ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
What Are ACT/NCEA College and Career Readiness Targets? Identifying Student Learning Targets Based on Real-World Outcomes. Fact Sheet
Author: ACT, Inc., National Center for Educational Achievement
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Higher Education,College Bound Students,College Preparation,School Readiness,Definitions,Academic Achievement,Academic Ability,Success,Postsecondary Education,Career Development,Educational Indicators,Scores,Grade 3,Grade 4,Grade 5,Grade 6,Grade 7,Identification,Outcomes of Education

The National Center for Educational Achievement (ACT/NCEA), a department of ACT, Inc., defines College and Career Readiness as when a student has reached an academic achievement level that indicates they are likely to have success in postsecondary learning or training that leads to skilled careers. This paper provides answers to the following questions: (1) What is College and Career Readiness?; (2) What are ACT/NCEA College and Career Readiness Targets?; (3) Is College Ready and Career Ready the same?; and (4) How are NCEA's College and Career Readiness Targets identified?
Texas College and Career Readiness, 2010
Author: ACT, Inc., National Center for Educational Achievement
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Educational Indicators,Scores,Grade 3,Grade 4,Grade 5,Grade 6,Grade 7,Outcomes of Education,Identification,Academic Ability,Success,Postsecondary Education,Career Development

This document presents the percentage of Texas students achieving the National Center for Educational Achievement's (NCEA) College and Career Readiness Targets and ACT's College Readiness Benchmarks. The key to all students graduating college and career ready is to be able to identify whether or not students, starting in elementary school, are on the path to college and career readiness. NCEA provides educators with the opportunity to monitor students' progress on this path. NCEA's College and Career Readiness Targets, developed for the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS), act as grade-level indicators of whether students are on pace to graduate from high school college and career ready. NCEA's College and Career Readiness Targets combined with ACT's College Readiness Benchmarks on EXPLORE, PLAN, and the ACT tests offer educators a system of indicators that can be used to monitor students' progress toward college and career readiness. (Contains 2 footnotes and 2 resources.)
The Advanced Placement Program Benefits Mainly Well-Prepared Students Who Pass AP Exams. Issues in College Readiness
Author: ACT, Inc., National Center for Educational Achievement
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: High School Students,Equal Education,Advanced Placement,Low Income,Academic Achievement,Advanced Placement Programs,Minority Groups,Secondary School Curriculum,College Preparation,Tests,Educational Benefits

Many policymakers and education leaders have embraced the Advanced Placement (AP) Program as a tool to strengthen the high school curriculum and prepare students for college. The popularity of the AP program among these policy leaders reflects their belief that the traditional high school curriculum has often failed to provide rigorous courses with well-specified curricular content and end-of-course examinations to verify that students have mastered that content--and that AP courses and exams can supply the rigor missing from the high school curriculum. Further, some policymakers have sought to expand the AP program in schools serving primarily minority and low-income students, in the belief that access to AP courses will promote educational equity and greater readiness for college and career among these students. Are these beliefs supported by the evidence? From 2002 to 2006, the National Center for Educational Achievement (NCEA) conducted research on the relationship between students' participation in AP courses in high school and their later success in college--relationships that are often misunderstood or misinterpreted. The research is summarized in a report (Dougherty, Mellor, & Jian, 2006) and a book chapter (Dougherty & Mellor, 2010). This brief highlights the four major findings of this research. These findings are: (1) Taking AP Courses Alone Is Not Related to College Success; (2) Taking AP Courses and Passing AP Exams Is What Matters; (3) Low-Income and Minority Students Have Low AP Exam Passing Rates; and (4) Academic Preparation in the Early Grades is Critical for AP Readiness.
The NCEA Core Practice Framework: An Organizing Guide to Sustained School Improvement
Author: Dougherty, Chrys
Date: 2009-01-00
Type: Guides - Non-Classroom
Subjects: Educational Improvement,Models,Elementary Secondary Education,School Districts,Systems Approach,Educational Practices,Educational Research,School Effectiveness

