January 2007
No. 10
Copyright © 2007 Queue, Inc.

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EDUCATION NEWS

For back issues of this newsletter, as well as current and back issues of our state newsletters and U.S. Education News, please go to: http://www.queuenews.com/

For the latest education research news on a daily basis, please visit our Education Research Report Weblog: http://educationresearchreport.blogspot.com/ Please don't forget to change your bookmarks!

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Letters to the Editor

Response to letter in our last issue asking for help with science curricula (http://www.queuenews.com/NewslettersDec06/EduResrchReportDec.html#letter):

There is no organization for at the cutting edge of science education reform than the National Science Resorce Center http://www.nsrconline.org/. They were formed by the Smithsonian and the National Academy of Sciences in 1985. Their "mission is to improve the learning and teaching of science in school districts in the United States and throughout the world. The NSRC employs strategies that are informed by research, incorporate best practices, and leverage change through the development of strategic partnerships."

They regularly offer 5 day sessions that provide your schools and districts with assistance in developing 5 year strategic plans for science reform. They share some of the best curricula on the market and connect you with the resources and support you might need to succeed.

It's true that the quality of the teacher is the best indicator of success for children. But the NSRC has developped their own material based on best practices that has lead to significant improvement, not only in students' science scores, but also in reading and writing.

Please feel free to contact me for further information or support. Or just contact the NSRC!

Good Luck! 

Todd Farris
6th grade Math/Science
French Prairie Middle School
tfarris@woodburn.k12.or.us

 

I would like the latest research in language arts curriculum:  reading textbooks, spelling textbooks, English textbooks, vocabulary textbooks, phonics textbooks.

Our school will be ordering new materials this coming year, and I would like the latest information on the texts that are available, which textbooks are better than another.

Thank you.
Eileen Franks
107 6th St N W
Waukon, Iowa 52172

Editor: Can anyone help her?

 

Thank you for sending out the education news reports. I may have introduced myself before, but would like to do so again.

I lead the Tutor/Mentor Connection, based in Chicago. I focus on getting people who don't live in poverty involved with inner-city youth via  non-school volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs.  I feel the non school hours, particular the after work hours, are a time frame when many volunteers will connect with kids in on-going and flexible ways that are not possible during the school day and at the school. The longer we can keep a volunteer connected, and the more we do to educate  him on the issues, the more likely that person will become an advocate and a leader, bringing resources from his community to the neighborhood where the youth lives.

At http://www.tutormentorconnection.org you can see how we support the involvement of volunteers in programs all over the Chicago region, and in other states.  In the Links section I have links to organizations that provide tutoring/mentoring, and to organizations that are resources.  I encourage you to add your link.

The challenge  you and I and other face, is getting more people to look at this information every day, reflect on it, discuss it with others, then incorporate it into the way they volunteer, the way they lead, the way they donate, and the way they vote.  None of us has advertising dollars, so we need to collaborate in other ways to create advertising type frequency and awareness.

I've organized conferences in May and November for this purpose,  and hosted them since 1994.  I'll be doing another on May 17 and 18 and I encourage you to take a role, as a presenter, or as a display table, or as a sponsor.  You can read about the last conference at http://www.tutormentorconference.bigstep.com

Dan Bassill
Tutor/Mentor Connection

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AFT Report: Building Minds, Minding Buildings Turning Crumbling Schools into Environments for Learning

Mold, extreme temperatures, overcrowding, poor air quality, vermin infestation and other deplorable conditions in too many public schools throughout the United States must be addressed immediately as a top educational priority, the American Federation of Teachers concludes in a report released recently.

"This is a health issue, a safety issue and an educational issue," said Antonia Cortese, AFT executive vice president. "In the world’s richest nation, every child is entitled to learn in clean, well-maintained classrooms. As we try to build young minds, we also have to mind school buildings."

Building Minds, Minding Buildings—Turning Crumbling Schools into Environments for Learning was based on the responses of more than 1,000 school employees to a survey on the physical environment at their schools. Many of the responses revealed some startling building conditions, from students who have to wear coats and gloves in class to rats and mice entering classrooms through windows and cracks in walls. The report features compelling observations and quotes from teachers and school employees in urban areas, small towns and rural communities alike:

• "The mold is so bad that in one of the teachers' bathrooms, mushrooms are growing," remarked a math specialist from New York state.
  
• "[We have] leaks and even the occasional icicle from my computer lab ceiling, asbestos coming up off the floor, the exterior walls are crumbling. We feel forgotten by our community and state and federal funding," said a Minnesota technology coordinator.
  
• "Our school has broken ceiling tiles, plumbing in bathrooms that have not been updated since the '60s, dirty carpets and electrical outlets that don't work (this causes the use of extension cords across the room), and finally, roaches are everywhere!" an employee at a Florida school commented.

Building Minds, Minding Buildings also includes vivid photographs of school conditions submitted by AFT members.

According to the report, an increase in cases of asthma may be linked to poor air quality, student concentration may be affected by temperature extremes, and student and staff absenteeism may be due to an unhealthy "built environment."

These also were the conclusions of a study required to be conducted by the U.S. Department of Education under the No Child Left Behind law but never publicized. The study found "the overall evidence strongly suggests that poor environments in schools due primarily to effects of indoor pollutants adversely influence the health, performance and attendance of students." The agency shelved the study's results and took no action.

Even in the face of such evidence, federal, state and local elected officials have been slow to adopt this issue as a top priority. As the AFT report notes, "Some supporters of increased accountability in our schools change the subject when the discussion turns to the condition of the buildings where our children learn."

The AFT recommends federal action, including:

• Passage of America’s Better Classroom (ABC) Act, which would provide $24.8 billion in school modernization bonds for renovation of existing buildings and construction of new schools.
  
• Passage of the 21st Century High Performing School Facilities Act, which would authorize grants to school districts for modernization and construction.
  
• Creation of a “Learning Environment Index” under NCLB that would require schools and districts to make improvements in the teaching and learning environment.

The AFT recommends improvements at the state and local levels, including:

• Stronger standards for school building and systems inspections.
  
• Clear guidelines for school renovation practices.
  
• Uniform and comprehensive pest control and maintenance plans.
  
• Increased involvement of union members in the planning of new school construction and renovation.

"Teachers and school staff are more than willing to be held accountable for the achievement of our students," said Cortese, "but it’s time for elected officials at all levels to begin taking more responsibility for improving the physical learning environment in our schools."

Visit the links below:

• The Building Minds, Minding Buildings report is available at: http://www.aft.org/topics/building-conditions/downloads/minding-bldgs.pdf
• More details and additional resources on the AFT's school buildings campaign are available here: http://www.aft.org/topics/building-conditions/index.htm.

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States Key to Ensuring Access and Quality of Effective Preschools, Says State Boards of Education Association

Quality pre-school programs have proven themselves so successful at boosting student achievement that states should expand high-quality preschool systems to as many children as possible as soon as possible, concludes a new study by the National Association of State Boards of Education.

The new NASBE report, Fulfilling the Promise of Preschool, recommends that state boards of education leverage their existing authority — over K-12 system standards and teacher licensure — to vertically align the pre-kindergarten system with the rest of public education.

The report also encourages state boards to collaborate with other state agencies, both to transform disparate preschool service providers into a more cohesive network and move toward universal preschool, in an incremental and phased-in shift that serves low-income and at-risk children first.

State board leaders, the report emphasizes, are uniquely positioned to promote the report’s recommendations on extending pre-k access and ensuring pre-k program quality.

“The goal of leaving no child behind simply cannot be met without high-quality preschools for all,” says Brenda Welburn, NASBE Executive Director. “Given the clear payoff from early childhood programs, in everything from narrowing the achievement gap to boosting student performance,” she adds, “state board members need to take the lead in efforts to nurture the best early childhood practices and ensure access and quality for all students.”

Poor children may have the most to gain from expanded access to preschool, the new NASBE study points out, but all children can benefit from quality preschool. The K-12 system benefits as well, as the experiences young children gain in pre-k programs translate into higher achievement in later grades.

The year-long NASBE study examined how state policymakers can create high-quality learning environments for all children within the current fragmented system of pre-k programs, authority, and funding that stretches from federal and state to local levels and encompasses both public and private entities. State education leaders, the report finds, can surmount this fragmentation by helping to forge a common vision and well-defined preschool standards linked to child outcomes.

“The teacher-child interaction is the linchpin of a quality early learning experience,” says Karabelle Pizzigati, the chair of the report committee and a member of the Maryland State Board of Education. “As we expand preschool education, we need to put in place clear policies in teacher training, instructional supports, and other areas that promote quality early learning. We also need program evaluations that assess how well children are progressing.”

The executive summary, Fulfilling the Promise of Preschool is accessible on NASBE’s website at http://www.nasbe.org/publications/Early_Childhood_Study_Group/early_childhood_exec_summary.pdf
and the full report is available by either calling 800-220-5183 or ordering online.

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U. of Colorado Study Finds Growing Up in Bad Neighborhood Not as Harmful as Expected

Study shows successful rate of development of children in best neighborhoods not significantly higher than those from disadvantaged neighborhoods

There's good news for children growing up in bad neighborhoods in a comprehensive study led by nationally renowned University of Colorado at Boulder sociology Professor Delbert Elliott.

