ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Florida Assessments for Instruction in Reading, Aligned to the Language Arts Florida Standards, FAIR-FS, Grades 3 through 12. Technical Manual
Author: Foorman, Barbara R.
Date: 2015-03-26
Type: Guides - General
Subjects: Reading Instruction,Screening Tests,Reading Comprehension,Oral Language,Reading Tests,Adaptive Testing,Computer Assisted Testing,Elementary Secondary Education,Alphabets,Item Response Theory,Test Items,Test Norms,Scores,Test Reliability,Test Validity,Achievement Tests,Standardized Tests,Correlation,Intelligence Tests,Verbal Ability,Vocabulary

The FAIR-FS consists of computer-adaptive reading comprehension and oral language screening tasks that provide measures to track growth over time, as well as a Probability of Literacy Success (PLS) linked to grade-level performance (i.e., the 40th percentile) on the reading comprehension subtest of the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT-10) in the 2014-2015 school year and will predict to the Florida Standards Assessment once those data are available. Thus, the FAIR-FS provides universal screening and diagnostic tasks in a precise and efficient computer-adaptive framework with psychometrics and norms derived from large samples of Florida K-12 students representative of Florida demographics. By including Vocabulary Knowledge and Syntax Knowledge Tasks, the FAIR-FS has excellent construct coverage of oral language, which has been shown to account for the vast majority (i.e., 72%-96%, with a median of 87%) of individual differences in reading comprehension in grades 4-10 (Foorman, Koon, Petscher, Mitchell, &amp; Truckenmiller, 2015) and comparable variance to decoding fluency in grades 1-2 (Foorman, Herrera, Petscher, Mitchell, &amp; Truckenmiller, 2015). In grades 3 through 12, the FAIR-FS consists of four computer-adaptive tasks that each provide unique information regarding a student's literacy skills. The FAIR-FS efficiently assesses multiple research-based component skills of reading comprehension to help teachers diagnose skill weaknesses and target instruction. This technical manual provides: (1) An introduction to the alphabetic principle; (2) Comprehending Written Language (better known as Reading Comprehension); (3) Summary of FAIR-FS Constructs and Tasks; and (4) Description of the Tasks in the FAIR-FS. Description of Method, Item Response Theory, Guidelines for Retaining Items, Linking Design and Item Response Analytic Framework, Norming Studies and Score Definitions are also provided. Information on Reliability and Validity is also provided in this manual. Appended are: (1) G3-G12 Weights; (2) Distribution of the Log Odds and Predicted Probability of Success on the SAT-10 at the 40th Percentile; (3) Distribution of the Log Odds and Predicted Probability of Success on the SAT-10 at the 70th Percentile; (4) Quantile Correlations between FAIR-FS Vocabulary Knowledge and PPVT-IV; (5) Quantile Correlations between FAIR-FS Word Recognition and TOWRE Real Word; (6) Quantile Correlations between FAIR-FS Word Recognition and TOWRE Non-Word; and (7) Quantile Correlations between FAIR-FS Syntax Knowledge and GJT.
The Condition of Education 2016. NCES 2016-144
Author: Kena, Grace
Date: 2016-05-00
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: Educational Indicators,Elementary Secondary Education,Postsecondary Education,Educational Attainment,Income,Employment,Unemployment,Family Characteristics,Enrollment,Preschool Education,Kindergarten,Public Schools,Private Schools,Race,Ethnicity,English Language Learners,Disabilities,Undergraduate Students,Graduate Students,Institutional Characteristics,Educational Environment,Charter Schools,Low Income Students,Crime,School Safety,Teacher Student Ratio,Educational Finance,Expenditures,National Competency Tests,Reading Achievement,Mathematics Achievement,Achievement Tests,Foreign Countries,International Assessment,Secondary School Students,Science Achievement,Course Selection (Students),Graduation Rate,Dropout Rate,Out of School Youth,Student Characteristics,Teacher Characteristics,College Faculty,Academic Degrees,School Holding Power,Public Colleges,Private Colleges,Student Costs,Student Loan Programs,Student Financial Aid,High School Graduates,Young Adults,Grade 4,Grade 8,Grade 12,College Graduates,Socioeconomic Status,Achievement Gains,Scores

