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Students’ Performance on
International Math Assessments Is Related to Time Spent on Math Instruction
Brown
Report investigates a conundrum raised by recent research into the use of
time in education—on the one hand, researchers have confirmed the common-sense
assumption that the more time kids spend on learning, the more they learn;
on the other hand, when researchers compare students from various
countries, they can’t find any correlation between achievement and the
amount of time spent on school tasks.
This section of the Brown
Report attempts to make sense of this contradiction by taking a fresh look
at the existing data. Specifically, it examines data from the math portion
of the Trends in Mathematics and Science Survey (TIMSS), an international
assessment. Unlike previous analyses, which looked for relationships in
TIMSS data collected at one point in time, this study looks at changes in
instruction and homework over several years.
The
analysis shows no relationship between TIMSS math scores and the amount of
time students spent on homework. However, it does find a positive
relationship between test scores and the amount of time teachers spent on
classroom instruction, contradicting the findings of previous research.
Increased
time is associated with higher test scores whether extra minutes are added
to the school day or an equivalent number of days are added to the school
year. Adding time to the school day appears to have the greatest value,
though.
The
average amount of math instruction for U.S. eighth graders was 45 minutes
per day in 2003 (down from 49 minutes in 1995) over a total of 180 days
(unchanged from 1995). Adding 10 minutes per day to math instruction (a 22
percent gain in instructional time) is associated with a 19 point gain on TIMSS
math assessment, and increasing the school year by 40 days (which would
basically eliminate the summer break) is associated with a gain of 8.5
points.
“We
can’t say for sure that more minutes of instruction would translate
directly into higher test scores,” notes Loveless. “But the data suggest
that if America’s schools were to devote more time to math instruction, the
nation’s students could gain a decent amount of ground on their
counterparts from Singapore and other high-scoring countries.”
Study finds that U.S. middle
school math teachers are ill-prepared
Middle
school math teachers in the United States are not as well prepared to teach
this subject compared to teachers in five other countries, something that
could negatively affect the U.S. as it continues to compete on an
international scale.
The
new Michigan State University study, Mathematics Teaching in the 21st
Century (MT21 studied how well a sample of universities and
teacher-training institutions prepare middle school math teachers in the
U.S., South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, Bulgaria and Mexico. Specifically,
2,627 future teachers were surveyed about their preparation, knowledge and
beliefs in this area.
The
length of teacher preparation requirements varied from four to seven years
among the countries, according to the study, which was funded by the
National Science Foundation.
“The
real issue is the courses they take and the experiences they have while in
their programs,” Schmidt said. “It’s not just the amount of formal
mathematics training they get. It also involves training in the practical
aspects of teaching middle school math and of teaching in general.”
Compared
to the other countries, the U.S. future teachers ranked from the middle to
the bottom on MT21 measures of math knowledge.
“What’s
most disturbing is that one of the areas in which U.S. future teachers tend
to do the worst is algebra, and algebra is the heart of middle school
math,” Schmidt said. “When future teachers in the study were asked about
opportunities to learn about the practical aspects of teaching mathematics,
again we ranked mediocre at best.”
The
MT21 findings support previous international research, including the Third
International Mathematics and Science Study, also conducted by MSU, showing
low U.S. achievement in math compared to other countries at seventh and
eighth grades. Another TIMSS finding indicated that one of the major
factors related to this low performance was a U.S. middle school curriculum
that was unfocused, lacking coherence and not demanding.
“We
must address this,” he said. “We can make our mathematics curriculum more
demanding, instead of a mile wide and an inch deep, but we also need
teachers that are well prepared to teach it to all children.”
Other
MT21 findings include:
·
The
best area for future teachers in the U.S. was statistics knowledge, where
they performed near the international average.
·
Taiwanese
and South Korean future teachers typically covered about 80 percent or more
of advanced math topics in their training, while those in Mexico and the
U.S. covered less than 50 percent.
·
In
the practical aspect of teaching, the extent of coverage for U.S. future
teachers was also substantially less than that provided by Taiwan and South
Korea.
·
Future
U.S. middle school math teachers in the study are trained in three kinds of
programs: secondary programs, elementary programs and those that directly
prepare middle school teachers.
·
Those
that prepare as secondary teachers have a stronger math preparation. Those
that prepare as elementary teachers have stronger teaching skills
preparation. Those that prepare as middle school teachers seem to have the
worst preparation in both of these programs.
·
Full
study:
http://usteds.msu.edu/MT21Report.pdf
Dramatic
improvement in student achievement between one and five years of teacher
experience
The
2007 Washington State Legislature created the Joint Task Force on Basic
Education Finance (Task Force). Task Force researchers found a dramatic improvement
in student achievement between one and five years of teacher experience and
a more gradual boost in the years following. Student achievement in these
studies was mostly tracked through scores on standardized reading or math
tests.
A
similar analysis of studies concerning teachers getting graduate degrees
found that the degrees seemed to have little or no effect on student
outcomes.
The
report makes a preliminary recommendation that any changes in the way
teachers are paid should emphasize financial rewards for experience rather
than higher pay for teachers with graduate degrees.
Full
report:
http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/rptfiles/07-12-2201.pdf
NAEP Standard Too High
A new study from the Brown Center on Education Policy at the
Brookings Institution finds that the benchmarks used in scoring the
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are set too high,
causing inordinately large numbers of students to be classified as less
than proficient in math and reading, and making it unrealistic to expect
that schools will make rapid progress in bringing students to so-called
“proficient” levels, as required under No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
“I’ve always wondered how
the percentage of kids proficient on NAEP could look so awful, given that
the exam itself covers fairly low-level content,” says Tom Loveless, the
Brown Center’s director and author of the new report. “Now it’s
clear—NAEP’s proficiency cutscores are set too high.”
Critics
tend to accuse the states of being out of sync with the way in which NAEP
defines academic proficiency. However, important new research suggests that
it may be NAEP that is most out of sync, not just with the states but with
the rest of the world. As a groundbreaking 2007 study by Gary W. Phillips
showed,1 if students from other industrialized nations were asked to take
the NAEP, their pwould look dismal, too. Even in the countries that rank
highest on international comparisons—Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan,
and Japan—anywhere from 25 to 50 percent of studentswould fail to score
highly enough to be considered proficient.
“If
the world’s best school systems don’t measure up to NAEP’s standards, then
maybe there’s something wrong with the standards themselves,” notes
Loveless. “We have come to define anything less than proficiency as
failure. Then 43% of Japanese 8th graders are failing at math. That’s
doubtful.”
As
noted in the 2004 Brown Center Report, students’ difficulty in scoring at
the proficient level has little to do with the rigor of the academic
content of NAEP. Indeed, analysis of NAEP’s mathematics tests reveal that
they emphasize arithmetic skills that are far below tgrade level of the
students being assessed. For example, on the 8th grade test, almost all
problem solving items use whole numbers andavoid fractions—which students
must master to tackle higher mathematics.
The
most plausible explanation for low proficiency rates is that NAEP’s
designers have over-compensated for the low level of the test. content by
ratcheting up the complexity of the test questions and the level of the
cutscores.
This
raises serious questions about the validity of the achievement
levels—basic, proficient, and advanced—that NAEP uses when reporting its
results. The public may take “proficient” to mean the capacity to do
grade-level work. But in fact, scoring at the proficient level proves only
that students have aced a test that poses tricky questions about simple
content.
“When
it comes to gauging the performance of American students across the board,
NAEP is the only game in town,” Loveless acknowledges. “The original
purpose of the achievement levels was to translate the test’s results into
language that the public would understand. That’s worth doing, but it
hasn’t been done right yet.”
If Private Schools are
Viewed as Superior, Then Why Have Their Enrollments Declined?
The
2007 Brown Center report also examines the national decline in private
school enrollment that has occurred over the past half-century.
According
to a 2004 Kappan poll, a majority of Americans believe that private schools
are superior to public schools, a view consistent with well-publicized
research showing that private school students achieve at higher levels than
do their public school peers, even when parental income and other factors
are taken into account.
Why, then, have private
schools seen their market share decline in recent decades? And in
particular, why do private school enrollments tend to shrink in the
transition to high school (a time when parents especially should be
concerned about school quality, given the need for their children to
prepare for college and work)?
The
report offers two explanations: First, declining private school enrollments
can be traced largely to specific difficulties facing the nation’s Catholic
schools, in particular, rising costs associated with teacher salaries.
Second, the report points to broad changes in American culture, which have
made Catholic parents more likely to embrace secular schools and have made
parents in general more likely to give their children a say in choosing
where to attend high school.
Viewed
as a percentage of the overall population of America’s school-aged
children, private school enrollments were miniscule as the twentieth
century began, and they grew rapidly over subsequent decades. For example,
private schools enrolled less than 2 percent of the nation’s 14-17 year
olds in 1890, and their enrollment peaked at more than 9 percent in 1960.
As of 2000, private high school enrollment stood at 7.7 percent of the age
cohort (and 8.0 percent in 2004, not shown in the table), while the public
school share grew from 74 percent in 1960 to 83.5 percent in 2000.
Much of the decline in
private school enrollments since 1960 can be attributed to a drop in
Catholic school attendance, particularly in urban areas. In 1965, Catholic
schools served 5.6 million students, but the number had dropped to 2.3
million by 2003, even though the nation’s Catholic population roughly
doubled in that period. According to the National Catholic Educational
Association, nearly 600 Catholic schools closed from 2000 to 2006 alone.
The increasing expense of operating schools is the typical reason given for
the closures.
Tuition
explains why high school is the point at which private schools lose
students. In 2004, tuition at private secondary schools averaged $8,412, a
significant leap from the $5,049 charged at the elementary level. Tuition
at Catholic schools averaged $3,533 for elementary and $6,046 for secondary
schools. As children transition from elementary to secondary schools,
families that cannot afford such hefty increases in tuition are forced to
reevaluate the relative advantages of private and public schooling.
At
the same time, the report suggests, cultural factors also play a role in
the decline of Catholic school enrollments and, thus, of private school
enrollments overall. American Catholic schools were founded in the
nineteenth century to provide schooling for families who felt that the
larger society, and its public schools, was hostile to their interests and
would not provide the kind of education they desired for their children.
However, since the 1960s, anti-Catholic sentiment has significantly
decreased across the U.S., and Catholic parents are now more likely to
embrace secular schools.
To
underscore the point, in the past few decades, and even as Catholic school
enrollments have declined, attendance at evangelical Christian schools has
surged. Today, it is evangelical Christians—far more than Catholics—who
feel ostracized by mainstream institutions and perceive a need to create
their own schools.
Finally,
the report speculates that changes in American child-rearing practices may
help to explain the fact that private school enrollment declines most
sharply between the 8th and 9th grade. Parents are more likely than in
previous generations to permit their children to weigh in on choices such
as where to attend school, and many teenagers may prefer to go to their
local high school rather than to commute to a private school across town.
Recent
declines in private school enrollment are driven by a confluence of
economic and social forces, Loveless concludes. “Despite the public’s
belief that private high schools excel academically, overwhelmingly parents
choose to send high-school-age children to public schools. It could be that
American parents do not consider academic quality the prime criterion for
selecting schools, especially if the academic advantage incurs significant
costs in tuition. This suggests it will take more than higher test scores
to stem the decline of private schooling in the United States. It also
suggests that, in an era when school quality is the focus of much debate,
we have much to learn about what that elusive term really means.”