The 8-year effort analyzing the successful development of children in different kinds of neighborhoods in Denver and Chicago found that children growing up in high-poverty neighborhoods were doing much better than expected. The rate of successful development for children from the best neighborhoods was 63 percent while the success rate for children living in high-poverty, disadvantaged neighborhoods was 52 percent.

"There's an 11-point difference between our worst neighborhoods and our best neighborhoods," said Elliott, director of the CU-Boulder Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence. "That's very surprising."

"The idea that living in high-poverty, disorganized, disadvantaged neighborhoods is kind of a death sentence for kids is clearly not the case," he said. "We're getting kids coming out of those neighborhoods that are doing quite well."

The examination of neighborhoods was one of four integrated studies launched by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Network on Successful Adolescent Development. The portion of the study conducted by Elliott and his colleagues looked at neighborhoods, while three other teams focused on family and school influences on development, and youth development in rural farming areas.

The results were published this fall in "Goods Kids From Bad Neighborhoods" by Cambridge University Press. The study was co-authored by Scott Menard, Amanda Elliott and David Huizinga of the CU-Boulder Institute of Behavioral Science, William Julius Wilson of Harvard University and Bruce Rankin of Koc University in Turkey.

The researchers used U.S. census data, personal interviews and focus groups to study 662 families and 820 youths age 10 to 18 from 33 neighborhoods in Denver, and 545 families and 830 youths from 40 neighborhoods in Chicago. Names of all neighborhoods in the study were changed to protect the confidentiality of the participants.

Relatively little is known about how adolescents from disadvantaged neighborhoods overcome adversity, according to Elliott. While most other studies focus on crime, drugs and the dysfunctional behavior of youth in poor neighborhoods, this study focused on success: the factors that helped adolescents develop into healthy, productive, contributing citizens.

In examining the combined effects of neighborhood, family, school and peer group, the researchers were surprised to find that "success in any one of those seemed to be able to buffer the kids from the negative effects of living in a bad neighborhood," Elliott said. This finding is "very encouraging" because it means that the conditions in all four contexts don't have to improve at once in order to make a difference in children's lives, he said.

It also was somewhat surprising that the impact of each of these social contexts was fairly similar, although not identical, Elliott said. For positive youth development, the family and the school are the two most critical contexts. But for issues of delinquent behavior, drug use and early sexual activity, the critical context is the peer group.

As expected, the family has a strong influence on the behavior of younger children but this influence wanes starting at about age 15 when the school and peer group gain in importance. The good news from this finding is that good family-based interventions are available for parents of younger children, he said.

"We know that we can teach parents how to do a better job of parenting," Elliott said. "That's an intervention in disadvantaged, high-poverty neighborhoods that potentially can have a dramatic effect on youth development. The earlier we can do that the better, given this age effect that we see. You can't wait until kids are 16, 17, 18."

Another key finding was that parents in disadvantaged neighborhoods are doing a pretty good job of parenting. The researchers didn't find that the quality of parenting was strongly related to the type of neighborhood. The tendency for poor parenting, bad schools and antisocial peer groups to cluster in bad neighborhoods was quite weak.

When the difference in financial resources between poorer and wealthier neighborhoods was taken into account, "The quality of parenting was just as good and in some cases better than in more advantaged neighborhoods," Elliott said.

The nature of the parenting was different, however. In disadvantaged neighborhoods, a lot of the parenting dealt with teaching children how to deal with the dangers in their neighborhoods -- the exposure to drugs, delinquency, crime and the dysfunctional behavior of some of the adults and teens who live there, he said.

"A large part of the parenting practice issues for those parents had to do with ensuring the safety of their children," he said.

One of the findings in the companion MacArthur study on families showed that trying to confine kids to the house in a dangerous neighborhood doesn't appear to be a good strategy because teenagers are too apt to sneak out to be with their peers.

"There's such a need on the part of adolescents to be with their friends that if you don't provide positive social contexts for that to happen, it's going to happen anyway, and it's going to happen in some sort of context where you don't have good monitoring and supervision, and then you get some pretty negative outcomes," he said.

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New Dyslexia Theory Blames 'Noise'

Poor filtering of unwanted data may be the root cause of common disorder

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development defines dyslexia as "a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction.

Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge."

The dyslexic brain struggles to read because even small distractions can throw it off, according to a new model of dyslexia emerging from a group of recent studies.

The studies contradict an influential, 30-year-old theory that blamed dyslexia on a neural deficit in processing the fast sounds of language.
Instead, the studies suggest that children with dyslexia have bad filters for irrelevant data. As a result, they struggle to form solid mental categories for identifying letters and word sounds.

Such children may benefit from intensive training under "noisy" conditions to strengthen their mental templates, said University of Southern California neuroscientist Zhong-Lin Lu.

Lu was a co-author on three studies, along with lead author and former USC graduate student Anne Sperling (now at the National Institute of Mental Health), USC psychologist Franklin Manis and University of Wisconsin, Madison psychologist Mark Seidenberg.

The most recent study is due to be published later this month in Psychological Science.

Confusion about dyslexia rivals the confusion of dyslexia. Many still think that to have dyslexia means to mix up your letters (one of many possible symptoms having to do with word recognition, directional ability and decoding of symbols).

What is known is that dyslexia affects millions of children, with estimates of its incidence ranging from 5 to 15 percent.

Sperling, who conducted her research as a doctoral student at USC, said the new findings point to a deeper problem - not just a visual deficit - affecting all areas of perception.

Sperling said people with dyslexia appear to have shaky mental categories for the essential sounds that make up language.

"It's harder to make a [language] task automatic when your categories are fuzzier than they ought to be to begin with," she said.

"In terms of treatment, the results suggest that programs that foster the development of sharper perceptual categories for letters and letter sounds might be a good way to supplement existing dyslexia interventions," she added.

Lu said, "Train them in noise."

The new study in Psychological Science builds on similar results published by the team of Sperling, Lu, Manis and Seidenberg last year in Nature Neuroscience.

In addition, the same authors previously showed that poor readers also have trouble figuring out categories in simple card games.
Other recent studies lend support to the noise exclusion theory.

Johannes Ziegler of the Universite de Provence in Marseille, France, was the lead author on a study of dyslexia and auditory noise published this year in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Ziegler said his results suggest that dyslexia stems from shaky categories for phonemes (the basic sounds of language).

"In silence, information is often redundant and dyslexics get away with the perception deficit," Ziegler said in an e-mail. "In noise, however, they can no longer compensate.

"What is important is that noisy environments are the rule and not the exception," he added, citing a study from South Bank University in England that found average noise levels in primary classrooms to be as high as near a busy intersection.

"What Sperling and Lu's data suggest is that the mechanism responsible for faulty phonological development is quite general and has to do with attention in a broad sense....

"This is a great paper of very high significance... As people like Steve Grossberg [of Boston University] have argued for many years, attention ... is crucial for stable learning of categories."

Ziegler called for preventive training for children with weak speech perception in noise in kindergarten or early primary grades, saying they are at greater risk for developing dyslexia.

He also cited a Northwestern University study from 2003 that documented negative effects from noise on children with learning deficits.

Lu said there is a "lot of evidence" of learning problems from ambient noise. In one such study, Manis and a collaborator from UCLA found that children with dyslexia struggled to discriminate similar sounds, like "spy" and "sky," because they weighed irrelevant differences in sounds equally with key distinctions.

Manis also cited research from Finland and the United States showing that infants with dyslexic parents lag behind their peers in forming categories for speech sounds.

In the conclusion to their study in Psychological Science, the authors speculate that the deficit in noise exclusion may have biochemical roots in abnormal levels of GABA, a neurotransmitter that helps the brain to filter out irrelevant information.

"This may become interesting for drug development," said Lu, who is testing this hypothesis with functional magnetic resonance imaging trials.

Lu and his collaborators interpret the new results as a rejection of the "magnocellular hypothesis" - named for a type of neuron involved in processing fast visual information - that influenced dyslexia research for decades.

The researchers found that the magnocellular pathway works normally both in children with dyslexia and in adult poor readers - as long as visual or aural noise is low.

As external noise goes up, the same subjects begin to score poorly on visual pattern tests.

The deficit persists even when the task requires only slow processing.

"The findings, and particularly the [slow processing] ones, are consistent with the hypothesis that ... dyslexic children have difficulty setting their signal filters to optimum and ignoring distracting noise," Lu said at the time of the Nature Neuroscience study.

The new study in Psychological Science was designed to replicate visual tests on motion perception from seminal experiments in the 1970s, with the addition of variable external noise. It also found no magnocellular deficit.

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Commercial Marketing in Schools May Discourage Healthy Nutrition Environment for Students

Commercial activity permitted in schools, such as soft drink ads; the use of Channel One broadcasts in classrooms; sales incentives from soft drink bottlers; and exclusive beverage contracts may discourage a "nutrition-friendly" environment for students, says researchers.

Dr. Claudia Probart, Penn State associate professor of nutritional sciences who led the study, says, "Schools’ newly created wellness policies as mandated by the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 provide ideal opportunities to examine school environments for advertising that might conflict with their goals for a healthy climate for students."

The study is detailed in the current (December) issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association in a paper, "Existence and Predictors of Soft Drink Advertisements in Pennsylvania High Schools." The authors are Probart; Elaine McDonnell, project coordinator, Penn State; Lisa Bailey-Davis, director of operations, Pennsylvania Advocates for Nutrition and Activity; and J. Elaine Weirich, project manager at Penn State.

