Education Research Report

It’s a question that confronts parents and teachers everywhere- what is the best method of teaching kids new skills? Is it better for children to learn gradually, starting with easy examples and slowly progressing to more challenging problems? Or is it more effective to just dive-in head first with difficult problems, and then move on to easier examples? Although conventional wisdom suggests that the best way to learn a difficult skill is to progress from easier problems to more difficult ones, research examining this issue has resulted in mixed outcomes.

University of California, Santa Barbara psychologists Brain J. Spiering and F. Gregory Ashby wanted to pinpoint the best strategies for learning new information. In their study, a group of volunteers were taught a new task in which they had to categorize items. The volunteers were trained to complete the task by one of three methods—starting with easy problems, starting with harder problems then moving on to easier examples or being shown examples in random order.

The results, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, showed that the effects of the different training methods depended on the type of categories that the participants were learning. When the categories could be easily described (i.e. was the line horizontal or vertical?), all three of the training procedures were equally effective. However, when the categories could not be described easily, starting with the harder problems then moving to easier ones produced the best results. The volunteers in the easy-to-hard group were able to come up with simple rules and category descriptions which worked for the easy problems, but were not applicable to more complicated problems. As a result, these participants ended up doing poorly on the task because they were unable to think abstractly to solve the problem. On the other hand, the participants who began with harder problems very quickly stopped trying to come up ways to describe the categories and thought about the problems in a more abstract way; this strategy helped them to perform well throughout the task.

These findings have important implications for teachers and educators and suggest that materials should be presented to students in a specific order, depending on what is being taught.

From beginner to stellar: Five tips on developing skillful readers

A consensus has emerged among researchers that five components are necessary for skillful reading. Ask parents what they want their children to learn at school, and they’re likely to put “learn to read” at the top of the list. No wonder: Reading is the cornerstone of a child’s education. Students who don’t have strong reading skills will struggle through school and may not be able to reach the college level. If their reading skills remain limited as adults, they are likely to be restricted to low-wage positions. This research review includes:

· Stages of reading development

· Components of skillful reading

· Are teachers prepared to teach reading?

· How well are our students reading?

· Early diagnosis and intervention for reading problems

· What the research means for your schools

In recent years, research has gone a long way in identifying what goes into that kind of sound reading instruction. This is part one of a two-part series that looks at how children learn to read and what works in reading instruction in the early grades. The second part in the series will address how to develop more advanced reading skills in older students. Together, these reports provide information you can use as you deliberate policy decisions concerning curriculum, teacher preparation, and resource allocation.

Complete article:

http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/site/c.kjJXJ5MPIwE/b.4672871/k.9EFA/From_beginner_to_stellar_Five_tips_on_developing_skillful_readers.htm

Progress report on Texas state-funded teacher performance pay program

Paying teachers for their performance was supported by both presidential candidates in the 2008 election and is being tried in school districts across the nation. But the question remains—does it work? A second-year evaluation of Texas’ statewide performance pay program, the largest in the nation, released Dec. 1 reveals insights into whether these programs are beneficial and attractive to teachers.

“We found that most eligible schools – 90 percent – participated in the voluntary Texas Educator Excellence Grant program, indicating teachers and schools are very interested in this concept,” Matthew Springer, lead author of the new report and director of the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, said. “We also found that continuity is important. Turnover in which schools are eligible to participate in the TEEG program is high from one program cycle to the next, which caused some teachers to feel uncertain about its benefits. We found that the TEEG program has been received most favorably in schools where the program was implemented for two consecutive years.”

Not surprisingly, the size of the award was also important, as revealed by teacher turnover rates. “The probability of turnover increased sharply among teachers receiving no bonus award or a relatively small award, while it greatly decreased among teachers receiving large bonus awards,” Springer said.

In addition to data about TEEG, the report includes background information about the District Awards for Teacher Excellence, or D.A.T.E., program. Both programs are state funded and provide grants to schools and districts to design and implement performance pay plans. TEEG is now in its third year; D.A.T.E. is in its first. The TEEG program distributes almost $100 million annually in one-year grants to approximately 1,000 schools. The D.A.T.E. program provides $147.5 million annually. Just over 200 districts are currently participating in D.A.T.E. These districts comprise about 50 percent of public k-12 students enrolled in Texas.

School and district officials are given flexibility on how to structure and implement the performance pay programs in their individual schools. Springer and his colleagues studied how differences in program design impacted teachers’ attitudes toward performance pay policies, their reported satisfaction with the TEEG program and their professional practice.

“Some of the most significant areas we have found so far associated with program success are how schools determine teachers’ eligibility for awards, how those awards are structured and how schools are selected to participate in the programs,” Springer said. At the same time, he cautions about placing too much weight on year two results. “We need to remain patient, remembering what looks promising in the short-run may not be the case in later years. More time is needed to determine the full potential of bonus programs such as TEEG.”

The report presents findings of the first two years of a planned five-year study being conducted by NCPI under a contract with the Texas Education Agency. Scholars from Texas A&M University, University of Missouri – Columbia, and Corporation for Public School Education K-16 were key collaborators on the report. Data about the impact of the TEEG program on student performance is still being collected and analyzed.

“Future evaluation initiatives will continue to explore how the unique characteristics of these state-funded programs – and the plans designed by their participants – influence the quality of teaching and student learning within Texas public schools,” Springer said.

A report detailing NCPI’s evaluation findings of the Governor’s Educator Excellence Grant program – a state-funded performance pay program that operated in 99 Texas public schools from 2005-06 to 2007-08 school years – will be released in spring 2009. The report focuses on outcomes related to teacher attitudes and behavior, institutional and organizational dynamics, teacher turnover and student achievement gains.

The National Center on Performance Incentives was created in 2006 with a five-year, $10 million grant from the United States Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences.

A full copy of the report also is posted at http://www.tea.state.tx.us/opge/progeval/TeacherIncentive/index.html.

When 2 + 2 = Major Anxiety: Math Performance in Stressful Situations

Imagine you are sitting in the back of a classroom, daydreaming about the weekend. Then, out of nowhere, the teacher calls upon you to come to the front the room and solve a math problem. In front of everyone. If just reading this scenario has given you sweaty palms and an increased heart rate, you are not alone. Many of us have experienced math anxiety and in a new report in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, University of Chicago psychologist Sian L. Beilock examines some recent research looking at why being stressed about math can result in poor performance in solving problems.

Much of Beilock’s work suggests that working memory is a key component of math anxiety. Working memory (also known as short term memory), helps us to maintain a limited amount of information at one time, just what is necessary to solve the problem at hand. Beilock’s findings suggest that worrying about a situation (such as solving an arithmetic problem in front of a group of people) takes up the working memory that is available for figuring out the math problem.

The type of working memory involved in solving math problems may be affected by the way the problems are presented. When arithmetic problems are written horizontally, more working memory resources related to language are used (solvers usually maintain problem steps by repeating them in their head). However, when problems are written vertically, visuo-spatial (or where things are located) resources of working memory are used. Individuals who solve vertical problems tend to solve them in a way similar to how they solve problems on paper. Beilock wanted to know if stereotype-induced stress (i.e. reminding women of the stereotype that “girls can’t do math”) would result in different results for solving vertical versus horizontal math problems. The findings showed that the women who had been exposed to the negative stereotype performed poorly, although only on the horizontal problems (which rely on verbal working memory). Beilock suggests that the stereotype creates an inner monologue of worries, which relies heavily on verbal working memory. Thus, there is insufficient verbal working memory available to solve the horizontal math problems.

It has generally been shown that the more working memory capacity a person has, the better their performance on academic tasks such as problem solving and reasoning. To further explore this, Beilock and her colleagues compared math test scores in individuals who had higher levels of working memory with those who had less. The subjects took a math test either in a high pressure situation or low pressure situation. It turns out that the subjects with higher working memory levels performed very poorly during the high pressure testing situation—that is, the subjects with the greatest capacity for success were the most likely to “choke under pressure”. Beilock surmises that individuals with higher levels of working memory have superior memory and computational capacity, which they use on a regular basis to excel in the classroom. “However, if these resources are compromised, for example, by worries about the situation and its consequences, high working memory individuals’ advantage disappears," Beilock explains.

As more schools start emphasizing state-exam based curricula, these studies will become increasingly relevant and important for the development of exams and training regimens that will ensure optimal performance, especially by the most promising students.