Congress has required that the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) produce an annual report to policymakers about the progress of education in the United States. &quot;The Condition of Education 2016&quot; presents 43 key indicators on important topics and trends in U.S. education. These indicators focus on population characteristics, such as educational attainment and economic outcomes; participation in education at all levels; and several contextual aspects of education, including international comparisons, at both the elementary and secondary education level and the postsecondary education level. The three Spotlight indicators for the 2016 report provide a more in-depth look at some of the data. Supplemental indicators, which help to provide a fuller picture of the state of American education, are available online. &quot;The Condition&quot; includes an At a Glance section, which allows readers to quickly make comparisons within and across indicators, and a Highlights section, which captures a key finding or set of findings from each indicator. The report contains a Reader's Guide, Glossary, and a Guide to Data Sources that provide additional information to help place the indicators in context. In addition, each indicator references the data tables that were used to produce the indicator, most of which are in the &quot;Digest of Education Statistics.&quot; This year's &quot;Condition&quot; shows that 91 percent of young adults ages 25 to 29 had a high school diploma or its equivalent in 2015, and that 36 percent had a bachelor's or higher degree. Median earnings continued to be higher for 25- to 34-year-olds with higher levels of education in 2014, and in 2015, the employment rate was generally higher for those with higher levels of education. [For &quot;The Condition of Education 2015. NCES 2015-144,&quot; see ED556901.]
&quot;What Happened Before?&quot; &quot;What Happened After?&quot; The Value and Process of Visual Thinking Strategies
Author: Williams, Heidi
Date: 2016-05-23
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Visual Literacy,Learning Strategies,Thinking Skills,Middle School Students,Language Arts,Educational Practices,Assignments,Reflection,Inferences,Generalization,Critical Thinking,Creative Activities,Descriptive Writing,Prediction,Art Activities,Art Expression,Teaching Methods,Painting (Visual Arts)

(Purpose) The purpose of this paper is to describe visual literacy and an adapted version of Visual Thinking Strategy (VTS) and its value to enhance students' inferential thinking. (Methodology) An example of a middle school VTS, art-integrated lesson is described as well as reflections of a middle school language arts teacher about what she learned about her students as thinkers, writers, and painters. Students were shown Winslow Homer's painting, The Gulf Stream and were asked literal, inferential, and generalization questions about it. They were asked to write a paragraph of what they inferred happened before or after the scene. Students also wrote justifications for their inferences. They passed their paragraph to their neighbor who painted the scene based on details provided. (Results) Students were motivated to voice and justify their inference when asked to describe what happened before and after the scene depicted in Winslow Homer's painting. They learned that specific details in their descriptive writing about their prediction of what happened before and after were needed, to help their classmate paint a scene that accurately portrayed their classmate's thinking. (Conclusions) Viewing art and painting helped students understand the process of how to think inferentially. (Recommendations) Teachers are encouraged to include the Visual Thinking Strategy into content area art-integrated lessons. (Additional data) Contains 9 Figures and 43 References.
Numerical Development
Author: Siegler, Robert S.
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Numeracy,Numbers,Arithmetic,Fractions,Intervention,Instructional Effectiveness,Mathematics Instruction,Difficulty Level,Cognitive Development,Theories,Cultural Differences

In this review, we attempt to integrate two crucial aspects of numerical development: learning the magnitudes of individual numbers and learning arithmetic. Numerical magnitude development involves gaining increasingly precise knowledge of increasing ranges and types of numbers: from non-symbolic to small symbolic numbers, from smaller to larger whole numbers, and from whole to rational numbers. One reason why this development is important is that precision of numerical magnitude knowledge is correlated with, predictive of, and causally related to both whole and rational number arithmetic. Rational number arithmetic, however, also poses challenges beyond understanding the magnitudes of the individual numbers. Some of these challenges are inherent; they are present for all learners. Other challenges are culturally contingent; they vary from country to country and classroom to classroom. Generating theories and data that help surmount the challenges of rational number arithmetic is a promising and important goal for future numerical development research. [At the time of submission to ERIC this article was in press with &quot;Annual Review of Psychology.&quot;]
Suburban Schools: The Unrecognized Frontier in Public Education
Author: Gill, Sean
Date: 2016-05-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Suburban Schools,Public Education,Educational Quality,School Districts,Disadvantaged Youth,Student Needs,Poverty,Educational Finance,Teacher Competencies,Political Issues,Risk