The researchers sent surveys to 271 school foodservice directors at high schools in Pennsylvania and received 84 percent participation. The schools were representative of the entire population of high schools in Pennsylvania.

Approximately two-thirds (66.5%) of the respondents said soft drink advertisements were located in at least one spot in their school, with 62 percent at vending machines and 27 percent on school grounds such as sports playing fields. More than 10 percent of the respondents said the ads were displayed in the cafeteria.

Factors influencing the number of soft drink ads were soft drink company incentives from distributors, exclusive beverage contracts with the schools and subscriptions to Channel One, a free 12-minute news broadcast with 2 minutes of advertisements.

The extent of soft drink ads appears to be linked to lower average daily participation in the school lunch program, the researchers write.
"The negative association between number of soft drink advertisement locations and participation in school lunch is a disturbing finding, suggesting these ads compete effectively with school lunches, which are designed for good nutrition," Probart notes.

McDonnell adds, "The school-supported appearance of commercial advertising in locations or in news programs may be sending silent messages that this brand might be 'OK,’ creating a 'halo effect.’ "

This study points to the need for additional research, including physical inventories of commercialization on school campuses to verify the possible impact on students. The findings may prompt consideration of tough issues because financially strapped schools may not be able to replace the revenue from commercial activity.

"However, under the 2004 legislation, schools are being asked to become zones of good health and nutrition, providing leadership in the effort to prevent childhood obesity," Probart says. "One way is for a community, parents and educators to change teens’ unhealthy eating habits is to develop, implement and enforce policies to create advertising-free, nutrition-friendly school environments."

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Education Trust Releases 2006 Education Watch State Summaries

Parents, policymakers and the public-at-large are paying closer attention to education outcomes than ever before. That’s good news, because education matters more now than ever before.

Spurred in part by No Child Left Behind, much of the focus is on the achievement gap that separates students of color and low-income students from White and more affluent students. The Education Trust is releasing its Education Watch 2006 State Summary Reports to provide a common foundation of fact for conversations about—and action to close—these gaps.

The State Summary Reports provide a data-based snapshot of student achievement and the condition of public education in the 50 states, the District of Columbia and the nation. The information in these reports reveals how far we have to go to ensure that every young American has access to high-quality education.

The Education Watch State Summary Reports provide state-specific data on:

Achievement Gaps:

• How many students are proficient in reading and mathematics on state assessments? How do proficiency rates on state assessments compare to proficiency rates on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)?
• How do achievement gaps between groups compare across states? Where are gaps the smallest? Where are they the biggest?
• What are the trends in student achievement over time? Which states are making the biggest gains?

High School and College Attainment Gaps:

• What is the on-time high school graduation rate for different groups of students?
• How many high school graduates enroll in college?
• What is the college graduation rate for different groups of students?

Opportunity Gaps

• What are the participation and success rates for different groups of students in high-level courses such as Advanced Placement (AP)?
• Which students are most likely to have teachers who have even a college minor in the subject they’re teaching?
• How much state and local per-pupil funding is provided to schools in low- versus high-poverty districts? Which states provide the most funding to low-income districts? Which states provide the least?
• How affordable is college for each state’s lowest income students?

The data in these reports underscore the need for a renewed commitment to closing achievement gaps. Despite the dramatic changes in our economy, our public schools continue to turn out millions of young people—mostly minority and low-income—without the knowledge or skills they need to be productive participants in our democracy and economy.

“While manufacturing and agriculture once gave America an edge, education will determine who leads the 21st century,” said Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust. “America is facing unprecedented pressure to compete in a global economy, and we simply cannot afford to under-educate so many of our young people.”

A Deeper Look at Achievement Across States: NAEP Data Tables

While no state is yet where it needs to be in terms of educating poor and minority students, some are doing a much better job than others. To help state leaders, researchers, and advocates explore these differences and identify states from which they might learn, the accompanying NAEP Data Tables allow for easy state-to-state comparisons of scale scores for different groups of students. They include tables that look at student achievement and gap trends over time. For example:

• Low-income eighth-graders in Massachusetts score 21 points higher in math than low-income eighth-graders in neighboring Rhode Island (273 vs. 252).
• In 2003, reading scores for African-American fourth-graders were 14 points higher in Connecticut than in Delaware. Over the last five years, however, African-American reading scores increased by 23 points in Delaware while in Connecticut, they decreased by 2 points. Delaware’s African-American fourth-graders now read at higher levels than their peers in Connecticut.
• The gap in math achievement separating Latino from White eighth-graders in Minnesota is 10 points larger than the gap in Virginia, a state educating a similar proportion of Latino students (33 points vs. 23 points).

The wide variation between states in achievement for the same groups of students demonstrates just how important state policies and practices are. “If race and poverty mattered more than what happens in schools, then NAEP scores for low-income students and students of color would be more consistent from state to state,” said Daria Hall, senior policy analyst for the Education Trust.

Focus on Opportunities to Learn

The data are clear: what states do matters a lot when it comes to student achievement. But far too often, state policies and practices work to the direct disadvantage of low-income and minority students. For example:

• In New York, schools in the highest poverty districts have $2,065 less to spend per pupil than schools in the most affluent districts.
• In Illinois, students in high-poverty secondary schools are more than three times as likely as students in low-poverty schools to have a teacher lacking even a minor in the subject they’re teaching (47 percent vs.15 percent).
• In Michigan, African-American students represent 20 percent of the state’s K-12 enrollment but just 5 percent of the students enrolled in Advanced Placement English Language and Composition courses.

The State Summary Reports provide data on the opportunities that students are given to learn in all states. The accompanying PowerPoint presentation delves deeper into opportunity gaps in individual states, illustrating more advanced ways to look at these issues. For example, while a teacher’s college degree provides just a very rough proxy for his or her content knowledge, researchers at the Illinois Education Research Council have devised a much fuller measure of teacher quality—one that includes certification status, years of experience, performance on licensure exams and the teacher’s own academic background and skills. Using this measure as well as student ACT performance, the researchers demonstrate the profound impact that teachers have on their students’ college-readiness. They further demonstrate the hugely inequitable distribution of teacher quality between schools serving poor and minority students and those serving White and middle-class students.

Both the state summary reports and the PowerPoint testify to the unfortunate truth that states continue to give poor and minority students less of everything that research and experience suggest would help them catch up in school: less access to qualified and effective teachers, less money and less access to challenging curriculum.

Rather than questioning whether we can close achievement gaps, as some would have us do, we should instead question policies and practices that undermine the school success of low-income students and students of color. “As our country pushes on into the 21st century, the international challenges will only become steeper. We need to focus NOW on the unfinished business of combining both excellence and equity,” Haycock said. “We owe it to the young people who are relying on public education to give them a path out of poverty, and we owe it to our country. Achievement gaps are not inevitable, but we can’t close them without profoundly rethinking and reshaping our public schools.”

Links to Education Watch 2006 State Summary Reports: http://www2.edtrust.org/edtrust/summaries2006/states.html

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Commission's "Tough Choices or Tough Times" Report Calls for Biggest Changes in American Education System in a Century

New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce Says U.S. Standard of Living Jeopardized by Current System—Offers Framework for Change

Declaring the U.S. is continuing to lose the education race to other nations in this new global economy, The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce has laid out in its Tough Choices or Tough Times report a plan for the total overhaul of U.S. education by 2021.

“The first Commission, in 1990, never dreamed that we would end up competing with countries that could offer large numbers of highly educated workers willing to work for low wages. American workers must match their education levels — a big challenge — but our workers’ wages will still fall unless we can offer something else, and that is a capacity for endless creativity and innovation,” noted Chairman Charles Knapp.

To confront this U.S. crisis head-on, the bi-partisan commission, comprised of former Cabinet secretaries, governors, college presidents and business, civic and labor leaders, is calling for a total shakeup in how America educates its people with an innovative system that boosts students to unprecedented levels of learning throughout their lives while creating a structure that gives them the best teachers and schools the country can offer. The report points out that the United States has one of the most expensive elementary and secondary education systems in the world, one that produces only mediocre results. Because it is the system that is the problem, it is the system that must be rebuilt, the Commissioners noted. The report lays out a series of steps that are designed as an integrated approach to changing the entire system, and it warns that only selecting ideas that “cost the least and offend the fewest will not solve the problem.” The new system would support students beginning at age three and create an infrastructure to stimulate learning, dramatically increase the number of students headed to college, and allow everyone in the workforce the chance to strengthen and improve their skills. The recommendations include:

• Revamping the high school-college transition. High school would end for most students after 10th grade, when they would take rigorous State Board Exams set to what they should be able to do to succeed in state colleges. Students meeting that Board Exam standard would be able to go directly to state technical schools and colleges as freshmen. But students could choose to stay In high school to prepare for entrance to selective colleges, if they wished.

• Reallocating funds to high priority strategies for improving system performance. The new progression through high school and college would release nearly $60 billion in funds that can be used to make sure that students would in fact be ready for college by the time they are 16.

• Pre-K for all. A third of the savings would be used to provide high-quality early childhood education for all four-year-olds and all low-income three-year olds.

• Redesigning how schools are funded. The last third of the savings would be used to provide more money to schools serving low-income and other disadvantaged children. Local funding would be abolished; the funds would be raised and distributed to the schools by the state.

