ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Racial Disparities in Pre-K Quality: Evidence from New York City&apos;s Universal Pre-K Program. EdWorkingPaper No. 20-248
Author: Latham, Scott
Date: 2020-07-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Achievement Gap,Preschool Education,Preschool Children,Educational Quality,Equal Education,Racial Differences,Access to Education,Attendance,Proximity,School Location

New York City's universal pre-kindergarten program, which increased full-day enrollment from 19,000 to almost 70,000 children, is ambitious in both scale and implementation speed. We provide new evidence on the distribution of pre-K quality in NYC by student race/ethnicity, and investigate the extent to which observed differences are associated with the spatial distribution of higher-quality providers. Relative to other jurisdictions, we find the average quality of public pre-K providers is high. However, we identify large disparities in the average quality of providers experienced by black and white students, which is partially explained by differential proximity to higher-quality providers. Taken together, current racial disparities in the quality of pre-K providers may limit the program's ability to reduce racial achievement gaps.
Make It Count: Lessons for Upskilling in Times of Uncertainty
Author: Hester, Candace
Date: 2020-10-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Skill Development,Job Skills,Certification,College Credits,Job Training,Wages,Outcomes of Education,Labor Needs,Postsecondary Education,Associate Degrees,Educational Attainment,Academic Degrees,High School Graduates,College Graduates

It is commonly understood that education is one of the most reliable paths to economic security-- particularly for Black and Latinx people and for people from low-wealth families. But it is less well known that the greatest unmet labor market demand is for workers with &quot;middle skills,&quot; who have some postsecondary training but not a 4-year degree. This brief summarizes findings from a study that contrasted two potential paths to middle-skills training: (a) credit-bearing certification, including associate degree programs, and (b) non-credit-bearing certification, including certificate and licensure programs. The study findings discussed in this brief indicate that credit-bearing training improves earnings significantly more than non-credit-bearing training. As such, these findings indicate that policymakers and educational institutions should consider ways to make credit-bearing credentials more accessible.
Understanding Teacher Perceptions of Efficacy in Social and Emotional Learning: Toward Equity-Based Approaches to SEL in Urban Schools. EdWorkingPaper No. 20-341
Author: White, Terrenda C.
Date: 2020-12-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Social Emotional Learning,Urban Schools,Teacher Attitudes,Disadvantaged,Equal Education,Teaching Methods,Well Being,Faculty Development,Minority Group Teachers,Teacher Surveys,Self Efficacy,Fellowships,Comparative Analysis,Teacher Characteristics,Social Justice,Communities of Practice,Kindergarten,Elementary Secondary Education,Race,Intervention,Academic Achievement

Researchers have noted the importance of equity-based approaches to social and emotional learning (SEL), which emphasize the role of school environment, including adult beliefs, in student well-being. This article builds on this work by examining 129 teachers' perceptions of efficacy in SEL. While participants worked in urban schools, were selected from national fellowship programs, and had similar years of experience and preparation, survey data found that teachers in one program reported higher levels of efficacy in SEL. Interviews and observations with a purposeful sample of these teachers found that despite common challenges with exclusionary discipline practices and limited resources, efficacious teachers described a &quot;social justice learning community,&quot; geared for teachers of color, that enhanced their capacities to enact SEL in their schools. Discussion includes the need for critical professional development opportunities in SEL that are race-conscious, context-specific, and asset-based, as well as opportunities for teachers from historically marginalized groups to form specialized learning communities.
The Segregation of Students by Income in Public Schools. EdWorkingPaper No. 20-338
Author: Dalane, Kari
Date: 2020-12-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Low Income Students,Public Schools,Family Income,Educational Discrimination,Economically Disadvantaged,Equal Education,Elementary School Students,Middle School Students,Correlation,Social Discrimination,Socioeconomic Status,Minority Group Students,Grade 3,Grade 4,Grade 5,Grade 6,Grade 7,Grade 8,Enrollment,Mathematics Achievement