Professional Development Key to Improving Math Achievement

Teachers have a greater impact than new textbooks or computers when it comes to raising math scores, according to a comprehensive research review by the Johns Hopkins University School of Education’s Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education.

Researchers Robert Slavin, director of the Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University, and Cynthia Lake, research scientist, reviewed 87 previously released experimental studies evaluating the effectiveness of math programs in the elementary grades. The researchers’ review covered three approaches to improving math achievement – textbooks, computer-assisted instruction, and approaches emphasizing professional development in specific teaching methods, such as cooperative learning and teaching of learning skills. They found that changing daily teaching practices did more for student achievement than simply using new textbooks or adding computers to the mix.

“The debate about mathematics reform has focused primarily on curriculum, not on professional development or instruction,” said Slavin. “Yet the research review suggests that in terms of outcomes on math assessments, curriculum differences are less consequential than instructional differences.”

Researchers conducted a broad literature search in order to locate every study comparing the effectiveness of various math programs to traditional control groups.

The results were published in the September issue of the American Educational Research Association’s Review of Educational Research. The review notes that the three approaches to mathematics instruction do not conflict with each other and may have added effects if used together.

The Johns Hopkins Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education is conducting one of the largest research review projects ever undertaken, to increase the use of evidence in education to improve student achievement. The intent is to place all types of programs on a common scale to provide educators with meaningful, unbiased information that they can use to select programs and practices most likely to make a difference with their students. Topics include reading, math, and other programs for grades K-12. Educator-friendly ratings of effective education programs as well as the full reports appear on the Best Evidence Encyclopedia web site at http://www.bestevidence.org.

Highlights From TIMSS 2007: Mathematics and Science Achievement of U.S. Fourth- and Eighth-Grade Students in an International Context

This report from the National Center for Education Statistics within the Institute of Education Sciences summarizes the performance of U.S. fourth- and eighth-grade students on the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), comparing their scores with their peers internationally as well as documenting changes in mathematics and science achievement since 1995. The report also describes additional details about trends in the achievement of students within the United States, by sex, racial/ethnic background, and the poverty level of the schools they attend.

TIMSS is sponsored by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), an international organization of national research institutions and governmental research agencies. TIMSS has been administered four times: in 1995, 1999, 2003, and 2007. The United States participated in all four administrations. In 2007, 36 countries participated at grade four, while 48 participated at grade eight.

Mathematics

Results show that the 2007 average mathematics scores of both U.S. fourth- and eighth-grade students were higher than the TIMSS scale average. At grade four, the average U.S. mathematics score was higher than those in 23 of the 35 other countries, lower than those in 8 countries (all 8 were in Asia or Europe), and not measurably different from those in 4 countries. At grade eight, the average U.S. mathematics score was higher than those in 37 of the 47 other countries, lower than those in 5 countries (all located in Asia), and not measurably different from those in 5 countries.

Comparing average scores from the first administration of TIMSS in 1995 to the most recent results from 2007 showed that both U.S. fourth- and eighth-graders improved in mathematics.

Science

In science, the average scores of both U.S. fourth- and eighth-graders were higher than the TIMSS scale average. At grade four, the average U.S. science score was higher than those in 25 of the 35 other countries, lower than those in 4 countries (all of them in Asia), and not measurably different from those in 6 countries. At eighth grade, the average U.S. science score was higher than the average scores in 35 of the 47 other countries, lower than those in 9 countries (all located in Asia or Europe), and not measurably different from those in 3 countries.

Unlike in mathematics, the average science scores for both U.S. fourth- and eighth-grade students were not measurably different in 2007 compared to the first TIMSS results collected in 1995.

Mathematics

Comparing average scores from the first administration of TIMSS in 1995 to the most recent results from 2007 showed that both U.S. fourth- and eighth-graders improved in mathematics.

Science

Unlike in mathematics, the average science scores for both U.S. fourth- and eighth-grade students were not measurably different in 2007 compared to the first TIMSS results collected in 1995.

Complete report:

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2005/2005005.pdf

Educational Researcher Devotes December Issue to Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel

WASHINGTON, December 8, 2008—The December 2008 issue of Educational Researcher (ER) provides a timely scholarly examination of Foundations for Success: The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. With peer-reviewed articles from leading education research experts, and under the guest editorship of Dr. Anthony E. Kelly of George Mason University, this ER issue presents diverse perspectives on substantive research in mathematics education and contributes to the discussion of valid methodological approaches.

The National Mathematics Advisory Panel (NMAP) was created in April 2006 by executive order of President George W. Bush to advise the U.S. Secretary of Education on ways to improve mathematics instruction across the nation. After two years of extensive research and hearings held around the United States, the panel prepared a final report that synthesized existing research and offered 45 recommendations on mathematics education.

The December ER picks up where the Foundations for Success report leaves off, by creating a forum for scientific dialogue and an exchange about broad strategies in the conduct of mathematics research. Eleven articles address a range of opportunities and challenges in preparing teachers and children to deal with critical 21^st-century issues in mathematics education.

With an introduction by Guest Editor Anthony E. Kelly and rejoinder by Mathematics Panel Chairs Camilla Persson Benbow and Larry R. Faulkner, the special issue of ER is an invaluable resource for experts who seek to develop a coherent strategy for research and for policymakers who make critical decisions about mathematics education. According to Benbow and Faulkner, the dialogue presented in this ER issue “adds intellectual depth to what has become a national policy discussion.”

A majority of the contributing researchers took issue with the NMAP’s heavy reliance on quantitative studies. Hilda Borko and Jennifer A. Whitcomb, in their commentary on teaching and teacher education, summed up a common theme: “Different designs and methods are better for different purposes....multiple types of scientific inquiries and methods are required to generate the rich body of scientific knowledge needed to improve education.”

In addition to the panel’s narrow filter for research, scholars’ concerns included:

· lack of clear framing of measurement issues;

· focus on content knowledge to the exclusion of pedagogical content knowledge; and

· failure to address achievement disparities through improved mainstream instructional practices.

The researchers noted that the report, while summarizing each subpanel’s report, contained no integrative work. Patrick W. Thompson, in his commentary on curricula content, wrote that the panel’s “emphasis on proficiency with standard procedures in arithmetic and its lip service to ‘conceptual understanding’ will do little to address the fundamental problem of mathematics education in the United States—namely, the systematic inattention to students’ development of meanings that will support an interest in mathematics that results in taking more, and higher level, coursework.”

This special issue of the Educational Researcher aims at adding information and insights for research and evidence-based policy related to mathematics education. These ER articles “are intended to broaden the terms of the ongoing discussion of effective instruction as well as to draw sharp distinctions where there is disagreement,” concluded Kelly.

Psychologists report that a gender gap in spatial skills starts in infancy

Men tend to perform better than women at tasks that require rotating an object mentally, studies have indicated. Now, developmental psychologists at Pitzer College and UCLA have discovered that this type of spatial skill is present in infancy and can be found in boys as young as 5 months old.

While women tend to be stronger verbally than men, many studies have shown that adult men have an advantage in the ability to imagine complex objects visually and to mentally rotate them. Does this advantage go back to infancy?

"We found the answer is yes," said Scott P. Johnson, a UCLA professor of psychology and an expert in infant perception, brain development, cognition and learning. "Infants as young as 5 months can perform the skill, but only boys — at least in our study."

"We've known for approximately 30 years that men and women can see an object from one perspective and then recognize that object after it has been rotated in space into a new position," said David S. Moore, professor of psychology at Pitzer College and Claremont Graduate University, both in Claremont, Calif., and an expert in the development of perception and cognition in infants. "In addition, while we have known that all people can do this, it turns out that men are quite a bit faster at it than women are. Previous studies have shown that this sex difference can be detected in children as young as 4 years of age, but our study is the first to have successfully found a way to assess the situation in young infants.

"Although we did not expect to find any sex differences in babies this young, our results suggest that the 5-month-old boys in our study used mental rotation to complete our task while the 5-month-old girls in our study did not," Moore said.

However, with most psychological characteristics, Johnson and Moore note, there are no differences between groups of men and groups of women.

Mental rotation involves taking a mental representation of a three-dimensional object and imagining it in a different orientation — basically rotating the object in your mind.

Moore and Johnson will report their findings in the Dec. 12 issue of the journal Psychological Science.

