ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Slow off the Mark: Elementary School Teachers and the Crisis in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education
Author: Epstein, Diana
Date: 2011-05-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Elementary School Teachers,STEM Education,Elementary School Mathematics,Elementary School Science,Knowledge Base for Teaching,Teacher Education,Teacher Selection,Teacher Certification,Teacher Competencies,Teacher Qualifications,Teacher Recruitment,Educational Policy,Admission Criteria,Schools of Education,Degree Requirements

One can't throw a stone without hitting a STEM initiative these days, but most science, technology, engineering, and math initiatives--thus the STEM acronym--overlook a fundamental problem. In general, the workforce pipeline of elementary school teachers fails to ensure that the teachers who inform children's early academic trajectories have the appropriate knowledge of and disposition toward math-intensive subjects and mathematics itself. Prospective teachers can typically obtain a license to teach elementary school without taking a rigorous college-level STEM class such as calculus, statistics, or chemistry, and without demonstrating a solid grasp of mathematics knowledge, scientific knowledge, or the nature of scientific inquiry. In this report, the authors focus on the selection and preparation of elementary school teachers, most of whom will be required to teach mathematics and science when they enter the classroom. It is elementary school mathematics and science that lay the foundation for future STEM learning, but it is elementary school teachers who are often unprepared to set students on the path to higher-level success in STEM fields. In order to improve STEM learning, the selection, preparation, and licensure of elementary school teachers must be strengthened. The authors make five specific recommendations in this report: (1) Increase the selectivity of programs that prepare teachers for elementary grades; (2) Implement teacher compensation policies, including performance-based pay, that make elementary teaching more attractive to college graduates and career-changers with strong STEM backgrounds; (3) Include more mathematics and science content and pedagogy in schools of education; (4) Require candidates to pass mathematics and science subsections of licensure exams; and (5) Explore innovative staffing models that extend the reach of elementary level teachers with an affinity for mathematics and science and demonstrated effectiveness in teaching them. As the authors will demonstrate, improving the ability of elementary school teachers to teach the facts, concepts, and procedures critical to success in STEM fields is required if the nation is to succeed in the globally competitive arena of the 21st century. (Contains 39 endnotes.)
The False Promise of Class-Size Reduction
Author: Chingos, Matthew M.
Date: 2011-04-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Academic Achievement,Evidence,Educational Quality,Class Size,Teacher Effectiveness,Teacher Student Ratio,Educational Change,Educational Finance,Educational Policy

Class-size reduction, or CSR, is enormously popular with parents, teachers, and the public in general. Many parents believe that their children will benefit from more individualized attention in a smaller class and many teachers find smaller classes easier to manage. The pupil-teacher ratio is an easy statistic for the public to monitor as a measure of educational quality, especially before test-score data became widely available in the last decade. Policymakers across the nation, including those in at least 24 states, have taken these ideas to heart and enacted CSR initiatives at costs upward of billions of dollars. These policies, coupled with trends in local school districts, have produced a widespread reduction in the number of students per teacher over the past four decades. Parents, teachers, and policymakers have all embraced CSR as a strategy to improve the quality of public education. There is surprisingly little high-quality research, however, on the effects of class size on student achievement in the United States. The credible evidence that does exist is not consistent, and there are many low-quality studies with results all over the map. The evidence on class size indicates that smaller classes can, in some circumstances, improve student achievement if implemented in a focused way. But CSR policies generally take exactly the opposite approach by pursuing across-the-board reductions in class size at the state or federal level. These large-scale, untargeted policies are also extremely expensive and represent wasted opportunities to make smarter educational investments. The fact that across-the-board CSR policies at the state or district level are not cost-effective does not mean that smaller classes should never be used, but rather that they should be reserved for use in special cases by individual schools. (Contains 1 figure and 38 endnotes.)
Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project
Author: Ito, Mizuko
Date: 2008-11-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Ecology,Youth,Ethnography,Video Technology,Social Networks,Handheld Devices,Computer Games,Educational Technology,Technology Integration,Friendship,Peer Influence,Role of Education,Interviews,Focus Groups,Diaries,Questionnaires,Adolescents,Dating (Social),Feedback (Response)

