ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Characteristics of Career Academies in 12 Florida School Districts. Issues &amp; Answers. REL 2011-No. 106
Author: Estacion, Angela
Date: 2011-03-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Career Academies,School Districts,High Schools,High School Students,Educational Change,Tourism,Partnerships in Education,Labor Market,Scores,Enrollment,State Departments of Education

This report describes career academies in 12 Florida school districts in the 2006/07 school year. It examines their structure and career clusters, the high schools offering them, and the students enrolled. This study is driven by three research questions: (1) How many career academies were there, and of what types? (2) What were the characteristics of high schools offering career academies? and (3) How many students were enrolled in career academies, and what were their characteristics? This study is one of the first to investigate both career academy structure and clusters using multiple data sources. The findings reveal substantial career academy activity across the 12 Florida school districts in 2006/07. Almost 80 percent of schools had at least one career academy, and there were 596 distinct career academies across the 145 schools offering them. Of those, most operated as school-within-a-school career academies embedded in a larger high school, with most students not participating. Fewer schools reported wall-to-wall academies, where all students participate, and these were primarily in Miami-Dade. Of the 332,010 sample high school students, 49,795 (15 percent) were identified as academy participants. Schools with wall-to-wall academies tended to be larger, and their academies served a more disadvantaged student population (as proxied by the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch), on average. Wall-to-wall academies also tended to address more general career clusters, such as arts, audiovisual technology, and communication, and human services. By contrast, school-within-a-school career academies tended to be in smaller schools and serve more advantaged students. School-within-a-school academies also tended to address more specific career clusters, such as hospitality and tourism. (Contains 3 boxes, 4 figures, and 12 tables.)[For &quot;Characteristics of Career Academies in 12 Florida School Districts. Summary. Issues &amp; Answers. REL 2011-No. 106,&quot; see ED518374.]
Applying Adult Learning Theory through a Character Analysis
Author: Baskas, Richard S.
Date: 2011-04-10
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Learning Theories,Adult Learning,Personality Traits,Films,Literary Devices,Literary Criticism,African American Literature,African Americans,Females,Social Cognition,Epistemology,Reflection

The purpose of this study is to analyze the behavior of a character, Celie, in a movie, 'The Color Purple," through the lens of two adult learning theorists to determine the relationships the character has with each theory. The development and portrayal of characters in movies can be explained and understood by the analysis of adult learning theories which were conducted. Research was conducted through the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) system, and seven peer-reviewed articles were located for this purpose. A literature review of these articles determined their relevance in the study as well as the relationship between the two theorists. Analysis revealed that the character exhibited traits that matched the two theories where Bandura's theory seemed more prominent of the two.
Documentation for the 2008-09 Teacher Follow-up Survey. NCES 2011-304
Author: Graham, Shawna
Date: 2011-04-00
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: Elementary Secondary Education,Elementary School Teachers,Secondary School Teachers,Teaching (Occupation),Questionnaires,School Surveys,Documentation,Followup Studies,Teacher Characteristics,Administrator Characteristics,Teacher Employment,Teacher Selection,Teacher Qualifications,Administrator Qualifications,Professional Development,Class Size,Testing,Quality Control,Teacher Surveys,Sampling,Interviews,Data Collection,Data Processing,Job Satisfaction,National Surveys,Tables (Data),Teacher Persistence,Private Schools,Public Schools,Teacher Transfer,Minority Group Teachers,Teacher Retirement

The Teacher Follow-up Survey (TFS) is sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education and is conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. TFS is a follow-up survey of selected elementary and secondary school teachers who participated in the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). SASS is the largest, most extensive survey of K-12 school districts, schools, teachers, and administrators in the United States today. It provides extensive data on the characteristics and qualifications of teachers and principals, teacher hiring practices, professional development, class size, and other conditions in schools across the nation. TFS focuses on a sample of teachers who participated in SASS, including both teachers who left and teachers who remained in the K-12 teaching profession. This report covers all phases of the Teacher Follow-up Survey (TFS), from survey planning through data file availability. The TFS determines how many teachers remained at the same school, moved to another school, or left the profession in the year following the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) administration. This report contains chapters on preparation for the 2008-09 TFS, frame creation and sample selection procedures, data collection, response rates, data processing, imputation procedures, weighting and variance estimation, a review of the quality of TFS data, structure of TFS data files and information on merging data files, and user notes and cautions. Appended are: (1) Key Terms for TFS; (2) Questionnaire Availability; (3) First Cognitive Testing of TFS Items: Summary of Findings and Recommendations; (4) Second Cognitive Testing of TFS Items: Summary of Findings and Recommendations; (5) Teacher Status Form (Form TFS-1); (6) Results of the Unit Nonresponse Bias Analysis; (7) Quality Assurance for Keying and Mailout Operations; (8) Changes Made to Variables During the Consistency and Logic Edits, by Data File; (9) Imputation Changes to Variables, by Data File; (10) Weighting Adjustment Cells; (11) Evaluation of an Alternative Nonresponse Adjustment Method; (12) Frame and Created Variables; and (13) Crosswalk Among Items in the 2000-01, 2004-05, and 2008-09 TFS and With the 2007-08 SASS. (Contains 40 tables and 14 exhibits.)
HEPS Inventory Tool: An Inventory Tool Including Quality Assessment of School Interventions on Healthy Eating and Physical Activity
Author: Dadaczynski, Kevin
Date: 2010-05-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Physical Activities,Health Promotion,Public Health,Intervention,Program Evaluation,Evaluation Criteria,Educational Quality,Check Lists,Glossaries,Program Effectiveness,School Policy,Guides,Nutrition,Eating Habits,Guidelines,Evaluation Methods,Web Sites,Educational Policy