• Redesigning how schools are managed. All public schools would be managed by independent contractors operating under performance contracts managed by the local school districts. Only those schools that succeeded in improving the performance of their students would be funded. Parents would be free to send their children to any of these schools they wished.

• Educating the current workforce to a high standard. Adults who are currently in the workforce would have the right to a free education to the same standard that would be set for high school students under the new system.

• Creating personal competitiveness accounts. Inspired by the GI bill, the federal government would deposit an initial $500 into each account at birth, and these accounts would allow everyone to receive ongoing education and training throughout their lives.

“Our education and training systems were built for another era. It is not possible to get where we have to go by patching that system, and there is not enough money available at any level to fix this problem by spending more on the system we have,” says Marc Tucker, Commission Vice- Chairman and Staff Director. “We believe this kind of change, which will take 15 years of hard work to implement, will result in what will plausibly be the best national public school system in the world.”

These changes track closely with the views of top students nationwide. A November 2006 survey of top students (those with a combined math and verbal score of 1100 on the SAT) found that when asked about the obstacles and / or downsides to choosing a teaching career, six out of ten (62%) students mentioned “low pay.” In addition, these students identified the following as the four most highly motivating incentives for them to consider a teaching career: • a system in which teacher pensions would be mobile; • top salaries of about $95,000 per year for teachers working a regular school year, and $110,000 per year if they work a full year; and • a system where a teacher could earn more for accepting greater responsibilities than regular teachers for working in difficult situations, and for serving in shortage fields. If these changes were implemented, one out of three (34%) top students indicated that they would choose classroom teaching as a career. Compared to the pre-measure where only 21% indicated they were very likely to choose a career in classroom teaching at some point, this is a significant increase of 13%.

RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE NEW COMMISSION ON THE SKILLS OF THE AMERICAN WORKFORCE

#1 ASSUME THAT WE WILL DO THE JOB RIGHT THE FIRST TIME

Our first step is creating a set of State Board Examinations, which are exams in a set of core subjects based on syllabi provided by the Board. For most students, the first Board Exam will come at the end of 10th grade. Students who score well enough will be guaranteed the right to go to their community or technical college to begin a program leading to a two-year technical degree or a two-year program designed to enable the student to transfer later into a four-year state college. Students who get a good enough score can stay in high school to prepare for a second Board exam, like the ones given by the International Baccalaureate program, or the AP, or another state or private equivalent. When those students are finished with their program, assuming they do well enough on their second set of Board exams, they can go off to a selective college or university and might or might not be given college credit for the courses they took in high school.

#2 MAKE MUCH MORE EFFICIENT USE OF THE AVAILABLE RESOURCES

The proposed changes release close to $60 billion for reinvestment in our education system. With those resources, we propose to invest in: 1) recruiting, training and deploying a teaching force for the nation’s schools recruited mainly from the top third of the high school students going on to college; 2) building a high quality full service early childhood education system for every four-year old student in the United States and every low-income three-year old and 3) giving the nation’s disadvantaged students the resources they need to succeed against internationally benchmarked education standards.

#3 RECRUIT FROM THE TOP THIRD OF THE HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES GOING ON TO COLLEGE FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF SCHOOL TEACHERS

We must first change the shape of teacher compensation, which is currently weak on cash compensation, and heavy on pensions and health benefits for retired teachers. Therefore, we would make retirement benefits comparable to those of the private sector firms and use the savings to increase teachers’ cash compensation. We would add to this a substantial amount from what is saved by changing the progression of students through the system. These changes would enable the nation to pay beginning teachers about $45,000 per year, which is now the median teachers’ pay, and to pay about $95,000 per year to the typical teachers working at the top of new career ladders for a regular teaching year and as much as $110,000 per year to teachers willing to work the same hours per year as other professionals typically do. Higher cost states might pay more and lower cost states might pay less.

#4 DEVELOP STANDARDS, ASSESSMENTS AND CURRICULUM THAT REFLECT TODAY’S NEEDS AND TOMORROW’S REQUIREMENTS

The new system will not work without much higher quality assessments than those now in wide use in the United States. And those assessments will have to be set to standards that take account of the greatly changed challenges described in the Commission report. When we have the right assessments, and they are connected to the right syllabi, then the task will be to create instructional materials fashioned in the same spirit and train our teachers to use the standards, assessments, syllabi and materials as well as possible.

#5 CREATE HIGH PERFORMANCE SCHOOLS AND DISTRICTS EVERYWHERE— HOW THE SYSTEM SHOULD BE GOVERNED, FINANCED, ORGANIZED AND MANAGED

Public schools would be run by independent contractors, many of them limited liability corporations owned and run by teachers. The primary role of school district central offices would be to write performance contracts with the operators of these schools, monitor their operations using very sophisticated data systems, cancel or decide not to renew the contracts of those providers who did not perform well and find others who could do better.

#6 PROVIDE HIGH QUALITY, UNIVERSAL EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

The funds freed up by the Commission’s proposals for altering the student progression through the system will, for the first time, make it possible for the whole nation to do what should have been done many years ago in early childhood education.

#7 GIVE STRONG SUPPORT TO THE STUDENTS WHO NEED IT THE MOST

The proposal to abandon local funding of schools in favor of state funding using a uniform pupilweighting funding formula, combined with the addition of $19 billion to the system as a whole, will make it possible to have an equitable means of funding our schools. In this way, funding for the state system as a whole would be increased, so that relatively well to do districts would not have the incentive to defeat the system that they would have if the funds were simply redistributed.

To buy the report: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0787995983.html

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Crime, Violence, Discipline and Safety in U.S. Public Schools: Findings from the School Survey on Crime and Safety: 2003-04

This report presents national-level information about crime and safety in U.S. public schools as reported by school principals, including the frequency of criminal incidents at school, the use of disciplinary actions, and efforts to prevent and reduce crime at school. Data come from the 2003–04 School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS:2004). Eighteen percent of public schools reported at least one serious violent incident during the 2003–04 school year; two percent of public schools reported hate crimes; five percent of public schools reported gang-related crimes.

Download the report: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2007/2007302.pdf

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Closing the achievement gaps that separate the academic performance of various subgroups of students is a central goal of current education reform efforts nationwide. Hard-earned progress has been made at the elementary school level, but high school students are not progressing nearly as well. Indeed, it is at this level that performance gains in general have been most elusive and chronic student achievement disparities among significant subgroups seem most intransigent. Yet success is not beyond reach.

This guide profiles eight charter secondary schools that are making headway in meeting the achievement challenge. They are introduced here so their practices can inspire and inform other school communities striving to ensure that all of their students, regardless of their race, ZIP code, learning differences, or home language, are successful learners capable of meeting high academic standards.

In the nationwide drive to raise student achievement and eliminate performance gaps, state accountability systems and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) provide public access to data on how students are doing. This information pinpoints any achievement gaps that exist and, in doing so, propels and helps guide action to close them. The data also shed light on hard-won advances. For example, 2005 results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show significant performance gains in the early grades.

Fourth-graders in all subgroups demonstrated improved achievement on the reading exam. Equally important, the achievement gaps between African-American and white students and between Hispanic and white students narrowed to the smallest size in history on the reading assessment. Gaps also narrowed in mathematics, and the average scores for white, African-American, and Hispanic fourth-graders were higher than in any previous assessment year. Students who were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch—an indicator of family poverty—had higher average scores in math in 2005 than in 1996. Those fourth-graders with disabilities who were assessed also had a higher average score, and a higher percentage of them performed at or above “basic” compared to previous assessment years. Such gains do not come about by accident: While there is more to do, these improvements suggest that by paying attention to the data and implementing research-based practices, schools can make a powerful difference in closing achievement gaps.

Unfortunately, improving high schools has proved more challenging. Achievement on NAEP for 17-year-olds has not increased. In in­ternational comparisons, our high schools are effectively losing ground rather than gaining it. NAEP data show that higher percentages of 12th-grade African-American and Hispanic students score “below basic” in reading and math, compared to their white and Asian American peers: In 2000, 70 percent of African-American students scored below basic in math compared to 58 percent of Hispanic students, 29 percent of white students, and 26 percent of Asian American students. In reading, 48 percent of African-American students scored below basic compared to 41 percent of Hispanic students, 28 percent of Asian American students, and 22 percent of white students. Meanwhile, high school graduation rates continue to be lower for minority students than for white students. In the class of 2002, about 78 percent of white students graduated from high school with a regular diploma, compared to 56 percent of African-American students and 52 percent of Hispanic students.

To read the full report: http://www.ed.gov/admins/comm/choice/charterhs/report.pdf

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Teacher Pay Reforms

New Report from the Center for American Progress Studies Teacher Quality and Pay Issues

Education research convincingly shows that teacher quality is the most important schooling factor influencing student achievement. A very good teacher as opposed to a very bad one can make as much as a full year’s difference in learning growth for students. Indeed, the effect of increases in teacher quality swamps the impact of any other educational investment, such as reductions in class size.

A new report (PDF) from the Center for American Progress shows that while improving the quality of the teacher workforce presents educational policymakers with a tremendous opportunity to dramatically improve the educational achievement of America’s students, there does not appear to be any specific credential or characteristic that is a silver-bullet predictor of quality.