The Global Campaign for Education
The Global Campaign for Education believes that, halfway to
the Education For All deadline of 2015, governments are
failing
their children and jeopardising the lives and prospects of
future
generations. Their broken promises are cast into sharp
relief by this,
the first global version of the GCE ‘School Report’.
Bringing together
data from various sources it proves what can be done with
political
will, but how far away the world is from showing the courage
of its
convictions across the entire EFA agenda, leaving no child
or adult
behind. The report finds the following:
• Successful countries show what can be done with sustained
investment and the right policy frameworks and their
experience
suggests that success does not depend on having high per
capita
income
• Education has gained increasing political priority for a
significant
number of countries over the last 7 years, especially in
Asia and
sub-Saharan Africa
• Gains in primary enrolment have been made, but risk being
undermined by poor quality - especially the lack of trained
teachers - and the charging of fees
• The 'other' EFA goals have been seriously neglected -
literacy is
so undervalued that we do not even have enough data on which
to measure progress, gains in gender equity at primary level
are
not reaching up to secondary
• Underinvestment in education - by donors and a significant
proportion of developing countries - continues to be a
problem
• Donors bear a large part of the responsibility for this
situation, as
their failure to live up to their part of the Dakar compact
has left
many poor countries short of the vital cash they need to
deliver
good education strategies.
• There is an urgent need for governments and donors to
address
equity, rights and the hardest-to-reach children including
disabled children and child labourers
• The challenges in large countries and fragile states are
considerable, but should not be insurmountable
• Despite the Dakar promise to value civil society as partners
in
education, there has been only patchy inclusion of their
voices;
governments’ attitudes to teacher unions remain a block to
true
partnership for the achievement of EFA
• Data constraints make it difficult to identify trends and
draw
valid comparisons; there is a desperate need to invest in
data
collection involving civil society
• There is an urgent need to revitalise the EFA movement and
to
reform the international architecture that is supposed to
monitor
and drive government efforts.
US Report Card (well worth a look!):
http://www.campaignforeducation.org/schoolreport/2008_reports/USA.pdf
Full report:
http://www.campaignforeducation.org/schoolreport/2008_reports/Final%20Global%20Report.small.pdf
Making
schools more successful for more students more of the time
The
key findings of 30 years of worldwide School Effectiveness Research (SER)
are examined in a new report funded by CfBT Education Trust.
The
report, entitled School Effectiveness and Equity: Making Connections considers
international research into the characteristics of effective schools and
provides a framework for practitioners and policy-makers whose aim is to
create more successful schools.
Pam
Sammons, Professor of Education in the Teacher and Leadership Research
Centre, has for many years been one of the leading figures in the movement
to research the workings of schools of different types, including those
that 'over-achieve'. The highly effective schools are ones 'in which
students progress further than might be expected from consideration of its
intake'.
The
CfBT report reminds us that before this body of research began, people did
not realise how powerful the impact could be of more effective schools and
there was a tendency to explain student results largely in terms of social
class. School Effectiveness Research has shown that the kind of
school a child goes to can matter a great deal in terms of educational
outcomes and life chances. The report highlights the importance of strong
links between understanding school effectiveness and achieving greater
equity and social justice through education. This is particularly
relevant with regard to promoting wider policies of social inclusion and
reducing the achievement gap.
In
the CfBT Report Professor Sammons identifies the key aspects of school life
that make maximum difference, these include: leadership that focuses on
educational quality and getting the right staff: consistent approaches to
teaching: assessment for learning: and high levels of parental engagement.
These
approaches appear to be key to success across international boundaries and
regardless of the level of deprivation of the communities served by
schools. Pam Sammons also emphasises the importance of the school
culture. Schools that achieve against the odds are often characterised by a
'mindset' that includes a fundamental optimism and a problem-solving group
attitude on the part of the staff. The report goes on to describe how the
research has emphasized the need to make sense of effectiveness at the
level of the classroom and the individual teacher.
The
CfBT report teases out some of the practical implications of the research
for school improvement. Effective school improvement programmes tend to:
·
focus
closely on changes at the classroom level
·
adopt
explicit, shared approaches to teaching strategies
·
collect
systematic evaluative evidence
·
aim
for cultural as well as structural changes.
Professor
Sammons recognises that some aspects of SER are controversial. She explains
that this, in part, is linked to disagreement about the purposes and
therefore the outcomes of schooling. Professor Sammons argues that there is
no necessary tension between 'academic' or cognitive progress, and social
and emotional development. In her conclusion she advocates schools that
both maintain an emphasis on fostering students' progress, while promoting
social and emotional development, recognising that these outcomes can be
complementary.
SER
may not offer a universal panacea but this research review suggests it can
inform, empower and challenge educators to make schools more successful for
more students more of the time.
LAPTOPS SHOWN TO
POSITIVELY IMPACT STUDENTS, IMPROVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
An
independent study of Pennsylvania’s innovative Classrooms for the Future
initiative has found that the program is improving the quality of high
school instruction, resulting in stronger engagement by students and
teachers and an intensified focus on critical thinking and problem-solving
skills.
Classrooms
for the Future is a three-year effort to provide laptop computers,
high-speed Internet access, state-of-the-art software and intensive teacher
training and support to high school classrooms across the state in the core
subjects of English, math, science and social studies. The plan calls for
every Pennsylvania public high school to be a participant in Classrooms for
the Future by 2009.
As
part of its commitment to ensuring accountability for the use of taxpayer
resources, the Department of Education commissioned Penn State University
to conduct the independent study of the program’s effectiveness.
Researchers,
led by Penn State faculty, evaluated Classrooms for the Future schools for
several months during the 2006-07 school year, the program’s first year.
Evaluation methods included classroom observations, teacher and student
surveys, and interviews with Classrooms for the Future coaches, principals
and liaisons to assess the progress being made.
Among
the findings:
• Observers
and students reported that teachers spent significantly less time in
whole-class lectures and more time working with small groups of students
and interacting with individual students.
• Teachers
reported that students spent significantly more time working in groups and
even the physical setup of classrooms often changed to accommodate more
collaborative student learning.
• There
was a notable shift in the nature of assignments given to students, moving
away from worksheets and toward “real world” topics and teaching styles in
which students gain understanding through activities and hands-on projects.
• A
before-and-after analysis of Classrooms for the Future indicated students
using the technology tools in learning spent significantly less time “off
task” (doing things other than what the teacher had intended) and there was
a significant increase in the level of engagement.
• Teachers’
attitudes changed, reflecting increased value for technologies in the
learning process, increases in effort and hours, and increased levels of
preparation to teach their subjects well.
Now
in its second year, Classrooms for the Future will reach 358 high schools
in 304 of the state’s 501 school districts by the end of the 2007-08 school
year.
The
state budget signed by Governor Edward G. Rendell last July allocated $90
million this fiscal year to provide 255 high schools with 83,000 laptop
computers and related equipment. It also invested $11 million in
high-quality professional development for Classrooms for the Future high
schools. Those investments are in addition to the $20 million in equipment
and $4 million in professional development allocated to 103 high schools by
the state in 2006-07.
Classrooms For the Future 1st Year Report:
http://www.pdenewsroom.state.pa.us/newsroom/lib/newsroom/CFF_Y1_Report_Final_12-3-07.pdf
Maryland Retooling its Approach to Schools Faced With
Major Sanctions Under No Child Left Behind
State, School Districts Try to Make Restructuring
Process More Effective
Building on its experience as one of the first states to have
a significant number of schools enter restructuring—the No Child Left
Behind Act’s ultimate sanction for persistently low-performing
schools—Maryland is retooling its approach to make the process more
effective, according to a report from the Washington, D.C.-based Center on
Education Policy.
Based on its early experience and continued struggle to find
the right mix of options to lift achievement in the struggling schools, the
state is changing its strategy by limiting several governance options that
are no longer deemed effective and rolling out more technical support.
According to the report, very few schools in restructuring
have actually raised achievement enough to exit improvement status—just 12
schools, or 16 percent of the total number to reach this phase, since 2004.
And many educators and administrators interviewed for the report
acknowledged that restructuring efforts do not appear to be having a great
impact on schools’ ability to meet achievement targets.
The Maryland State Department of Education has eliminated six
previously available alternatives for governing the school—including using
an independent “turnaround specialist” and temporarily suspending the
office of the school principal. At the same time, the state has also
introduced new programs to support restructuring schools, including special
technical assistance to schools that have been in restructuring for three
or more years.
The employment of full or part time turnaround specialists, by
far the most popular restructuring reform option in Maryland in 2006-07,
was used by 65 percent of schools in restructuring implementation. Schools
that had selected this option prior to its elimination are allowed to
continue using it. However, Prince George’s County and other school
districts have made changes in the role of these specialists and how they
are deployed.
With turnaround specialists off the table, replacement of
school staff has emerged as the mostpopular option for schools new to
restructuring, but the approach is not without its problems.
According to the report, Making Mid-Course Corrections:
School Restructuring in Maryland, staff replacement has often
led to lower staff morale and a shift in teachers’ focus to job security
issues.
“Maryland is one of the first states to really wrestle with
restructuring,” said Jack Jennings, president and CEO of the Center. “Right
now, the state is learning the hard way how difficult it is to get the
right mix of reforms and interventions that will make a difference. This is
an important test, for Maryland and the nation, to determine how well the
state can work within the context of No Child Left Behind to help schools
that have struggled the most.”
The number of Maryland schools in restructuring implementation
has increased by 39 percent since 2004 (from 46 to 64). Between 2005-06 and
2006-07 (the year in which research for this report was conducted) the
number of schools implementing restructuring plans increased by 10 percent
to 69 schools. All of the schools are urban, with most (84 percent, or 59
schools) in the Baltimore City Public School System. The remaining 11
schools were located in Prince George’s County. The schools have each
missed Adequate Yearly Progress toward state achievement targets for at
least five straight years, subjecting them to a variety of major
school-wide reforms intended to dramatically boost achievement.
Very few Maryland schools have elected to implement other
restructuring options such as reopening as a charter school, bringing in
outside management companies or reform models, or placing direct control in
the hands of the school district.
In addition, many of those interviewed for the report
suggested that a wide variety of other improvement activities—tutoring,
increased math and reading time, diagnostic assessments, increased focus on
“bubble” students—may have a bigger impact on student performance than
alternative governance options under NCLB.
The report notes that logistical problems have often delayed
the hiring of staff and the implementation of other strategies until well
after the start of the school year, denying some schools the full benefit
of supports prior to the 2007 administration of the Maryland School
Assessment—the test used to determine Adequate Yearly Progress under the
law. Recently, the state has changed its school improvement grant rules to
allow for districts to begin hiring staff or purchasing services before the
start of the school year where necessary.
Previously Released Reports on NCLB Restructuring (available
at www.cep-dc.org). § California (March
2007): Beyond the Mountains: An Early Look at Restructuring Results in
California
§ Michigan (March 2007): What Now?
Lessons from Michigan About Restructuring Schools and Next Steps Under NCLB
§ Maryland (September 2006): Building on
State Reform: Maryland School Restructuring
Full report:
http://www.cep-dc.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=document.showDocumentByID&nodeID=1&DocumentID=230
Highly Effective Principals
In
an effort to ensure that the effectiveness of each and every school leader
is assessed in a fair and consistent manner, the Board of Directors of the
National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) has approved a
set of guidelines for policymakers to consider. Albeit lacking in some
areas, the characteristics of a Highly Qualified Teacher (HQT) have been
established in the latest iteration of NCLB. There is no similar definition
of what constitutes a highly qualified principal, leaving school leaders
open to performance evaluations that only take student performance
indicators into account. The guidelines NASSP proposes are based on
multiple, objective measures that consider the context in which a principal
operates his or her school.