The HEPS Inventory Tool aims to support stakeholders working in school health promotion to promote high quality interventions on healthy eating and physical activity. As a tool it provides a step-by-step approach on how to develop a national or regional inventory of existing school based interventions on healthy eating and physical activity.  It provides a comprehensive understanding of quality and its dynamics in school health promotion.  The HEPS quality model builds on four quality dimensions: the quality of concept, the quality of structure, the quality of process and the quality of results. The model provides a structured sequence and reflects a holistic perspective of quality. Each of the four dimensions need to be looked at in order to determine the quality of health related interventions in the school setting. The tool contains a set of criteria and indicators that will help a comprehensive quality review of already developed school based interventions on healthy eating and physical activity. Also, the tool helps to promote sustainable quality development of school based interventions. The tool is part of the HEPS Schoolkit, an EU funded project that supports the implementation of school health promotion on healthy eating and physical activity on various levels. The HEPS Quality Checklist is appended. A glossary of basic terms and a list of useful web resources are also included. [This publication arises from the HEPS project which has received funding from the European Union, in the framework of the Public Health Programme. The HEPS project is co-funded by ZonMw (The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development).]
Involve Me and I Learn: Providing Substantial Learning Choices in Higher Education
Author: Francom, Gregory M.
Date: 2011-04-11
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Independent Study,Selection,Learning Activities,Case Studies,Higher Education,Graduate Students,Criteria,Familiarity,Prior Learning,Interests,Computer Software,Goal Orientation

Making one's own learning choices is central to self-directed learning, yet the opportunity to choose learning activities is rarely given to students in formal educational settings. The case study reported in this paper is a description of student experiences and perceptions in a software tools graduate level class that offered substantial learning choices. Findings indicate that students did not expect to be given a learning choice but had positive reactions. They chose what to learn based on future usefulness, familiarity and personal interest. Students also experienced an overall learning process that progressed from isolation to community and from subject matter orientation to goal orientation. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)
Achievement Goal Orientation of Community College Mathematics Students and the Misalignment of Instructors' Perceptions
Author: Mesa, Vilma
Date: 2011-04-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: College Mathematics,Community Colleges,Goal Orientation,Learning Motivation,Mathematics Skills,Teacher Attitudes,Surveys,Academic Achievement,Remedial Instruction,Mathematics Instruction,Self Concept,Interviews,College Faculty,Student Attitudes

This study reports findings regarding the application of a survey of achievement goal orientations to a sample of mathematics 777 students enrolled in remedial and college mathematics courses at a community college. The survey was based on the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scales [PALS] and it included questions from the Views About Mathematics Survey [VAMS]. Interviews with faculty teaching these students gave us their perceptions of how their students would score in the scales measured with the survey. Survey results indicate that students' achievement goal orientations are consistent with adaptive learning patterns: students are interested in developing competence, expect and believe they can handle challenging work, avoid self-handicapping behaviors, and exhibit a positive mathematics self-concept. Interviews reveal that instructors perceive that their students are more concerned with external judgments regarding their ability and less interested in developing competence, that they engage in self-handicapping behaviors, have a poor sense of their own capacity to do the work, routinely press for reducing challenge in the classroom, and have a low mathematics self-concept. In addition, students in remedial classes and their instructors hold more positive perceptions than students and instructors of college classes. These discrepancies suggest that instructors might benefit from learning the goal orientations that community college mathematics students have, so they can take advantage of the high confidence and motivation to learn that their students bring to the mathematics classroom. Appended are: Survey Items and Scales. (Contains 11 tables, 1 figure, and 5 footnotes.)
HEPS Tool for Schools: A Guide for School Policy Development on Healthy Eating and Physical Activity
Author: Simovska, Venka
Date: 2010-04-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Physical Activities,Health Promotion,Public Health,Program Effectiveness,School Policy,Program Development,Policy Formation,Guides,Nutrition,Eating Habits,Guidelines,Evaluation Methods,Web Sites,Educational Policy,Questionnaires,Evaluation Criteria

