ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Way Station or Launching Pad? Unpacking the Returns to Postsecondary Vocational Programs in Tennessee
Author: Carruthers, Celeste K.
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Vocational Education,Employment,Community Colleges,Salaries,Role,Technology Education,Comparative Analysis,Trend Analysis,Job Placement,Labor Market,Educational Attainment,Educational Certificates,Credentials,Outcomes of Education,Educational Trends,Postsecondary Education

Many higher education institutions award credentials below the associate's degree level, yet little is known about the pecuniary returns to sub-baccalaureate awards like diplomas (for the culmination of a program of study lasting one to two years) and certificates (for the successful completion of portions of those programs, often within one or two semesters). Carruthers and Sanford add to this body of work in two ways, using administrative data on college and labor outcomes for Tennessee students and workers over the years 2000-2012. First, the authors highlight the potential role of state-run technology centers in producing diplomas and certificates. They next compare the returns to sub-baccalaureate awards across technology centers and community colleges, characterizing immediate post-credential gains in employment and earnings as well as post-credential trends in the same. Postsecondary data are drawn from administrative files maintained by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission. The study results support the conventional wisdom that narrow vocational programs and sub-baccalaureate credentials promote job placement and immediate earnings recovery, but with the important caveat that the labor market returns to certificates and diplomas depreciate after attainment. Tables and figures are appended.
The Cost of Agree-Disagree: Satisficing and Sacrificing Reliability
Author: McIntyre, Joe
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Questionnaires,Surveys,Likert Scales,Test Items,Test Format,Online Surveys,Parents,Child Caregivers,Randomized Controlled Trials,Test Reliability,Statistical Analysis,Correlation

Of all the approaches to collecting data in the social sciences, the administration of questionnaires to respondents is among the most prevalent. Despite their popularity, there is broad consensus among survey design experts that using these items introduces excessive error into respondents' ratings. The authors attempt to answer the following question: what are the specific impacts on survey data quality if one uses statements and A-D response anchors as opposed to questions and construct-specific (C-S) response anchors? Data were collected from a nationally representative SurveyMonkey panel of parents/primary caregivers for school-aged children. In return for their participation, participants received the chance to win money for a charity of their choosing. The authors found strong evidence that web-pages with only AD items elicited more straight-lining than corresponding pages with only C-S items. To their surprise, it was found that A-D scale scores were frequently less reliable than C-S scale scores even before removing straight-liners. While the authors consider these findings to be conclusive, they believe that more work remains to be done, both theoretical and practical. Tables and scales from the two forms of the survey are appended.
Stereotype Threat Spillover and SAT® Scores. Research Report No. 2008-2. ETS RR-08-28
Author: Walker, Michael E.
Date: 2008-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Stereotypes,Social Psychology,Negative Attitudes,Standardized Tests,College Entrance Examinations,Graduate Study,Reading,Mathematics,Writing (Composition),Performance,Comparative Analysis,Scores,Hypothesis Testing,Critical Reading,Gender Differences,Racial Differences,Ethnic Groups,Grade Point Average,High School Students,Intention,Majors (Students),Minority Group Students,Predictor Variables,Statistical Analysis

A recent study by Beilock, Reidell, and McConnell (2007) suggested that stereotype threat experienced in one domain (e.g., math) triggered by knowledge of a negative stereotype about a social group in that particular domain can spill over into subsequent tasks in totally unrelated domains (e.g., reading). The authors suggested that these findings might have implications for how the ordering of sections on standardized tests such as the SAT or GRE could affect examinee performance. To test the authors' assertions, this study used data from a recent SAT administration in which either a reading, a math, or a writing task preceded a reading task. Performance on the subsequent reading task of members of a stereotype threatened group (i.e., women) who took the math task first was compared to performance of those who took the reading or writing task first. Results were inconsistent with the stereotype threat spillover hypothesis, and serve to justify the exhortation of Cullen, Hardison, and Sackett (2004) for caution in generalizing lab findings on stereotype threat to operational testing situations.
Stand and Deliver: Effects of Boston&apos;s Charter High Schools on College Preparation, Entry, and Choice
Author: Angrist, Joshua D.
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Charter Schools,High Schools,College Preparation,College Admission,College Choice,Correlation,High Stakes Tests,Teaching Methods,Test Coaching,Outcomes of Education,Human Capital,Education Work Relationship,Compensation (Remuneration),Postsecondary Education,Graduation,Scholarships,Advanced Placement,College Entrance Examinations,Scores,Academic Persistence