The psychologists tested 20 boys and 20 girls in the study, each 5 months old.

They used a common method in infant perception research: They had the infants look at something repeatedly until their amount of looking waned to less than half its original level. The researchers showed them a computer-generated image of a 3-D object that resembled an "L," constructed of multicolored cubes. Once the infants were bored with the object, the researchers showed them the same object from a different vantage point, and then the mirror image of the object.

"We're requiring the infants to rotate mentally in three dimensions," Johnson noted.

The 5-month-old boys looked at the mirror image about 1.5 seconds longer than they looked at the more familiar image, a "statistically robust difference" (although girls looked at both images longer than boys did), Moore and Johnson report. The 5-month-old girls looked at the mirror image for slightly less time than they looked at the familiar image.

The boys looked longer at the mirror image, the researchers said, because they recognized that the mirror image was completely new and that the other object was simply the original L-shaped image they had become bored with, shown from a different vantage point — a task that required them to rotate the remembered original object mentally.

"We don't know why men are better than women at this task or why boys are better than girls at this, but we do now know that this difference extends all the way back to 5 months of age," Johnson said. "We have shown that this gender difference is present in a pre-verbal population, a population too young to have learned it from manual experience with objects or from extensive learning processes, although learning certainly could be involved."

"We are interested in this question because the visual-spatial skills of male and female adults, on average, are different, and as developmentalists, we are interested in exploring the origins of these differences," Moore said. "While we believe we have found a phenomenon worthy of additional study, good science entails a circumspect approach to our conclusions; it would not be prudent to draw particularly strong or wide-ranging conclusions from the results of this single study."

Failed Promises: Assessing Charter Schools in the Twin Cities

After two decades of experience, most charter schools in the Twin Cities still underperform comparable traditional public schools and intensify racial and economic segregation in the Twin Cities schools. This is the conclusion of a new report issued today by the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota Law School.

Entitled “Failed Promises: Assessing Charter Schools in the Twin Cities,” the new study evaluates the record of charter schools in terms of academic achievement, racial and economic segregation, and their competitive impact on traditional public schools. The study finds that rather than encouraging a race to the top, charter school competition in fact promotes a race to the bottom in the traditional public school system.

“The Twin Cities is the birthplace of charter schools. Education reformers look up to Minnesota as the state with the longest track record with charter schools. But before they rush into expanding the charter sector in their states, they should take a closer look at the Twin Cities experience,” said Myron Orfield, Director of the Institute on Race and Poverty. “Rather than being a solution to the educational problems faced by low-income students and students of color, charter schools are deepening these problems.”

This reexamination of charter schools is timely. It comes as the next administration considers charter schools among the many alternatives to reform K-12 education. The study is one of very few to evaluate the academic performance of charter schools and their competitive impact on traditional public school systems within the context of racial and economic segregation.

“Research shows that students in segregated poor schools do worse than students in low-poverty schools,” said Tom Luce, one of the authors of the study and Research Director at the Institute. “Because of this, the way charter schools sort students racially and economically is likely to affect how students perform academically. This is why the report is careful to account for school characteristics when comparing achievement rates in traditional and charter schools.”

The study shows that although a few charter schools perform well on standardized tests, most offer low income parents and parents of color an inferior choice—a choice between low-performing traditional public schools and charter schools that perform even worse. The Institute’s analysis of proficiency rates in elementary schools finds that in both reading and math, a lower percentage of charter school students reached proficiency compared to students who attended comparable traditional public schools. For reading proficiency, the average difference is nearly 9 percentage points and for math it is nearly 10 percentage points.

Charter schools also perform worse than the schools participating in another public school choice program—The Choice is Yours Program. The program is based on the principle of moving low-income students to effective middle-class public schools in the suburbs. The report shows that, all else equal, suburban schools participating in the Choice is Yours Program outperform other comparable traditional public schools as well as charter schools. The clear implication is that the Choice is Yours Program provides better alternative schools than the charter system does.

“The poor performance of charter schools should not come as a surprise given how segregated they are,” said Baris Gűműş-Dawes, one of the authors of the study and a Research Fellow at the Institute. “Racially segregated schools have high concentrations of poverty. The average poverty rate in segregated schools in the Twin Cities metro is 81 percent, compared to 14 percent in predominantly white schools. Research shows that high-poverty schools are associated with a wide range of negative educational and life outcomes. Low test scores is only one of these negative outcomes. Racially-segregated schools with high student poverty rates lead to high dropout rates, low college attendance rates, low earnings later in life, and greater risk of being poor as adults.”

Racial and economic segregation in charter schools intensifies these problems in the Twin Cities. Students of color are much more likely to be in segregated settings in charter schools than in traditional schools. In 2008, 89 percent of black charter students attend school in segregated settings compared to just 38 percent of black traditional public school students in the Twin Cities metro. Similarly, Hispanics and other students of color are more than twice as likely to be in segregated settings in charter schools as in traditional public schools. Charter schools also have higher poverty rates than traditional schools—50 percent versus 22 percent in 2008; and they are more likely to be intensely poor—60 percent of them have poverty rates above 40 percent, compared to 31 percent of traditional public schools.

Even when compared to the highly segregated traditional public schools in the Minneapolis and St. Paul school districts, charter schools are still more segregated than their traditional public school counterparts. In Minneapolis, for instance, 96 percent of all students of color who attended charter schools did so in segregated settings compared to 80 percent in traditional public schools in 2008.

In St. Paul, 88 percent of all students of color in charter schools attended segregated schools in 2008 compared to 73 percent of students of color in traditional public schools.

The presence of predominantly white charter schools with low poverty rates in St. Paul’s racially diverse school district also suggests the possibility that charter schools are facilitating white flight. Eleven percent of the district’s white students attend predominantly white charter schools in a district where there are no predominantly white traditional schools.

Charter schools in the Twin Cities metro perform worse than comparable public schools academically—measured by test scores— and socially—measured by segregation rates. “But the problem is not only with the academic and social performance of charter schools;” said Orfield “charter schools also hurt traditional public schools by triggering further segregation in the traditional public school system.”

Charter schools can compete with public schools in many ways, including areas of interest, ethnicity, risk factors or other characteristics. However, many charter schools in the Twin Cities choose to compete in ethnic niches by offering “ethno-centric” or “culture-specific” programs to their students. “We find that some school districts, in turn, are creating ‘ethno-centric’ schools and programs of their own to compete with these charter programs and to protect their ‘market share,’” said Orfield. “This is a real problem because when the niche that schools choose to compete in is an ethnic niche, it deepens segregation in the overall public school system.”

The study finds that charter school competition has deepened segregation in the traditional public school system in two important ways. First, school districts have responded to charter competition by sponsoring racially segregated and in some cases “ethno-centric” charter schools of their own. Second, districts have initiated “ethno-centric” programs within traditional public schools and have promoted “ethno-centric” magnet schools in their districts. The study concludes that “Overall, charter school competition in ethnic niches has been particularly detrimental for students of color and low-income students because this type of competition intensifies racial and economic segregation in metro schools and exiles these students to low-performing schools.”

Complete report:

http://www.irpumn.org/uls/resources/projects/2_Charter_Report_Final.pdf

Childhood social program leads to better-functioning young adults

A social development intervention administered in elementary school appears to have positive effects on mental health, sexual health and educational and economic achievement assessed 15 years after the intervention ended, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Unemployment, poverty and disorganized neighborhoods are common problems plaguing U.S. cities, according to background information in the article. Many urban families and children must contend with crime, drug use, teen pregnancy, school dropouts and mental health problems. "Public schools, available to all children in the United States beginning at age 5 or 6 years, are a potentially powerful setting for preventive intervention," the authors write.

J. David Hawkins, Ph.D., and colleagues at the University of Washington, Seattle, studied the long-term effects of one such prevention program, the Seattle Social Development Project. "The objective of the intervention was to improve the skills of teachers, parents and children to increase positive functioning in school and decrease problems related to mental health, risky sexual behavior, substance use and criminal behavior," the authors write. Beginning in fall of 1981, some first-grade students in Seattle elementary schools began the program, which was eventually expanded to 15 public elementary schools serving diverse neighborhoods. Parents, teachers and students in the intervention received special instruction in areas such as behavior management, refusal, social skills training and academic development.