What fundamental ideas from higher performing schools underlie a coherent approach to educational improvement? First, only a system-wide approach to improving teaching and learning can make it possible for students to receive good teaching, year after year, across different subjects. Given the difficulty of the task, isolated and uncoordinated efforts by individual educators are not enough. Second, improvement efforts must be coordinated across schools from preschool through the end of high school, since students do not stay in the same school for their entire educational careers. Third, students must be placed on the path to college and career readiness as early as possible--ideally in preschool and elementary school, but no later than middle school. Waiting until high school to boost poorly prepared students onto a path to college and career readiness places "an extreme degree of difficulty" on educators and is unfair to students. Finally, efforts to improve teaching and learning must give first priority to the behaviors most closely related to the teaching-learning transaction by addressing each of the following five key questions: (1) What do leaders and policymakers expect all students to know and be able to do, in each course or grade and subject?; (2) How do they select and develop the leaders and teachers needed to ensure that every learner in the system achieves these learning goals?; (3) What programs, strategies, materials, and time allocation do they use to teach the necessary content and skills to students?; (4) How do they know if students learned what they said they should learn?; and (5) If students are not learning what they should, what are they going to do about it? This paper discusses how educational leaders and policymakers can use research on higher performing schools and districts to address these five questions and promote a coherent, big-picture approach to educational improvement. First, the authors discuss how to determine whether a school system currently lacks such an approach. Second, they introduce an organizing guide, the NCEA (National Center for Educational Achievement) Core Practice Framework, which can be used to develop such an approach based on a systematic comparison of local practices with those in higher performing schools. Next, they describe how the Framework has been derived from research on consistently higher performing schools. Finally, they provide an example of how information on the practices in the Framework is organized, and discuss how the Framework can become a guide to align local practices with those of higher performers and keep those practices coherent. A bibliography is included. (Contains 1 figure, 1 table and 13 footnotes.)
Hidden Disadvantage: Asian American Unemployment and the Great Recession. EPI Issue Brief #277
Author: Austin, Algernon
Date: 2010-05-28
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: Asian Americans,Unemployment,Educational Attainment,College Graduates,Dropouts,Education Work Relationship,Whites,Disadvantaged,Advantaged

Nationally, Asian Americans have the lowest unemployment rate of the major racial groups. But a closer look at unemployment by educational attainment shows a more complicated picture. Asian Americans with bachelor's degrees have a higher unemployment rate than whites with comparable education, but Asian American high school dropouts are more successful than comparable whites at finding jobs. As a result, the economic hardships and disadvantages for Asian Americans are sometimes overlooked. This Issue Brief shows that Asian American workers experience a complex mix of advantages and disadvantages in finding jobs when education level is considered. It concludes that if Asian Americans had the same unemployment rates by education level as whites, the Asian American unemployment rate would have been almost a percentage point lower in the fourth quarter of 2009. Thus, Asian American workers are disadvantaged relative to white workers in finding jobs. This paper examines the Asian American unemployment rate nationally and in five states: California, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, and Texas. Only these five states had Current Population Survey sample sizes large enough for reliable statistics on Asian American unemployment. These analyses of Asian Americans exclude Pacific Islander, multi-racial, and Hispanic workers. The data for white workers also exclude multi-racials and Hispanics. (Contains 6 tables, 4 figures and 2 endnotes.)
False Impression: How a Widely Cited Study Vastly Overstates the Benefits of Charter Schools. Issue Brief
Author: Basile, Marco
Date: 2010-07-05
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Charter Schools,Academic Achievement,Urban Schools,Traditional Schools,Comparative Analysis,School Effectiveness,Achievement Gains,Educational Research,Research Design,Research Methodology

This issue brief focuses on one particular report, released in September 2009, that has been widely cited by charter school advocates because it appears to show remarkable results. In the report, &quot;How New York City's Charter Schools Affect Achievement,&quot; Stanford University professor Caroline Hoxby and her colleagues Sonali Murarka and Jenny Kang probe the academic achievement of 30,000 New York City students who had applied to charter schools and had been randomly separated by lotteries into charter schools (the &quot;lotteried-in&quot; students) and traditional schools (the &quot;lotteried-out&quot; students). Hoxby and her colleagues made the headline-grabbing assertion that, on average, for students that attended from kindergarten through grade eight, New York City charter schools could close the &quot;Scarsdale-Harlem gap&quot;--that is, the achievement gap between students in Harlem and students in the much more affluent suburb of Scarsdale--by 66 percent in English and 86 percent in math. This is a shocking finding that, if true, would suggest that charters could be a magic bullet after all. But Hoxby's colleague at Stanford, Sean Reardon, the education researcher and expert in social sciences methodology, scrutinized Hoxby's report and uncovered serious design flaws in the study. Reardon's analysis largely undercuts the claims of dramatic gains that have attracted so much media attention. Reardon found that the design of Hoxby's study destroyed the way in which the lottery randomly separated students into charter schools and traditional schools. A second problem Reardon finds with the design of the Hoxby study for grades four through eight is its implicit assumption that a charter school student will continue to make the same amount of academic gain each year throughout the student's educational career. These two concerns would not be problematic if the study was a truly longitudinal one, following the performance of a single cohort of students from an initial lottery before kindergarten through eighth grade. However, the data for the majority of subjects in the study were for students who had been in charter schools for only three or four years. Reardon's review of Hoxby and colleagues' study highlights further points of concern. These further concerns are also presented in this brief. (Contains 12 endnotes.
Review of &quot;Reform with Results for New Jersey Schools&quot;
Author: Sadovnik, Alan R.
Date: 2011-02-10
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Educational Research,Urban Schools,Academic Achievement,Court Litigation,School Law,Research Methodology,Criticism,Research Reports,Validity,Methods Research,Value Judgment,Educational Policy,Politics of Education