One of the most important questions in education research is whether the gains from interventions for which perceived short-term success can be sustained. The possibility of short-lived impacts is especially relevant for research on charter schools, where charter operators who face high-stakes assessments have an incentive to &quot;teach to the test.&quot; The fact that charters are subject to intense scrutiny and evaluation may even create incentives for cheating (Jacob and Levitt, 2003), strategic instruction (Jacob, 2007), and a focus on small groups of students that are pivotal for official accountability measures (Neal and Schanzenbach, 2010). The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of attendance at Boston's charter high schools on outcomes where the link with human capital and future earnings seems likely to be sustained and strong. Specifically, the authors focus on outcomes that are either essential to or facilitate post-secondary schooling: high school graduation, the attainment of state competency thresholds, scholarship qualification, Advanced Placement (AP) and SAT scores, college enrollment, and college persistence. Importantly, most of these outcomes are less subject to strategic manipulation than are the state's test-based assessments. As in earlier work, the research design implemented here exploits randomized enrollment lotteries at oversubscribed charter schools. The resulting estimates are likely to provide reliable measures of average causal effects for charter applicants. Six tables are appended.
Simulation Models of the Effects of Race- and Socioeconomic-Based Affirmative Action Policies on Elite College Enrollment Patterns
Author: Reardon, Sean
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Affirmative Action,Student Diversity,Simulation,Models,Competitive Selection,Reputation,Colleges,Enrollment,Enrollment Trends,Evidence,Program Effectiveness,Access to Information,College Admission,College Applicants,Socioeconomic Status,Racial Factors,Court Litigation,Racial Composition,Income

The creation of racially diverse colleges at all levels of selectivity has proven to be no small task, even with the legal use of race-conscious affirmative action. As evidenced in the postsecondary destinations of the high school class of 2004, very selective schools (those with Barron's Selectivity rankings of 1, 2 or 3) have many more White, and many fewer Black and Hispanic, students than the population of 18-year-olds overall. However, the trend of decreasing diversity with increasing selectivity is not strictly monotonic: the most selective schools (Barron's 1s) are slightly more diverse than the schools just below them in the selectivity rankings. In these Barron's 1 schools there is suggestive evidence of successful (race-based) affirmative action policies. Given the apparently modest results of explicitly race-based affirmative action, the construction of race-neutral policies that replicate, or even improve upon, these levels of diversity presents a daunting challenge. The goal of this study is to inform the current affirmative action debate with evidence from sophisticated simulation models in which the authors vary how colleges weigh race and class in the admission decision process. This model is able to take into account many of the complexities and interrelated dynamics of the college admissions process, such as uncertainty over college or student quality, learning over time, and strategic application submission. Results from the simulations suggest at least three important patterns: (1) unless SES-based affirmative action policies use a very large bump, these policies are unlikely to result in the same racial composition in colleges as under current race-based affirmative action policies; (2) socioeconomic affirmative action results in a moderate-to-substantial reduction in the average resources of students enrolled at elite colleges, and are thus effective at increasing socioeconomic diversity; and (3) information plays a large, and perhaps previously unrecognized, role in the sorting of minority students into colleges; the application behavior of students responded much more effectively to affirmative action policies when those policies were made explicit to students. Three figures are appended.
The Impact of Tuition Increases on Undocumented College Students' Schooling Decisions
Author: Conger, Dylan
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Tuition,Undocumented Immigrants,College Students,College Attendance,Stopouts,Full Time Students,Part Time Students