The HEPS Tool for Schools provides ideas, guidelines and suggested techniques to help schools in their development of school policy on healthy eating and physical activity. There is growing evidence that a comprehensive whole school policy on healthy eating and physical activity can lead to better academic outcomes of pupils as well as promoting their health. The HEPS Tool for Schools includes a set of steps for schools to follow when developing a policy. This includes a rapid assessment tool to assess the current situation and an introduction to HEPS school level indicators. These help in developing an overview of what needs to be considered when planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating school policy. The tool can be used by schools a guide since developing a school policy is a process that takes place in a dynamic school community and is linked to changing local and national contexts.  The tool is part of the HEPS Schoolkit, an EU funded project that supports the implementation of school health promotion on healthy eating and physical activity on various levels. Appended are: (1) Rapid Assessment Tool; and (2) School Level Indicators. (Contains a list of useful web links.) [This publication arises from the HEPS project which has received funding from the European Union, in the framework of the Public Health Programme. The HEPS project is co-funded by ZonMw (The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development.)]
Characteristics of Career Academies in 12 Florida School Districts. Summary. Issues &amp; Answers. REL 2011-No. 106
Author: Estacion, Angela
Date: 2011-03-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Career Academies,School Districts,High Schools,High School Students,Educational Change,Enrollment,State Departments of Education

This report describes career academies in 12 Florida school districts in the 2006/07 school year. It examines their structure and career clusters, the high schools offering them, and the students enrolled. This study is one of the first to investigate both career academy structure and clusters using multiple data sources. It provides state education leaders and other stakeholders with baseline trends and patterns to use in tracking and evaluating Florida career academy development. [For the full report, see ED518283.]
The Effects of School Wide Bonuses on Student Achievement: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from North Carolina
Author: Lauen, Douglas Lee
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Research Design,Public Schools,Elementary School Students,Grade 4,Grade 5,Mathematics Tests,Reading Tests,Scores,Incentives,Educational Improvement,Achievement Gains,Low Achievement,Academic Achievement,Evidence,Program Effectiveness

This study examines the incentive effects of North Carolina's practice of awarding performance bonuses on test score achievement on the state tests. Bonuses were awarded based solely on whether a school exceeds a threshold on a continuous performance metric. The study uses a sharp regression discontinuity design, an approach with strong internal validity around the cutoff of the treatment assignment score, to examine three questions: (1) Do bonuses induce incentive effects to increase math or reading test score gains?; (2) Do bonuses promote &quot;educational triage&quot; based on the achievement level of the student?; and (3) Do bonuses promote a narrowing of the curriculum at the expense of science? The study is set in North Carolina public schools elementary schools (statewide) in the spring of 2008. The study finds evidence consistent with the hypothesis that educators in North Carolina respond to incentives to increase test score gains in reading and math. Those students in schools that just missed the bonus threshold in 2007 have higher test score gains in 2008. This suggests that educators expend additional effort and may implement new practices in response to the failure to receive a bonus. The author finds suggestive, but not conclusive, evidence that math gains are primarily driven by low and average achieving students. Contrary to expectations, reading gains are disproportionately driven by students with the highest within-school achievement. This suggests that either schools targeted high achieving students with reading interventions, which is unlikely, or that schools used whole-school interventions that had positive effects on high achievers and no effects on low achievers. This finding deserves future research into its generalizability across different time periods and investigation of the mechanisms through which this differential effect was produced. The author finds no evidence of a narrowing of the curriculum at the expense of science. This is in contradiction to theory and prior research on a &quot;narrowing of the curriculum&quot; at the expense of low-stakes and non-tested subjects. The fact that the policy is focused on test score gains, rather than levels, however, raises questions about whether incentive effects on test score levels should be expected. That North Carolina's bonus policy had no effect on test score levels may be viewed as a shortcoming of the policy if absolute, rather than relative, levels of performance are also of interest. (Contains 9 figures and 1 table.)
Teacher Pay for Performance: Experimental Evidence from the Project on Incentives in Teaching (POINT)
Author: Springer, Matthew G.
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Evidence,Control Groups,Middle Schools,Academic Achievement,Program Effectiveness,Incentives,Merit Pay,Experimental Programs,Likert Scales,Achievement Gains,Experimental Groups,Educational Practices,Teacher Attitudes,Teacher Effectiveness