A report published by the Lexington Institute presents findings on the effectiveness of New Jersey's Abbott v. Burke court decisions from the late 1990s through 2009. The report argues that the reforms ordered by the state's supreme court failed to significantly increase student achievement despite what it terms as dramatic increases in spending. Based on these findings, the report argues that the increases in spending in these urban districts and their continued dismal student achievement rates make New Jersey, and particularly Newark, ideal for instituting a number of reforms. These advocated reforms include parental empowerment, increases in the number of charter schools, changes in teacher union contracts, and the enactment of private school choice policies (e.g., vouchers). The report cannot stand as a research document and provides little or no empirical evidence to support its critiques of Abbott or its recommendations for reform. It omits important parts of the existing research literature, such as NAEP data showing New Jersey as high performing and as closing the achievement gap. The Lexington report contains no methodology to speak of. Overall, the report has little or no use for informing educational reform in Newark, New Jersey or nationally. (Contains 30 notes.)
Review of "Waiting for Superman"
Author: Dutro, Elizabeth
Date: 2011-01-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Poverty,Academic Achievement,Films,Documentaries,Equal Education,Public Schools,Achievement Gap,Dropout Rate,Teacher Education,Teacher Effectiveness,Educational Practices

"Waiting for Superman" offers what appear to be straightforward, commonsense solutions to inequities in schooling. The film argues that heroic action can be taken to fix what it portrays as the disaster of public schooling. The film disregards poverty as a factor in school performance and connection--and therefore never addresses anti-poverty measures as potential solutions to the problems it identifies. While it raises issues that demand attention, including achievement gaps, high drop-out rates in some schools and districts, and the need for committed, well-prepared teachers, it offers solutions that are simplified, ignore research evidence, and are built on false assumptions. (Contains 12 notes.)
Review of "Charter Schools: A Report on Rethinking the Federal Role in Education"
Author: Miron, Gary
Date: 2011-01-00
Type: Information Analyses
Subjects: Charter Schools,Educational Finance,Educational Facilities,Government Role,Academic Achievement,Educational Policy,Educational Research,Policy Formation,Expenditures,School Effectiveness

The report summarizes evidence from five studies of student achievement in oversubscribed charter schools and two studies on charter school revenues and outlines a number of recommendations relevant to the federal role in charter schools. While many recommendations are reasonable, those related to charter school facilities and charter school finance are more likely to be disputed because they are poorly developed and based on a narrow and misleading view of the evidence. This review discusses and expands upon the evidence and recommendations presented in the report. The intent of the report is to guide federal policy in ways that can improve and expand charter schools, but weaknesses in the report and flaws in the conclusions and the process used to generate the report undermine its utility. The report can serve as an initial step in outlining some of the key issues that federal lawmakers should consider. Nevertheless, federal policies that will strengthen charter schools in the longer run--rather than expanding the number of charter schools in the short run--need to be based on a more accurate and representative body of evidence. Further, the process of formulating recommendations requires more than six voices and more than a day of conversations to develop a comprehensive understanding of vital issues as well as to build a consensus. (Contains 24 notes.)
Review of &quot;The Lottery&quot;
Author: Tate, William
Date: 2011-01-24
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Documentaries,Criticism,Charter Schools,Educational Quality,Politics of Education,Urban Schools,Advocacy,Educational Research,Evidence,Comparative Analysis,Games,Probability

The documentary film &quot;The Lottery&quot; focuses on the battle between advocates for a New York City charter school provider, Harlem Success Academy Charter Schools (HSA), and those presented as charter school opponents. It uses the struggle of four students who hope to get into a charter school as a vehicle to examine how difficult it is for poor children to receive a high-quality education in America's large urban districts. Unfortunately, while there is much that is very real and poignant about this film, its zealous advocacy for charter schools fundamentally misdirects viewers away from the actual evidence about the mixed results that charter schools have achieved. (Contains 8 notes.)
How to Fix Our Schools: It's More Complicated, and More Work, than the Klein-Rhee &quot;Manifesto&quot; Wants You to Believe. EPI Issue Brief #286
Author: Rothstein, Richard
Date: 2010-10-14
Type: Opinion Papers
Subjects: Academic Achievement,Educational Change,Politics of Education,Teacher Dismissal,Teacher Competencies,Superintendents,Professional Autonomy,Teacher Salaries,Teaching (Occupation),Rewards,Teacher Effectiveness,Social Science Research,Systems Approach,Social Change

