarten achievement taken before random assignment to first-grade classes and available for about sixty percent of this sample. Data are not missing at random. This paper studies effects of peer lagged achievement on first-grade achievement. The STAR data allow for credible inference about peer effects because students and teachers were randomly assigned to classes within school. Further, the data contain pre-assignment measures of achievement, which are useful as conditioning variables to explain each student's own outcome and for characterizing each student's peer group. The paper contributes methodologically to the larger peer-effects literature in advancing the understanding of how to make inference about peer effects in the presence of missing data on peers.
Evaluating Programs for Community College Students: How Do We Know What Works? A Paper Prepared for the White House Summit on Community Colleges
Author: Brock, Thomas
Date: 2010-10-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Community Colleges,Two Year College Students,Higher Education,Educational Policy,Program Effectiveness,Outcomes of Education,Educational Change,Program Evaluation,Educational Strategies

After a brief introduction on community colleges as a pathway to higher education and earnings, the author describes a few approaches to evaluating the effectiveness of policies and programs designed to benefit students and issues to consider in determining standards of evidence. He then presents three examples of programs that have been carefully studied and concludes with thoughts on bringing programs to scale. While there is much to be done to improve student outcomes there is also reason for optimism. Many states and colleges are piloting reforms, and there is a growing body of evidence on strategies that work. (Contains 10 endnotes.)
The Supporting Healthy Marriage Evaluation: Early Lessons from the Implementation of a Relationship and Marriage Skills Program for Low-Income Married Couples
Author: Gaubert, Jennifer Miller
Date: 2010-09-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Marriage,Low Income Groups,Parents,Family Programs,Adult Education,Program Implementation,Marketing,Recruitment,Participation,Program Administration,Program Evaluation,Workshops,Activities

This report presents early implementation and operational lessons from the Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) evaluation. Funded by the Administration for Children and Families, SHM uses a rigorous research design to test the effectiveness of a new approach to improving outcomes for low-income children: strengthening the marriages and relationships of their parents as a foundation for family well-being. It also uses implementation research to document and assess how the organizations that were selected to be in the study are implementing the SHM model. The SHM model is for low-income married couples and includes three components: &quot;relationship and marriage education workshops&quot; that teach strategies for managing conflict and effective communication, &quot;supplemental activities&quot; that build on workshop themes and skills through educational and social events, and &quot;family support services&quot; that pair couples with specialized staff who facilitate participation and connect couples with needed services. In the first year of program implementation, SHM providers focused on three main tasks: developing effective marketing and recruitment strategies, keeping couples engaged in the program, and building management structures and systems. Lessons in these three areas from implementation analyses are the focus of this report. Appendices include: (1) Relationship and Marriage Education Curricula Used by SHM Program Operators; and (2) Profiles of Local SHM Program Operators. Individual chapters contain footnotes. (Contains 9 tables, 2 figures and 7 boxes.) [Dissemination of MDRC publications receives additional support from the Sandler Foundation and The Starr Foundation.]
Building a Learning Agenda around Disconnected Youth
Author: Bloom, Dan
Date: 2010-03-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Educational Development,Youth Programs,Young Adults,Best Practices,Feasibility Studies,Educational Opportunities,Learning Activities,Youth Problems,Formative Evaluation,Program Evaluation,Performance Factors,Change Strategies,Field Tests,Pilot Projects,Continuation Students,High School Equivalency Programs,Reentry Students