At ages 24 and 27, childhood participants completed a self-assessment of their school, work and community life, along with their mental health, sexual behavior, substance use and crime. Court records were also referenced. A total of 598 young adults (146 who began the intervention in first grade, 251 who began the intervention in grades five or six and 201 in a control group who did not receive the intervention) completed the 15-year follow-up at age 27.

Participants who received the full intervention reported improved functioning in almost all areas assessed. No differences were observed in rates of substance abuse or crime. However, compared with the control group, those who participated in the intervention:

· Were more likely to be at or above the median in educational attainment or household income

· Were more likely to have continued their education beyond high school

· Reported higher levels of community involvement and volunteerism

· Had fewer symptoms of mental health disorders, and any mental health problems they reported were lower in magnitude

· Had a lower prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases

"A universal intervention for urban elementary schoolchildren, which focused on classroom management and instruction, children's social competence and parenting practices, positively affected mental health, sexual health and educational and economic achievement 15 years after the intervention ended," the authors conclude.

Facing the Future: Financing Productive Schools

Public school finance systems around the United States are outmoded, failing to support the effective education of America’s children.

In practice, the way states and local school districts fund their schools is “like an old computer that has become so laden with applications, one added on top of another over the decades, that it can no longer do anything well.”

This is the conclusion of an extensive six-year national study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The study’s final report, Facing the Future: Financing Productive Schools, authored by Paul Hill, Marguerite Roza, and James Harvey, criticizes school finance systems because they are so burdened by rules and narrow policies that they commit dollars “with little regard for results, holding adults accountable for compliance but not results.”

According to the authors, “We need to measure performance at every level—district, school and classroom—and let money and students flow from less to more effective uses. We need to experiment with new ideas and new technologies.”

Facing the Future offers a four-part action plan to overhaul today’s outmoded school finance systems:

· Drive funds to schools based on student counts—the money would be given to principals to allocate and manage within their individual schools. A weighting formula could be used to provide extra funds for disadvantaged students.

· Concentrate federal funds on low-income students—direct money on the basis of student characteristics right down to the individual student’s school.

· Redesign states’ school finance systems for continuous improvement—demand innovation and continuous improvement, keeping what works and discarding what does not.

Base accountability on performance—make superintendents and the chief of state schools responsible for judging school performance and finding better options for children whose schools do not teach them effectively.

Full report:

http://www.crpe.org/cs/crpe/download/csr_files/pub_sfrp_finalrep_nov08.pdf

Funding Student Learning: How to Align Education Resources with Student Learning Goals

After years of hard work and spending hundreds of millions to raise the level of student performance, educators, political and civic leaders, and parents still have not produced the results they expect.

Now we know why:

“A basic flaw in these improvement efforts is that they look to the education finance system for solutions when the system itself is the problem," according to a team of nationally respected education scholars.

That observation arises from a five-year, in-depth examination of K-12 school finance in the United States.

The group's conclusion is simply put:

“The bottom line is that education finance needs to be redesigned to support student performance.”

According to Jacob Adams of the Claremont Graduate University, “States will never educate all students to high standards unless they first fix the finance systems that support America's schools.

“These systems dictate how much is spent, who gets what, how resources are used, and which outcomes are tracked. Unfortunately, the way they do these things no longer matches the results we expect from schools.”

Adams chaired the group that conducted the study and issued its report, Funding Student Learning: How to Align Education Resources with Student Learning Goals.

The report summarizes the work of eleven scholars. It both describes the problems with state school finance systems and offers solutions.

“Funding student learning requires more than merely adjusting funding levels, tinkering with distribution formulas, creating new programs, imposing another sanction, or singling out hot-button issues,” Adams says. “The system itself must be transformed so that resources can better support the ambitious learning goals the public now demands.”

Key ingredients in the recipe for fixing broken school finance systems are:

· Allow dollars to follow students to their schools

· Integrate resource decisions with instructional plans; measure and analyze results of different expenditures

· Actively support continuous student improvement

· Define and fund a research and development agenda that expands what we know about effective resource use

· Make resource use and academic achievement central to financial reporting practices, and use funding contingencies to create fair and meaningful accountability

Full report:

http://www.crpe.org/cs/crpe/download/csr_files/pub_sfrp_wrkgrp_oct08.pdf

Colorado Dropouts Establish Patterns Early On

Middle schoolers who fail a single math or reading class are much more prone to drop out of high school than those who do well, according to some of the most sophisticated research into dropouts ever conducted in five Colorado school districts.

The study, which mimics trends found in Philadelphia and Boston, followed dropouts in Denver, Aurora, Jefferson County, Pueblo and Adams County. The districts churn out almost half of the state's dropouts each year.

Among those who left school in these five districts, researchers looked at behavior records, grades and attendance as far back as middle school.

The numbers show that parents and teachers should take seriously student failures in core subjects even when they're as young as 11 years old.

"It's a commitment at the early stages. If a student gives off a warning sign, you make it someone's job that they notice that," said Martha Abele MacIver, a Johns Hopkins University research scientist studying the dropout data for Colorado. "I don't think it takes that many more resources; it's a commitment to do things differently."

The data in the five districts are mostly still incomplete and should be finalized this spring. Pueblo is the only district openly sharing what it has so far.

Researchers found that 52 percent of Pueblo's ninth-graders who were absent 18 or more days ended up leaving school altogether before graduation. Almost half of all dropouts had at least one suspension in four years. And 88 percent of all dropouts had at least one F in ninth grade.

Full story:

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_11109613

Doing research on the Web: New teaching tool pushes students to analyze online materials

Students doing research for their classes are increasingly turning to online resources, which raises concerns among many academic instructors who have questions about the quality of material found on the Internet. However, research co-authored by North Carolina State University's Dr. Susan Miller-Cochran offers a teaching approach that attempts to address the problem by encouraging students to do their own critical analysis of the material they use in their work – regardless of whether it was found online.

"This is the first research tool that encourages students to analyze the reliability of the texts they're reading, rather than pigeonholing the material based on where it was found," Miller-Cochran says. "We want students to think critically about what they are reading, whether it is in print or online."

The research approach developed by Miller-Cochran and co-author Rochelle Rodrigo, of Maricopa Community Colleges, calls on students to evaluate two aspects of online research materials. First, students should determine how the text changes over time. For example, is something published and never updated? Or is it a dynamic text, such as an article on Wikipedia, which is constantly being revised?

Second, students should determine if and how an online text has been reviewed. Did a recognized authority in the field edit the material? Did a body of peer reviewers go over the text? Was the material self-published, with no outside agency review whatsoever? Sometimes the answers are fairly complicated. Wikipedia, for example, is in some ways self-published, but also has elements of peer review. "But then the question becomes," Miller-Cochran says, "How do you define peers, and when does the review occur?"

The ultimate goal, Miller-Cochran says, is to get students into the habit of asking questions about the reliability of their research materials, whether in print or online. "Just because something has been published in print does not make it a reliable source," Miller-Cochran says, "and online materials are not inherently unreliable."

The Late Pretest Problem in Randomized Control Trials of Education Interventions

This study addresses pretest-posttest experimental designs that are often used in randomized control trials (RCTs) in the education field to improve the precision of the estimated treatment effects. For logistic reasons, pretest data are often collected after random assignment, so that including them in the analysis could bias the posttest impact estimates. Thus, the issue of whether to collect and use late pretest data in RCTs involves a variance-bias tradeoff.. This paper addresses this issue both theoretically and empirically for several commonly-used impact estimators using a loss function approach that is grounded in the causal inference literature.

The key finding is that for RCTs of interventions that aim to improve student test scores, estimators that include late pretests will typically be preferred to estimators that exclude them or that instead include uncontaminated baseline test score data from other sources. This result holds as long as the growth in test score impacts do not grow very quickly early in the school year.

Full study:

http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pdf/20094033.pdf

Preparing Teachers to Work with Students with Disabilities

The study examines the extent to which elementary education teacher preparation programs in 36 randomly selected colleges and universities in the six Southeast Region states integrate content related to students with disabilities. Findings show most programs require one disability-focused course, two-thirds incorporate fieldwork related to students with disabilities, and more than half incorporate disability content into their mission statements.

Full study:

http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/southeast/pdf/REL_2008065_main.pdf

Expectations and Reports of Homework for Public School Students in the First, Third, and Fifth Grades

This brief uses data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K) to examine (1) the amount of time that students' public school teachers expected them to spend on reading/language arts and mathematics homework in first, third, and fifth grades; and (2) reports from parents of public school children of how often their children did homework at home in the first, third, and fifth grades. Teachers' expectations are reported by the percentage of minority students in the student's school and parents' reports are reported by the child's race/ethnicity.