Joel Klein, chancellor of the New York City public school system, and Michelle Rhee, who resigned October 13 as Washington, D.C. chancellor, published a &quot;manifesto&quot; in the &quot;Washington Post&quot; claiming that the difficulty of removing incompetent teachers &quot;has left our school districts impotent and, worse, has robbed millions of children of a real future.&quot; The solution, they say, is to end the &quot;glacial process for removing an incompetent teacher&quot; and give superintendents like themselves the authority to pay higher salaries to teachers whose students do well academically. Otherwise, children will remain &quot;stuck in failing schools&quot; across the country. In this paper, the author opines that there is a world of difference between claiming, as the Klein-Rhee statement does, that the single biggest factor in student success is teacher quality and claiming, as Barack Obama does in his more careful moments, that the single biggest school factor is teacher quality. Decades of social science research have demonstrated that differences in the quality of schools can explain about one-third of the variation in student achievement. But the other two-thirds is attributable to non-school factors. Making teacher quality the only centerpiece of a reform campaign distracts everyone's attention from other equally and perhaps more important school areas needing improvement, areas such as leadership, curriculum, and practices of collaboration. Blaming teachers is easy. These other areas are more difficult to improve. Of course, the author believes that superintendents should continue attempts to improve teacher quality. They should work on developing ways to identify better and worse teachers without relying heavily on the corrupting influence of high-stakes test scores. But they will have to embed all of this work in an insistence on broader efforts of economic and social reform if they hope their school improvements to make any difference. Otherwise, their manifesto might appear to be more an example of scapegoating teachers than a reflection of serious commitment to the futures of children. (Contains 12 endnotes.)
Where Has the Money Been Going? A Preliminary Update. EPI Briefing Paper #281
Author: Alonso, Juan Diego
Date: 2010-10-28
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: Elementary Secondary Education,Public Education,Educational Finance,Resource Allocation,Special Education,Expenditure per Student,Time Perspective,Tables (Data)

For two decades, researchers at the Economic Policy Institute have been tracking nine school districts, typical of districts nationwide, to understand how the spending levels and composition in elementary and secondary education have changed over time. The first report, &quot;Where's the Money Gone?&quot; (1995) tracked expenditures from 1967 to 1991. The second report, &quot;Where's the Money Going?&quot; (1997) carried the analysis forward to 1996. These reports concluded that conventional views of the rise of education spending are exaggerated because inflation in educational services is more rapid than inflation in the economy overall. When an appropriate education price deflator is applied, elementary and secondary school spending increases since 1967 have been substantial, but not as much so as commonly believed. The authors have now completed a new analysis that carries the data through 2005. They find that the trends identified in earlier reports have continued: real spending increases that are slower than conventionally believed when an appropriate price deflator is used, and a continued growth of special education as a share of total elementary and secondary expenditures. Publication of the full report, covering changes in the level and composition of spending from 1967 to 2005, is forthcoming. Until that time, to assist researchers and policy makers, this briefing paper contains the data tables that will eventually appear in that full report. (Contains 40 tables.)
Graduate Employment Gap: Students of Color Losing Ground. EPI Briefing Paper #282
Author: Austin, Algernon
Date: 2010-10-28
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: Unemployment,Minority Groups,African American Employment,High School Graduates,College Graduates,Asian Americans,Hispanic Americans,Whites,Racial Differences,Debt (Financial),Educational Finance,Bachelors Degrees

This Briefing Paper explores the racial and ethnic variation in the employment situation for recent high school and college graduates. For 16 to 24 year olds, this Briefing Paper finds: (1) In the first half of 2007, even before the recession began, one in five black high school graduates were unemployed; (2) By the first half of this year, the white unemployment rate for recent high school graduates had more than doubled what it was in the first half of 2007; (3) Asian American high school graduates experienced the largest increase in unemployment among recent high school graduates from the first half of 2007 to the first half of this year; (4) Hispanic high school graduates saw the largest decline in their employment-to-population ratio from the first half of 2007 to the first half of this year; (5) In the first half of this year, the black employment-to-population ratio for recent high school graduates dropped to 49.7%; (6) From the second half of 2007 to the second half of 2009, Asian American recent college graduates experienced the largest increase in unemployment; (7) The Hispanic unemployment rate for recent college graduates, in the first half of 2007, was basically equal to the white rate; and (8) Black bachelor's degree recipients were the worst of in terms of education loan debt. (Contains 5 figures, 2 tables and 6 endnotes.)