Social network sites, online games, video-sharing sites, and gadgets such as iPods and mobile phones are now fixtures of youth culture. They have so permeated young lives that it is hard to believe that less than a decade ago these technologies barely existed. Today's youth may be coming of age and struggling for autonomy and identity as did their predecessors, but they are doing so amid new worlds for communication, friendship, play, and self-expression. This white paper summarizes the results of a three-year ethnographic study, funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, examining young people's participation in the new media ecology. It represents a condensed version of a longer treatment of the project findings. The study was motivated by two primary research questions: How are new media being integrated into youth practices and agendas? How do these practices change the dynamics of youth-adult negotiations over literacy, learning, and authoritative knowledge? Summary of the Study is appended. (Contains 3 figures and 66 notes.) [This paper was written with Sonja Baumer, Rachel Cody, Dilan Mahendran, Katynka Martinez, Dan Perkel, Christo Sims, and Lisa Tripp.]
A Look at Community Schools
Author: Bireda, Saba
Date: 2009-10-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Academic Standards,Foreign Countries,Community Schools,Poverty,School Restructuring,Effective Schools Research,Institutional Characteristics,School Effectiveness,Improvement Programs,Academic Achievement,Achievement Gains,Government Role,Federal Legislation,Federal Regulation,Change Strategies,Comparative Education,Integrated Services,Family School Relationship

Children living in poverty face many obstacles outside the classroom that can hinder their success in the classroom. Unaddressed health care needs interfere with learning and cause low attendance. Inadequate and inconsistent housing may deprive students of a safe and quiet place to study. The advent of accountability-based school reform has pushed many high-poverty schools to focus on providing effective instruction and meeting high academic standards. Numerous schools have made progress in these areas but few have been adequately equipped with the tools needed to confront external learning obstacles related to poverty. A small but growing number of &quot;community schools&quot; have bridged the gap between the provision of antipoverty services and an excellent academic program. They capitalize on the school's physical space and access to students and families in order to deliver much-needed services in a central, accessible location. This report will provide an overview of community school strategies in the United States and how community schools can decrease poverty's detrimental effect on students. There are many examples of community school initiatives--from national models to local school district initiatives. This report highlights the examples where research shows community schools have had the most success. It will also review England's extended school model and suggest how the United States can expand community schools based on England's experience. (Contains 76 endnotes.) [Support for this publication was provided by JP Morgan.]
Reforming Public School Systems through Sustained Union-Management Collaboration
Author: Rubinstein, Saul A.
Date: 2011-07-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Teacher Effectiveness,Stakeholders,Cooperation,Public Schools,Educational Change,Public Education,School Restructuring,Partnerships in Education,Unions,Change Strategies,Educational Improvement,Improvement Programs,Teacher Administrator Relationship,Educational Administration,Politics of Education,Case Studies,Long Range Planning,Systems Analysis

For most of the past decade the policy debate over improving U.S. public education has centered on teacher quality. In this debate, teachers and their unions have often been seen as the problem, not part of the solution. Further, current discourse often assumes that conflicting interests between teacher unions and administration is inevitable. What is missing in the discussion, however, is a systems perspective on the problem of public school reform that looks at the way schools are organized, and the way decisions are made. Most public schools today continue to follow an organizational design better suited for 20th century mass production than educating students in the 21st century. This paper offers an alternate path in this debate--a counterstory that looks at schools as systems. It focuses on examples of collaboration among stakeholders through the creation of labor-management partnerships among teachers' unions, school administrators, and school boards. These partnerships improve and restructure public schools from the inside to enhance planning, decision-making, problem solving, and the ways teachers interact and schools are organized. The paper also offers recommendations for local unions and districts seeking to engage in collaborative approaches to school reform and improvement.
Charting New Territory: Tapping Charter Schools to Turn around the Nation's Dropout Factories
Author: Lazarin, Melissa
Date: 2011-06-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Urban Schools,High Schools,Graduation Rate,Educational Change,School Organization,Charter Schools,School Role,School Turnaround,Dropouts,Expertise,Partnerships in Education,Politics of Education,School Districts,Cooperation,School Effectiveness,Educational Improvement