The findings indicate that the amount of reading and mathematics homework that students' teachers expected them to complete on a typical evening generally increased from first grade to fifth grade. In both subjects and in all grades, differences were found by the minority enrollment of the school.

Children in schools with higher percentages of minority students had teachers who expected more homework on a typical evening, whereas generally children in lower minority schools had teachers who expected less homework. In addition, in all three grades, larger percentages of Black, Asian, and Hispanic children than White children had parents who reported that their child did homework five or more times a week.

Full study:

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009033.pdf

What Works Clearinghouse - Two new quick review reports.

The first is a review of the article "Teaching Science as a Language: A Content-First Approach to Science Teaching". This study examined whether teaching scientific concepts using everyday language before introducing scientific terminology improves the understanding of these concepts.

Access the Teaching Science as a Language: A Content-First Approach to Science Teaching quick review report: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/publications/quickreviews/teachscience/index.asp

The second What Works Clearinghouse quick review is on the report "Evaluation of the Kansas City CDF Freedom Schools Initiative". This review examined whether the initiative improves students' reading assessment scores.

Access the Evaluation of the Kansas City CDF Freedom Schools Initiative quick review report: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/publications/quickreviews/kscityfreedom/index.asp

California’s Teaching Force 2008

California’s Teaching Force 2008: Key Issues and Trends, the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning’s tenth annual report on the status of the teaching profession in California. It finds that a grim budget outlook, complex challenges to the supply and assignment of public school teachers, and the lack of an effective teacher data system pose significant hurdles to California’s ability to meet increasing demands for students’ high academic performance.

This report updates data on the teacher workforce and raises serious questions about the current capacity of the state’s teaching force to help students meet the academic goals the state has set for them. For instance, schools in the bottom achievement quartile have more than four times as many underprepared teachers as those in the top achievement quartile. And in high schools across the state, a quarter to a third of teachers in core subjects are teaching out-of-field, are underprepared or are in their first two years of teaching.

The new report also reveals that one-third of middle school algebra teachers are underprepared or teaching out-of-field, and underprepared mathematics teachers are more likely to teach in the state’s lowest performing schools.

California’s Teaching Force 2008: Key Issues and Trends, is now available online at our Web site:

http://www.cftl.org/documents/2008/TCF/TCFReport2008.pdf

Finding and Funding Programs That Close the Achievement Gap an Increased Priority in Times of Shrinking Budgets

In education reform, money matters, but so does wise spending. This is especially important in the current economic slowdown when most states are keeping education spending flat and some are actually making cuts. Solutions to closing the achievement gap will require information on what programs work in light of the costs and benefits of those programs.

The fall issue of ETS Policy Notes, a publication of Educational Testing Service's Policy Information Center, presents highlights from the May 2008 symposium, "School Finance and the Achievement Gap: Funding Programs that Work."

This edition of ETS Policy Notes offers both sobering statistics and encouraging news. ETS Senior Vice President Michael Nettles notes that achievement gaps form early and compound over the course of a child's academic career. However, he adds, some urban school districts have succeeded in narrowing such gaps, citing Austin and Atlanta as examples of school districts that have had some success in closing achievement gaps.

ETS President and CEO Kurt Landgraf says, "Reforming how education dollars are spent is necessary but difficult, especially in today's economy. In order for us to continue to make strides in closing the achievement gap, we must choose cost-efficient programs already proven to work over time."

Co-sponsored by the Education Law Center and the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) at the University of Pennsylvania, ETS's 10th Achievement Gap Symposium provided a forum for discussion among political, academic and legal experts from across the country to advance their efforts to ensure that education resources are used effectively and efficiently. Participants explored the relationship between school finance and academic achievement, examined issues in resource allocation and accountability, highlighted programs that successfully close gaps, and examined the costs and benefits of those programs.

Symposium sessions looked at school finance issues from the state, local, legislative and policy perspectives. Margaret Goertz, co-director of CPRE, traced the role of public funding as it relates to an adequate education. Jacob Adams Jr., education professor, Claremont Graduate University, followed Goertz's presentation with some creative solutions to the funding dilemma.

Professor Arthur Reynolds, director of the long-term study of the Chicago Child-Parent Center's early education program outlined "What We Know" about effective Pre-K and elementary-school programs, and Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) researcher Janet Quint did the same for effective secondary school programs. The final session, "Reflections on Where We Are and Where We Want to Go," moderated by Angelo Falcón, President of the National Institute for Latino Policy, provided a look at the challenges and possibilities that lie ahead.

Other symposium participants included:

-- Paul Reville, Massachusetts Secretary of Education

-- Molly Hunter, head of Education Justice, a national initiative

of the Education Law Center, Newark, N.J.

-- Frieda Lacey, Deputy Superintendent of the Montgomery County

School District, Maryland

-- Henry Levin of Teachers College, Columbia University

-- Clive Belfield of Queens College, City University of New York

-- Michael Griffith, a school finance analyst at the Education

Commission of the States

-- Ronald Cowell of the nonprofit Education Policy and Leadership

Center

Download the complete fall issue of ETS Policy Notes, supporting materials and symposium presentations for free at www.ets.org/schoolfinanceconf. Free print copies, while supplies last, are available from the Policy Information Center, ETS, MS 19-R, Rosedale Road, Princeton, N.J. 08541-0001; by calling (609) 734-5949; or by sending an e-mail to pic@ets.org.

School Based Arrests

Children are far more likely to be arrested at school today than they were a generation ago. The use of school-based arrests as a means of addressing even minor, non-violent disciplinary infractions raises serious concerns for educators, parents, and the wider community. While there is no question that guaranteeing the safety of our public schools is of the utmost importance, we must never come to view arresting students at school as just another approach to discipline.

Instead, every time a school-based arrest occurs, we must ask: Was this a rational, proportional, and evenhanded response to misbehavior? And was it really necessary? Or was there another way? At the same time, we must examine closely the relationship between schoolbased arrests and the use of school resource officers, or SROs, sworn law enforcement personnel stationed permanently in public schools. Plainly, SROs can help make schools safer. But their presence also may encourage a criminal justice response to misconduct better addressed by school administrators.

The American Civil Liberties Union, along with several other civil rights and civil liberties organizations, has become increasingly concerned over the last several years about the national trend of criminalizing, rather than educating, our nation’s children, through increased reliance on zero-tolerance school discipline, school-based arrests, disciplinary alternative schools, and secure detention. The ACLU seeks to reverse this trend, commonly known as the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

To this end, during the past eighteen months, the ACLU and its Connecticut affiliate have investigated two factors that may contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline – school-based arrests and SRO programs – in three towns in the Hartford, Connecticut area: Hartford, East Hartford, and West Hartford.

The authors findings were as follows:

• There is a need to clarify the objectives of SRO programs in the school districts the authors studied. SROs in Hartford and West Hartford are not subject to formal written policies or agreements clearly describing their duties. In East Hartford, a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) defines the relationship between the school district and the police department, but awareness of its requirements among individual SROs appears limited.

• SRO training requirements in the three districts the authors surveyed are uneven. Neither Hartford nor West Hartford requires special training for SROs – though it does appear that some SROs are receiving relevant training. East Hartford, meanwhile, does impose a specific requirement for SROs, but it is unclear whether that requirement has been enforced.

• In all three districts, at the local level, data collection and reporting on the subject of school-based arrests – a critical element of any effort to monitor and evaluate SRO program performance – are inadequate. In fact, none of the local police departments or school districts in the three districts the authors studied maintains schoolbased arrest data in an accessible form.

One dismaying aspect of the school-to-prison pipeline is its disproportionate impact on students of color.

Across the nation, such students are far more likely than their white peers to be suspended, expelled, or arrested, even when engaging in exactly the same conduct. In the two suburban school districts the authors studied, the same pattern emerges. Students of color are arrested at a rate far out of proportion to their numbers, and students of color committing certain common disciplinary infractions are more likely to be arrested than are white students committing the same offenses. School-based arrest likewise has a significant impact on very young students in the towns the authors studied.

