ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Establishing a State Consortium for Assessment: A Discussion of Factors to Consider
Author: DePascale, Charles A.
Date: 2009-12-23
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Student Evaluation,Program Effectiveness,Motivation,Best Practices,Consortia,Standardized Tests,State Standards,Testing Programs,Evaluation Methods,Cost Effectiveness,Cooperative Planning,Role,Governance

Unparalleled demands on state assessment programs and conditions associated with the availability of federal monies, particularly the $350 million portion of the $4 billion Race to the Top funds set aside for assessment, have led to a renewed interest in the establishment of state consortia for the development and administration of assessment programs. The motivation to establish state consortia may be driven by a combination of factors such as a) the desire for national, cross-state comparisons on a common assessment produced by a consortium of states, b) the belief that a consortium of states working together is more efficient and cost effective than individual states developing their own assessments, c) the belief that a consortium of states working together will produce higher quality assessments than any individual state working on its own, and d) the belief that a consortium of states working together increases the equity in assessment resources available across states. Similarly, there are a variety of purposes for which an assessment consortium might be established including a) developing common, general summative assessments to be administered across states, b) developing common components of a general, comprehensive assessment system, c) developing specific assessments to measure the knowledge and skills of particular subgroups of students (e.g., ELL or SWD), and d) conducting research and determining best practices in the design and use of various assessment models, item types, and alternative formats to create comprehensive assessment systems. Regardless of the motivation for establishing the consortium or the specific purpose for which the consortium is established, there are common factors that will impact the operation of any consortium that should be considered as it is being established. This document provides a framework that includes four major areas to consider when establishing a consortium: (1) Role of consortium members; (2) Governance of the consortium; (3) Management of the consortium; and (4) Structural organization of the consortium. Although these areas are interrelated, the issues encountered within each area are significant and distinct enough to warrant discussion within its own section. In part because there are no hard and fast rules regarding the organization of a state consortium, it is critical that any proposal to develop a consortium include consideration of how issues within each of these four areas will be addressed.
Truth Be Told: How College Students Evaluate and Use Information in the Digital Age. Project Information Literacy Progress Report
Author: Head, Alison J.
Date: 2010-11-01
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: College Students,Student Surveys,Information Literacy,Information Seeking,Information Skills,Student Research,Research Skills,Assignments,Internet,Campuses,Evaluators,Web 2.0 Technologies,Library Materials,Electronic Libraries

A report about college students and their information-seeking strategies and research difficulties, including findings from 8,353 survey respondents from college students on 25 campuses distributed across the U.S. in spring of 2010, as part of Project Information Literacy. Respondents reported taking little at face value and were frequent evaluators of Web and library sources used for course work, and to a lesser extent, of Web content for personal use. Most respondents turned to friends and family when asking for help with evaluating information for personal use and instructors when evaluating information for course research. Respondents reported using a repertoire of research techniques--mostly for writing papers--for completing one research assignment to the next, though few respondents reported using Web 2.0 applications for collaborating on assignments. Even though most respondents considered themselves adept at finding and evaluating information, especially when it was retrieved from the Web, students reported difficulties getting started with research assignments and determining the nature and scope of what was required of them. Overall, the findings suggest students use an information-seeking and research strategy driven by efficiency and predictability for managing and controlling all of the information available to them on college campuses, though conducting comprehensive research and learning something new is important to most, along with passing the course and the grade received. Recommendations are included for how campus-wide stakeholders--faculty, librarians, and higher education administrators--can work together to help inform pedagogies for a new century. Appended are: (1) Methods; (2) Complete Data Sets; and (3) Survey Instrument. (Contains 32 figures and 55 footnotes.)
Lessons Learned: How College Students Seek Information in the Digital Age. Project Information Literacy Progress Report
Author: Head, Alison J.
Date: 2009-12-01
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: College Students,User Needs (Information),Information Seeking,Search Strategies,Library Services,Library Role,Librarians,Information Needs,Navigation (Information Systems),Online Searching