ISSUE
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)
expanded the federal role in education and has significantly impacted
schools and school leader responsibilities. The era of reform ushered in by
this legislation requires that administrators make connections between
academic data and excellence and they employ strategic thinking and
innovations in developing partnerships with a variety of constituent
groups. It is no longer sufficient to deplore the achievement gap; school
leaders must be able to make decisions to improve teaching and learning for
all students or face corrective action if their schools fail to meet
mandated accountability measures.
NCLB placed a great emphasis on
teachers by defining a highly qualified teacher (HQT) and mandating that
all teachers meet specific certification requirements in order to teach.
However, the HQT provisions only ensure that teachers are competent with
respect to subject knowledge. To be truly highly effective, a teacher must
also be able to successfully communicate that knowledge to students.
Highly qualified principals are
mentioned throughout NCLB, but there is not a similar definition of what
constitutes a highly qualified principal, nor any assurance that the
principal be effective in his or her position. Nonetheless, a recent study
by the Southeast Center for Teaching Quality (2005) on the working
conditions of teachers found that high-quality leadership was the single
greatest predictor of whether or not high schools made “adequate yearly
progress” as defined by NCLB—more than either school size or teacher
retention.
NASSP GUIDING PRINCIPLES
·
NASSP
acknowledges that within the school building, the principal bears the
ultimate responsibility for implementing schoolwide reforms that will lead
to high academic achievement for all students.
·
NASSP
recognizes that school leaders are expected to be instructional leaders but
also educational visionaries; assessment experts; working knowledge of
curriculum as it aligns to content standards; disciplinarians; community
builders; public relations experts; budget analysts; facility managers;
special programs administrators; and guardians of various legal,
contractual, and policy mandates and initiatives.
·
NASSP
offers this position statement as guiding recommendations for federal,
state, and local policymakers, noting that states currently bear the
responsibility for determining the characteristics of a highly effective
principal and the multiple measures used in assessing the principal’s
performance.
·
NASSP
believes that quantitative and qualitative data should inform decisions at
the classroom, school building and district levels. Data should therefore
inform principals' effectiveness.
·
NASSP
recommends that principal performance be based on multiple measures that
are objective and take into account the context in which a principal
operates the school, and are not limited to student performance indicators.
·
NASSP
developed Breaking Ranks II and Breaking Ranks in the Middle to offer strategies
for principals implementing schoolwide reforms, and this framework provides
a basis for our recommendations to define and measure highly effective
principals.
RECOMMENDATIONS
NASSP
recommends that a highly effective principal or assistant principal:
·
Demonstrate
awareness of and have experiences with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes
needed to effectively lead teaching and learning appropriate to the needs
of all students in the school
·
Has
successfully completed a state approved principal licensure program that
builds the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to effectively lead people,
lead learning, and manage school operations
·
Engages
in continuous professional development, utilizing a combination of academic
study, developmental simulation exercises, self-reflection, mentorship and
internship
·
Demonstrates
capacity to lead in establishing and maintaining a professional learning
community that effectively extracts information from data to improve the
school culture and personalize instruction for all students to result in
improved student achievement
·
Demonstrates
knowledge of youth development appropriate to the age level served by the
school
·
Demonstrates
the capacity to create and maintain a learning culture within the school
that provides a climate conducive to the development of all members of the
school community.
NASSP
recommends that school districts examine quantitative and qualitative data
pertaining to both academic and nonacademic indicators in their evaluation
of principals.
NASSP recommends the following
measurements, in addition to student indicators, for assessing principal
performance:
·
Self-assessments
·
Supervisor
site visits
·
School
documentation of classroom observations, faculty agendas, etc.
·
Climate
survey
·
Teacher,
other school staff, parent, and student evaluations
·
Teacher
retention/transfer rates
·
Opportunities
for student engagement through co-curricular and extracurricular activities
and rates of participation.
In
measuring a principal’s performance based on student indicators, states
should use multiple assessments that are aligned with state standards,
include performance based measures, and measure individual student growth from
year to year. NASSP suggests the use of such assessments as:
·
State
assessments
·
Portfolios,
performance tasks, and other examples of a student’s accomplishments
·
Traditional
quizzes and tests
·
Interviews,
questionnaires, and conferences
·
End-of-course
exams
·
Comprehensive
personal academic or graduation plans
·
Assessments
aligned with high school and college entrance requirements (ACT, PSAT, SAT)
·
Senior
projects.
NASSP recommends that Congress
provide a dedicated funding stream of $100 million to prepare, train, and
recruit highly effective principals. Funds could be used for the following:
·
Reforming
principal certification (including recertification) or licensing
requirements
·
Carrying
out programs that provide support to principals or assistant principals, including
mentoring and professional development programs
·
Assisting
local educational agencies and schools in effectively recruiting and
retaining highly effective principals
·
Encouraging
and supporting the training of administrators to effectively integrate
technology into curricula and instruction
·
Developing
and implementing professional development programs that enable principals
to be effective instructional leaders and to prepare all students to meet
challenging state academic content and student academic achievement
standards
·
Developing
and implementing initiatives to promote the retention of highly effective
principals, particularly within elementary, middle and high schools with a
high percentage of low-achieving students
·
Carrying
out professional development activities designed to improve the quality of
principals, including the development and support of academies to help
talented aspiring or current principals become outstanding managers and
educational leaders.
REFERENCES
National Association of Secondary
School Principals (2004). Breaking Ranks II: Strategies for Leading High
School Reform. Reston, VA: Author.
National Association of Secondary
School Principals (2006). Breaking Ranks in the Middle: Strategies for
Leading Middle Level Reform. Reston, VA: Author.
National Association of Secondary
School Principals (2007). Changing Role of the Middle Level and High School
Leader: Learning from the Past—Preparing for the Future. Reston, VA:
Author.
Southeast Center for Teaching Quality
(2004). Teaching working conditions are student learning conditions.
Retrieved June 2005 from http://www.teachingquality.org/pdfs/TWC_FullReport.pdf
Educational
Technology in Teacher Education Programs for Initial Licensure
This
report details findings from “Educational Technology in Teacher Education
Programs for Initial Licensure,” a survey that was designed to provide
policy makers, researchers, educators, and administrators with timely
baseline information on a range of topics involving educational technology
and teacher education programs for initial licensure at 4-year
postsecondary institutions.
Findings
suggest that teacher education programs for initial licensure were oriented
toward preparing teacher candidates to use educational technology. For
example, while about half of all institutions with teacher education
programs for initial licensure offered 3- or 4-credit stand-alone courses
in educational technology in their programs, many also taught educational
technology within methods courses (93 percent), within the field
experiences of teacher candidates (79 percent), and within content courses
(71 percent).
Large
majorities of institutions agreed (strongly or somewhat) that their program
graduates possess the skills and experience to integrate technology into
instruction, and can construct project-based learning lessons involving
educational technology. However, institutions reported a variety of
barriers that impeded efforts to prepare teacher candidates to use
educational technology within both program coursework and field
experiences. For example, a majority of institutions reported a variety of
moderate or major barriers to the ability of teacher candidates to practice
educational technology-related skills and knowledge during their field
experiences, including competing priorities in the classroom (74 percent),
available technology infrastructure in the schools (73 percent), and lack
of training or skill (64 percent), time (62 percent), and willingness (53
percent) on the part of supervising teachers to integrate technology in
their classrooms.
Full report:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2008040
Highlights
from PISA 2006: Performance of U.S. 15-Year-Old Students in Science and
Mathematics Literacy in an International Context
This report summarizes the performance of U.S. students on
the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), comparing the
scores of U.S. 15-year-old students in science and mathematics literacy to
the scores of their peers internationally in 2006. PISA, first implemented
in 2000, is sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD), an intergovernmental agency of 30 member countries. In
2006, fifty-seven jurisdictions participated in PISA, including 30 OECD
jurisdictions and 27 non-OECD jurisdictions.
The results show the average combined science literacy scale
score for U.S. students to be lower than the OECD average. U.S. students
scored lower on science literacy than their peers in 16 of the other 29
OECD jurisdictions and 6 of the 27 non-OECD jurisdictions.
Twenty-two jurisdictions (5 OECD jurisdictions and 17
non-OECD jurisdictions) reported lower scores compared to the United States
in science literacy. On the mathematics literacy scale, U.S. students
scored lower than the OECD average. Thirty-one jurisdictions (23 OECD
jurisdictions and 8 non-OECD jurisdictions) scored higher on average, than
the United States in mathematics literacy in 2006. In contrast, 20
jurisdictions (4 OECD jurisdictions and 16 non-OECD jurisdictions) scored
lower than the United States in mathematics literacy in 2006.
Differences in student performance based on the selected
student characteristics of sex and race/ethnicity are also examined.
Following the presentation of results, a technical appendix describes the
study design, data collection, and analysis procedures that guided the
administration of PISA 2006 in the United States and in the other
participating jurisdictions.
Full
report:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2008/2008016.pdf
NEA
Reaction to Science Report
Program for
International Student Assessment (PISA) surveys the knowledge and skills of
15-year-olds in science, math and reading. Students from 30 OECD member
countries and 27 additional countries and jurisdictions participated in the
2006 PISA. The United States again rates in the lower half of 57 other
participating countries and scored below average in student achievement.
NEA President Reg
Weaver, who also serves as vice president of Education International, said,
“Once again, Finland ranks number one in the world in the PISA survey. Is
it a coincidence that Finland has no standardized testing and provides each
child with an individualized education plan? Additionally, in Finland,
teachers help to make key decisions regarding budget allocations,
scheduling, and curriculum, which influence learning. This country has
designed an education system exclusively focused on helping students
excel.”
The 2006 PISA results
do not show significant increases in math and science compared to 2003 when
the last assessments were performed. The results, however, do suggest a
correlation between equity and quality.
The study recommends
that educational policies should target disadvantaged children and that low
performing schools and students would greatly benefit from specialized
curricula and additional resources. “These findings confirm what NEA has
known all along—gaps in student achievement must be narrowed in order to
level the playing field so that American children will be able to compete
in the global economy of the future,” said Weaver.
The results also
highlight that all students can benefit from expanded education
opportunities such as providing early childhood education and increased
learning time. “No Child Left Behind has forced teachers to teach to the
test and narrow curricula, depriving students of the well-rounded education
they need,” Weaver said. “Good science instruction requires teachers and
students to become engaged in critical thinking and laboratory activities,
which require sustained amounts of time and resources. These are luxuries
that today’s teachers don’t have. We must provide teachers with the
resources and time they need to teach—not test—our students. Teachers also
require ongoing training opportunities so they can keep up with constant
innovations in science.”
One of the major goals
of Education International, which represents more than 30 million teachers
and education workers, is to promote equality through the development of
education. “This must be made a priority in America so that U.S. children
aren’t left paying the price for our education policy’s shortcomings,”
Weaver said.
The 2006 Program for
International Student Assessment is available at:
http://www.pisa.oecd.org
For more information on
NEA’s initiatives regarding gaps in student achievement, please go to http://www.nea.org/achievement/gaps.html
Seattle
Public Schools Accelerated Progress Program (APP) Review
The
Accelerated Progress Program (APP) review is complete. The charge to the
review team was to compare the offerings of the APP program in relation to
current state-of-theart in gifted education as reflected by the “Standards
for Gifted Programs of the National Association for Gifted Children”
(NAGC). The review was conducted by three experts in the area of gifted
education: Dr. Carolyn M. Callahan; Dr. Catherine M. Brighton; and Dr.