This paper examines the effect of a short-lived increase in tuition rates on undocumented college students' schooling decisions. In the spring of 2002, the City University of New York (CUNY) reversed its policy of charging in-state tuition rates to undocumented college students who could demonstrate that they migrated to New York at a relatively young age. The policy was in place for exactly one semester; by fall 2002, the New York legislature restored the in-state tuition policy for eligible undocumented youth. I use this unique policy context to examine the impact of tuition increases on undocumented students' schooling choices, including whether to remain enrolled or to disenroll for a semester (&quot;stopout&quot;) and whether to enroll part-time instead of full-time. The data are provided by CUNY and the empirical models estimate the difference between documented and undocumented students in fall 2002 relative to earlier and later semesters. The results suggest that the removal of in-state tuition caused undocumented students in the bachelor's degree programs to stopout of school and shift from full-time to part-time enrollment. The findings provide strong evidence that college costs can have a large impact on the collegiate outcomes of undocumented students who have already chosen to attend college and, perhaps more generally, the outcomes of price sensitive college students, including those from low-income backgrounds. Figures are appended.
Replicating the Moderating Role of Income Status on Summer School Effects across Subject Areas: A Meta-Analysis
Author: Quinn, David M.
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Summer Schools,Meta Analysis,Mathematics Instruction,Low Income,Program Effectiveness,Role,Reading Achievement,Mathematics Achievement,Reading Instruction,Intervention,Correlation,Outcomes of Education,Coding,Information Retrieval,Literature Reviews

The finding that academic summer programs are effective for low income students has been replicated across meta-analytic reviews. However, these reviews have yielded contradictory evidence about whether summer programs are more effective for lower- or higher-income students. This discrepancy may be due to income-based differences in the summer counterfactual that exist for reading but not for math. Additionally, the related question of whether the effects of summer school differ for math and for reading in general has not yielded robust findings to date and bears replication with updated studies. In the present study, the authors therefore extend their previous research on summer learning programs in two ways: (1) They conduct a comprehensive meta-analysis of the literature on math summer school programs (from 1998 to 2011), and test whether the moderating role of income that they observed in reading over this period replicates for math; and (2) They ask whether the effect of summer programs on student outcomes differs for math compared to reading. Their search resulted in 35 studies of summer reading programs, which reported the effects of 41 different interventions, and 12 studies of summer math programs. In conclusion, the authors found evidence that the result does replicate for math, with stronger effects for low-income students than for higher-income students. They also found that the effects of summer programs did not differ for math and reading outcomes; on the contrary, programs with both math and reading components demonstrated effect sizes that were highly correlated between content areas. Tables and figures are appended.
The Impact of Teacher Evaluation Reform on Student Learning: Success and Challenges in Replicating Experimental Findings with Non-Experimental Data
Author: Jiang, Jennie Y.
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Teacher Evaluation,Educational Change,Academic Achievement,Correlation,Student Evaluation,Teacher Effectiveness,Observation,Evidence,Mathematics Achievement,Reading Achievement,Institutional Characteristics,Elementary Schools,Scores

One of the most persistent and urgent problems facing education policymakers is the provision of highly effective teachers in all of the nation's classrooms. Of all school-level factors related to student learning and achievement, the student's teacher is consistently the most important (Goldhaber 2002; Rockoff 2004; Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain 2005). Even with substantial within-school variation in teacher effectiveness (Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain 2005; Aaronson, Barrow, and Sander 2007), historically teacher evaluation systems have inadequately differentiated teachers who effectively improve student learning from lower-performing teachers. In Chicago from 2003 to 2006, for example, nearly all teachers (93 percent) received performance evaluation ratings of &quot;Superior&quot; or &quot;Excellent&quot; (based on a four-tiered rating system) while at the same time 66 percent of CPS schools failed to meet state proficiency standards under Illinois' accountability system (The New Teacher Project 2007). This study seeks to answer the following research questions about two waves of teacher evaluation reform in Chicago, a pilot (Excellence in Teaching Pilot or EITP) focused on rigorous classroom observations (2008-10) and a fully implemented evaluation system (REACH) that incorporates information from classroom observations and student assessment (2012-13 to present): (1) What does experimental evidence say about the effect teacher evaluation can have on school-level performance in mathematics and reading in elementary schools? and What does experimental evidence say about how teacher evaluation can differentially impact schools with different characteristics (for example, are there greater impacts in lower- or higher-achieving schools)? Findings from the first wave showed: (1) at the end of the first year of implementing EITP, schools improved student achievement in reading; and (2) more advantaged schools (i.e., schools that were high achieving prior to implementation, schools with lower rates of student poverty) tended to benefit the most from EITP. This finding suggests that an intervention such as teacher evaluation requires high levels of capacity in the school building in order to affect student learning. Analysis of the REACH data is still ongoing. Five tables and one figure are appended.
Teacher-Led Math Inquiry in Belize: A Cluster Randomized Trial
Author: Hinerman, Krystal M.
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Mathematics Instruction,Randomized Controlled Trials,Teacher Education,Pedagogical Content Knowledge,Mathematics Achievement,Pretests Posttests,Inquiry,Control Groups,Experimental Groups,Comparative Analysis,Program Implementation,Fidelity,Predictor Variables,Teacher Attitudes,Qualitative Research,Elementary School Teachers,Program Effectiveness,Demography,Observation,Mentors,Hierarchical Linear Modeling,Regression (Statistics)