A report of findings from 2,318 respondents to a survey carried out among college students on six campuses distributed across the U.S. in the spring of 2009, as part of Project Information Literacy. Respondents, while curious in the beginning stages of research, employed a consistent and predictable research strategy for finding information, whether they were conducting course-related or everyday life research. Almost all of the respondents turned to the same set of tried and true information resources in the initial stages of research, regardless of their information goals. Almost all students used course readings and Google first for course-related research and Google and Wikipedia for everyday life research. Most students used library resources, especially scholarly databases for course-related research and far fewer, in comparison, used library services that required interacting with librarians. The findings suggest that students conceptualize research, especially tasks associated with seeking information, as a competency learned by rote, rather than as an opportunity to learn, develop, or expand upon an information-gathering strategy which leverages the wide range of resources available to them in the digital age. Research Methods and Sampling are appended. (Contains 15 figures and 30 footnotes.) [Funding for this paper was provided by ProQuest.]
Balancing Act: How College Students Manage Technology While in the Library during Crunch Time. Project Information Literacy Research Report
Author: Head, Alison J.
Date: 2011-10-12
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Undergraduate Students,Interviews,Use Studies,Library Equipment,Library Materials,Library Services,Interior Space,Libraries,Physical Environment,Value Judgment,Laptop Computers,Time Management,Technology Uses in Education,Context Effect,Course Content,Tests,School Schedules,Research Papers (Students),Social Networks,Computer Mediated Communication

The paper presents findings from 560 interviews with undergraduates on 10 campuses distributed across the US, as part of Project Information Literacy (PIL). Overall, the findings suggest that students use a &quot;less is more&quot; approach to manage and control all of the IT devices and information systems available to them while they are in the library during the final weeks of the term. In the hour before we approached them for an interview, more respondents had checked for messages (e.g., Facebook, email, texts, IMs) more than any other task while they were in the library. A majority of respondents who had checked for messages during the previous hour had also prepared assignments and/or studied for courses. More respondents reported using library equipment, such as computers and printers, more than they had used any other library resource or service. Over half the sample considered their laptop their most essential IT device and most had a Web browser and, to a lesser extent, a word processing application running at the time of the interviews. Most students were using one or two Web sites at the time of the interviews, but there was little overlap among the Web sites they were using. A large majority of the respondents could be classified as &quot;light&quot; technology users, i.e., students who use one or two IT devices to support one or two primary activities (at the time of the interviews). A preliminary theory is introduced that describes how students' technology usage may be influenced by locale (i.e., the campus library) and circumstance (i.e., crunch time). Recommendations are made for how campus-wide stakeholders--faculty, librarians, higher education administrators, and commercial publishers--can work together to improve pedagogies for 21st century undergraduates. Appended are: (1) Methods; and (2) Interview Script. (Contains 23 figures and 51 footnotes.)
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Volume 61, Number 33
Author: Moolenaar, Ronald L., Ed.
Date: 2012-08-24
Type: Collected Works - Serial
Subjects: Pregnancy,Poisoning,Drug Therapy,Patients,Foreign Countries,Disease Control,Kindergarten,Young Children,Immunization Programs,Child Health,Diseases,Microbiology,Public Health,Disease Incidence,Communicable Diseases,Hospitals

The &quot;Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report&quot; (&quot;MMWR&quot;) Series is prepared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Data presented by the Notifiable Disease Data Team and 122 Cities Mortality Data Team in the weekly &quot;MMWR&quot; are provisional, based on weekly reports to CDC by state health departments. This issue of &quot;Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report&quot; includes the following reports: (1) Lead Poisoning in Pregnant Women Who Used Ayurvedic Medications from India--New York City, 2011-2012 (Paromita Hore, Munerah Ahmed, Jacqueline Ehrlich, Celia Ng, Lourdes Steffen, Slavenka Sedlar, Phyllis Curry-Johnson, Nathan Graber, Deborah Nagin, Nancy Clark, Robert Saper, and Marissa Scalia Sucosky); (2) Vaccination Coverage Among Children in Kindergarten--United States, 2011-12 School Year (Stacie M. Greby, Karen G. Wooten, Cynthia L. Knighton, Bob Avey, and Shannon Stokley); and (3) Tattoo-Associated Nontuberculous Mycobacterial Skin Infections--Multiple States, 2011-2012 (Brenden Bedard, Byron Kennedy, Vincent Escuyer, Kara Mitchell, Jeffrey S. Duchin, Paul Pottinger, Stanley Hurst, Ken Sharp, Timothy Wickham, Sarah Jackson, Wendy Bamberg, Pamela LeBlanc, Linda M. Katz, Taranisia MacCannell, Judith Noble-Wang, Heather O'Connell, Alexander Kallen, Bette Jensen, Duc B. Nguyen, and Michael H. Kinzer). QuickStats are also included. Individual reports contain figures, tables and references.
School Involvement Leave: Providing Leave for Parental Involvement in School Activities. Policy Briefing Series. Issue 18
Author: Curlew, Mary
Date: 2009-00-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: School Activities,Parent Participation,Performance Factors,Personnel Policy,Leaves of Absence,Fringe Benefits,Labor Legislation,Information Sources,Parent Teacher Conferences,Parent School Relationship,Politics of Education