Holly Hertberg Davis, all from the University of Virginia. The APP program
serves the mostly highly capable of learners, within a continuum of
services for highly capable students. Other programs include Spectrum and
Advanced Learning Opportunities.
The
review team conducted stakeholder interviews with students, teachers and
principals, central office staff and parents; observed classrooms; and
studied an array of district documents.
Among
the conclusions:
“While
recent work has been done to ensure the APP curriculum is more aligned with
the general education program, a long history of little or no staff
development has led to staff under-prepared to deliver the most current,
challenging curriculum to gifted students. Recommendations include: Provide
APP teachers with substantial time together and the leadership and training
needed to develop a curriculum framework, share learning activities, and
communicate about student needs across grade levels. “
Full
report:
http://www.seattleschools.org/area/advlearning/APPEvaluationReportSeattle.pdf
Numbers and
Rates of Public High School Dropouts: School Year 2004-05
This
report presents findings on the numbers and rates of public school students
who dropped out of school in school years 2002-03, 2003-04, and 2004-05,
using data from the CCD State-Level Public Use Data File on Public School
Dropouts for these years. The report also used the Local Education
Agency-Level Public-Use Data File on Public School Dropouts: School Year
2004-05, and the NCES Common Core of Data Local Education Agency Universe
Survey Dropout and Completion Restricted-Use Data File: School Year
2004-05.
Full
report:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2008305
Humans
appear hardwired to learn by 'over-imitation'
Children
learn by imitating adults—so much so that they will rethink how an object
works if they observe an adult taking unnecessary steps when using that
object, according to a Yale study today in Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences.
“Even
when you add time pressure, or warn the children not to do the unnecessary
actions, they seem unable to avoid reproducing the adult’s irrelevant
actions,” said Derek Lyons, doctoral candidate, developmental psychology,
and first author of the study. “They have already incorporated the actions
into their idea of how the object works.”
Learning
by imitation occurs from the simplest preverbal communication to the most
complex adult expertise. It is the basis for much of our success as a
species, but the benefits are less clear in instances of “over-imitation,”
where children copy behavior that is not needed, Lyons said.
It
has been theorized that children over-imitate just to fit in, or out of
habit. The Yale team found in this study that children follow the adults’
steps faithfully to the point where they actually change their mind about
how an object functions.
The
study included three-to-five-year-old children who engaged in a series of
exercises. In one exercise, the children could see a dinosaur toy through a
clear plastic box. The researcher used a sequence of irrelevant and
relevant actions to retrieve the toy, such as tapping the lid of the jar
with a feather before unscrewing the lid.
The
children then were asked which actions were silly and which were not. They
were praised when they pinpointed the actions that had no value in
retrieving the toy. The idea was to teach the children that the adult was
unreliable and that they should ignore his unnecessary actions.
Later
the children watched adults retrieve a toy turtle from a box using needless
steps. When asked to do the task themselves, the children over-imitated,
despite their prior training to ignore irrelevant actions by the adults.
“What
of all of this means,” Lyons said, “is that children’s ability to imitate
can actually lead to confusion when they see an adult doing something in a
disorganized or inefficient way. Watching an adult doing something wrong
can make it much harder for kids to do it right.”
More
information is available at the project website: http://www.hellofelix.com
FCAT Lessons
Learned
FCAT
Reading Lessons Learned: 2001-2005 Data Analyses and Instructional Implications
and FCAT Mathematics Lessons Learned: 2001-2005 Data Analyses and
Instructional Implications, provides educators with detailed trend
analyses of student reading and mathematics performance in grades three
through 10. The publications include summaries, observations and
statistical trends that provide a comprehensive study of student
performance by grade.
In
2006, the DOE convened a task force of curriculum supervisors and
specialists, resource teachers, school administrators and Florida educators
to examine and review the DOE’s data analyses of student performance. The
task force used these insights to draft observations and instructional
implications to improve instruction in the classroom.
To
view the publications:
Reading:
http://fcat.fldoe.org/pdf/FCAT07_LL_Reading.pdf
Math:
http://fcat.fldoe.org/pdf/FCAT07_LL_Math.pdf
Washington
Assessment of Student Learning: Washington's High School Assessment System:
A Review of Student Performance on the WASL and Alternative Assessment
Options
To
“increase understanding of the students who did not meet the standard in
one or more areas of assessment,” the 2006 Washington State Legislature
directed the Institute to conduct a “review and statistical analysis of
Washington assessment of student learning data.” The study direction also
calls for a review of "options to augment the current system of
assessments to provide additional opportunities for students to demonstrate
that they have met the state learning standards." (SSB 6618)
This
final report addresses both components of the Institute’s assignment. The
first section summarizes performance on the Washington Assessment of
Student Learning (WASL) and analyzes the characteristics of students in the
classes of 2008 and 2009 who have not yet met standard. The second section
considers the impact of alternative assessment options on overall
met-standard rates, discusses the cultural appropriateness of various
student assessment options, describes the initial implementation of the
Collection of Evidence (COE) option, and provides an overview of “multiple
measures” assessment systems.
Full
report: http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/rptfiles/07-12-2202.pdf
California
Reduces Underprepared Teachers by 25,000
But new report from the Center for
the Future of Teaching and Learning says state lacks a coherent system to
strengthen teaching, urges policymakers to focus on quality
California has reduced the number of
underprepared teachers by more than 25,000 over the past five years,
according to a new report released today by the Center for the Future of
Teaching and Learning. There were 42,000 underprepared teachers in
California in 2000-01, and just over 15,000 in 2006-07, a reduction from
14% of the workforce to just 5%.
“These gains in the supply of
qualified teachers represent a significant accomplishment for policymakers
and those in the education community,” said Margaret Gaston, executive
director of the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning. “As demand
eases, the time is right to focus on strengthening teaching quality.
We would like to see the conversation turn toward building teaching
capacity.”
But the report also cautions that the
gains in the supply of qualified teachers mask difficult problems.
Poor and minority students are still much more likely to have an
underprepared teacher than their more advantaged white peers, and low
achieving schools continue to face significant challenges in hiring
qualified teachers. Additionally, the supply of teachers is threatened by
declining production of new teachers and looming retirements of an aging
teacher workforce.
Further, California students
are still not meeting the academic standards the state has set for them.
While test scores have shown gains, more than half of the state’s students
still are not considered “proficient” on the California Standards Tests in
English and mathematics, and the achievement gap between white and Asian
students and African-American and Latino students has not narrowed.
“This report makes clear the next
important step in making public schools better is building a teacher
development system that focuses on strengthening the quality of teaching in
order to improve student outcomes. Fortunately, California already has many
of the components of such a system in place,” says Gaston.
The Status of the Teaching
Profession 2007
examines how quality is measured across key points in a teacher’s career —
teacher preparation, hiring, and evaluation — and concludes that California
currently does not have a coherent teacher development system that builds
knowledge and skill.
“California does not rigorously
measure teaching quality or use and share what information is collected to
improve teaching quality,” says Patrick Shields, director of the Center for
Education Policy at SRI International and the principal researcher for the
report. “Assessments should yield information that can be better used
to strengthen the quality of teaching to improve student outcomes. And this
information should be shared to create a coherent system of teacher
development where learning continues throughout a teaching career.”
In examining teacher development, the
report finds that information about the knowledge, attitudes and
performance of teaching candidates is not used to strengthen preparation;
hiring is based on weak data; and teacher evaluations are rarely based on
meaningful data or used to improve teaching practice. Making matters worse,
information is not shared across the components of the teacher development
continuum to strengthen preparation programs, inform hiring decisions and
improve classroom practices.
“With ninety-five percent of
classrooms now staffed by qualified teachers, the opportunity arises to
turn our attention toward strengthening teaching,” said Gaston. “But to do
that, we need a teacher development system that builds capacity. In what is
sure to be a year of complex challenges, made more difficult by a lack of
resources, we urge policymakers to stay focused on teaching quality.”
“We can start right now by making
low-cost, high-yield changes in teacher development like simply passing on
assessment information from teacher preparation programs to schools where
the new teachers are hired. We also have to stop looking at assessments
only as gate-keeping devices and start using them to strengthen
practice. This requires a sea change in how we collect and use assessment
information.”
The Status of the Teaching
Profession 2007
is produced and disseminated by the Center for the Future of Teaching and
Learning. Research for the report is conducted by SRI International. The
2007 report provides the latest available data and analysis of California’s
teaching workforce. Key findings include:
Measurable Progress
·
There
are fewer underprepared teachers. 42,427 in 2000-01, 15,549 in 2006-07
·
There
are fewer novice teachers in the first or second year of teaching.
46,000 in 2000-01, 36,000 in 2006-07
·
Schools
of all types have lower percentages of underprepared teachers. For
example, in 2000-01, 23% of faculty in low achieving schools were
underprepared. In 2006-07, 8% were underprepared.
Persistent Problems
Low achieving schools serving poor
and minority students are still more likely to have underprepared and
inexperienced teachers.
·
Schools
in the lowest achievement quartile continue to have a higher percentage of
underprepared teachers, on average, than schools in the highest achievement
quartile. In 2006-07, on average, 8% of teachers in schools in the lowest
achievement quartile were underprepared. By comparison, only 2% of
teachers in the highest achieving quartile were underprepared.
·
In
2006-07, 54% of interns were teaching in schools in the lowest API
achievement quartile.
·
Ninety-four
percent of principals in high achieving schools say they usually or always
can hire fully prepared teachers. By comparison, just 71 percent of
principals in low achieving schools say the same thing.
The supply of fully prepared
teachers faces continuing problems and future threats.
·
A
quarter (26%) of new secondary teachers enter the workforce underprepared.
·
Forty-four
percent of novice special education teachers have not completed their
preparation before they begin teaching.
·
Thirty-two
percent of the teaching workforce was 50 years old or older in 2006-07.
About one-third of the workforce will be eligible for retirement within ten
years.
·
Enrollment
in teacher preparation programs has declined from 44,820 in 2001-02 to
34,176 in 2004-05.
California needs a teacher
development system
California rarely collects
adequate data on teaching quality, and what data it does collect is not
used to inform practice nor to strengthen preparation, hiring or
professional development.
Teacher Preparation: Teacher candidate content
knowledge is not used to inform preparation, candidate beliefs and
attitudes are rarely measured, and assessments in coursework do not
differentiate individual candidate skills. Student teaching is hampered by
few opportunities for training and support of master teachers and
supervisors.
Hiring: Decisions on hiring
often rely on weak data. Teacher credential status is highly valued by
principals, but characteristics associated with student achievement such as
academic background are less valued. Hiring processes yield little
information on a candidate’s pedagogical skills and content knowledge that
can be used by principals and others during the selection process.
The size and quality of the candidate pool shapes how schools assess
candidates’ teaching quality with high-wealth schools having larger
candidate pools than high-need schools.
Evaluation: Performance
reviews do not measure teaching quality well and are rarely used to
determine teacher professional development needs or set career goals. Less
than half of school administrators value using student achievement data or
student work to identify the ways in which teaching practice can be
strengthened. Data that are used to measure teaching quality fail to
link measurement and support, or are infrequently used.