In December 2007, the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation gave MDRC a grant to conduct reconnaissance on promising strategies to reengage disconnected young people and improve their long-term outcomes. The primary objective of the grant was to identify key leverage points for future investment by government and foundations. MDRC consulted with researchers and policy experts, reviewed the results of completed and ongoing evaluations of youth programs, visited a number of innovative youth programs and cities with strong youth strategies, and hosted a meeting of youth practitioners. The goal of the paper's recommendations is to develop a menu of approaches for the heterogeneous population of disconnected youth--analogous in some ways to the multiple pathways that are being developed for high school students. The recommendations fall into two broad categories: building knowledge about mature, existing programs (to better understand whether they work, for whom, and why) and investment in developing and/or scaling up new programs that address areas of unmet need, such as efforts to restructure General Educational Development (GED) preparation programs so that they are more tightly linked with postsecondary programs, both occupational and academic; new &quot;leg-up&quot; strategies for older youth with very low basic skill levels, for whom a GED may not be a realistic goal; and new strategies to engage young people who are more profoundly disconnected and  unlikely to volunteer for youth programs. (Contains 3 tables, 2 boxes and 7 footnotes.)
The Employment Retention and Advancement Project: How Effective Are Different Approaches Aiming to Increase Employment Retention and Advancement? Final Impacts for Twelve Models. Executive Summary
Author: Hendra, Richard
Date: 2010-04-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Employment Programs,Welfare Recipients,Low Income Groups,Unwed Mothers,Labor Turnover,Promotion (Occupational),Program Effectiveness,Program Evaluation,Program Implementation,Participation

This report summarizes the final impact results for the national Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) project. This project tested, using a random assignment design, the effectiveness of numerous programs intended to promote steady work and career advancement. All the programs targeted current and former welfare recipients and other low-wage workers, most of whom were single mothers. Given that earlier retention and advancement initiatives studied for these groups were largely not effective, ERA sought to examine a variety of programs that states and localities had developed for different populations, to determine whether effective strategies could be identified. In short, nine of the twelve programs examined in this report do not appear to be effective, but three programs increased employment levels, employment stability, and/or earnings, relative to control group levels, after three to four years of follow-up. (Contains 3 tables and 6 footnotes.) [This paper was written with the assistance of Aaron Hill and Sonya Williams. For the full report, see ED514699.]
Testing for Thresholds in Associations between Child Care Quality and Child Outcomes
Author: Burchinal, Margaret
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Behavior Problems,Low Income Groups,Interpersonal Competence,Child Care,Educational Quality,Educational Improvement,Preschool Evaluation,Educational Indicators,Benchmarking,Rating Scales,Outcomes of Education,Emotional Intelligence,Instructional Effectiveness,Schematic Studies

Most of the literature has examined linear associations, yielding findings that higher quality is better and lower quality is worse (Vandell, 2004), but identification of thresholds in the association between quality and child outcomes has been a goal of researchers and policy makers for several reasons. A primary goal has been to identify levels in the association between quality and child outcomes at which the linear association begins to asymptote or level off, above or below which there is little evidence of increases in learning associated with increased in quality. A threshold that indicated that the quality-outcome association level off above a given level of quality would suggest that policies should focus on improving quality up to that threshold level, but improving quality above that point may not be necessary for improving child outcomes. Policy to address this goal would invest in lower or average quality classrooms while leaving classroom with quality scores above the threshold alone. In contrast, it is possible a threshold could define the minimum level at which a positive association between quality and outcomes is observed. In this scenario, there may be no detected relation between quality and outcome gains until quality reached a certain point on the scale; in other words, learning did not take place until classrooms demonstrated a minimal level and after that minimum, gains in learning increased as quality increased. This form of threshold effect would suggest that it is especially important to ensure that children experience at least the minimum level of quality child care in order for those experiences to be related to improved child outcomes. It would point perhaps to not allowing vouchers to pay for care that was below the threshold, while also incentivizing teachers above the threshold to continue to improve. One can see how the examination of thresholds may have considerable implications for the efficient and effective expenditure of funds, not only in relation to providing access to quality of a certain minimal level, but also in the targeting of funds to improve quality. Whether there was any evidence of thresholds in the association between quality of center-based child care and gains in academic and social skills was examined in 5 large studies of child care experiences of children from low-income families. Using a quadratic or spline regression approaches, findings suggested that teacher sensitivity was related to higher levels of social competence and lower levels of behavior problems only in high-quality classrooms. (Contains 2 tables and 2 figures.)
Sustained Earnings Gains for Residents in a Public Housing Jobs Program: Seven-Year Findings from the Jobs-Plus Demonstration. Policy Brief
Author: Riccio, James A.
Date: 2010-01-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Public Housing,Economically Disadvantaged,Employment Programs,Income,Employment,Demonstration Programs,Program Effectiveness,Program Costs,Urban Areas