This paper presents the results of a rigorous experiment examining the impact of pay for performance on student achievement and instructional practice. This study, conducted by the National Center on Performance Incentives in partnership with the RAND Corporation examines an experimental pay for performance program administered via a randomized controlled study in the Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) district. The research questions are: (1) Does performance-pay alone improve student outcomes?; and (2) Does the opportunity to earn bonuses alter teachers' instructional practices and attitudes? The Project on Incentives in Teaching (POINT) experiment was conducted in MNPS district middle schools (grades 5-8) for three academic years from 2006-07 through 2008-09. The authors find no significant difference overall between students whose teachers were assigned to the treatment group and those whose teachers were assigned to the control group. In addition, there were no significant differences in any single year, nor were there significant differences for students in grades 6-8 when separate effects were estimated for each grade level. The authors do find significant positive effects of being eligible for bonuses in the second and third years of the project in grade 5. The difference amounts to between one half and two-thirds of a year's typical growth in mathematics. However, for the 2007-08 fifth grade cohort (the only cohort they have been able to follow as yet as sixth graders), these effects are no longer evident the following year. That is, it makes no difference to grade 6 test scores whether a student's fifth grade teacher was in the treatment group or the control group. There was also a significant difference between students of treatment and control teachers in fifth grade social studies (years 2 and 3 of the project) and fifth grade science (year 3). No differences for these subjects were found in other grades. Based on survey responses, more than 80 percent of treatment teachers agreed that POINT &quot;has not affected my work, because I was already working as effectively as I could before the implementation of POINT.&quot; Fewer than a quarter agreed that they had altered their instructional practices as a result of the POINT experiment. (Contains 2 figures and 3 tables.) [For the full report, &quot;Teacher Pay for Performance: Experimental Evidence from the Project on Incentives in Teaching,&quot; see ED513347.]
Team Pay for Performance: Experimental Evidence from Round Rock's Project on Incentives in Teaching
Author: McCaffrey, Daniel F.
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Evidence,Private Schools,Middle Schools,Academic Achievement,Program Effectiveness,Teaching Methods,Incentives,Educational Practices,Merit Pay,Achievement Gains,Teamwork,Teacher Attitudes,Core Curriculum,Performance Based Assessment,Teacher Effectiveness

This paper presents the results of a rigorous experiment examining the impact of pay for performance on student achievement and instructional practice. This study, conducted by the National Center on Performance Incentives, examines a pay-for-performance program in Round Rock (Texas) which distributed performance awards to teachers based on a team's contribution to student test score gains. The research questions are: (1) Does the opportunity to earn bonus on the basis of student achievement of taught core subjects of English language arts/reading, mathematics, science, and social studies by the teacher and his or her teammates effect teachers' attitudes about compensation and teaching, and affect their teaching practices; and (2) Does the opportunity to earn bonus on the basis of student achievement of taught core subjects of English language arts/reading, mathematics, science, and social studies by the teacher and his or her teammates affect student achievement. The study was conducted in the nine middle schools in Round Rock Independent School District (ISD) that were in operation in the 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years (a new middle school was opened for the 2010-11 school year). Preliminary results find no overall intervention effect on any of the student achievement outcomes. The effects sizes are typically very small with small standard errors. At the grade level there are some significant effects. However, these are sensitive to the outcome and are currently under ongoing investigation.
Learning Communities for Developmental Education Students: Early Results from Randomized Experiments at Three Community Colleges
Author: Weiss, Michael J.
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Community Colleges,College Role,Learning Activities,Discourse Communities,Grouping (Instructional Purposes),Student Placement,Credits,Evidence,School Holding Power,Academic Persistence,Developmental Studies Programs,Educational Strategies

This paper presents results from a rigorous random assignment study of Learning Communities programs operated at three of six community colleges participating in the National Center for Postsecondary Research's (NCPR) Learning Communities Demonstration. The demonstration's focus is on determining whether Learning Communities are an effective strategy for helping students who have been referred to developmental education. The setting of this research is Hillsborough Community College, Queensborough Community College and Houston Community College. Findings from these three Learning Communities Demonstration sites are as follows: (1) Hillsborough's fairly basic Learning Communities' model did not have a meaningful impact on students' academic success (in terms of likelihood of completing developmental reading, average total credits attempted/earned, and rates of persistence); (2) Both Houston's and Queensborough's Learning Communities programs showed evidence of helping students progress through the developmental math sequence more quickly; and (3) Houston's and Queensborough's Learning Communities programs both did not show evidence of lasting impacts on credit accumulation or retention. (Contains 2 tables.)