Full
report:
http://www.cftl.org/documents/2007/tcf07/TCFReport2007.pdf
Fever
May Briefly Alleviate Autism Symptoms
The
behavior of children with autism may improve during a fever, according to a
first-of-kind study, “Behaviors Associated With Fever in Children With
Autism Spectrum Disorders,” published Nov. 30 in Pediatrics.
Researchers
hypothesize that fever may restore nerve cell communications in regions of
the autistic brain. The restoration may help children improve socialization
skills during a fever.
The
study was based on 30 autistic children between ages 2 and 18 who were
observed during and after a fever of at least 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
More than 80 percent of the children showed some improvement in behavior
during a fever and 30 percent showed significant improvement, researchers
said. Behavior changes included longer concentration span, increased amount
of talking and improved eye contact.
The
study was written by Craig J. Newschaffer, Ph.D., professor and chair of
the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Drexel University, and
Laura K. Curran, Ph.D., an epidemiology doctoral degree graduate who
Newschaffer advised before he joined Drexel from Johns Hopkins University.
“Any
leads that suggest new biologic mechanisms that could be acted on through
treatment are welcomed,” Newschaffer said.
Study
data suggest that behavior changes may not solely be the byproduct of
sickness and, consequently, could be the byproduct of a biologic response
to fever. More research, however, is needed to prove fever-specific
effects, researchers sa
Slow
reading in dyslexia tied to disorganized brain tracts
Dyslexia
marked by poor reading fluency -- slow and choppy reading -- may be caused
by disorganized, meandering tracts of nerve fibers in the brain, according
to researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and Beth Israel Deaconess
Medical Center (BIDMC). The study, using the latest imaging methods, gives
researchers a glimpse of what may go wrong in the structure of some
dyslexic readers' brains, making it difficult to integrate the information
needed for rapid, "automatic" reading.
The
study was led by Christopher Walsh, MD, PhD, chief of the Division of
Genetics at Children's Hospital Boston, and Bernard Chang, MD, a
neurologist at BIDMC. Findings will appear in the journal Neurology on
December 4.
"We
looked at dyslexia caused by a particular genetic disorder, but what we
found could have implications for understanding the causes of dyslexia in
other populations as well," says Walsh, who is also a Howard Hughes
Medical Institute investigator at BIDMC.
Dyslexia,
which affects 5 to 15 percent of all children, has different forms.
Subjects in the study had reading problems caused by a rare genetic
disorder known as periventricular nodular heterotopia, or PNH. Although
their intelligence is normal, people with PNH have trouble reading
fluently, or smoothly, lacking the rapid processing necessary for this
aspect of reading.
The
genetic mutation that causes PNH disrupts brain structure. In a normal
brain, much of the gray matter (consisting mostly of nerve cells) appears
on the brain's surface, while white matter (consisting mostly of nerve
fibers or "wiring" connecting areas of gray matter) runs deeper
in the brain. In PNH, nodules of gray matter sit deep in the brain's core,
in the white matter, having failed to migrate out to the surface as the
brain was developing.
To
learn more about how these developmental changes in the brain might lead to
reading problems, the researchers tested cognitive skills needed for
reading in 10 patients with PNH, 10 individuals with dyslexia without
neurological problems, and 10 normal readers. They used a specialized form
of MRI called diffusion tensor imaging to look at the structure of the
white matter in the brain.
In
PNH patients, unlike in normal readers, white matter fibers took circuitous
routes around the misplaced gray matter, and in some cases, didn't organize
into uniform bundles, which could leave regions of gray matter poorly
connected. Importantly, the more disorganized the PNH patients' white
matter, the less fluent their reading.
While
other studies have found disorganized white matter in the general
population of people with dyslexia, these individuals often struggle with
several aspects of reading, making it "hard to know exactly what the
role of white-matter integrity is in isolation," says Chang. By
demonstrating white-matter problems in PNH patients, who have an isolated
reading fluency problem, and correlating that with reading fluency scores,
the researchers were able to conclude that white-matter integrity and
organization may be the structural basis in the brain for reading fluency.
"This
makes sense," says Chang. "When we read, we need to take in
information visually, hook it up with our inner dictionary of what letters
and words mean, and when we’re reading aloud, connect that with the region
that gives us our ability to speak." For smooth, automatic reading,
"the white matter is there to connect different regions of gray matter
and allow them to function seamlessly." When reading fluency is the
primary problem, "it may be that the areas of the brain that are
important for reading are not connected efficiently," says Chang.
Most
people with dyslexia who have trouble reading fluently don't have misplaced
gray matter or PNH. But Walsh and Chang believe that disorganized white
matter could similarly alter brain function in both groups. Their next
study will examine how faulty white-matter connections alter brain
patterns, comparing brain activation during reading in PNH patients and in
dyslexic readers with poor fluency, who do not have PNH.
Pinpointing
the brain structures responsible for fluent reading may eventually help
researchers and educational specialists develop and use techniques that
help improve the automatic nature of reading in children and adults with
these kinds of difficulties, the researchers note.
Participation
in Organized High School Activities Lowers Smoking Risk 3 Yrs After
Graduation
Researchers
from the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania reported
today that students who participate in high school sports or individual
physical activity are less likely to smoke than their classmates. The new
study indicates that the protective effect of participation extends at
least three years beyond graduation. The Penn team discovered, however,
that girls do not derive the same level of protection from school sports as
do boys.
Daniel
Rodriguez, PhD, Research Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, reported that an
adolescent’s self-assessment and sense of physical competence was an
important aspect in smoking prevention. Students who feel successful
continue to participate and are less likely to start negative behaviors. “I
visualize this as a fork in the road,” Rodriguez said. “If you are
successful, then you continue doing sports. If you are not successful, then
you are now in need of other reinforcement and start looking for other
things. In that case, things like smoking become open to you.”
Given
the data, Rodriguez recommends that parents make an effort to get their
children involved in organized activities – whether it is a physical sport,
like track and field, or some other organized activity, like the chess team
– and that they teach them how to properly evaluate their own skills. It is
important that children learn to compare their current skills or
performance to their past performance and not to that of their teammates or
opponents. That way they can feel good about their skills, even if they are
not the best at something.
Rodriguez,
PhD, and colleagues in the NIH-funded Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use
Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania have shown previously
that adolescents who are physically active are about one-third less likely
to start smoking than their less active peers.
Now,
in the first of two studies that Rodriguez will present at the American
Association for Cancer Research’s “Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research”
meeting in Philadelphia, the investigators followed 985 young adults from
12th grade through the third year after high school. As expected, the young
adults who participated in high school sports or individual physical
activity were significantly less likely smoke than their non-active peers.
Physical activity reduced the likelihood of smoking 12% by improving the
adolescents’ perception of their physical self. By contrast, team sports
reduced smoking 18% by improving their perception of their physical self
and reducing contact with peers who smoke. Remarkably, the benefit of
participation was still evident three years after graduation.
In
the second study 384 high school students, Rodriguez found that
participation in a team sport during 10th grade reduced the risk of smoking
in 11th grade by 5%. In this case, the reduced smoking was due to an
increased feeling of competence in their sport and fewer depressive
symptoms in students who were on teams.
“Most
smoking initiation occurs during adolescence,” Rodriguez said. “So if you
can make it out of that adolescent period, and you have a sport to buffer
you from smoking during that period, you’re pretty safe.”
Given
that team sports reduces a student’s risk of smoking by both increased
confidence in his or her physical self and by decreasing contact with peers
who smoke, Rodriguez hypothesizes that physical activity may not be the key
factor. Rather the student’s environment and his or her feelings of success
keep a student from starting to smoke. “A structured activity keeps a
student away from negative influences. It is not inconsistent for you to be
physically active and smoke, but when you are part of a team, you are just
not exposed to smoking. You don’t have the opportunity to do something like
start smoking.”
Unfortunately,
the Penn researchers found in the study of 10th and 11th graders that girls
do not derive the same benefit from participation in high school sports as
do boys. Exactly why that gender difference exists is not yet clear,
according to Rodriguez, but knowing there is a difference will help him and
his colleagues look for smoking prevention measures that do work for girls.
MIT launches web site for high school
students
MIT has launched a new web site, Highlights
for High School, that will provide resources to improve science,
technology, engineering and math (STEM) instruction at the high school
level.
The website is: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/hs/home/home/index.htm
The web site builds on the success of
MIT's revolutionary OpenCourseWare initiative and is designed to inspire
the next generation of engineers and scientists and to be a valuable tool
for high school teachers.
Highlights for High School features
more than 2,600 video and audio clips, animations, lecture notes and
assignments taken from actual MIT courses, and categorizes them to match
the Advanced Placement physics, biology and calculus curricula.
Demonstrations, simulations and animations give educators engaging ways to
present STEM concepts, while videos illustrate MIT's hands-on approach to
the teaching of these subjects.
Thomas Magnanti, former dean of the
School of Engineering at MIT, chaired the committee that developed the
site. "As has been well documented, the U.S. needs to invest more in
secondary education, particularly in STEM fields. MIT, as a leading
institution of science and technology, has an obligation to help address
the issue," he said.
Highlights for High School represents
MIT's first step in adapting the successful OpenCourseWare model to
secondary education. The web site organizes the course materials currently
featured on OCW--including syllabi, lecture notes, assignments and
exams--into a format that is more accessible to high school students and
teachers.
An estimated 10,000 U.S. high school
instructors and 5,000 U.S. high school students already visit MIT
OpenCourseWare each month, and MIT expects Highlights for High School to
make MIT's course materials even more useful to these audiences.
Two-thirds of States Get Poor
Grades on School Food Report Card
Kentucky
and Oregon top the nation in healthy school foods policies, but two-thirds
of states have no or weak nutrition standards to limit junk-food and soda
sales out of vending machines, school stores, and other venues outside of
school meals, according to a school foods
report card from the Center for Science in the Public Interest
(CSPI).
“Over
the last ten years, states have been strengthening their school nutrition
policies,” said Margo G. Wootan, director of nutrition policy at CSPI. “But
overall, the changes, while positive, are fragmented, incremental, and not
happening quickly enough to reach all children in a timely way.”
No
states received an A grade, though two states (Kentucky and Oregon)
received an A-; six states received a B+ (Nevada, Alabama, Arkansas,
California, Washington and New Mexico); nine states earned a B or B-,
Including Texas and arizona;; six states and the District of Columbia
received Cs; seven states got Ds;
including NC (D+) VA (D)and Georgia (D-) and 20 states got Fs,
including Massachusetts, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
Most
improved honors go to Oregon, which upgraded from an F in last year’s
report card to an A-, and Washington state, which moved from an F to a B+.
Since CSPI’s last
report card in 2006, Oregon passed a comprehensive school snack
and beverage policy which limits calories, saturated and trans fat, and
sugars in snacks in K-12 schools and limits the sale of most sugary
beverages in schools. Both states previously had no guidelines beyond
USDA’s bare-bones rules.
“You
would think that with all the concern about childhood obesity that getting
junk food and soda out of schools would be easy. But, it took us six years
of hard work to pass our school nutrition legislation,” said Mary Lou
Hennrich, executive director of the Community Health Partnership: Oregon's
Public Health Institute, who led Oregon’s effort to improve school foods.
“We welcome national action to build on what we and other states have done
and ensure that all children go to school in junk-food-free environments.”
CSPI
found that only 11 states have comprehensive food and beverage standards
that apply to the whole campus, the whole school day, for all grade levels.