More specifically, the authors findings on the subject of school-based arrest were as follows:

• The per capita rate of school-based arrest in East Hartford, at just over 17 arrests per 1000 students during the 2006-07 school year, is the highest among the three districts. That rate also rose by nearly a third between the 2005-06 and 2006-07 school years.

• In West Hartford, the per capita rate of school-based arrest was considerably lower – just over 5 arrests per 1000 students in 2006-07. But over the two years for which data were available, the likelihood that a disciplinary incident would result in a school-based arrest was higher in West Hartford than in the other two districts. During the 2005-06 and 2006-07 school years, 4.9 percent of incidents resulted in arrest in West Hartford, as compared to 3.3 percent in East Hartford and 0.6 percent in Hartford.

• Hartford reports the lowest rate of school-based arrest, at around 4 arrests per 1000 students in 2006-07, but its high suspension rate likely increases the number of students arrested off campus. The same year, Hartford imposed 9,194 suspensions on a student population totaling 22,319, or approximately 412 suspensions per 1000 students. Moreover, as explained further below, discrepancies between Hartford’s reported arrest totals and contemporaneous media accounts suggest that Hartford school officials may have understated their arrest totals.

• In West Hartford and East Hartford, students of color are arrested at school at a rate far out of proportion to their numbers. In 2006-07, for example, African American and Hispanic students together accounted for 69 percent of East Hartford’s student population, but experienced 85 percent of its school-based arrests. Likewise, the same year, in West Hartford, African American and Hispanic students accounted for 24 percent of the population, but experienced 63 percent of arrests.

• In West Hartford and East Hartford, students of color committing certain common disciplinary infractions are more likely to be arrested than are white students committing the very same offenses. For example, over the two years for which data are available, African American students involved in physical altercations at school in West Hartford were about twice as likely to be arrested as similarly situated white students. And during the same time period, in East Hartford, both African American and Hispanic students involved in disciplinary incidents involving drugs, alcohol, or tobacco were ten times more likely to be arrested than were similarly situated white students.

• In all three school districts, very young students are being arrested at school. For example, in Hartford, during the two years for which data are available, 86 primary-grade students experienced school-based arrest. A majority of these were seventh or eighth graders, but 25 were in grades fThe authors through six, and 13 were in grade three or below.

In the two suburban school districts the authors studied, students of color are arrested at a rate far out of proportion to their numbers, and students of color committing certain common disciplinary infractions are more likely to be arrested than are white students committing the same offenses.

Complete report:

http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/racialjustice/hardlessons_november2008.pdf

Education Blogs Provide Platform for New Voices in National Education Debate

The Internet is evening out the playing field for education commentators and analysts by making the traditional trappings of power and influence obsolete, writes Michael J. Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in his new analysis of education web logs (blogs) published in Education Next.

Currently, there are as many as 30,000 education blogs on the Internet. Some focus on policy, others on practice; many link and comment on daily newspaper articles and other blog posts and provide a forum for other users to do the same. The bloggers come from a variety of backgrounds and the influence of their blogs does not seem tied to any particular set of credentials. For example, the nation’s top education policy blogger, Eduwonkette, was, until recently, anonymous: Jennifer Jennings, a graduate student in sociology at Columbia University, managed to overtake Eduwonk’s Andrew Rotherham in the top spot, even though her competitor is a former Clinton White House aide and cofounder of a major Washington education think tank.

In his analysis for Education Next, Petrilli ranked the top ten education blogs and the top ten education policy blogs by their technorati score as of August 2008, which provides an indicator of the “authority” given to a site by other bloggers by identifying the number of unique blogs that have linked to that blog within the past 180 days as measured by technorati.com.

In terms of political leaning, education policy blogs are balanced between Left and Right, Petrilli says. Eduwonk and the Quick and the Ed write from the center-left; Intercepts, Flypaper, and Jay P. Greene come from the center-right. None of the major education interest groups have broken into the upper ranks of the education blogosphere: The United Federation of Teachers, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National School Boards Association all have active blogs, but none makes the top 10 lists.

Top 10 Education Blogs	Author(s)	Technorati Score
1. Weblogg-ed	Will Richardson, author, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts…	850
2. Joanne Jacobs	Joanne Jacobs, former reporter & columnist	788
3. Cool Cat Teacher	Vicki Davis, teacher, Westwood Schools, Georgia	531
4. 2¢ Worth	David Warlick, The Landmark Project, former teacher	529
5. Speed of Creativity	Wesley Fryer, Oklahoma Heritage Association	462
6. Dangerously Irrelevant	Dr. Scott McLeod, Iowa State University	443
7. Edu.blogs	Ewan McIntosh, teacher, Edinburgh, Scotland	406
8. Fischbowl	Karl Fisch, teacher, Arapahoe High School, Colorado	323
9. Students 2.0	K–12 students from around the world	266
10. The Thinking Stick	Jeff Utecht, tech specialist, Shanghai American School	243

Top 10 Education Policy Blogs	Author(s)	Technorati Score
1. Eduwonkette	Jennifer Jennings, doctoral student, Columbia University	179
2. Eduwonk	Andrew Rotherham, Education Sector	165
3. The Education Wonks	Anonymous (EdWonk, TeacherWonk, and TeenWonk)	129
4. The Quick and the Ed	Kevin Carey and others, Education Sector	103
5. Intercepts	Mike Antonucci, Education Intelligence Agency	89
6. Matthew Tabor	Matthew Tabor, college admissions counselor	82
7. Schools Matter	Jim Horn, PhD (affiliation unknown)	82
8. This Week In Education	Alexander Russo, former Capitol Hill staffer	82
9. Flypaper	Education Gadfly team, Thomas B. Fordham Institute	79
10. Jay P. Greene	Jay P. Greene, University of Arkansas	76

For more about the wild world of education blogging, read “Linky Love, Snark Attacks, and Fierce Debates about Teacher Quality: A Peek Inside the Education Blogosphere” online or in PDF format:

http://media.hoover.org/documents/ednext_20091_86.pdf

REPORT CARD ON AMERICAN YOUTH:

There’s a Hole in Our Moral Ozone and It’s Getting Bigger Survey of 29,000 high school students reveals entrenched habits of dishonesty in the workforce of future – stealing, lying, and cheating rates climb to alarming rates

Josephson Institute’s 2008 Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth, a report on the attitudes and conduct of 29,760 high school students, reveals entrenched habits of dishonesty in today’s young people — and that doesn’t bode well for the future when these youngsters become the next generation’s politicians and parents, cops and corporate executives, and journalists and generals.

CHEATING. Cheating in school continues to be rampant and it’s getting worse. A substantial majority (64 percent) cheated on a test during the past year (38 percent did so two or more times), up from 60 percent and 35 percent in 2006. There were no gender differences on the issue of cheating on exams. Students attending non-religious independent schools reported the lowest cheating rate (47 percent) while 63 percent of students from religious schools cheated. Responses about cheating show some geographic disparity: Seventy percent of the students residing in the southeastern U.S. admitted to cheating, compared to 64 percent in the west, 63 percent in the northeast, and 59 percent in the midwest. More than one in three (36 percent) said they used the Internet to plagiarize an assignment. In 2006 the figure was 33 percent.

STEALING. In bad news for business, more than one in three boys (35 percent) and one-fourth of the girls (26 percent) — a total of 30 percent overall — admitted stealing from a store within the past year. In 2006 the overall theft rate was 28 percent (32 percent males, 23 percent females). Students who attend private secular and religious schools were less likely to steal, but still the theft rate among non-religious independent school students was more than one in five (21 percent) while 19 percent who attend religious schools also admitted stealing something from a store in the past year. Honors students (21 percent), student leaders (24 percent) and students involved in youth activities like the YMCA and school service clubs (27 percent) were less likely to steal, but still more than one in five committed theft. Twenty-three percent said they stole something from a parent or other relative in the past year (the same as 2006) and 20 percent confessed they stole something from a friend. Boys were nearly twice as likely to steal from a friend as girls (26 percent to 14 percent).

LYING. More than two of five (42 percent) said that they sometimes lie to save money. Again, the male-female difference was significant: 49 percent of the males, 36 percent of the females. In 2006, 39 percent said they lied to save money (47 percent males, 31 percent females). Thirty-nine percent of students in private religious schools admitted to lying as did 35 percent of the students attending private non-religious schools. More than eight in ten students (83 percent) from public schools and religious private schools confessed they lied to a parent about something significant. Students attending nonreligious independent schools were somewhat less likely to lie to parents (78 percent).