This casts doubt on the prospects of using state licensure policy to determine who is eligible to teach (a “gatekeeper approach”) to greatly improve the quality of the teacher workforce. Instead, the report suggests that policymakers may wish to address teacher performance through a focus on teacher workforce policies—that is, policies that are based on a teacher’s actual demonstrated classroom performance.

“Teachers are the most important factor in educational success for most youngsters, especially those from low-income families,” said Cindy Brown, Director of Education Policy at the Center for American Progress. “Examples abound of highly effective teachers in every community, but overall we are faced with a continuing shortage of good teachers that jeopardizes progress in education improvement. State and federal policymakers need to invest in and carefully evaluate new ways to attract high quality candidates to teaching, and reward those who are most effective.”

Based on this review of what we know about teacher pay reform, this paper argues that pay reform holds promise, and offers the following recommendations for those who wish to see teacher pay reforms successfully implemented:

• Teacher pay reform is much more likely to be successful if the reform takes place at the state level.
  
• States must make basic investments in their education data infrastructures.
  
• More basic research is needed on the data and methodological requirements for using student achievement tests as a gauge of teacher effectiveness.
  
• States and localities need to engage in a number of pay experiments.

Pay is certainly not the only way to manage a workforce, but it is one of the primary policy tools that school systems have at their disposal. The strict adherence to the traditional single-salary schedule therefore strips school districts of a key managerial tool. Even though the research on teacher compensation reform is hardly definitive enough to recommend the use of specific pay reforms to reach specific goals, the few quantitative studies that do exist suggest that a more strategic use of teacher compensation could lead to both a more equitable allocation of teachers among students, and increased student achievement.

Click here to read the entire report: Teacher Pay Reforms: The Political Implications of Recent Research. (PDF):
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/12/pdf/teacher_pay_report.pdf

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Market Trends Report – Teacher Buying Behavior, 2006-2007

Findings in the report include:

• On average, teachers report spending a total of  $475 of their own money on classroom materials and supplies.
• 44% of respondents spend over $500 on their classrooms, with 20% spending over $1,000.
• 38% of teachers report needing materials that support differentiated instruction
• Respondents in the South and West are significantly more likely to report needing English Language Learning Materials compared to respondents in the Northeast.

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The Consequences of a “Narrowing” K-12 Curriculum

Neglecting history, civics, literature and the arts threatens U.S. economic competitiveness, leaders say

Doubling the time that schools devote to math and reading in response to state and federal testing requirements won’t truly prepare young Americans for life in the 21st century. It probably won’t even boost reading and math scores long term, concluded a conference of policymakers, business leaders, and educators today.

At the event scholars and education leaders highlighted alternatives to a hyper-narrow curriculum, including testing added subjects like history, lengthening the school day to encompass art and music, and providing stronger curricular guidance and instructional materials for teachers.

“Narrowing the K-12 curriculum isn’t just a problem that arrived with No Child Left Behind,” said Fordham president Chester E. Finn, Jr. “Since the dawn of standards-based education reform, some states and schools have reacted to pressure for better basic skills by squeezing out history, civics, literature, and the arts. This is wrong. Our kids need both to walk and chew gum and our schools must prepare them accordingly, ensuring that they’re adept in the basic skills while also acquiring a broad liberal arts education.”

Business leaders, including technology mastermind Dr. Sidney Harman; artists, including poet and chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts Dana Gioia; statesmen, historians, and practicing educators from around the country gathered at the Fordham symposium, Beyond The Basics: Why reading, math, and science aren’t sufficient for a 21st century education, to ponder possible remedies, including:

• Increasing instructional time in U.S. classrooms. According to data newly analyzed by Kate Walsh, president of the National Council for Teacher Quality, students in some cities (e.g. Chicago) spend the equivalent of eight weeks less in school per year than their peers in other cities (e.g. New York). Such sharp differences mean less time for learning basics—and everything else.
• Adding subjects to the testing docket. Brown University scholar Martin West presented research showing that, at a national level, instructional time for reading has risen dramatically while time for non-tested subjects such as history has eroded. However, states that test students in history haven’t experienced these same declines; their students spend more time studying history than in other states. UNESCO researcher Aaron Benavot also found that U.S. primary schools spend more time on reading instruction—and less on the arts—than do other OECD nations.
• Equipping teachers with better instructional materials and professional development to teach a well-rounded curriculum. A range of leaders including Kati Haycock of the Education Trust, E. D. Hirsch, Jr. of the Core Knowledge Foundation, and Antonia Cortese of the American Federation of Teachers faulted states for lacking a coherent curriculum that teachers can use in class. As most state standards are too vague to be helpful, teachers crave clear expectations and powerful classroom tools.

“The narrowing of the curriculum is not an inevitable response to testing and accountability,” said education historian Diane Ravitch. “Some schools, districts, and states have done a better job ensuring a broad education for all of their students, and they deserve to be emulated. The educators in charge of schools must hew close to a vision of a good education for their students, regardless of NCLB requirements.”

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Influence: A Study of the Factors Influencing Education Policy

The Editorial Projects in Education Research Center…has conducted a study of the factors that have influenced the educational policy landscape during the past decade. Using a two-stage survey methodology, we asked leading education-policy experts first to identify and then to rate highly influential agents or “Influentials” across four different categories – Studies, Organizations, People, and Information Sources.

We report influence scores and rankings for the leading nominees in each category. As the study’s results demonstrate, there are strong interconnections among these four dimensions of influence. Certain institutions, for example, appear in multiple categories, represented as prominent organizations, the homes of renowned experts, and sponsors of leading studies and information sources.

This report offers a first attempt at untangling the complex web of influence that has helped to shape education policy over the years. The full report describes the study’s methodology in greater detail and provides in-depth profiles for the top-ranked nominees in each of the four influence categories. An appendix to the report also includes a complete listing of all studies, organizations, people, and information sources that received nominations in our survey of education-policy experts.

Influential Studies

… The studies ranking in the highest tier of influence – the “short list” – prove to be quite different from one another in a variety of ways. Some nominees conform to a conventional understanding of a study, as a relatively discrete work taking the form of a clearly identifiable core product like a report, monograph, or commission proceedings. The National Reading Panel’s 2000 report Teaching Children to Read very much fits this mold, as do: the two National Research Council reports that made the list (How People Learn and Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children); What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future, a report by the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF); and the American Diploma Project’s Ready or Not: Creating a High School Diploma that Counts.

But when asked to identify influential studies, respondents often cited broader bodies or collections of work rather than individual reports and publications. Several researchers, for example, were nominated for strands of investigation on particular topics: Richard Elmore on school reform; Jay Greene on graduation rates; Paul Peterson on school choice and vouchers; and William Sanders on value-added methodology.

The Education Trust, as an organization, was recognized in a similar manner for a series of reports highlighting the issue of teacher quality. The Tennessee Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio experiment (Project STAR) offers another twist within the set of nominees that could be labeled research strands. Project STAR is represented by a variety of studies conducted by a number of independent researchers and institutions, all focusing on the state’s class-size experiment. Perhaps furthest removed from the traditional conception of a discrete study were the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Far from being a single piece of work, NAEP is a decades-long student assessment and data collection initiative of the U.S. Department of Education. Likewise, the international TIMSS study has at its core a large-scale assessment combined with the collection of background and contextual data, as well as major research components examining curricular content and instructional practices… “

To read the full report: http://www.edweek.org/media/influence_study.pdf

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New York State's Charter Schools Breaking Their Promise

Most charter schools are underperforming the traditional public schools in their districts, according to a report released today by New York State United Teachers. The report found that only 13 percent of charter schools had shown higher academic achievement than their public school counterparts.
"The numbers don't lie," said NYSUT President Richard C. Iannuzzi. "It's clear that the performance of charter schools has been lackluster at best. Increasing the number of charter schools in New York state may serve some political agenda, but it won't serve the needs of our students."

The study, titled "Broken Promise: How the charter school experiment is falling short," compared the results of 2004-05 4th and 8th grade state assessments for students at charter schools with comparable public schools in the district. Fewer than 13 percent of the charter schools had better test results than the traditional public schools. NYSUT Executive Vice President Alan B. Lubin also noted that charter schools have drained tremendous resources from local public schools, particularly in Albany and Buffalo.

"Charter schools were created to be better than traditional public schools," Lubin said. "That's just not happening. And who knows how much better public schools in cities like Albany could be performing if they hadn't been devastated by cuts made to pay for charter schools."

Lubin said the charter school report has been sent to the governor and every legislator. He said the goal of the study was to ensure that the Legislature had a clear picture of the poor performance of most charter schools before they returned to Albany for this week's special legislative session.

" New York state hasn't received much bang for its charter school bucks," Lubin said. "There should have been a Hippocratic oath applied to the creation of charter schools: First, do no harm. Unfortunately, a lot of harm has already been done to public schools. But, hopefully, this report will help ensure that the Legislature doesn't do any more harm when it's in Albany."

"Charter schools were set up to encourage the use of new and innovative approaches to education that could be replicated in other schools," NYSUT Vice President Maria Neira said. "This report shows the educational programs offered by charter schools are already being used in public schools throughout the state."

The report also found that charter schools tend to serve students who are more advantaged than the general population of the district they're located in, and charters also have one-sixth the number of English language learners and far fewer special education students. The report examined test results for local public schools with the same or a higher percentage of students eligible for free lunch as the charter schools.