Thirteen states limit portion sizes for snacks, and only 11 states limit
portion sizes for beverages. Fifteen states limit the saturated-fat content
of school snacks, and only ten address trans fat. Just five states set
limits on sodium in school foods.
“The
majority of states still rely on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s
outdated school nutrition standards,” said Wootan. “Those national
standards limit only the sale of jelly beans, lollipops, and other
so-called ‘foods of minimal nutritional value.’ Those standards don’t
address calories, saturated and trans fat, sodium, or other key nutrition
concerns for children today.”
CSPI
based its grades on five key considerations:
•
Beverage nutrition standards
•
Food nutrition standards
•
Grade levels to which policies apply
•
Time during the school day to which policies apply
•
Locations on campus to which policies apply
Over
the last 20 years, obesity rates have tripled in children and adolescents,
and only 2 percent of children eat a healthy diet, according to key
nutrition recommendations by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Despite
that, about a third of elementary schools, 71 percent of middle schools,
and 89 percent of high schools sell items such as sugary drinks, snack cakes,
candy, and chips out of vending machines, school stores, or a la carte
lines in the cafeteria, according to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention’s 2006 School
Health Policies and Programs Study:
http://www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/shpps/2006/factsheets/pdf/FS_FoodandBeverages_SHPPS2006.pdf
Full
Report Card:
http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/2007schoolreport.pdf
Kids eat more fruits, vegetables when
schools offer salad bar
A new UCLA study has found that elementary schools
can significantly increase the frequency of fruit and vegetable
consumption among low-income students by providing a lunch salad
bar.
The findings, published in the December issue of the
international peer-reviewed journal Public Health Nutrition, show that the
frequency of students' fruit and vegetable consumption increased
significantly — from 2.97 to 4.09 times daily —
after a salad bar was introduced. In addition, students' mean daily
intake of energy, cholesterol, saturated fat and total fat declined considerably.
"One of the major contributing factors to the high rate
of overweight children in the United States is that they do not consume the
daily recommended servings of fruits and vegetables," said lead author
Dr. Wendy Slusser, assistant professor of pediatrics at Mattel Children's
Hospital UCLA and the UCLA School of Public Health. "Increasing the
availability and accessibility to healthy foods is one way to improve
children's diets. In turn, this sets up opportunities for kids to have
repeated exposure to healthy food and positively impact their
choices."
The UCLA pilot study was conducted at three Los Angeles
Unified School District elementary schools participating in the salad bar
program and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's
reimbursable lunch program. Study participants included 337
children in grades 2 through 5. Children were interviewed using a 24-hour
food-recall questionnaire, both before and after the salad bar
intervention — in 1998 and 2000, respectively.
The study was offered in conjunction with a nutritional
education component, including a school assembly to teach children about
the proper etiquette of serving themselves salad and picking a
well-balanced lunch, as well as an artwork project and visits to farmers
markets or a farm. The salad bar program was developed together by LAUSD
Food Services and Occidental College in Los Angeles.
"The results are clear — if we provide fresh fruits and
vegetables in kid-friendly ways, we will increase consumption," said
school board member Marlene Canter. "I am excited to see that our
efforts to find new and creative ways to improve our students' nutrition
and help reduce obesity are working."
Since the study, the LAUSD school board voted
positively on a 2003 obesity-prevention motion that includes recommending
fruit and vegetable bars as a modification of the hot lunch program.
An important source of nutrition, fruits and vegetables help
with weight management and can also be beneficial in
reducing the risk of certain cancers, heart disease, stroke and Type 2
diabetes. Eating a variety of fruits and vegetables can improve
health by increasing amounts of vitamin C, phytonutrients, potassium
and fiber in the body and displacing energy-dense fatty foods.
The U.S.D.A. has reported that only 36.4 percent of U.S.
children between the ages of 2 and 19 eat the recommended three
to five servings of vegetables per day, and only 26 percent eat the two to
four recommended daily servings of fruit.
"The salad bar program showed us that children will
indeed eat more fruits and vegetables if offered in an appetizing and
accessible manner," Slusser said. "Future studies should evaluate
parent education with school lunch menu changes, as well as why boys are
less likely to eat from the salad bar at lunch than girls."
Kids
more active when playground has balls, jump ropes, UNC study shows
Children play harder
and longer when their child care centers provide portable play equipment
(like balls, hoola hoops, jump ropes and riding toys), more opportunities
for active play and physical activity training and education for staff and
students, according to a study published in the January 2008 issue of the
American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Researchers at the University of
North Carolina School of Public Health examined environmental factors that
encourage children to be active with greater intensity and for longer
periods of time. Increased activity levels help children maintain a healthy
weight, the researchers say, which is critical as obesity rates climb
nationwide, especially among children.
“Childhood obesity
is an epidemic that threatens the future health of our nation,” said Dianne
Ward, EdD, MS, director of the School of Public Health nutrition
department’s intervention and policy division and a co-author of the study.
“We know that about 57 percent of all 3- to 5-year-olds in the United
States attend child care centers, so it’s important to understand what
factors will encourage them to be more active, and, hopefully, less likely
to become obese.”
Researchers assessed
the physical and social environmental factors thought to influence healthy
weight at 20 childcare centers across North Carolina. Then they evaluated
the physical activity levels of children attending the centers. Additional
data were gathered through interviews and documents provided by the child
care directors.
The study showed
that children had more moderate and vigorous physical activity and fewer
minutes of sedentary activity when their center had more portable play
equipment, including balls, hoola hoops, jump ropes and riding toys,
offered more opportunities for active play (inside and outside), and had
physical activity training and education for staff and students. Stationary
equipment, like climbing structures, swings and balance beams, were
associated with lower intensity physical activity, researchers said, but
are beneficial to other aspects of child development, such as motor and
social skills.
The researchers also
noted that centers with more computer and TV equipment actually scored
better on activity levels. “It’s unlikely that TV and computers promoted
active behavior,” Ward said, “but it could be that centers that have the
resources to buy media equipment may also spend more on equipment and
activities that promote physical activity and provide supplemental training
and education for staff.”
Although previous
research pointed to a link between physical activity and the child care
center that children attend, there had been little data explaining which
aspects of the child care environment actually promoted vigorous physical
activity. Not surprisingly, researchers said, children in centers that
ranked higher on supportive environment criteria in the study receive
approximately 80 more minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity and
140 fewer minutes of sedentary activity per week compared to centers having
less supportive environments.
“Child care
providers can play a huge role in encouraging children to be active and
developing habits and preferences that will help them control their weight
throughout their lives,” Ward said. “The easiest way of increasing physical
activity may be as simple as providing more active play time, and providing
relatively inexpensive toys, like balls and jump ropes. Our data doesn’t go
this far, but parents buying toys and games for children this time of year
might consider stocking up on jump ropes and hoola hoops. And for their own
health, they should get outside with their children and run, jump and play,
too.”
State and
Local Implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, Volume
III-Accountability Under NCLB: Interim Report
We
already reported on this in our last issue, but here are more details:
Accountability for improved student performance lies at the
very heart of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). This report
draws on data from the 2004–05 data collection cycles of two federally
funded studies—the Study of State Implementation of Accountability and
Teacher Quality Under NCLB (SSI–NCLB) and the National
Longitudinal Study of NCLB (NLS–NCLB)—to describe major
patterns in state, district, and school implementation of NCLB's central
accountability provisions. The SSI-NCLB study interviewed state education
agency staff and collected extant data in all states. The companion NLS-NCLB
study surveyed districts, principals, teachers, and Title I
paraprofessionals in a nationally representative sample of 300 districts
and 1,483 schools. Both studies will collect a second round of data in the
2006 07 school year. The two studies will issue a series of joint reports
on accountability, teacher quality, Title I choice provisions, and
targeting and resource allocation.
The findings presented in this report indicate rapid
implementation of many NCLB requirements, including assessments in additional
grades, new definitions of AYP, and increased reporting of disaggregated
assessment data. Findings also suggest areas that may need more attention,
such as the timeliness of notification about AYP and identification status,
implementation of English language proficiency standards and assessments,
and assistance to schools regarding students with special needs.
STATE STANDARDS, ASSESSMENTS, AND TARGETS
All states have content standards in at least mathematics
and reading. Most states continued to engage in standards development or
revision activities in reading and mathematics during the three years
between 2001–02 (when NCLB was passed) and 2004–05. Many had no science
standards in place prior to 2001, but 38 states had adopted content
standards in science by 2004-05.
States are making progress in addressing NCLB testing
requirements. By 2004–05, 28 states had instituted yearly testing in
grades 3–8, which NCLB requires by the 2005–06 school year—more than double
the number of states (12) that had such tests in 1999–2000. Nearly all
states administered or were planning to administer alternate assessments
for students with disabilities in 2004-05.
States varied widely in the levels at which they set
academic achievement standards to define student proficiency. Using
the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) as a common external
metric, state standards for proficiency under NCLB in 8th grade
mathematics, for example, range from NAEP equivalent scores of
approximately 247 to 314. States that set higher performance standards
tended to have a lower percentage of students scoring at the proficient
level and will need to make greater progress in order to reach the goal of
all students proficient by 2013–14.
States are still working to implement English language
proficiency standards and assessments two years after the original
deadline. Few states were able to meet the NCLB deadline to implement
English language proficiency (ELP) standards and assessments before or
during the 2002–03 school year, but 41 states had adopted ELP standards by
the 2004–05 school year. In addition, in 2004-05, 20 states reported they
had an ELP assessment in place to meet NCLB requirements and 27 planned to
have such an assessment in 2005-06.
SCHOOL AND DISTRICT ADEQUATE YEARLY PROGRESS
States varied greatly in the proportions of schools and
districts that made AYP. Three quarters of the
nation's schools made AYP in 2003–04, as did 71 percent of school
districts. The proportion of schools that made AYP ranged from nearly 95
percent in Wisconsin to 23 percent in Alabama and Florida. Similarly, the
proportion of districts that made AYP ranged from all districts in Arkansas
and Delaware to less than 10 percent in Alabama, West Virginia, and
Florida.
Schools that were high poverty, high minority, urban, and
large were less likely to make AYP than other schools. For
example, 57 percent of high-poverty schools made AYP in 2003 04, compared
with 84 percent of low-poverty schools. Secondary schools also were less
likely to make AYP than elementary schools.
Half (51 percent) of schools that did not make AYP in
2003 04 missed due to the achievement of the "all students" group
(33 percent) or two or more student subgroups (18 percent). In
contrast, 23 percent missed only for the achievement of a single subgroup.
Small percentages of schools missed AYP for test participation only (6
percent) or the other academic indicator only (7 percent).
IDENTIFYING SCHOOLS AND DISTRICTS FOR IMPROVEMENT
The number of Title I schools identified for improvement
increased considerably in 2005, from 6,219 in 2003–04 to 9,333 in 2004–05.
Overall, 13 percent of all schools and 18 percent of Title I schools were
identified for improvement in 2004–05. Of these schools, about 1,000 Title
I schools were in corrective action and about 1,200 were in restructuring
status.
States varied greatly in the percentage of Title I
schools identified for improvement for 2004–05. Rates
of school identification ranged from only 2 percent in Iowa and Nebraska to
68 percent in Florida. Schools in states where proficiency standards for
AYP are high, as referenced to NAEP, were more likely to be identified than
schools in states with lower proficiency standards.