IT’S WORSE THAN IT APPEARS. As bad as these numbers are, it appears they understate the level of dishonesty exhibited by America’s youth. More than one in four (26 percent) confessed they lied on at least one or two questions on the survey. Experts agree that dishonesty on surveys usually is an attempt to conceal misconduct. Despite these high levels of dishonesty, these same kids have a high self-image when it comes to ethics. A whopping 93 percent said they were satisfied with their personal ethics and character and 77 percent said that “when it comes to doing what is right, I am better than most people I know.”

This report addresses honesty and integrity and is the first based on the extensive data gathered. Additional reports, to be issued in the coming months, will focus on violence, drug use, and other issues. Some will analyze the impact of sports, religious convictions, and other factors on young people's values, attitudes, and behavior. Following a benchmark survey in 1992, Josephson Institute has conducted a national survey of the ethics of American youth every two years. Data was gathered through a national sample of public and private high schools. Surveys were conducted in 2008. For the general questions (over 20,000 responses), the accuracy is well within +/- 0.007 or 0.7%; for breakdowns of 10,000 the accuracy is +/- 0.98%; and even when there are just 1,000 responses, the accuracy is +/- 3.1%. Almost all standard errors of differences are much less than 1% for even small samples.

A complete set of data generated by the survey is available at http://charactercounts.org/programs/reportcard

Civil Rights Project Releases Findings of Study on Nation's Largest System of School Choice—Public Magnet Schools

Historically, magnet schools have been an important part of school districts' efforts to improve equity and quality in our nation's schools and enroll twice as many students as charter schools. But as charters – created without fundamental civil rights considerations - have become a central focus of school choice proponents, federal funds for magnet schools have been frozen. A new report, The Forgotten Choice? Rethinking Magnet Schools in a Changing Landscape, looks at the policy effects of neglecting magnet schools.

Magnet schools were located in 31 states in 2005-06, the latest year for which there is available data, and enroll more students (just over 2 million) than charter schools. Magnets are more likely to be located in central cities than charters; both types are more likely to be in cities when compared to the location of other traditional public schools. Data indicate that the charter school population is more affluent than the magnet school population, as well as the student population in all public schools. Charters also contain a higher percentage of white students than magnet schools, while there is higher segregation of black students—and isolation of white students—in charter schools than magnet schools. Latinos are more segregated in magnet schools, which may be due to the high enrollment of Latino students in magnet schools in the western U.S. In short, in comparison to magnet schools, many charters today are enrolling a disproportionately affluent and white student population. These data suggest that it is important to consider the experiences of magnet schools alongside those of charter schools as educational choice grows.

The conditions under which magnet schools are structured have important implications for levels of diversity. For example, schools with desegregation goals were more likely to be substantially integrated or experiencing increasing integration. By contrast, the highest percentages of onerace schools were those that had never had any desegregation goals. Additionally, whole school magnets as compared to school-within-a-school magnets were more likely to be diverse. Competitive admissions criteria, such as using GPA or test scores as part of the admissions process, are frequently used by magnet schools and, among this sample, were used more often by a larger number of segregated schools. Most schools have at least one type of special outreach to attract students and families from racially diverse backgrounds. Schools that outreach to prospective students were more likely to have experienced increasing integration over the last decade, while one-quarter of those without special outreach were one-race schools.

Full report:

http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/magnet/the_forgotten_choice_rethinking_magnet_schools.pdf

Subtitles do not guarantee hearing-impaired viewers a total comprehension of television messages

They are shown too quickly and are too literal, which does not allow them time to view the images or reach an overall understanding

After almost twenty years since the first television subtitles were used, professors Cristina Cambra, Núria Silvestre and Aurora Leal, members of the UAB Research Centre on Hearing Impairment and Language Acquisition (GISTAL), were interested in discovering whether deaf viewers - the main users of this service - actually can understand the programmes, find it easy to read subtitles and understand the messages transmitted through the images.

Research work was carried out with the support of the Audiovisual Council of Catalonia (CAC) and the Spanish Ministry for Education and Science (MEC). Participants included students with hearing impairment of different ages and the research focused on the role played by visual, audio, and oral and written information on the screen. Twenty adolescents aged 12 to 19 participated in this study. All of them suffer from either severe or profound hearing impairment, went to municipal schools of the Barcelona province with children who had no hearing impairments, and communicated with others using spoken language with the help of auditory prostheses and by learning how to lip-read.

Participants were asked to explain what was happening in a fragment of the Catalan TV series "El cor de la ciutat". The first viewing was done with no sound, the second with sound and the third with sound and subtitles.

At the end of the first viewing, 30% of participants had a global understanding of what had happened by only watching the images. The percentage increased to 40% after turning on the sound and after adding the subtitles.

According to researchers these figures indicate that for teenagers with hearing impairments, subtitles as they are currently presented are not a good enough resource in helping them understand what a television programme is about. More specifically, researchers verified that the speed at which they appeared and a literal transcription of the dialogues did not give participants time to view the images and reach an overall understanding.

Two more studies were carried out with younger participants: one consisted in a pilot study with seven kids aged 6 and 7, while the other was formed by 16 children aged 7 to 10. Both groups viewed a fragment of the cartoon "Shin-Chan", but the second group was shown the cartoon with subtitles created by the professors themselves (using new speed and text selection criteria). In the first group, only 2% of participants understood what the cartoon was about. In the second group, overall understanding of the fragment reached 65.5%.

These studies show that there is a need to review currently used criteria and define new parameters which take into account information offered by the images, sound and spoken language, as well as the language skills of deaf people. According to research results, two general criteria which should be followed are: firstly, respect for the heterogeneity of the hearing impaired and the possibility to choose from more than one type of subtitle, offering different degrees of language complexity so that each viewer can choose the level that best fits their case. Secondly, and especially in the case of children programmes, it would be advisable to subtitle only essential information that cannot be deduced by the images. In contrast, when the images are explicit enough, e.g. emotional states of the characters, viewers should be able to deduce this information themselves. Therefore, the time spent reading the subtitles can be combined with the time needed to view the images.

According to researchers, an adaptation in subtitles is particularly necessary in the case of deaf children, since they are in the process of learning to read and this is a stage in which subtitles can help to boost their motivation.

They also highlight the fact that television programmes which offer subtitles can be used as an additional educational resource in schools when teaching children to read. It would help both kids with hearing impairments and those without, who may find written language a support tool which helps them understand spoken language. The research carried out by professors Cambra, Silvestre and Leal aims to create teaching and learning material for teachers and parents of deaf children.

First study to examine rare injuries and conditions of US high school athletes

Football leads sports associated with rare injuries

(Rare injuries accounted for 3.5 percent of high school athletes' injuries 2005 through 2007, according to the first study to examine rare injuries and conditions of U.S. high school athletes. Rare injuries include eye injuries, dental injuries, neck and cervical injuries and dehydration and heat illness, which may result in high morbidity, costly surgeries and treatments or life-altering consequences.

Football was associated with the highest rate of rare injuries, accounting for 21 injuries per 100,000 exposures, according to the study published in the current issue of the Journal of Athletic Training and conducted by researchers at the Center for Injury Research and Policy (CIRP) of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital.

"Neck and cervical injuries were higher in boys at 8 per 100,000 exposures while girls accounted for 1 per 100,000 exposures," explained the study's author Ellen Yard, MPH, CIRP research associate at Nationwide Children's Hospital. "This difference could easily be attributed to girls not playing football. Of those neck and cervical injuries in football, 93 percent were caused by contact with another player during tackling or blocking. Overall though, boys had 12 per 100,000 exposures while girls had three per 100,000."

Football also was correlated with the majority of dehydration and heat illnesses. Sixty percent of these injuries occurred during pre-season practice after the athlete had already been participating for an hour.

"This finding is consistent with previous research, which stresses the need for athletes to be hydrated. Many times, the athletes just aren't used to the environmental conditions during pre-season practice," said study co-author Dawn Comstock, PhD, CIRP principal investigator at Nationwide Children's and a faculty member of The Ohio State University College of Medicine.

Study shows school-based program enables children and adolescents to better manage chronic disease

'Kickin' Asthma' found to help urban students reduce symptoms, activity limitations, emergency room visits, and increase school attendance

A new study has found that a school-based asthma education program conducted in the Oakland, California school district was shown to reduce symptoms and increase the number of days that children who suffered from asthma were able to go to school. The study will be published this month in the Journal of School Health.