"We compared apples to apples, and that's the only comparison that matters," Neira said.

NYSUT represents 575,000 teachers, school-related professionals, academic and professional faculty in higher education, professionals in education and health care and retirees. NYSUT is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, National Education Association and the AFL-CIO.

DOWNLOAD Complete Report: http://www.nysut.org/files/BrokenPromise_brochure061207.pdf

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Education Next Most Influential Journal in Education, Study Finds

Education Next is the most influential journal in education, according to a study released last week by the Editorial Projects in Education (EPE) Research Center.  The study, Influence: A Study of the Factors Shaping Education Policy, was based on an extensive survey of the education field’s opinion-elite.

Education Next, published quarterly by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, was the sole journal, peer-reviewed or otherwise, listed among the top-ten information sources in the EPE survey, surpassed only by agencies of the U. S. government, Education Week, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the non-profit organization Education Trust. 

“The other editors and I are very pleased to learn that this young journal, now in its sixth year of publication, has attained such prominence and recognition,” said Paul E. Peterson, editor-in-chief of Education Next and director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University.  “The honor reminds us to keep focused on our central mission, namely to ‘present the facts as best they can be determined, giving voice (without fear or favor) to worthy research, sound ideas and responsible arguments.’”

EPE’s study also ranked most influential research in education as well as the most influential individuals.  The research on school vouchers conducted by Peterson and his colleagues at Harvard was cited among the thirteen “blockbuster” studies of the past decade.  A study of graduation rates by Jay Greene, an Education Next contributing editor, was also listed as one of the top thirteen.  The National Assessment of Educational Progress, conducted under the auspices of the U. S. Department of Education, was listed as the most influential research study.   

Education Next Senior Editor Chester E. Finn Jr., who also serves as chair of the Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force on K-12 Education and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, was named as one of the 20 most influential individuals in education.  Microsoft founder Bill Gates held the top spot as the single most influential person in education in the last decade. 

In a statement, EPE Director Christopher Swanson said the study provides “a unique look at the power-brokers in American education who have shaped much of what happens in our nation’s classrooms over the last 10 years.  The influence rankings also shed some light on the movers and shakers to watch in the next decade.”

Education Next features and forums provide opportunities for experts and analysts to cover key issues in school reform.  All items in its research section are subject to double-blind peer-review.  The journal has garnered national and international attention in recent months with the publication of ground breaking research on such topics as the increased achievement of students when taught by teachers of the same gender, the failure of school phys-ed classes to fight obesity, and the hidden social costs for academically successful minority students in integrated public schools.  Regular features of the journal, such as its annual report card on states’ proficiency standards and its “Check the Facts” column, which shines a spotlight on inaccurate and misleading research, are widely referenced by the media, policymakers, government officials, and education practitioners.

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The Cato Education Market Index

The school choice movement has a long way to go according to the newly released "Cato Education Market Index." The report rates all fifty states and two foreign countries on the extent to which they enjoy market freedoms and incentives in education. It finds that no state in the nation has anything approaching a free educational marketplace — including states with charter school, voucher, or education tax credit programs. Cato scholar Andrew J. Coulson, the report's author, argues that in order to enjoy the substantial benefits of a true free market in education — innovation, diversity, efficiency, the rapid dissemination of best practices, reduced social conflict over the curriculum — several key policy changes are necessary.

To see full report please go to: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6848

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Does Success on Advanced Placement Program® Exams Predict College Success?

A Summary of AP® Research

Widespread research confirms that students who score well on the College Board's AP Exam are more likely to graduate college in five years or less, students who use AP to place out of introductory courses are more likely to pursue higher-level course study in their exam discipline, and AP Exam grades are valid predictors of college success. Following is a summary of the most recent research:

I.  Performance in upper-level college courses: AP students exempted from introductory college courses, including mathematics and science courses, earned higher course grades than students who took the introductory course on the college campus.

Rick Morgan and Len Ramist (1998)

Advanced Placement Students in College: An Investigation of Course Grades at 21 Colleges: http://www.collegeboard.com/ap/pdf/sr-98-13.pdf

Morgan and Ramist evaluated the subsequent course performance of AP students who placed out of the introductory college course. They did this by collecting official college transcript data from 21 colleges and universities. For 25 AP Exams, including AP Exams in mathematics (Calculus AB & Calculus BC) and science (Biology, Chemistry, Physics B, Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism, & Physics C: Mechanics), results showed that AP students who were exempted from the introductory courses in mathematics and science generally earned the same or higher course grades in the second-level courses than students who took the introductory course on the college campus. Students earning higher AP Exam grades tended to do better, on average, in the second-level course than those earning lower AP Exam grades.

Some colleges and universities included in the Morgan and Ramist (1998) study permitted students to enroll in math and science courses beyond the second level depending on their AP Exam grades. When Morgan and Ramist investigated the performance of AP students who placed out of both introductory and second-level courses, they found that AP students also earned, on average, higher grades in all mathematics and science third-level courses compared to students who took the lower-level course with the exception of Physics B (where only students earning a 5 on the exam outperformed the comparison group) and Biology (where only students earning a 4 or 5 on the exam outperformed the comparison group).

Barbara G. Dodd, Steven J. Fitzpatrick, R. J. De Ayala, Judith A. Jennings (2002)

An Investigation of the Validity of AP Grades of 3 and a Comparison of AP and Non-AP Student Groups (.pdf/241K)

This study, conducted using data from the University of Texas at Austin, addressed the same research question as Morgan and Ramist and found results that corroborate the earlier research. Results showed that AP students who were exempted from the introductory course in calculus, biology, and English earned the same or higher grades in the subsequent course, took as many or more class hours in the subject area, and had the same or higher grades in additional courses in the subject area compared to the group of non-AP students of similar academic ability. The fact that the researchers compared the AP group to non-AP students of similar academic ability is a notable strength of this study.

II.  AP Student Course-taking Patterns: Students who took AP Exams were more likely to take at least one course in the discipline of their exam while in college, compared to their peers who did not take AP Exams in those disciplines.

Rick Morgan and Behroz Maneckshana (2000)

AP Students in College: An Investigation of Their Course-taking Patterns and College Majors: http://www.collegeboard.com/ap/pdf/validity2.pdf

Morgan and Maneckshana investigated the college course-taking patterns of students who have taken AP Exams. With respect to mathematics and science, results showed that students who took AP Exams in these areas were more likely to take at least one course in the discipline of their exam while in college compared to students who did not take any AP Exams in the same areas. In addition, many AP students who took AP Exams in biology, physics, and calculus subsequently majored or minored in the subject area of their exams or a closely related field.

III.  College Graduation: Students who earned a 3 or higher on one or more AP Exams in the areas of English, mathematics, science, or social studies were more likely to graduate from college in five years or less compared to non-AP students

Chrys Dougherty, Lynn Mellor, and Shuling Jian, National Center for Educational Accountability (2005)

This paper can be requested by emailing chrys@mail.utexas.edu.

Dougherty, Mellor, and Jian explored the effect of AP course participation and AP Exam performance on college graduation rates. They found that students who earned a 3 or better on one or more AP Exams in the areas of English, mathematics, science, or social studies were more likely to graduate from college in five years or less compared to non-AP students, even after controlling for prior academic achievement and other student-level (e.g., free and reduced price lunch status) and school-level demographic characteristics (e.g., percentage of low-income students, district dropout rate). The same was true for AP students who earned a 1 or 2 on AP Exams and for students who took an AP course but not the exam, although the size of the effect was smaller. The positive effect for AP was consistent across minority and low-income students.

When Dougherty et al. framed the question in terms of a school-level analysis, they found that the best AP-related indicator for predicting the percentage of students who would graduate from college from a particular high school was the percent of students taking and performing well (3 or better) on AP Exams.

IV.  College Grades in Math and Science: AP Exam grades were a strong predictor of second-year undergraduate GPA in biological sciences, mathematics, and physical sciences, second in strength only to high school grade point average.

Saul Geiser and Veronica Santelices (2004)

The Role of Advanced Placement and Honors Courses in College Admissions: http://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/docs/ROP.Geiser.4.04.pdf

Geiser and Santelices found that AP Exam grades were a strong predictor of second-year undergraduate GPA in biological sciences, mathematics, and physical sciences, second in strength only to high school grade point average. They further state: "The subject-specific, curriculum-intensive AP Exams are the epitome of 'achievement tests,' in this sense, and their validity in predicting college performance should not be surprising from that standpoint" (see p. 18 of their report).

V.  International Comparisons: Students enrolled in AP Calculus and AP Physics courses outperform students in most other countries.

Eugenio J. Gonzalez, Kathleen M. O'Connor, & Julie A. Miles (2001)

How Well Do Advanced Placement Students Perform on the TIMSS Advanced Mathematics and Physics Tests?

Gonzalez et al showed that students enrolled in AP Calculus courses earned the highest average scores on the TIMSS Advanced Mathematics tests, significantly outperforming students in all other countries except France, including U.S. students who did not take AP Calculus.

Students enrolled in AP Physics also performed well, scoring significantly above the international average on the TIMSS Physics test; whereas U.S. students not taking AP scored significantly below the international average.

It's also important to note that AP students who earned AP Exam grades of 3 or better on the AP Calculus Exams or the AP Physics Exams earned even higher scores on the TIMSS assessments compared to students who took the AP course but not necessarily the exam.