In Belize, the percentage of untrained teachers (i.e. teachers with the equivalent of a high school education or less) is one of the highest in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean. In response to growing student cohorts, the increased demand for more classroom teachers has led to significant decrease in the proportion of trained teachers at both the primary and secondary levels. Fewer than 45% of teachers at primary and secondary levels are trained, whereas some countries in the region report more than 80% are trained. Perhaps as a result of the lack of training, a content test that was applied to a representative sample of teachers nationwide as part of this study design revealed important gaps in teachers' math content knowledge. The authors hypothesized that increased math content and pedagogical skill enhancement of teachers would lead to improved student outcomes on content knowledge in mathematics. The Teacher-Led Math Inquiry (TLMI) project posed three research questions: 1.When controlling for pretest differences, do students exposed to the TLMI treatment exhibit higher post-treatment math achievement than students in the control group at the end of one school year? (Intent to treat model); 2. To what extent does implementation fidelity as an added variable in the ITT model moderate post-treatment math achievement? (Test of treatment model); and 3. How did teachers view implementation of the TLMI approach? (Qualitative results). The present study indicates TLMI has a substantive significant positive effect on student math performance in comparison to traditional instructional practices in Belize, specifically in the Belize District. Tables are appended.
The Role of Between-Case Effect Size in Conducting, Interpreting, and Summarizing Single-Case Research. NCER 2015-002
Author: Shadish, William R.
Date: 2015-12-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Effect Size,Case Studies,Research Design,Observation,Inferences,Computation,Computer Software,Meta Analysis

The field of education is increasingly committed to adopting evidence-based practices. Although randomized experimental designs provide strong evidence of the causal effects of interventions, they are not always feasible. For example, depending upon the research question, it may be difficult for researchers to find the number of children necessary for such research designs (e.g., to answer questions about impacts for children with low-incidence disabilities). A type of experimental design that is well suited for such low-incidence populations is the single-case design (SCD). These designs involve observations of a single case (e.g., a child or a classroom) over time in the absence and presence of an experimenter-controlled treatment manipulation to determine whether the outcome is systematically related to the treatment. Research using SCD is often omitted from reviews of whether evidence-based practices work because there has not been a common metric to gauge effects as there is in group design research. To address this issue, the National Center for Education Research (NCER) and National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) commissioned a paper by leading experts in methodology and SCD. Authors William Shadish, Larry Hedges, Robert Horner, and Samuel Odom contend that the best way to ensure that SCD research is accessible and informs policy decisions is to use good standardized effect size measures--indices that put results on a scale with the same meaning across studies--for statistical analyses. Included in this paper are the authors' recommendations for how SCD researchers can calculate and report on standardized between-case effect sizes, the way in these effect sizes can be used for various audiences (including policymakers) to interpret findings, and how they can be used across studies to summarize the evidence base for education practices. Chapters 1 and 2 provide an overview of the paper and a detailed definition SCDs, their basic forms, and how they can be used to make causal inferences. Chapters 3 and 4 explain SCD research and the benefit of the use of effect sizes in general, the different types of standardized effect sizes (i.e., between-case and within-case), how they can be used in SCD research, and a suggested approach for reporting between-case effect sizes. Chapters 5 and 6 describe how to use between-case effect sizes for individual SCD studies, benefits that are likely to result from increased reporting of between-case effect sizes, and how these effect sizes can be used to identify evidence-based practices across studies. Chapter 7 provides recommendations for future directions and development of between-group effect sizes in SCD. A glossary is included.