Over the past two decades, big cities have been the most consistent focus of investment and controversy in American public education. The challenges for big cities are obvious. Increasing numbers of foreign-born students and students living in poverty, coupled with dramatic declines in the numbers of native-born middle-class students, mean that cities face an unprecedented array of educational needs and great uncertainty about how to meet them. Debates about how to make city public schools effective, particularly about whether to shore up existing arrangements or experiment with new ways of running and overseeing schools, have been intense. While urban schools continue to warrant attention, school districts in many suburbs just outside the central city's limits (inner-ring suburbs) have similar trends but have received less notice. These school districts--from Prince George's County, Maryland, to Reynoldsburg, Ohio, and Aurora, Colorado, to Burien, Washington--have also experienced population changes as dramatic as those in big cities. Some might argue that inner-ring suburbs undergoing population changes have been lucky to avoid the battles over education policy, teacher strikes, and state interventions. But for suburbs with growing numbers of disadvantaged students, neglect has not all been benign. Many suburbs are economically distressed and not well-equipped to handle major new challenges. Even suburban school systems that were effective for the groups that moved there after World War II are likely not prepared to meet the new array of student needs or to find solutions to unprecedented problems. In this essay the authors review the evidence on these points, consider the strengths and weaknesses of inner-ring suburbs when faced with new challenges, and suggest ways leaders--local, state, and philanthropic--can help suburban schools adapt to the challenges they face.
Teacher Shortages: What We Know. Teacher Shortage Series
Author: Aragon, Stephanie
Date: 2016-05-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Teacher Shortage,Alternative Teacher Certification,Incentives,Teacher Orientation,Mentors,Evaluation,Feedback (Response),Teacher Leadership,Leaders,Labor Market,Teacher Recruitment,Teacher Persistence,Faculty Mobility,Teacher Supply and Demand,Teacher Education Programs,Education Majors,Enrollment

This brief is the first in a series of reports examining the teacher shortage dilemma. It considers what the research says about teacher shortages and highlights recent state task force findings. Designed to guide state leaders in policy decisions, the briefs that follow examine five strategies states are using to address shortages: (1) Alternative Certification; (2) Financial Incentives; (3) Induction and Mentorship; (4) Evaluation and Feedback; and (5) Teacher Leadership.
The Transfer Playbook: Essential Practices for Two- and Four-Year Colleges
Author: Wyner, Joshua
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Guides - Non-Classroom
Subjects: Community Colleges,Partnerships in Education,College Transfer Students,Universities,Transitional Programs,Student Records,Bachelors Degrees,Educational Attainment,Guides,Alignment (Education),Educational Quality,Academic Advising

With their &quot;open door&quot; admissions policies and lower tuition, community colleges offer a gateway to higher education for millions of American students. Indeed, students who enter higher education through community colleges are much more likely than those who start at four-year institutions to be low-income or the first in their family to attend college. This playbook is a practical guide to designing and implementing a key set of practices that will help community college and four-year college partners realize the promise of the transfer process. The playbook is based on the practices of six sets of community colleges and universities that, together, serve transfer students well. Using student data from the National Student Clearinghouse, pairs of institutions that have higher than expected rates of bachelor's degree attainment for transfer students given their student demographics and institutional characteristics were selected. The first three sections describe essential practices underlying three strategies: (1) Prioritize Transfer; (2) Create Clear Programmatic Pathways with Aligned High-Quality Instruction; and (3) Provide Tailored Transfer Student Advising. Recognizing that there is still room for even the best current practice to improve, the fourth section of the playbook includes a discussion of &quot;next frontiers&quot; of practice; these are practices that even the high-performing community colleges and universities profiled here have only begun to work on in their continuing efforts to improve outcomes for their students. With that grounding, the fifth section lists activities for community colleges and four-year colleges to undertake in order to implement the strategies. The playbook concludes with a synthesis of practitioners' perspectives on the benefits and challenges associated with state transfer articulation policies. The Appendix describes the selection methodology and research design in greater detail.
Advanced Placement: Model Policy Components. Policy Analysis
Author: Zinth, Jennifer
Date: 2016-05-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Advanced Placement,Educational Policy,Policy Analysis,High School Students,State Policy,Models,Intellectual Disciplines,English,Mathematics,Computer Science Education,Sciences,History,Social Sciences,Languages,Art,Postsecondary Education,Outcomes of Education,Program Development,Program Implementation,Access to Education,Online Courses,Disproportionate Representation,Minority Group Students,Professional Development,Quality Assurance,Credits,Tests,Scores

Advanced Placement (AP), launched in 1955 by the College Board as a program to offer gifted high school students the opportunity to complete entry-level college coursework, has since expanded to encourage a broader array of students to tackle challenging content. This Education Commission of the State's Policy Analysis identifies key components of a comprehensive state AP policy, as well as model state policies, primarily from Arkansas, that align with each component. This analysis also provides a brief summary of subject areas in which AP courses and exams are currently offered, reasons states and districts are expanding AP access, and research supporting expansion of AP opportunities.
State Policy Leadership for the Future: History of State Coordination and Governance and Alternatives for the Future
Author: McGuinness, Aims
Date: 2016-05-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: State Policy,Higher Education,Educational Policy,Policy Formation,Government Role,Barriers,Planning,Financial Support,Budgeting,Resource Allocation,Databases,Information Management,State Regulation,Governance,Responsibility,Educational History,United States History,Educational Legislation,Leadership,Economic Climate