One of the most important factors in school performance is parental involvement. However, many parents do not have the flexibility in their work schedules or the leave policies necessary to attend school functions. As a result, legislators are creating policies to address this issue. School involvement leave policies provide parents with short-term, job-protected time away from the workplace to attend parent-teacher conferences or other school-related events. This paper discusses the following: (1) What is school involvement leave and why is it a policy issue?; (2) What are the benefits and concerns regarding school involvement leave policies?; (3) What policies have been enacted or proposed to address school involvement leave?; and (4) Where can a person get more information? (Contains 9 sources.)
Applying Systems Thinking to Improve Special Education in Ohio
Author: Levenson, Nathan
Date: 2012-09-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Special Education,Change Strategies,Educational Change,Academic Accommodations (Disabilities),Systems Approach,Educational Improvement,Special Needs Students,Delivery Systems,Cost Effectiveness,Educational Quality,Integrated Services,State Action,State Policy,Educational Opportunities,Free Enterprise System

This report was written at the request of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Educational Service Center of Central Ohio, to inform the discussion of state-level policy makers and other stakeholders on how to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of services provided to Ohio's students with special needs. It is critical for Ohio to find ways to deliver high-quality cost-effective services given the state's and school districts' persistent fiscal challenges. Funding of special education is not a new topic for policy makers, but this report looks at it from a new perspective--applying systems thinking across all relevant funds, agencies, and service providers. Simply put, systems thinking views all the parts of a system in the context of and in relation to the other parts, rather than as isolated elements. Optimizing the entire system as a whole yields better outcomes with fewer unintended consequences than analyzing and improving each element on its own. When done well, systems thinking can create a reality in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This report suggests opportunities to create greater operational effectiveness and efficiencies by more formally integrating statewide agencies to serve children with disabilities. Appended are: (1) Selected funding data; and (2) About the research. (Contains 3 tables.) [Foreword by Bart Anderson and Terry Ryan.]
A Guide to Personalizing Learning: Suggestions for the Race to the Top-District Competition. An Education White Paper
Author: Evans, Meg
Date: 2012-08-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Guides,Federal Legislation,Federal Programs,Competition,School Districts,Blended Learning,Web Based Instruction,Case Studies,Educational Technology,Educational Resources,Web Sites,Guidelines,Individualized Instruction,Elementary Schools,Secondary Schools,Data,Models,Program Implementation,Educational Innovation

The top priority for the U.S. Department of Education's new Race to the Top-District (RTT-D) competition is to create personalized-learning environments to bolster student achievement: &quot;Absolute Priority 1: Personalized Learning Environments. To meet this priority, an applicant must coherently and comprehensively address how it will build on the core educational assurance areas (as defined in the notice) to create learning environments that are designed to significantly improve learning and teaching through the personalization of strategies, tools, and supports for students and educators that are aligned with college- and career-ready standards (as defined in the notice) or college- and career-ready graduation requirements (as defined in the notice); accelerate student achievement and deepen student learning by meeting the academic needs of each student; increase the effectiveness of educators; expand student access to the most effective educators; decrease achievement gaps across student groups; and increase the rates at which students graduate from high school prepared for college and careers.&quot; Using online learning in blended-learning environments will be critical for most Local Education Agencies (LEAs) to realize this priority. As Innosight Institute has written in several reports, there are a growing number of schools and districts across the country that are implementing blended-learning models. Innosight Institute has collected dozens of case studies of blended-learning programs on its website. These profiles may be an important resource for those LEAs seeking to apply to the competition, as the profiles chronicle the history of how schools and districts started their blended-learning programs, the effect of these programs on student achievement, the blended-learning models they use, and the software or Internet tools that power these programs. This paper describes how personalized learning looks like in practice and discusses the essential elements of an effective transformation. (Contains 2 figures.)
Classifying K-12 Blended Learning
Author: Staker, Heather
Date: 2012-05-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Blended Learning,Definitions,Taxonomy,Elementary Secondary Education,Models,Educational Practices,Program Descriptions,Teaching Methods,Educational Principles,Cluster Grouping