High–poverty, high–minority, large, urban schools, and
middle schools, were most likely to have been identified for improvement. For
example, 36 percent of high-poverty schools were identified for 2004-05,
compared with 4 percent of low-poverty schools. Similarly, 34 percent of
schools with high concentrations of minority students were identified for
improvement, compared with 4 percent of low-minority schools.
About one in four identified Title I schools (23 percent)
exited improvement status in 2004–05 by making AYP for two
consecutive years. The remaining 77 percent of identified schools remained
at the same status or moved into a more serious school improvement status.
Ten percent of all districts were identified for
improvement for 2004–05, and 32 percent of these contained no identified
schools. Districts without identified schools become identified when
student subgroups are large enough to count at the district level but too
small to count at the school level. Fewer than 50 districts were placed in
corrective action for 2004–05.
STATE DATA SYSTEMS AND REPORTING
States are reporting assessment results more quickly, but
nearly half of principals did not receive notification of their schools'
AYP and identification status before the start of the 2004-05 school year. For
accountability determinations based on 2003-04 testing, 31 states delivered
at least preliminary data to schools before September, up from 28 states in
the previous year. Fifty-six percent of principals said they were notified
of their identification status before September 2004.
Most principals—but fewer teachers—knew whether their
school made AYP or was identified for improvement.
Overall, 88 percent of principals were able to correctly report their
schools' AYP status for 2003–04, and 92 percent knew whether their schools
had been identified for improvement in 2004–05. About two-thirds of
teachers correctly reported their school's AYP or identification status.
STATE SYSTEMS OF SUPPORT FOR IDENTIFIED SCHOOLS AND
DISTRICTS
All states provided some support to schools identified for
improvement. Thirty-nine states reported providing support to all
identified schools during the 2004–05 school year, while other states
provided support to only a subset of identified schools.
Support teams and distinguished educators were the most
common means through which states provided support to identified schools
during the 2004–05 school year. Thirty seven states provided
support teams, and 29 states used distinguished educators—experienced
teachers or administrators external to the district—to provide support to
schools identified for improvement.
PROMOTING SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT
Identified schools were more likely to report needing
technical assistance than were non-identified schools, and also reported
receiving more days of assistance from their districts (15
days vs. 10 days). Identified schools in states with comprehensive systems
of support received technical assistance at higher rates than those in
states with limited or moderate support systems.
Most principals said their schools received the technical
assistance they needed, but assistance regarding students with special
needs was frequently insufficient. For most technical assistance
topics, a majority of schools needing assistance reported that they
received it and that it was sufficient to meet their needs. However, about half
of the schools that needed assistance for students with special needs (such
as those with disabilities or with limited English proficiency) did not
have their needs met.
Most schools reported using a variety of improvement
strategies, and identified schools were focusing on more different types of
improvement efforts than other schools. Almost all schools
were involved in joint school improvement planning with their district or
state, and more than half used assessment results for planning instruction and
professional development or implemented periodic "progress" tests
to monitor student performance during the school year.
INTERVENTIONS AND SANCTIONS FOR IDENTIFIED SCHOOLS
Consequences required for identified Title I schools in
Year 1 or Year 2 of improvement status were implemented in most, but not
all, of these schools. Eighty nine percent of Title I schools in
Year 1 of improvement status said they notified parents of their children's
schools status, and 82 percent offered parents the option of transferring
their child to a higher performing school. Similarly, 90 percent of Title I
schools in Year 2 of improvement status offered students supplemental
educational services.
Nearly all (96 percent) Title I schools in corrective
action status experienced at least one of the NCLB–defined interventions. The
most common interventions involved changes in curriculum (89 percent) or
the appointment of outside advisors (59 percent). In contrast, only 27
percent of schools in corrective action status reported a significant
reduction in management authority in the school, and only 7 percent
reported that staff members were replaced.
Few Title I schools in restructuring status experienced
interventions specified under NCLB for schools in that stage of
improvement. This may in part reflect the two stages of school
restructuring status, where schools first spend a year planning for
restructuring and then implement the plan the following year. Few
principals of schools in the first or second year of restructuring status reported
state take-over of the school (9 percent), re-opening of the school as a
public charter school (2 percent), contracting with a private entity to
manage the school (2 percent), or replacement of all of the school staff (2
percent). Appointment of a new principal, although not specified as a
restructuring intervention under NCLB, was reported by 20 percent of
schools in restructuring status, as well as by 20 to 21 percent of schools
in other stages of school improvement status.
FOCUS OF SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT EFFORTS
Most schools, identified and non-identified, were
involved in efforts to improve curriculum and instruction, placing
particular emphasis on aligning curriculum and instruction with standards, and
most teachers reported having access to resources to help them accomplish
this. However, one third of teachers in identified schools reported that
they lacked sufficient textbooks and other instructional materials, and 18
percent said that textbooks and instructional materials that were not
aligned with state standards presented a moderate or major challenge to
improving student performance.
Increasing instructional time was a common improvement
strategy among identified schools. Half (51 percent) of
identified schools reported a major focus on extended time instructional
programs (such as after school programs). Nearly one-third (30 percent) of
identified elementary schools reported increasing instructional time in
reading by more than 30 minutes, and 55 percent of identified secondary
schools said they increased instructional time in reading for low-achieving
students.
Teachers found annual state tests and local progress
tests useful for improving instruction. For example, 80
percent of elementary teachers in identified schools reported using state
assessment results to identify areas where they needed to strengthen their
own content knowledge or teaching skills.
PROMOTING DISTRICT IMPROVEMENT
Most states made a broad range of technical assistance
available to all districts, as mandated, but did not target technical
assistance services specifically to identified districts. Some
states integrated assistance for identified districts with the support
provided for identified schools. Identified districts were more likely than
non identified districts to report needing technical assistance relating to
planning for district improvement and analyzing student assessment data.
The majority of identified districts reported that they
implemented additional professional development for teachers and
principals, distributed test preparation materials, and increased
monitoring of instruction and school performance.
Full report:
http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/disadv/nclb-accountability/highlights.pdf
Massive
study finds parenting practices don't suffer during divorce
New
research is challenging the notion that parents who divorce necessarily
exhibit a diminished capacity to parent in the period following divorce. A
large, longitudinal study conducted by University of Alberta sociology
professor Lisa Strohschein has found that divorce does not change parenting
behavior, and that there are actually more similarities than differences in
parenting between recently divorced and married parents.
The
study used data from the 1994 and 1996 cycles of the National Longitudinal
Survey of Children and Youth (NSLCY) to compare changes in parenting
practices between 208 households that divorced between the first and follow
up interview and 4796 households that remained intact. Strohschein looked
at three measures of parenting behavior (nurturing, consistent, and
punitive parenting) to tap into the different ways that divorce is believed
to disrupt parenting practices. Her results show that there are no
differences between divorced and stably married parents for any parenting
behavior either before or after a divorce has occurred.
“My
findings that parenting practices are unrelated to divorce appear to fly in
the face of accepted wisdom,” states Strohschein. “Undoubtedly, some
parents will be overwhelmed and unable to cope with the demands of
parenting in the post-divorce period, but the expectation that all parents
will be negatively affected by divorce is unfounded.”
“This
study is important because governments in both Canada and the US have
allocated considerable resources over the past decade to provide parenting
seminars on a mandatory or voluntary basis to parents who legally divorce,”
says Strohschein. “Although these programs do assist parents and children
in adjusting to divorce, it is equally clear that not all parents will be
well served by such programs. For those who work directly with families
during the divorce process, this means making greater effort to build on
the existing strengths of parents.”
“Researchers
need to shed much more light on the predictors of parenting behavior in the
post-divorce period so that this knowledge can be used to design programs
that effectively target the real needs of divorced parents,” says
Strohschein.
This
study appears in Family Relations.
Overall, illicit drug use by American teens continues
gradual decline in 2007
Eighth, tenth, and twelfth graders across the country are
continuing to show a gradual decline in the proportions reporting use of
illicit drugs, according to the 33rd national survey in the Monitoring the
Future (MTF) series conducted by scientists at the University of Michigan’s
Institute for Social Research.
The proportion of 8th graders reporting use of an
illicit drug at least once in the 12 months prior to the survey (called
annual prevalence) was 24 percent in 1996 but has fallen to 13 percent by
2007, a drop of nearly half. The decline has been less among 10th graders,
from 39 percent to 28 percent between 1997 and 2007, and least among 12th
graders, a decline from the recent peak of 42 percent in 1997 to 36 percent
this year.
All three grades showed some continuing decline this year in
the annual prevalence of illicit drug use, though only the one-year decline
in 8th grade (a drop of 1.6 percentage points) achieved statistical
significance. The rates for the three grades now stand at 13 percent, 28
percent, and 36 percent.
Drugs Declining in Use
The drugs most responsible for this year’s modest decline in
illicit drug use are marijuana and various stimulant
drugs, including amphetamines, Ritalin (a
specific amphetamine), methamphetamine, and crystal
methamphetamine.
Amphetamine use reached its recent peak in
the mid-1990s among 8th and 10th graders. Since then, annual prevalence has
fallen by more than one half among 8th graders to 4 percent and by one
third among 10th graders to 8 percent in 2007. Amphetamine use peaked
somewhat later among 12th graders, and has fallen by about one third to 8
percent in 2007. The one-year declines in amphetamine use were not large
enough to reach statistical significance, but because they are generally
consistent with an ongoing descending pattern, the investigators conclude
that the decline is continuing. The same is true for crystal
methamphetamine, which reached its lowest point this year
since 1992. Its use is measured only among 12th graders, and their annual
prevalence this year is 1.6 percent, down by about half from the peak year
of 2002.
Annual prevalence for the three grades combined did fall
significantly this year for both Ritalin and methamphetamine. Ritalin
is a prescription amphetamine drug used to treat attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Its use outside of medical
supervision was first measured in the study in 2001; it has been falling
since then, with total declines of between 25 percent and 42 percent at
each grade level. Today, 2–4 percent of students in these grades have
abused Ritalin at least once in the prior 12 months.
Methamphetamine, often called “meth,”
use has been in decline since it was first measured in 1999. Annual
prevalence is now down by about two thirds in all three grades from what it
was in 1999.. (Annual prevalence rates now range between 1.1 percent in 8th
grade and 1.7 percent in 12th grade.)
Marijuana still remains the most widely
used of all of the illicit drugs. The decline in 2007 in the annual
prevalence of marijuana use among 8th graders was statistically
significant, falling from 11.7 percent in 2006 to 10.3 percent in 2007.
Tenth graders showed a modest continuing decline in marijuana use, which
was not significant, while 12th graders showed no further change this year
after a significant decline in 2006. Since the recent peak years of use
reached in the mid-1990s, annual prevalence has fallen by over 40 percent
among 8th graders, 30 percent among 10th graders, and nearly 20 percent
among 12th graders. The prevalence rates for marijuana use in the prior
year now stand at 10 percent, 25 percent, and 32 percent for grades, 8, 10,
and 12, respectively.
Drugs Holding Steady
A number of illicit drugs showed little change this year. Many
of them are at rates well below their recent peak levels of use, however.
These include cocaine, crack cocaine, LSD, hallucinogens
other than LSD, heroin, and
most of the prescription-type psychoactive drugs used outside of medical
supervision, including sedatives, tranquilizers, narcotics
other than heroin, OxyContin specifically,
and Vicodin specifically. (Both OxyContin and Vicodin
are narcotic drugs.)