A decade ago, the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education (the National Center) issued a policy brief, &quot;State Capacity for Higher Education Policy.&quot; The National Center's core recommendation: States must have a broad-based, independent, credible public entity with a clear charge to increase the state's educational attainment and prepare citizens for the workforce. This paper reviews the historical development of the state role in higher education as a foundation for discussion of these questions: (1) Was the recommendation of the National Center realistic? What barriers continue to exist to the establishment of a state policy leadership entity?; and (2) What alternatives are available to provide the needed state policy leadership, especially in cases where existing structures are unable to play this role? There are essentially six functions that fall within the purview of entities labeled &quot;state higher education agency:&quot; (1) State-level planning; (2) State finance policy: budgeting, appropriations and resource allocation; (3) Maintenance of databases and conversion of data into information that guides policy making; (4) Regulation of higher education institutions or academic programs; (5) Administration of state-level services (for example, administration of student financial aid programs); and (6) Governance of higher education systems and institutions. In some states, a single entity is responsible for most or all of these functions. However, in most states, the responsibility for these functions is dispersed among multiple entities. How states carry out these six functions has evolved over time. The origins of current structures are rooted in each state's history and culture. This paper reviews the development of the state role in higher education using these six functions as an organizing framework. The framework provides a template that states can use to diagnose how they carry out these functions. Appended are: (1) Six State-Level Functions: Summary of Change Over Phases; (2) Change in Complexity of Major Decision-Points That Affect State Higher Education Policy, Early 20th Century to Present; and (3) Authority of State Boards and Agencies of Higher Education, 2015.
Distributed Item Review: Administrator User Guide. Technical Report #1603
Author: Irvin, P. Shawn
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Guides - Non-Classroom
Subjects: Test Items,Test Reviews,Test Validity,Guides,Administrators

The Distributed Item Review (DIR) is a secure and flexible, web-based system designed to present test items to expert reviewers across a broad geographic area for evaluation of important dimensions of quality (e.g., alignment with standards, bias, sensitivity, and student accessibility). The DIR is comprised of essential features that allow system administrators to design and conduct customized review studies, in which test items are bulk uploaded, paired with target academic content/performance standards and images, and then organized and assigned for review by selected experts. Administrators can choose from predefined item review questions, or design new review questions pertinent to their study. A variety of administrator-designed support resources can be uploaded and associated with item review studies. This document provides detailed information about the DIR system, framed by a step-by-step administrator's guide to successfully creating and conducting test item reviews using the DIR. The steps in this guide are presented in an order that comprehensively and parsimoniously discusses the principle steps; however, a DIR administrator may alter the sequence of the steps outlined, and possibly omit or alter a given step. Prior to reading this user guide and attempting to create a DIR item review, it is recommended that prospective administrators view the DIR System Introduction--downloadable as a Portable Document Format (.pdf) at: http://www.brtprojects.org/publications/presentations. The slides give prospective DIR administrators an overview of the system, offering a jumpstart to proceeding through this guide.
&quot;Brown&quot; at 62: School Segregation by Race, Poverty and State
Author: Orfield, Gary
Date: 2016-05-23
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Desegregation Litigation,School Desegregation,Civil Rights,Public Schools,United States History,School Segregation,Court Litigation,White Students,African American Students,Hispanic American Students,Asian American Students,Social Justice,Equal Education,Geographic Location,Racial Composition

As the anniversary of &quot;Brown v. Board of Education&quot; decision arrives again without any major initiatives to mitigate spreading and deepening segregation in the nation's schools, the Civil Rights Project adds to a growing national discussion with a research brief drawn from a much broader study of school segregation to be published in September 2016. Since 1970, the public school enrollment has increased in size and transformed in racial composition. Intensely segregated nonwhite schools with zero to 10% white enrollment have more than tripled in this most recent 25-year period for which we have data, a period deeply influenced by major Supreme Court decisions (spanning from 1991 to 2007) that limited desegregation policy. At the same time, the extreme isolation of white students in schools with 0 to 10% nonwhite students has declined by half as the share of white students has dropped sharply. This brief shows states where racial segregation has become most extreme for Latinos and blacks and discusses some of the reasons for wide variations among states. It calls attention to the striking rise in double segregation by race and poverty for African American and Latino students who are concentrated in schools that rarely attain the successful outcomes typical of middle class schools with largely white and Asian student populations. Further, it shows the importance of confronting these issues given the strong relationship between racial and economic segregation and inferior educational opportunities clearly demonstrated in research over many decades.