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Overcoming the Income Gap

One of the most complex aspects of the achievement gap—one that, by and large, is out of the direct control of educational leaders—is the income gap. Broadly defined, the income gap is the standard of living difference between rich and poor, but in the education system, the gap permeates deeply into many dimensions of a student's progression from kindergarten to senior year. This issue, the fourth in a series on the achievement gap, will explore the income gap, the relationship between the income gap and educational achievement, and practices that promise to mitigate its impact.

See the full report here: http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/fSvklewpBnjjsgCibvafAnep

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More Male Teachers Not Required, Says Report

Boosting the number of male teachers in school would have little impact on boys' attitudes towards education or their academic results, a report says.

Only one in eight primary teachers is a man and the figure for nurseries is smaller at one in eleven, but the idea boys would do better if they had more male role models in the classroom is misguided, say contributors to the report Boys to Men.

The government has been concerned about boys' poor performance at school compared with girls for some years and has also expressed a desire for more male role models in schools…

But in the report for the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, Christine Skelton, part of a team of researchers from the universities of Roehampton, Surrey, Newcastle and London Metropolitan, says their study of more than 300 seven and eight-year-olds found the gender of their teachers was not important to them nor did most see them as role models.

"Our research indicates that girls seem to be more positive about men than women teachers; boys were slightly more positive about women teachers than they were about men teachers. If the current government policy is right – i.e. that there is something beneficial about gender match - we would see some trend that supported such a premise. We did not."

Mary Thornton, of Hertfordshire University, and Patricia Bricheno, of Cambridge University, who questioned 250 primary and secondary schoolchildren, draw similar conclusions: "As a policy to remedy underachievement and laddish behaviour, boys are not queuing up to say 'give me a man teacher, I want to be like him', or girls, 'give me a woman teacher I want to be like her'."

Their studies of primary school results for 11-year-olds found no direct correlation with the gender balance of staff: "We certainly found that socio-economic status - the social class and background of the kids - had a much stronger correlation with behaviour and with achievement than the staff gender balance."

They say there never was a "golden age" when men accounted for a high proportion of teachers, and "small" declines in male primary teachers in the 1990s "are highly unlikely to have caused poorer behaviour among boys or their relative and recent underachievement when compared to girls"…

In secondary schools, four in ten teachers are men, although heads are worried the proportion may fall as a "bulge" of older teachers leaves the profession. Michael Watkins, of the Training and Development Agency for Schools, says: "We think there is a need to make the primary teaching workforce more representative by increasing the number of male teachers."

But he adds: "We do not think that male teachers make better primary teachers or that it takes a male teacher to drive up standards of boys or improve challenging behaviour."

For the complete article please go to: http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,1977694,00.html

For a different perspective see: http://www.tes.co.uk/blogs/blog.aspx?path=/Media/02%20Archive/11%20June%202006/&post=2248183

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Mathematics, Science, and Gender

The Question
How is gender related to mathematics and science achievement?

See complete study: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/314/5799/599

A similar report is available here: http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/amp606581.pdf

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Key Stage Tests Should Be Scrapped and Primary School Pupils Should Have '3Rs Guarantee'

Too many children in the U.K. are leaving primary school without the necessary skills in reading, writing and mathematics, and the current national tests are part of the problem, according to new analysis from the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr).

The report says that the current ‘Key Stage’ tests encourage teachers to ‘teach to the test’ rather than equipping children with the reading, writing and mathematics skills they need to succeed at secondary school. It argues that using the same test to assess both child development and school performance means that the tests end up doing neither effectively.

The report recommends a system of reformed testing and moderated teacher assessment where:

• Every child should be assessed throughout each key stage by their teachers
• Every child should sit a small number of national tests at the end of each key stage, but not in every area of every subject. The results of these should be used to measure overall school performance, but not the individual pupil’s attainment 
• The school’s performance, as measured by these tests, should be used to moderate the teacher assessments, producing detailed nationally comparable data for each pupil.

 ippr’s report says such an approach would stop the negative effects of the current testing regime, which include:

• Narrow learning. Because all pupils take the same test, and because each test covers a relatively large subject area, it is possible to predict with reasonable accuracy what will be tested – the most prominent elements of the curriculum. This enables teachers to concentrate on those aspects of the curriculum which are most likely to come up in the tests
• Shallow learning. Because all pupils take the same kind of test, it is possible to predict with reasonable accuracy how each component of the curriculum will be tested
• Question spotting 
• Risk-averse teaching.

ippr’s report shows that the proportion of pupils who achieve the target levels of reading, writing and mathematics has risen significantly over the past ten years, and the number of schools where unacceptably low proportions of pupils do so has fallen significantly. However;

• Improvements in standards of reading, writing and maths in primary schools have now slowed down dramatically
• Forty per cent of boys finished primary school with writing skills below the target level in 2006, as did 25 per cent of girls
• Of the children who missed the target level in reading, writing and maths at the end of primary school, just seven per cent achieved five A*-C grade GCSEs in 2005
• Around one in ten pupils leaves secondary school with very low qualifications (less than five GCSEs at G grade or better), a figure which has remained almost constant since 2000.

Richard Brooks, ippr Associate Director, said:

“Every pupil needs a solid foundation of reading, writing and mathematics at the end of primary school so that they can make a success of their secondary schooling. But for that to happen, there needs to be accurate assessment and a special focus on identifying pupils at risk of low attainment.

“Many pupils currently get stuck at the beginning of secondary school, even in some cases after they made good progress at primary school. If secondary schools had a progress target for all pupils, they would have to focus on the needs of each pupil, even where average attainment in the school was good.

“An end to national Key Stage testing should make space for better teaching and learning, but it would also mean new assessment responsibilities for teachers. We need a ‘new deal’ where teachers and heads are respected and held accountable as professionals.”

The report recommends:

A ‘three Rs guarantee’ that would require schools to identify pupils at risk of failing to achieve the necessary level of ability in reading, writing, and mathematics at the end of primary school, and then to take early action to address their specific needs:

• The Department for Education and Skills should have an objective, enshrined as a public service agreement, to reduce the attainment gaps between average pupil attainment at the end of the key stages and attainment by disadvantaged groups including children in receipt of free school meals, looked after children, and children from low-attaining ethnic groups. 
• Children below the expected level of attainment in literacy and numeracy in their first year of primary school should be entitled to an appropriate programme of structured support from their school, such as an intensive one-two-one reading recovery programme. 
• The same should apply at the beginning of Key Stage two for all those children who were below the expected level of attainment in reading, writing and mathematics at the end of Key Stage one. 
• How these entitlement are fulfilled should be down to the individual school, but they should give an account of what they are doing to the parents of the affected children, and each school’s arrangements should be inspected by Ofsted. 
• The existing national attainment targets for 14 year olds should be replaced with a progress target that all pupils should make at least one level of progress between the end of Key Stages two and three.

The two papers: Pupil Attainment: time for a three Rs guarantee (Richard Brooks & Sarah Tough) http://www.ippr.org/members/download.asp?f=%2Fecomm%2Ffiles%2FPUPIL%5FATTAINMENT%2Epdf
and Assessment and testing: making space for teaching and learning (Richard Brooks & Sarah Tough) http://www.ippr.org/members/download.asp?f=%2Fecomm%2Ffiles%2FASSESSMENT%2Epdf
are available to download from the links above.

To see more  discussion: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2519806,00.html

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Children’s Chances for Success Vary Dramatically By State, Report Warns

Study Examines State Efforts to Connect Education & Training FromBirth to Adulthood; Launches State Achievement Index for Grades K-12

State Highlights Reports Include Detailed Findings for Each State

A child born in Virginia is significantly more likely to experience success throughout life than the average child born in the United States, while a child born in New Mexico is likely to face an accumulating series of hurdles both educationally and economically, according to an analysis published by Education Week.

The analysis by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center is based on the “Chance-for-Success Index,” which tracks state efforts to connect education from preschool through postsecondary education and training. The index was developed by the EPE Research Center for Quality Counts 2007: From Cradle to Career, Connecting American Education From Birth to Adulthood, produced by Education Week with support from the Pew Center on the States. The report is available online at www.edweek.org/go/qc07.

The Chance-for-Success Index provides a perspective on the importance of education throughout a person’s lifetime and is based on 13 indicators that highlight whether young children get off to a good start, succeed in elementary and secondary school, and hit key educational and income benchmarks as adults. Virginia, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire rank at the top of the index, while Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Arizona, Louisiana, and New Mexico lag significantly behind the national average in descending order.

“Smart states, like smart companies, try to make the most of their investments by ensuring that young people’s education is connected from one stage to the next—reducing the chances that students will be lost along the way or require costly remedial programs to acquire skills or knowledge they could have learned right from the start,” said Virginia B. Edwards, the editor and publisher of Education Week and Quality Counts.

The 13 indicators that make up the index capture key performance or attainment outcomes at various stages in a person’s lifetime or are correlated with later success. For example, in the early-childhood years, indicators include the percent of children living in families that earn a decent wage and the percent of children with at least one parent who has a postsecondary degree – factors that research shows have an impact on how well children perform in school.

“Overall, the Index captures the cumulative effects of education experience from birth through adulthood and pinpoints the chance for success at each stage and for each state,” said Christopher B. Swanson, the director of the EPE Research Center. “We find that a child’s life prospects depend greatly on where he or she lives.”