Only a quarter of the class of 2008 graduated from Alain Locke Senior High School in Los Angeles after four years. This was unsurprising since nearly 60 percent of the class had left Locke by the end of their sophomore year. A majority of Locke teachers--frustrated with the school's mediocrity--petitioned to allow charter management organization Green Dot Public Schools to transform the school. Locke reopened its doors in the fall with new landscaping, new teachers, a series of new small schools within the school, and new expectations. Two years into the transformation, a record 73 percent of sophomore students were still there at the end of the year. Green Dot Public Schools's transformation of Locke is one of the most notable examples of a charter management organization, or CMO, turning around a chronically underperforming traditional public school. And the Obama administration would like to see more of it. This policy paper explores the role of charter schools in turning around the nation's lowest-performing high schools. Based on conversations with charter school operators, school district staff, researchers, and education reform experts, it examines how some pioneering cities--Los Angeles and Philadelphia in particular--are partnering with local charter operators to turn around some of their dropout factories and improve college readiness and graduation rates. The paper explores barriers and opportunities for collaboration between charter management organizations and districts to turn around high schools. It finds that the extent to which districts have access to CMOs in their area, the degree of expertise that CMOs have in targeting secondary schools, and factors affecting the charter sector's growth all have some influence on the likelihood of success from these partnerships. (Contains 91 endnotes.) [For related report, &quot;Review of Charting New Territory,&quot; see ED523958.]
A Way Forward: A Progressive Vision for Reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
Author: Ayers, Jeremy
Date: 2011-06-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Student Needs,Principals,Educational Change,Elementary Secondary Education,Federal Legislation,Educational Legislation,Politics of Education,Educational Objectives,Goal Orientation,Educational Policy,Teachers,Educational Finance,Financial Support,Educational Improvement,Educational Innovation,Accountability,Teaching Skills,Administrator Effectiveness,Teacher Effectiveness,Educational Resources,Student Personnel Services,Extended School Day,School Effectiveness,Low Achievement,Academic Achievement,Federal Government,Government Role,School Turnaround,Integrated Services

Congress has the opportunity to move forward on education reform by reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA, to ensure all children achieve their greatest potential. Unfortunately, it has yet to find the will to do so, to the detriment of American students and schools. ESEA is the largest and most significant federal education law supporting public schools. ESEA, currently known as No Child Left Behind, was due to be reauthorized in 2007. Congress has the opportunity to fix numerous flaws in NCLB and to build on positive change due to new, innovative programs already underway in many places. Political events and calculations, however, threaten to stymie the law's renewal. This paper outlines a smart, progressive vision for moving forward with the reauthorization of ESEA. Following core principles of federal education policy, the authors propose significant policy changes on topics such as teachers and principals, funding, school improvement, and innovation. Specifically, they recommend: (1) Holding all schools accountable for getting results with all students; (2) Investing in teachers and principals so they become more skilled and effective; (3) Making funding practices more fair and efficient so every student gets a fair shot at having an effective teacher and adequate resources; (4) Targeting support to low-performing schools, including expanding learning time and providing nonacademic services that meet all student needs; and (5) Investing in innovative practices that bring American schools into the 21st century. Appended are: (1) Summary of CAP's ESEA recommendations; and (2) CAP's body of work on ESEA topics. (Contains 33 endnotes.) [This paper was written with Ulrich Boser, Raegen Miller, and Theodora Chang.]
Maximizing the Promise of Community Schools: Streamlining Wraparound Services for ESEA
Author: Chang, Theodora
Date: 2011-04-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Community Schools,Public Schools,Integrated Services,Elementary Secondary Education,Federal Legislation,Educational Legislation,Federal Programs,Financial Support,Federal Aid,Low Income Groups,Economically Disadvantaged,Academic Achievement

As Congress moves to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA, it should authorize a program to provide comprehensive services that create the conditions for students to learn in the classroom. These &quot;wraparound&quot; support services range from primary health and dental care to family engagement strategies. For many students, especially those who attend school in high-poverty communities, wraparound services are a vital complement to direct classroom interventions. Congress should build upon existing federal efforts and implement the following recommendations to address the need for wraparound services: (1) Consolidate the Full-Service Community Schools program and the Promise Neighborhoods program to maximize efficiency and resources; (2) Ensure that a consolidated program encourages the coordination of services; (3) Ensure that a consolidated program requires a planning year for grantees undertaking new initiatives; and (4) Continue to allow school improvement funds and 21st Century Community Learning Center program funds to support a community schools strategy. The unmet needs of students have recently come into sharper focus in a nation where 42 percent of children live in low-income families. When used in conjunction with highly effective classroom interventions, wraparound services can be a powerful lever to help close the achievement gap and level the playing field for low-income students. (Contains 27 endnotes.)
Partnering for Compensation Reform: Collaborations between Union and District Leadership in Four School Systems
Author: Sommerfeld, Meg
Date: 2011-06-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Unions,School Districts,Cooperation,Public School Teachers,Teacher Salaries,Finance Reform,Educational Finance,Compensation (Remuneration),Merit Pay,Incentives,Teacher Placement,Academic Achievement,Teacher Effectiveness,Educational Change,Teacher Role,Poverty,Faculty Mobility