The Jobs-Plus Community Revitalization Initiative for Public Housing Families was developed in the late 1990s in response to the growing concentration of joblessness, underemployment, welfare receipt, and poverty in some of the nation's most economically deprived communities: public housing developments and their surrounding neighborhoods. In many cities, public housing residents were some of the hardest-to-employ populations, and rates of employment below 50 percent were common. In addition, longstanding public housing rent policies, which calculate rent at 30 percent of income, essentially functioned as a hefty tax on earnings, discouraging work and contributing to low rates of employment. Stated simply, as a family's income rose, so did its rent. The 1998 Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act (QHWRA) attempted to encourage more work among public about what strategies can boost the economic self-sufficiency of public housing residents. To date, the program remains the only rigorous multisite evaluation focused on this question. Findings released in 2005 showed that, in sites where the program was fully implemented, Jobs-Plus led to large, sustained, and steadily growing gains in earnings. This policy brief recaps key findings from the 2005 study and continues the story by examining new, longer-term findings. (Contains 1 figure, 1 table and 6 notes.) [This paper was prepared with the assistance of Susan Blank, John Wallace, Johanna Walter, John Hutchins, Gordon Berlin, and Howard Bloom.]
Metaphor Analysis in the Educational Discourse: A Critical Review
Author: Zheng, Hong-bo
Date: 2010-09-00
Type: Information Analyses
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Cultural Differences,Figurative Language,Content Analysis,Discourse Analysis,Teacher Attitudes,Student Attitudes,Beliefs,Research Methodology,Educational Research,Literature Reviews,Teaching Methods,English (Second Language),Second Language Instruction,Second Language Learning

Metaphor analysis is based on the belief that metaphor is a powerful linguistic device, because it extends and encapsulates knowledge about the familiarity and unfamiliarity. Metaphor analysis has been adopted in the educational discourse. The paper categorizes the previous relevant research into 3: interactions between learners and institutions, teachers' perceptions of teaching and learners' beliefs of learning. And a critical review of 3 kinds of studies and suggestions for further research are ensued.
An Ethnic Cultural Study on Asian Students' Learning Statuses
Author: Liu, Bo
Date: 2010-09-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Academic Achievement,Learning Strategies,Asians,Educational Attitudes,Cognitive Style,Barriers,Educational Strategies,Cultural Influences,Ethnic Groups,Student Subcultures,Student Characteristics,Aptitude Treatment Interaction

This paper describes the learning statuses of Asian students, and connects their individual learning status with their cultures, attitudes, histories, family relations, etc. It also focuses on a wide range of aspects as academic performances, learning attitudes, cultures, race relations, schoolings, learning strategies, obstacles, etc., thus traces the causes of their learning cultures and learning obstacles, and also discusses some possible solutions to the obstacles.
Why from Early Environmental Education?
Author: Sabo, Helena Maria
Date: 2010-12-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Environmental Education,Foreign Countries,Conservation (Environment),World Problems,Student Attitudes,Student Interests,Young Children,Kindergarten,Natural Resources,Teaching Methods