Over the past three decades, children from low-income families and those from more affluent families have increasingly been attending different public schools. While recent work has helped us understand patterns of income segregation between districts and schools within districts, we know very little about segregation of students as they experience school: in the classroom. In this paper, we attempt to advance knowledge of trends in the segregation of students by income at the classroom level. We make use of detailed, student-level administrative data from North Carolina which provides a measure of a student's free/reduced price lunch eligibility, which we refer to as economically disadvantaged (ED) status, along with information on classroom assignments. Since we know the ED status of each student in each classroom, we assess whether ED students are assigned to classes in the same pattern as other students or if are clustered/segregated into different classrooms. We know very little about the magnitude of income-based segregation, and almost nothing about whether this has changed over time, so we provide novel evidence on the question of whether segregation of students by socioeconomic status has increased within schools. We find that within-school segregation has risen by about 10 percent between 2007 and 2014 in elementary and middle schools we study. Further, we find that segregation of ED students within schools is correlated with the level of segregation between schools in districts, and this relationship grew stronger over our panel.
The Effects of Absenteeism on Cognitive and Social-Emotional Outcomes: Lessons for COVID-19. EdWorkingPaper No. 20-261
Author: Santibanez, Lucrecia
Date: 2020-10-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: COVID-19,Pandemics,School Closing,Distance Education,Online Courses,Electronic Learning,Social Development,Emotional Development,Attendance,Instructional Program Divisions,Intellectual Disciplines,Self Management,Self Efficacy,Beliefs,Student Characteristics,English Language Learners,Students with Disabilities,Homeless People,Low Income Students,Behavior Problems,Enrollment,Racial Differences,Ethnicity,Gender Differences

In March 2020, most schools in the United States closed their doors and transitioned to distance learning in an effort to contain COVID-19. During the transition a significant number of students did not fully engage in these learning opportunities due to resource or other constraints. An urgent question for schools around the nation is how much did the pandemic impact student academic and social-emotional development. This paper uses administrative panel data from California to approximate the impact of the pandemic by analyzing how absenteeism affects student outcomes. We show wide variation in absenteeism impacts on academic and social-emotional outcomes by grade and subgroup, as well as the cumulative effect of different degrees of absence. Student outcomes generally suffer more from absenteeism in mathematics than in ELA [English Language Arts]. Negative effects are larger in middle school. Absences negatively affect social-emotional development, particularly in middle school, with slight differences across constructs. Our results add to the emerging literature on the impact of COVID-19 and highlight the need for student academic and social-emotional support to make up for lost time.
Within-Year Achievement Gains for English Learners. EdWorkingPaper No. 20-337
Author: Johnson, Angela
Date: 2020-12-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Achievement Gains,Achievement Gap,Mathematics Achievement,Reading Achievement,English Language Learners,Special Education,Identification,Eligibility,Kindergarten,Elementary School Students,Middle School Students,Public Schools,Urban Schools,Achievement Tests,Academic Support Services,Multilingualism,Progress Monitoring

This study reports achievement levels and fall-to-spring gains in grades K to 8 for three groups of English Learners (ELs): (a) ever-ELs who were ever eligible for service; (b) current-ELs who continue to require service; and (b) dually-identified students eligible for both EL and Special Education services. I leverage unique data that include 186,139 ever-ELs and their never-EL peers in 1,520 schools. All three EL groups have lower mean math and reading achievement than the average of all students in kindergarten. Compared to the all-student average, ever-ELs and current-ELs make larger gains in the early grades but smaller gains in the middle grades. Dually-identified students make smaller gains than the all-student average across all grades in math and in kindergarten and 1st grade in reading. The expanding achievement gaps in the middle grades suggest better academic support is urgently needed for all multilingual students, especially dually-identified students.
Sustaining a Sense of Success: The Importance of Teacher Working Conditions during the COVID-19 Pandemic. EdWorkingPaper No. 20-279
Author: Kraft, Matthew A.
Date: 2020-08-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: COVID-19,Pandemics,Teaching Conditions,School Closing,Online Courses,Electronic Learning,Distance Education,Teacher Competencies,Barriers,Poverty,Minority Group Students,African American Students,At Risk Students,Equal Education,Teacher Attitudes,Success,Leadership Responsibility,Faculty Development,Learner Engagement,Student Characteristics,Adjustment (to Environment),Social Bias,Racial Bias,Institutional Characteristics,Teacher Characteristics

COVID-19 shuttered schools across the United States, upending traditional approaches to education. We examine teachers' experiences during emergency remote teaching in the spring of 2020 using responses to a working conditions survey from a sample of 7,841 teachers across 206 schools and 9 states. Teachers reported a range of challenges related to engaging students in remote learning and balancing their professional and personal responsibilities. Teachers in high-poverty and majority Black schools perceived these challenges to be the most severe, suggesting the pandemic further increased existing educational inequities. Using data from both pre-post and retrospective surveys, we find that the pandemic and pivot to emergency remote teaching resulted in a sudden, large drop in teachers' sense of success. We also demonstrate how supportive working conditions in schools played a critical role in helping teachers to sustain their sense of success. Teachers who could depend on their district and school-based leadership for strong communication, targeted training, meaningful collaboration, fair expectations, and recognition of their efforts were least likely to experience declines in their sense of success.
How Has COVID-19 Impacted FAFSA Submissions? EdWorkingPaper No. 20-266
Author: Gurantz, Oded
Date: 2020-07-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: COVID-19,Pandemics,Student Financial Aid,Financial Aid Applicants,College Freshmen,Federal Aid,College Bound Students,High School Graduates,Unemployment,Insurance,Instructional Program Divisions,Gender Differences,Socioeconomic Status,Student Characteristics,Family Income,Family Structure,Age Differences,National Surveys,Educational Attainment,College Students