The growth of online learning in the K-12 sector is occurring both remotely through virtual schools and on campuses through blended learning. In emerging fields, definitions are important because they create a shared language that enables people to talk about the new phenomena. The blended-learning taxonomy and definitions presented in this paper expand upon and refine the authors' previous work in helping to create a shared language for the K-12 blended-learning sector. In their report titled, "The rise of K-12 blended learning," the authors observed that there were six main blended-learning models emerging in the sector from the perspective of the student. This paper introduces a number of changes to that taxonomy based on feedback from the field and the need to update the research to keep pace with new innovations that are occurring in blended learning. Most importantly, the paper eliminates two of the six blended-learning models--Face-to-Face Driver and Online Lab--because they appear to duplicate other models and make the categorization scheme too rigid to accommodate the diversity of blended-learning models in practice. By moving from six to four overarching models, they have created more breathing room in the definitions. They hope these new models will better describe the majority of programs so that nearly all blended-learning programs will fit comfortably within one of the four. Notes about how this taxonomy differs from the taxonomy in "The rise of K-12 blended learning," January 2011 are appended. (Contains 12 figures and 16 notes.)
The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning: Profiles of Emerging Models
Author: Staker, Heather
Date: 2011-05-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Blended Learning,Educational Development,Educational Technology,Influence of Technology,Technology Integration,Technology Uses in Education,Technological Advancement,Profiles,Delivery Systems,Institutional Characteristics,Educational Practices,Models,Definitions,Educational Trends,Check Lists

Some innovations change everything. The rise of personal computers in the 1970s decimated the mini-computer industry. TurboTax forever changed tax accounting, and MP3s made libraries of compact discs obsolete. These innovations bear the traits of what Harvard Business School Professor Clayton M. Christensen terms a "disruptive innovation." Disruptive innovations fundamentally transform a sector by replacing expensive, complicated, and inaccessible products or services with much less expensive, simpler, and more convenient alternatives. Online learning appears to be a classic disruptive innovation with the potential not just to improve the current model of education delivery, but to transform it. Educators and entrepreneurs are increasingly creating blended-learning environments--where rather than doing online learning at a distance, students learn in an adult-supervised school environment for at least part of the time. This paper profiles 40 organizations that have blended or have plans to blend online learning with brick-and-mortar classrooms. These represent a range of operators, including state virtual schools, charter management organizations, individual charter schools, independent schools, districts, and private entities. The organizations profiled in this paper are not a "top 40" list. Thousands of other schools are currently participating in blended learning and may have superior programs. Furthermore, this report does not provide a comprehensive market analysis, but rather a survey that offers a more intimate look at a small sample, with the intention to identify emerging models. Appended are: (1) List of programs by model; (2) Technology wish list; and (3) Policy wish list. (Contains 12 figures.)
Disrupting College: How Disruptive Innovation Can Deliver Quality and Affordability to Postsecondary Education
Author: Christensen, Clayton M.
Date: 2011-02-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Postsecondary Education,Educational Theories,Innovation,Higher Education,Influence of Technology,Technological Advancement,Change Strategies,Educational Strategies,Educational Quality,Access to Education,Cost Effectiveness,Student Costs,Institutional Characteristics,Educational Practices,Educational Policy,Commercialization,Educational Change,Organizational Change,Technology Uses in Education

This report has not sought to study higher education to reach conclusions about higher education. Rather, it has been to treat the industry's challenges, at their core, as problems of managing innovation effectively. The authors therefore examine the industry through the lenses of the theories that have emerged from research on innovation. Higher education has seen incredible cost inflation in recent years, which is reflected in the 10 percent annual rate of inflation of tuition in nominal terms. This is the perfectly natural result of head-on competition in the plane of sustaining innovation. Disruption hasn't historically been possible in higher education because there hasn't been an upwardly scalable technology driver available. Yet online learning changes this. Disruption is usually underway when the leading companies in an industry are in financial crisis, even while entrants at the "low end" of the industry are growing rapidly and profitably. This is currently underway in higher education. This report is meant to give policymakers as well as the administrators and trustees of traditional universities a language and a way of framing the problem so that they can formulate and implement viable strategies for staying strong in the future. (Contains 11 figures, 4 tables, and 54 endnotes.)
Moving from Inputs to Outputs to Outcomes: The Future of Education Policy
Author: Horn, Michael B.
Date: 2011-06-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Educational Policy,Best Practices,Educational Quality,Case Studies,Online Courses,Electronic Learning,Outcomes of Education,Input Output Analysis,Graduation Requirements,Change Strategies,Educational Change,Educational Resources,Elementary Secondary Education,Policy Formation

Over the previous two years, Innosight Institute has published a series of case studies about the fast-growing field of online learning in K-12 education. One aim of this effort was to identify policies that had either positive or negative ramifications for students. This policy brief, sponsored by the Joyce Foundation, summarizes some of that thinking and research and builds upon Digital Learning Now's 10 elements of high-quality digital learning, to which Innosight Institute contributed. Although this policy brief discusses a few of the policy issues on which the case studies have shed some light, it is not a comprehensive list of policy recommendations for online learning. (Contains 31 notes.)