A growing number of American school systems are experimenting with innovative and varied methods of tying educators' salaries more closely to their work through differential pay. Differential pay means paying teachers differently based on their performance, their responsibilities, and/or their teaching assignments. For instance, it can mean increasing pay for teachers who are highly effective, take on the role of master or mentor teachers, or teach in a high-needs school. In some systems teachers' unions are working collaboratively with school districts to develop differential pay programs. For this paper, the author examined four school districts that have successfully partnered with their local teachers' unions to create differential pay programs, in an effort to better understand how these collaborations have evolved and what they are accomplishing. The common elements of these collaborations provide helpful guidance for districts and unions embarking on new reforms of teacher-related policies and programs. (Contains 10 endnotes.)
There Still Be Dragons: Racial Disparity in School Funding Is No Myth
Author: Miller, Raegen
Date: 2011-07-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Educational Finance,Evidence,Misconceptions,Equal Education,Racial Bias,Low Income Groups,Financial Support,Poverty,Minority Groups,Income,Public Education,State Government,School Districts,Educational Equity (Finance),Resource Allocation,Expenditures

It's hard to debunk a myth that's not a myth, but Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation has given it a try in his recent backgrounder, "The Myth of Racial Disparities in Public School Financing." The report suggests that public education spending is broadly similar across racial and ethnic groups, and it has found a predictably receptive audience in the conservative blogosphere. Richard Spencer of Alternative Right, for example, writes that "Richwine is helping policy analysts take a step closer to racial reality," whatever that means. The report ignores a crucial reality highlighted, ironically, in another Heritage publication. "Schools serving low-income students are often poorly funded," as put in 2000 by Samuel Casey Carter in "No Excuses: Lessons from 21 High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools." This reality matters because poverty rates vary among racial and ethnic groups. Given the tangled relationships among education funding, poverty, and race, how can Richwine conclude that racial disparity in education funding is a myth? The answer is that his analysis aggregates spending figures to the regional and national level, thus obscuring disparities within states or within districts. In this paper, the authors provide fresh evidence of racial disparities in education funding using state-by-state analysis of district level data. They also highlight a new and growing body of evidence, which Richwine ignores, of racial funding disparities within districts. They employ Richwine's basic methodology, which has the potential for shedding light on racial disparities, but they make starkly different analytic choices along the way. (Contains 2 tables.)
Speaking of Salaries: What It Will Take to Get Qualified, Effective Teachers in All Communities
Author: Adamson, Frank
Date: 2011-05-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Teacher Effectiveness,Teacher Recruitment,Teacher Qualifications,Teacher Distribution,Low Achievement,Educational Finance,Resource Allocation,Federal Legislation,Achievement Gap,Academic Achievement,Minority Group Students,Teacher Salaries,Merit Pay,Educational Strategies

The fact that well-qualified teachers are inequitably distributed to students in the United States has received growing public attention. By every measure of qualifications--certification, subject matter background, pedagogical training, selectivity of college attended, test scores, or experience--less-qualified teachers tend to be found in schools serving greater numbers of low-income and minority students. The problem of inequitably distributed teachers has continued to be a widespread major concern despite the intentions expressed in No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) as well as noteworthy progress in some states. Disparity in the access of rich and poor children to well-qualified teachers is one of the constant issues surfaced in the more than 40 state school finance suits that are currently active across the country. Efforts to address the issue--ranging from training subsidies and bonus pay to alternative pathways into teaching--have been only erratically helpful. This study examines how and why teacher quality is so inequitably distributed by reviewing research and examining data from California and New York--two large states that face similar demographic diversity and educational challenges. In this paper, the authors examine how funding, salaries, and teacher qualifications vary across districts and how these variations affect achievement. They explore whether and to what extent unequal salaries and the district revenues that underlie pay and working conditions may be at the root of the teacher distribution problem. They briefly review the literature on these questions and present analyses from California and New York state. In addition, they discuss strategies that have proven to be successful in recruiting qualified and effective teachers to high-need schools, and they draw implications for federal policy that may finally resolve this dilemma that has for so long reinforced the achievement gap. Data sources and methodology are appended. (Contains 11 figures, 11 tables, and 73 endnotes.)