COVID has led colleges to brace for potential enrollment declines in the Fall, which would devastate budgets and potentially decrease the likelihood a student ever earns a degree. We take an early look at California's FAFSA applications up through mid-June, to anticipate how students may be responding to this crisis. We find that COVID did not affect most of California's &quot;traditional&quot; high school graduates due to an early deadline for financial aid, which exists in a number of states. From early March to mid-June, FAFSA applications among freshmen declined 18%, relative to prior years. Although there were initial declines in applications among more experienced students, these quickly rebounded and are now 9% higher relative to prior years. The largest FAFSA increases occurred in counties that saw the most dramatic increases in Unemployment Insurance claims.
Politics, Markets, and Pandemics: Public Education&apos;s Response to COVID-19. EdWorkingPaper No. 20-304
Author: Hartney, Michael T.
Date: 2020-10-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: COVID-19,Pandemics,Public Education,Government Role,Local Government,School Closing,School Schedules,School Districts,Online Courses,Electronic Learning,Distance Education,Politics of Education,Unions,Counties,Institutional Characteristics,Decision Making,Public Health,Catholic Schools,Geographic Location,Racial Differences,Ethnicity,Socioeconomic Influences,Expenditure per Student

The COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to examine how local governments respond to a public health crisis amid high levels of partisan polarization and an increasing tendency for local issues to become nationalized. As an arena that has, in recent years, been relatively separate from national partisan divides, public schools provide a useful window into these dynamics. Leveraging the fact that all of the nation's school districts had to adopt a reopening plan for the fall, we test what factors best predict whether a district chose to return students to the classroom or educate them remotely. Contrary to the conventional understanding of school districts as localized and non-partisan actors, we find evidence that politics, far more than science, shaped school district decision-making. Mass partisanship and teacher union strength best explain how school boards approached reopening. Additionally, we find evidence that districts are sensitive to the threat of private school exit. Districts located in counties with a larger number of Catholic schools were less likely to shut down and more likely to return to in-person learning. These findings have important implications for our understanding of education policy and the functioning of American local governments.
Math Is for Girls: The Unequal Effects of Text Messaging to Help Parents Support Early Math Development. EdWorkingPaper No. 20-310
Author: Doss, Christopher
Date: 2020-10-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Telecommunications,Handheld Devices,Mathematics Skills,Preschool Children,Mathematics Instruction,Literacy Education,Social Development,Emotional Development,Program Effectiveness,Gender Differences,Behavior Modification,Intervention,Parent Participation,Information Dissemination,Teacher Role,Parent Role,Educational Technology,Technology Uses in Education

This study assesses the effects of two text-messaging programs for parents that aim to support the development of math skills in prekindergarten students. One program focuses purely on math, while the other takes an identical approach but focuses on a combination of math, literacy, and social-emotional skills. We find no evidence that the math-only program benefits children's development. However, the combination program shows greater promise, particularly for girls. Quantile regressions indicate that the effects are concentrated in the lower half of the outcome distribution. Results imply that girls may have started the year behind boys in math and caught up to and even surpassed boys when their parents have access to the program that combines topics. Our results also provide evidence that the structure of behavioral interventions can affect who benefits from the program, sometimes in unexpected ways, to produce meaningful differences in outcomes. We discuss and provide evidence for various hypotheses that could explain these differences.
Negative Impacts from the Shift to Online Learning during the COVID-19 Crisis: Evidence from a Statewide Community College System. EdWorkingPaper No. 20-299
Author: Bird, Kelli A.
Date: 2020-09-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: COVID-19,Pandemics,Online Courses,Electronic Learning,School Closing,Community Colleges,Academic Persistence,College Faculty,Two Year College Students,Barriers,Teaching Experience,Teacher Competencies,Student Adjustment,Student Characteristics,Teacher Characteristics,Grades (Scholastic)