The one stimulant drug that did not show a decline this year
was cocaine. Cocaine use reached a recent peak among
teens in the late 1990s, declined for a year or two, and has held
relatively level in recent years. Today, annual prevalence ranges between 2
percent and 5 percent in grades 8, 10, and 12.
Crack use previously declined some in
all three grades, but showed no further decline this year. Annual
prevalence now ranges between 1.3 percent and 1.9 percent across the three
grades; these rates are down by between a quarter and one half from what
they were at their recent peaks. LSD, once a
widely used drug, had a very sharp decline in use from about 2001 to 2005.
There has not been much change since then, and annual prevalence now ranges
between 1.1 percent and 2.1 percent in the three grades. These rates are
down from recent peak levels by about 75 percent.
Hallucinogens other than LSD, taken
as a class, show much less decline in recent years than LSD; but they are
still somewhat below their recent peak levels. (Psilocybin, also known as
“shrooms” or “magic mushrooms,” is the most widely used of these drugs
today.) There was little change in their use this year. Annual prevalence
ranges from 1.6 percent in 8th grade to 4.8 percent in 12th grade.
Heroin use by students in the survey is
down by a third to a half from the recent peak rates seen in the mid- to
late 1990s, but there was no change this year. Less than 1 percent of
students in any of the three grades report any use of heroin in the prior
12 months.
While most of the illicit drugs have shown considerable
declines in use over the past decade or so, most prescription
psychotherapeutic drugs did not; in fact, a number of
them showed steady increases in use outside of their legitimate medical use
(amphetamines being the single exception). These include sedatives,
tranquilizers, and narcotic drugs other than heroin (most of which are
analgesics). As a result, they have become a relatively more important part
of the nation’s drug abuse problem. Fortunately, most of them have shown
signs of leveling or even of beginning a gradual decline over the past
couple of years.
Sedative use, which is reported only for
12th grade, did not reach its recent peak until 2005, when annual
prevalence reached 7.2 percent. Today, it is down only slightly to 6.2
percent, with a drop of just 0.4 percentage points in 2007.
Tranquilizer use made a real comeback in the
early 1990s, and the increase continued into 2001 in the upper grades.
Since then use has declined somewhat in all three grades, including a
further decline this year in 12th grade only, but the rates are still not
far from the recent peaks. Annual prevalence ranges
between 2.4 percent in 8th grade and 6.2 percent in 12th
grade. Narcotic drugs other than heroin are also
reported only for 12th graders. An annual prevalence in 2007 of 9.2 percent
is just barely below that reached in the recent peak year of 2004 (9.5
percent). Two specific drugs in this class, OxyContin and Vicodin, also did
not show much change this year.
OxyContin use was first measured in 2002.
The 2007 figures for all three grades are slightly higher than they were in
2002, but the trend lines have been somewhat erratic. For the three grades
combined, there was no change in annual prevalence in the past year. Annual
prevalence rates in 2007 for OxyContin 4 use are 1.8 percent, 3.9 percent,
and 5.3 percent. In other words, at least one in every twenty high school
seniors has at least tried this powerful narcotic drug in the past year.
Vicodin similarly shows no systematic
change in use this year, and the observed rates remain close to recent peak
levels. Annual prevalence rates in 2007 are even higher than for OxyContin:
2.7 percent, 7.2 percent, and 9.6 percent in 8th, 10th, and 12th grades,
respectively.
Drugs Increasing in Use
The only drug showing signs of an increase in use is MDMA
(ecstasy). Ecstasy use among teens
plummeted in the early 2000s, as concern about the consequences of use
grew. However, the proportion of students seeing great risk in using this
drug has been in decline for the past two or three years at all three grade
levels, and use has begun to increase, at least in the upper grades. Among
10th graders, annual prevalence has risen from a recent low of 2.4 percent
in 2004 to 3.5 percent in 2007, while in 12th grade it has risen from a
recent low of 3 percent in 2005 to 4.5 percent in 2007.
While none of the one-year increases were statistically
significant for 2007, a clear pattern of gradually rising use is
discernable in the upper grades; and their cumulative increases over the
past couple of years are statistically significant.
Students’ disapproval of using ecstasy has also been slipping
in recent years, particularly among 8th graders. The fact that 8th graders
are showing the sharpest erosion in perceived risk and disapproval suggests
that there may be what the investigators call a “generational forgetting”
of the hazards of this drug as new cohorts of students enter adolescence
and replace those who knew more about the consequences of use.
Over-the-Counter Cough and Cold Medications
Questions were introduced into the study in 2006 about the use
of over-the-counter cough and cold medications taken
for the purpose of getting high. Most of the drugs abused in this way
contain the cough suppressant dextromethorphan as one of their active
ingredients. The rates observed in 2006 were fairly high, with annual
prevalence rates of 4 percent, 5 percent, and 7 percent in grades 8, 10,
and 12. This year saw no change in the lower grades (still at 4 percent and
5 percent) and a slightly lower rate at grade 12 (6 percent). (The decline
at 12th grade was not statistically significant.)
Anabolic
Steroids
Monitoring the Future tracked a fairly sharp increase in the
use of anabolic steroids by male teens in the late 1990s, with peak levels
reached in 1999 among 8th-grade males, in 2000 among 10th-grade males, and
in 2001 and 2002 among 12th-grade males. Since those peak years, the annual
prevalence rate has dropped by more than half among the 8th and 10th grader
males (to 1.1 percent and 1.7 percent, respectively), and by 40 percent
among 12th-grade males (to 2.3 percent annual prevalence in 2007).
Over the past four-year interval, there has been an increase
in the proportion of 12th-grade males—the only grade asked the question—who
see great risk in trying anabolic steroids, which may help
to account for the decline in use. There was also a sharp drop in 2005 in
the perceived availability of these drugs, very likely due to the Anabolic
Control Act of 2004, which placed 32 additional steroids into Schedule III
and expanded the Drug Enforcement Agency’s regulatory and enforcement
authority regarding their sale and possession.
Use among females is considerably lower than among males, and
has also been declining since 2002 in the lower grades, and since 2004 in
grade 12. In 2007 the annual prevalence of anabolic steroid use for girls
ranges from 0.4 percent in 8th and 10th grades to 0.6 percent in 12th.
These rates are down by about two thirds from their recent peak levels.
Trends in Alcohol Use
The use of alcohol by teens, like their use of many of the
illicit drugs, has declined since the mid-1990s. The 30-day
prevalence of alcohol use (reporting drinking an alcoholic
beverage at least once in the 30 days prior to the survey) has fallen by 40
percent among 8th graders since their peak level in 1996. The proportional
declines since recent peak rates are smaller for the older students,
however: about a one-fifth decline for 10th graders and about one sixth for
12th graders. All three grades showed small declines in use this year—none
reaching statistical significance. Thirty-day prevalence of alcohol use now
stands at 16 percent, 33 percent, and 44 percent for grades 8, 10, and 12.
The greater decline in use among 8th graders may well reflect the greater
decline in their reported availability of
alcohol. While there has been some decline in reported availability among
the upper grades, the 8th graders have shown by far the greatest decline.
In 1996, 75 percent of them thought that they could get alcohol if they
wanted some, whereas by 2007 the number had fallen to 62 percent.
Self-reports of being drunk continued a long slow
decline into 2007 (though one-year changes were not statistically
significant this year). Again, the long-term decline was most pronounced
among 8th graders—the youngest teens being surveyed.
The proportions saying that they got drunk in the prior 30
days was 5.5 percent in the 2007 survey, down by more than four tenths from
what it was in 1996 (9.6 percent). The proportional declines are much
smaller for the older students, with 18 percent of the 10th graders
admitting to drunkenness within the month, down almost one quarter from
their recent peak rate, and 29 percent of 12th graders admitting
drunkenness, down only about one sixth from their peak rate in 1997. Here
also, none of the one-year declines in 2007 reached significance, but all
three grades showed some decline.
Teen
smoking resumes decline
The
number of U.S. teens who smoke has shown significant declines in recent
years, particularly among those in their early teens. These declines can be
seen in their lifetime, 30-day, and daily smoking rates, according to the
latest Monitoring the Future (MTF) study. Including a further decline this
year, the rate of smoking in the prior 30 days is now down by two thirds
among 8th graders to 7 percent from the peak level reached in 1996 of 21
percent.
Compared
to peak levels in the mid-1990s, past 30-day smoking rates in 2007 are down
by 54 percent among 10th graders and 41 percent among 12th graders. The
researchers expect that smoking rates among 10th and 12th graders will
continue to decline as the current 8th graders, who smoke at lower rates,
get older. The rates of past 30-day smoking now stand at 7 percent, 14
percent, and 22 percent across the three grades.
Daily
smoking
has declined even more sharply during the past decade—by half for 12th
graders from recent peak levels and more than two thirds for 8th graders.
In 2007, daily smoking is reported by 3 percent of 8th graders, 7 percent
of 10th graders, and 12 percent of 12th graders. Many fewer young teens
even try cigarettes today compared to the mid-1990s. In 1996 half (49
percent) of all 8th graders indicated that they had ever smoked a
cigarette, whereas in 2007 little more than one fifth of them (22 percent)
said they had. But by the end of 12th grade, 46 percent of students in 2007
reported at least trying cigarettes, and 22 percent reported that they were
currently smoking.
Young
chimps top adult humans in numerical memory
Young
chimpanzees have an “extraordinary” ability to remember numerals that is
superior to that of human adults, researchers report in the December 4th
issue of Current Biology, a publication of Cell Press.
“There
are still many people, including many biologists, who believe that humans
are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions,” said Tetsuro
Matsuzawa of Kyoto University. “No one can imagine that chimpanzees—young
chimpanzees at the age of five—have a better performance in a memory task
than humans. Here we show for the first time that young chimpanzees have an
extraordinary working memory capability for numerical recollection—better
than that of human adults tested in the same apparatus, following the same
procedure.”
Chimpanzee
memory has been extensively studied, the researchers said. The general
assumption is that, as with many other cognitive functions, it is inferior
to that of humans. However, some data have suggested that, in some
circumstances, chimpanzee memory may indeed be superior to human memory.
In
the current study, the researchers tested three pairs of mother and infant
chimpanzees (all of which had already learned the ascending order of Arabic
numerals from 1 to 9) against university students in a memory task of
numerals. One of the mothers, named Ai, was the first chimpanzee who
learned to use Arabic numerals to label sets of real-life objects with the
appropriate number.
In
the new test, the chimps or humans were briefly presented with various
numerals from 1 to 9 on a touch-screen monitor. Those numbers were then
replaced with blank squares, and the test subject had to remember which
numeral appeared in which location and touch the squares in the appropriate
order.
The
young chimpanzees could grasp many numerals at a glance, with no change in
performance as the hold duration—the amount of time that the numbers
remained on the screen—was varied, the researchers found. In general, the
performance of the three young chimpanzees was better than that of their
mothers. Likewise, adult humans were slower than all of the three young
chimpanzees in their response. For human subjects, they showed that the
percentage of correct trials also declined as a function of the hold duration—the
shorter the duration became, the worse their accuracy was.
Matsuzawa
said the chimps’ memory ability is reminiscent of “eidetic imagery,” a
special ability to retain a detailed and accurate image of a complex scene
or pattern. Such a “photographic memory” is known to be present in some
normal human children, and then the ability declines with the age, he
added.
The
researchers said they believe that the young chimps’ newfound ability to
top humans in the numerical memory task is “just a part of the very
flexible intelligence of young chimpanzees.”
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