Virginia, for example, earns the highest Chance-for-Success score. The average child in Virginia starts out ahead of the curve: less likely to live in a low-income family and more likely to have college-educated parents. Those early advantages are amplified during the elementary-through-postsecondary years, when the typical young person enjoys higher achievement and is more likely to finish high school and continue on to college than in other states. Virginia’s well-educated adult population and strong economy offer ample opportunities to realize the returns to schooling as individuals enter the workforce. Similar conditions prevail in other high-ranking states, including Connecticut, Minnesota, and New Jersey.

A near-mirror image of this pattern occurs in the steadily declining trajectories of states like New Mexico. There, weak school performance is unable to overcome, and may exacerbate, the early sociodemographic disadvantages of poverty, linguistic isolation, and low parental education. Among adults in New Mexico, educational attainment, income, and rates of steady employment all fall significantly below the national average. Other low-ranking states, such as Louisiana, Arizona, and Texas, share many of the same characteristics.

“When states make smart choices about how they educate our children – from pre-K through college – they are making smart investments in the economic future of their communities,” said Mary Jo Waits, center director for the Pew Center on the States. “This year’s Quality Counts report shines the spotlight on those states that have given their children the greatest chance for success and those states that have more to do in preparing their young people for the challenges they will face as adults.”

In general, the Index shows that individuals born in the South and the Southwest are least likely to experience success, while those residing in the Northeast and the North Central states are more likely to do so.

Tracking School, College, and Workforce Readiness

For the first time since its debut in 1997, Quality Counts tracks state efforts to create a more seamless education system, based on more than 80 indicators in five categories: childhood well-being, early-childhood education, K-12 education, postsecondary education, and economy and workforce development. The report examines the extent to which states have defined what young people need to know and be able to do to move successfully from one stage of education to the next. In general, the report finds far more activity in the early years. For example, 42 states report having early-learning standards aligned with the academic expectations for elementary schools, and 13 states have a formal definition of school readiness.

In contrast, to date, there appears to be far more goodwill than actual policy results when it comes to aligning high school graduation standards with college- and workforce-readiness standards. Only 11 states, for example, have adopted a formal definition of college readiness.

New Achievement Index Launched

To help provide a picture of K-12 performance across states, Quality Counts also includes a new State Achievement Index that ranks each state based on whether its students are significantly above or below the national average or are making progress on 15 indicators. But while the Chance-for-Success Index focuses on a range of academic and other indicators throughout an individual’s lifetime, the Achievement Index focuses solely on performance during the K-12 years. It is based on a combination of current performance outcomes and gains states have made over time.

Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont, Connecticut, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Virginia, and Washington State are the top performers on the achievement index, while the District of Columbia, Louisiana, Alabama, Hawaii, New Mexico, West Virginia, and Mississippi perform at the bottom in descending order.

Grades Put on Hold

As Quality Counts moves from an exclusive focus on K-12 education to a broader perspective on the connections between K-12 education and the other systems with which it intersects, Education Week is taking the opportunity to rethink the report’s core indicators. For that reason, the 2007 report does not grade the states, and it does not include indicators related to school climate, teacher quality, or school finance, as it has in past years. Indicators on state standards, assessments, and accountability systems in K-12 are still included.

State Highlights Reports and Online Extras

Individual findings for each state—including state performance on the Chance-for-Success and State Achievement indices—are included in state highlight reports, available online on at http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/01/04/17shr.h26.html

From Cradle to Career: Connecting American Education From Birth Through Adulthood – National Summary
http://www.edweek.org/media/ew/qc/2007/17shr.us.h26.pdf

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CDC Reports Binge Drinking Is Common among High School Students and Tied to Other Risky Behaviors

Binge drinking is common among high school students in the United States and is strongly associated with sexual activity, violence, and other risky behaviors, according to a new study, Binge Drinking and Associated Health Risk Behaviors Among High School Students, released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and published in the January 2007 issue of Pediatrics.

The study analyzed data from the 15,214 high school students who completed the 2003 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. CDC scientists found 45 percent of the students reported past-month alcohol consumption, and 64 percent of students who drank reported binge drinking (defined as having five or more drinks of alcohol in a row). High school boys and girls who drank alcohol had similar rates of binge drinking: 67 percent and 61 percent, respectively. Among students who engaged in binge drinking, 69 percent reported doing so on more than one occasion in the past 30 days.

The researchers also found that the likelihood of engaging in other risk behaviors - including sexual activity, smoking, and physical fighting - was greater for binge drinkers than for drinkers who did not binge and for nondrinkers.

“Our study clearly shows that it’s not just that students drink alcohol, but how much they drink that most strongly affects whether they experience other health and social problems,” said Dr. Jacqueline Miller, Medical Officer on the CDC’s Alcohol Team and the lead author of the report. “It also underscores the importance of implementing effective strategies to prevent underage and binge drinking, such as enforcing the minimum legal drinking age and reducing alcohol marketing to youth, which can help us change social norms regarding the acceptability of underage and binge drinking.”

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University of Florida Study: Teacher Merit Pay Boosts Student Standardized Test Scores

      A carrot for teachers helps students stick to the books, according to a new University of Florida study that finds merit pay for instructors equates to better test scores for their pupils.

       Pay incentives for teachers had more positive effects on student test scores than such school improvement methods as smaller class sizes or stricter requirements for classroom attendance, said David Figlio, a UF economics professor. The study, by Figlio and UF economics professor Lawrence Kenny, has been accepted for publication in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Public Economics.

       "This research provides the first systematic evidence of a relationship between individual teacher performance incentives and student achievement in the United States," Figlio said. "We demonstrate that students learn more when teachers are given financial incentives to do a better job."

       Students at schools with teacher pay-for-performance programs scored an average of one to two percentage points higher on standardized tests than their peers at schools where no bonuses were offered, Figlio said.

       "While many explanations have been offered for the disappointing performance of primary and secondary schools, one untested hypothesis lays the blame on there being little or no incentive for teachers to do a good job," he said. "Good teachers make no more than uninspired, mediocre teachers."

       The UF study found the effects of these pay incentives were strongest in schools with students from the poorest families, perhaps because those schools have the most to gain from the incentive plan, Figlio said.

       "Many teachers complain that poor parents often are uninvolved in their children's education," he said. "Since there appears to be less parental monitoring in schools serving poorer families, these schools stand to have a greater potential for improvement."

       Figlio and Kenny collected surveys from 534 schools that were among 1,319 public and private schools participating in a national study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education beginning in 1988. They also collected data on the frequency and magnitude of school salary incentives, analyzing it in relation to student achievement. That achievement was measured in the earlier U.S. Department of Education study on eighth-graders, with follow-up surveys done in 10th and 12th grades.

       About 16 percent of American schools have teacher pay-for-performance programs in place, Figlio said. Such financial incentives were the rule rather than the exception early in the 20th century, but they gradually became less prevalent starting in the 1960s, probably because of the rising strength of teachers' unions, he said.

       Many teachers criticize these bonus plans, saying they raise questions about fairness and they destroy cooperation among teachers.

       "It's important to note that the form of performance pay we're looking at is linked to student outcomes rather than principal assessments," Figlio said. "One reason why performance pay based on principal assessments is not very effective is that principals are under a huge amount of pressure to say that everybody is excellent."

       One proposal that links teachers' bonuses to student performance is a Florida plan that awards the top 10 percent of teachers in each school district a 5 percent bonus based on student gains on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. Figlio believes such an approach, using standardized tests, recognizes individual teacher accomplishments without destroying the incentive of teachers within a school to work together.

       "This is important because one of the major criticisms of performance pay systems is that teaching is a collaborative enterprise," he said. "If a principal has to identify a single excellent teacher, it could end up pitting one colleague against another."

       The study also found that merit pay proposals that targeted only a few teachers for bonuses were more effective than programs in which large numbers of instructors received some kind of reward, Figlio said. "Doling out merit pay to most teachers seems to provide them with little incentive to do a better job," he said.

       Figlio said he believes the ideal merit pay system would reward both individual teachers as well as teams of teachers.

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Teacher Pay Reforms: The Political Implications of Recent Research

Education research convincingly shows that teacher quality is the most important schooling factor influencing student achievement. A very good teacher as opposed to a very bad one can make as much as a full year’s difference in learning growth for students. Indeed, the effect of increases in teacher quality swamps the impact of any other educational investment, such as reductions in class size.

These findings (documented in this paper) suggest that improving the quality of the teacher workforce presents educational policymakers with a tremendous opportunity to dramatically improve the educational achievement of America’s students. Unfortunately for policymakers, increasing teacher quality is no simple task: There does not appear to be any specific credential or characteristic that is a silver-bullet predictor of quality…

Research shows that teachers are responsive to monetary incentives. Few school systems strategically use compensation as a policy tool to achieve various objectives: a fairer allocation of teacher quality across students, hiring and keeping teachers with key knowledge and skills, and increasing student achievement via measurable results. Finally, research on the small amount of experimentation with alternatives to the single-salary schedule—various forms of individual or group-based merit pay, pay for specific knowledge and skills, and so-called combat pay for teaching in high-needs schools—generally suggests that teacher pay reform can be an effective way to achieve policy objectives.

Read the full report: Teacher Pay Reforms: The Political Implications of Recent Research (PDF)

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Trends in Elementary Sc