The COVID-19 pandemic led to an abrupt shift from in-person to virtual instruction in Spring 2020. Using a difference-in-differences framework that leverages within-course variation on whether students started their Spring 2020 courses in person or online, we estimate the impact of this shift on the academic performance of Virginia's community college students. We find that the shift to virtual instruction resulted in a 6.7 percentage point decrease in course completion, driven by increases in both course withdrawal and failure. Faculty experience teaching a course online did not mitigate the negative effects of moving to virtual instruction.
Reopening Washington Schools 2020: Special Education Guidance. Updated
Author: May, Tania
Date: 2020-09-03
Type: Guides - General
Subjects: COVID-19,Pandemics,School Closing,School Schedules,Access to Education,Elementary Secondary Education,Student Needs,Inclusion,Academic Support Services,Student Personnel Services,Barriers,Parent School Relationship,Advocacy,Information Dissemination,Family School Relationship,Supplementary Education,Social Development,Emotional Development,Eligibility,Early Childhood Education,Child Care,Graduation,State Government,At Risk Students,Special Education,Learner Engagement,Students with Disabilities,Individualized Education Programs,Related Services (Special Education),Assistive Technology,Educational Technology,Learning Disabilities,Deafness,Hearing Impairments,Blindness,Visual Impairments,Intellectual Disability,Autism,Pervasive Developmental Disorders,Chronic Illness,Emotional Disturbances,Behavior Disorders,Cooperative Planning,Progress Monitoring,Kindergarten,Transitional Programs,Teaching Methods

This special education reopening guidance has been developed as a companion resource to &quot;Reopening Washington Schools 2020: District Planning Guide&quot; (ED606044) to provide information and resources for supporting students with disabilities throughout the school reopening process. The intent of this document is to offer guidance for all district and school administrators and educators, as they continue to provide instruction and services to students with disabilities during and after the COVID-19 health crisis. This includes guidance on partnering with families, addressing issues of equity in access, supporting social-emotional and academic development of students, and providing special education and related services across the continuum of reopening models. [This guidance was originally published 7/30/2020 and updated on 9/3/2020 to include updated content specific to recovery services and parent training.]
Campus Free Expression: An Institutional Approach. Sketching a New Conservative Education Agenda
Author: Merrill, Jacqueline Pfeffer
Date: 2020-10-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Universities,Freedom of Speech,Academic Freedom,Ideology,School Culture,Educational Policy,Standards,Political Attitudes,Politics of Education

Over the past few decades, conservatives have watched universities move away from encouraging and protecting a broad ideological spectrum of reasoned debate toward an ever-narrowing range of acceptable speech. A 2020 report about one flagship public university illustrates the degree to which today's cancel culture chills open inquiry: 75 percent of self-identified conservative undergraduates and 26 percent of self-identified liberal undergraduates were concerned that what they said in an in-person classroom discussion would lower classmates' opinions of them, and 43 percent of self-identified conservatives and 10 percent of self-identified liberals were worried their classroom comments would be shared on social media. While students fear each other, professors fear students' bias response complaints. In addition to freedom of speech, freedoms of association and religion have also been chilled. Schools have banned single-sex organizations and prohibited faith-based student organizations from setting rules for membership and leadership roles consistent with their beliefs, and students have pushed others out of student government because of their religious beliefs. This brief report discusses how conservatives can work towards building up a free expression culture at more universities.
Campus Free Speech: A Cultural Approach. Sketching a New Conservative Education Agenda
Author: Kissel, Adam
Date: 2020-11-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Universities,Freedom of Speech,Academic Freedom,Censorship,Court Litigation,Educational Change,College Admission,College Curriculum,Curriculum Development,Crisis Management

US colleges and universities have well-documented cultures of self-censorship and oppression of disfavored views. In contrast, free expression is consistent with campus values of toleration, diversity, and inclusion. External forces such as lawsuits and legislation can help protect free expression, but lasting change must come from a shift in campus culture. This brief report suggests that effective cultural reform will include reformation of admissions practices, residence life, and curriculum, administrative training for crisis management on matters of free expression, and a culture of modeling good behavior, rather than punishing minority viewpoints.
Who Benefits from Attending Effective Schools? Examining Heterogeneity in High School Impacts. EdWorkingPaper No. 20-336
Author: Jackson, C. Kirabo
Date: 2020-12-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: High Schools,School Effectiveness,At Risk Students,Graduation Rate,College Attendance,Crime,Disadvantaged Youth,Advantaged,Educational Quality,Urban Schools,Public Schools,Social Development,Emotional Development,Minority Group Students,Low Income Students,Interpersonal Competence,Academic Achievement,Student Behavior,Grade 8,Grade 9

We estimate the longer-run effects of attending an effective high school (one that improves a combination of test scores, survey measures of socio-emotional development and behaviours in 9th grade) for students who are more versus less &quot;educationally advantaged&quot; (i.e., likely to attain more years of education based on 8th-grade characteristics). All students benefit from attending effective schools. However, the least advantaged students experience the largest improvements in high-school graduation, college going, and school-based arrests. These patterns are driven by the least advantaged students benefiting the most from school impacts on the non-test-score dimensions of school quality. However, while there is considerable overlap in the effectiveness of schools attended by more and less advantaged students, it is the most advantaged students that are most likely to attend highly effective schools. These patterns underscore the importance of quality schools, and the non-test score components of quality schools, for improving the longer-run outcomes for less advantaged students.