Nature protection is increasingly becoming one of the most important concerns of contemporary society and of 3 major issues: deterioration prevention, environmental remediation actions and environmental reconstruction, which mainly consist of remedies, and preservation or maintenance of the de-polluted areas. Interest and love for nature are instinctive for most children. In addition, attitudes and beliefs of children formed at an early age are those retained for a better life. Therefore, the education made in kindergarten has to start from children's natural interest for plants and animals, for what is in general nature to them. This project is supported by Reithmeier (Germany), having in mind that Germany was the first that has implemented such guidelines at the international conference in Stockholm--under Agenda 21--introduced in school curriculum.
Analyzing the Micro Coherence in English Writing and Implications for the Teaching of English Writing
Author: Sui, Dan-ni
Date: 2010-12-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: English (Second Language),Writing (Composition),Rhetoric,Semantics,Statistical Analysis,Writing Instruction,Undergraduate Students,Foreign Countries

Based on LSA's (Latent Semantic Analysis) measuring textual coherence and Halliday and Hasan's cohesive concepts and their categorization of cohesive devices, this paper analyzes coherent relatedness and cohesive devices of 100 Chinese students' English writings. The results indicate that (1) LSA is proved to be an objective and appropriate method in measuring the textual coherence, and (2) close attention should be paid to the cultivation of textual coherence, which will be of significance to the teaching of English writing. Finally, the paper provides some suggestions for college English writing. (Contains 4 tables.)
The Syntactic Positions of Adverbs and the Second Language Acquisition
Author: Zhang, Zi-hong
Date: 2010-09-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: English (Second Language),Second Language Learning,Form Classes (Languages),Language Universals,Adult Learning,Adult Students,Chinese,College Students

Based on the theory of linguistic universal and Second Language Acquisition (SLA), the paper discusses the acquisition of syntactic positions of adverbs in English. According to the data collected, the paper concludes that what adult learners acquire about adverbs is the distinction of different adverbs and the different scopes they take. (Contains 3 figures.)
Grammatical Metaphor and Its Difficulties in Application
Author: Wang, Xue-feng
Date: 2010-12-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Grammar,Figurative Language,College English,Writing Instruction,Second Language Learning,English (Second Language),Statistical Analysis,Data,English,Chinese

Grammatical metaphor is the term used by Halliday to refer to meaning transference in grammar. Instead of the congruent realization of a norm, the metaphorical representation has become the norm in many instances. Metaphorical modes of expression are characteristic of all adult discourses (Halliday, 1994). The shift from congruent to metaphorical modes of expression is also the characteristic of written English. For foreign language learners, getting to know the features of the target language and using them in their own expressions are important. This paper examines the features of grammatical metaphor in written English and then discusses the difficulties and problems of the application of these features in teaching writing to college English learners. This paper also provides some research findings and pedagogical implications for developing awareness of grammatical metaphor in writing of Chinese college learners of English. (Contains 4 tables.)
Assets for Children: Experiences in Asia and Implications for China
Author: Zou, Li
Date: 2010-08-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Economic Development,Foreign Countries,Local Government,Child Development,Public Policy,Role of Education,Social Development,Educational Finance,Money Management,Educational Opportunities,Government Role,Federal Government,Birth Rate,Low Income Groups

A growing number of national and local governments view child development accounts (CDAs) as an innovative policy tool for social and economic development. This article reviews the global landscape of CDAs, presents three CDA policy cases from Asia, analyzes main themes and discusses potential implications for China. (Contains 1 table.)
On Multi-Dimensional Vocabulary Teaching Mode for College English Teaching
Author: Zhou, Li-na
Date: 2010-09-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Vocabulary,English (Second Language),Second Language Instruction,College Second Language Programs,Teaching Methods,Grammar Translation Method,Audiolingual Methods,Communicative Competence (Languages),Foreign Countries

This paper analyses the major approaches in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) vocabulary teaching from historical perspective and puts forward multi-dimensional vocabulary teaching mode for college English. The author stresses that multi-dimensional approaches of communicative vocabulary teaching, lexical phrase teaching method, the grammar translation approach as well as audio-lingual method should be adopted, tasks should be designed and context be constructed to improve learners' vocabulary acquiring competence and language competence. [This paper was supported by China Youth University for Political Sciences Fund as Key Scientific Research Project.]