Nearly 10% or 6.8 million children have asthma in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The problem is most prevalent in urban areas, where children's symptoms are typically worse. In light of this, some schools in urban areas have been grappling with how best to help children cope with this chronic disease. Asthma can be deadly if not managed properly.

"This study demonstrates how schools can play an important role in the health and safety of children and adolescents coping with asthma," said Sheryl Magzamen, Ph.D., a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation® Health & Society Scholar at the University of Wisconsin and the lead author of the study. "We found that Kickin' Asthma is a good strategy for educating adolescents about their disease and helping them to take more control over it."

The study found that Kickin' Asthma demonstrated measurable and significant improvements for asthma symptoms, correct medication usage, and reduction in asthma morbidity for urban adolescent students during the first three years of the program. Days of activity limitations and days of school missed were significantly reduced (by one half day for every four weeks of intervention). The proportion of students who reported outpatient emergency care or hospitalization for asthma was significantly lower after participation during the first two years of the program. Frequency of daytime symptoms declined for the first three years of the program.

"The Kickin' Asthma program is specifically designed for an urban population and addresses the problem in children and adolescents during a potentially critical time, when they are starting to have more control over their own asthma care," said Adam Davis, Director of Programs and Research at the American Lung Association of California and Director of Oakland Kicks Asthma, which funded the Kickin' Asthma program.

Kickin' Asthma consists of a four-session curriculum developed by American Lung Association staff along with nurses and peer educators from the Oakland Unified School District. The program gives students the information and tools to better take care of their asthma by dispelling myths about the disease, educating students on the triggers, and instructing them about when and how to take their medication. The sessions were voluntary, although a small incentive was provided to students who completed the program during the first two years of the study.

Researchers surveyed 8,488 students during the first three years of the program (2003-2006) and 15.4% or 1,309 were identified as asthmatic. Of those, approximately 76% or 990 participated in the study. Participating students were in grades 7 to 10 from fifteen middle schools and three high schools.

"Effective asthma management programs can prevent costly and disruptive hospitalizations and ER visits, and decrease school absences," said Jo Ivey Boufford, M.D., co-director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars National Program Office. "Programs like this, that put teenagers in charge of managing their asthma, are important for success and create good health habits for a lifetime."

The Oakland Unified School District is a public, K-12 school system with 42,000 predominantly low-income students. It is one of the most diverse school systems in the country with 45% African-American, 31% Latino, 17% Asian or Filipino, and 5% Caucasian students. Few schools in this district have a nurse or health aide.

Boy-girl bullying in middle grades more common than previously thought

Much more cross-gender bullying – specifically, unpopular boys harassing popular girls – occurs in later elementary school grades than previously thought, meaning educators should take reports of harassment from popular girls seriously, according to new research by a University of Illinois professor who studies child development.

Philip C. Rodkin, a professor of child development at the U. of I.’s College of Education, said that while most bullies are boys, their victims, counter to popular conception, are not just other boys.

“We found that a lot of male bullies between fourth and sixth grade are bullying girls – more than people would have anticipated – and a substantial amount of that boy-girl, cross-gender bullying goes unreported,” he said.

Rodkin, who along with Christian Berger, a professor at the Universidad Alberto Hurtado in Santiago, Chile, published the paper “Who Bullies Whom? Social Status Asymmetries by Victim Gender” in the most recent issue of the International Journal of Behavioral Development, said cross-gender bullying hasn’t been fully explored because of the ways researchers have thought about the social status dynamic of bullying in the past.

“Bullies are generally more popular than their victims, and have more power over their victim, whether it’s physical strength or psychological power,” Rodkin said. “Researchers have taken it for granted that a bully will also have a higher social status than their victims. Based on our research, that’s not necessarily the case.”

The classic bullying paradigm follows what Rodkin calls the “whipping boy” syndrome: the powerful, popular bully tormenting an unpopular victim. (Think Biff Tannen bullying George McFly in “Back to the Future.”)

Over the course of his research, which included surveys of 508 fourth and fifth graders from two elementary schools in the Midwest, Rodkin found that boys who bullied other boys fit the classic pattern. But he also found a number of cases where an unpopular boy bullied a popular girl.

“In those cases where it was a boy picking on a girl, the bullies were regarded by their classmates as being quite unpopular,” Rodkin said. “They were not alpha males, and they were probably more reactive in their aggression compared to the classic bully.”

Could the explanation for the high proportion of boys bullying girls simply be that it’s part of the clumsy transition we all make into adolescence?

“You could say it’s normal behavior for kids – what’s been called ‘push-and-pull courtship’ – a result of learning about the birds and the bees,” Rodkin said. “But the fact that these unpopular boys were very aggressively targeting girls subtracts from the idea that it’s normal.”

Despite being perceived by their classmates as being “popular,” bullies also are nominated by their peers as being among those liked the least.

“Bullies are always aggressive, and they’re never likeable,” Rodkin said. “For a generation of research, being popular was equated with being liked. Popularity is an extremely important dimension of social life in any social structure, whether it’s kids or adults, but ultimately it’s a gauge of whether others think you have social influence, not if you’re likeable. Popularity doesn’t necessarily translate into what kind of person you want your child to become.”

Paradoxically, a bully’s victims are also disliked.

“Both bullies and victims are highly disliked by their peers,” Rodkin said. “There’s a stigma attached to being aggressive, as well as to being weak. Both qualities are looked down upon.”

Rodkin believes that exploring the bully-victim social dynamic is fruitful in that it will allow for a more complete representation of children’s social environments for parents and educators.

“Just because a kid is popular,” he said, “doesn’t mean that they’re problem-free or nothing bad is going on. There are a lot of dangers for girls and boys over middle childhood and adolescence, dangers that could continue in relationships between men and women later in life.”

Measuring Up 2008

Measuring Up 2008 is the most recent in the series of national and state-by-state report cards for higher education that was inaugurated in 2000. The key findings this year reveal that the nation and most of the 50 states are making some advances in preparing students for college and providing them with access to higher education. However, other nations are advancing more quickly than the United States; we continue to slip behind other countries in improving college opportunities for our residents. In addition, large disparities in higher education performance by race/ethnicity, by income, and by state limit our nation’s ability to advance the educational attainment of our workforce and citizenry—and thereby remain competitive globally.

College Preparation

Young Americans who graduate from high school on time are now more likely to take courses that prepare them for college and to enroll in college, compared with earlier this decade or in the 1990s. But far too many graduates leave high school unprepared to succeed in college-level courses and need remediation when they enroll. In addition, larger proportions than in the past fail to graduate from high school; some eventually receive alternative high school certification, principally the GED, but they do not enroll in college in large numbers. The reduced high school graduation rate decreases the pool of potential college graduates and college-educated workers.

Access to College

The likelihood that a high school freshman will enroll in college by age 19 has improved modestly in this decade, from 39% to 42%, and the proportion of 18- to 24-year-olds enrolled in college has grown even more modestly. Meanwhile, the enrollment of working-age adults in college-level education or training has been declining since the early 1990s. Overall, the Measuring Up indicators show that access to college is fairly flat in the United States, with mostly small improvements in some states and declines in others.

College Graduation

For students who enroll in college, rates of completion of certificate, associate, and baccalaureate programs are poor and have improved only slightly. These low college completion rates—as with the declining rates of high school completion—are depriving the nation of college-educated and trained workers needed to keep the American workforce competitive globally.

International Comparisons

The United States’ world leadership in college access has eroded steadily, as reflected in the international comparisons of the proportion of 18- to 24-year-olds enrolled in college (see Figure 1). In college completion, which has never been a strength of American higher education, the U.S. ranks 15th among 29 countries compared (see Figure 2). The U.S. adult population ages 35 and older still ranks among the world leaders in the percentage who have college degrees—reflecting the educational progress of earlier times (see Figure 3). Among 25- to 34-year-olds, however, the U.S. population has slipped to 10th in the percentage who have an associate degree or higher (see Figure 4). This relative erosion of our national “educational capital” reflects the lack of significant improvement in the rates of college participation and completion in recent years.

These cross-national comparisons place the nation’s higher education performance in a global context and reflect the gaps that have opened between the United States and other nations. These disparities undermine our national value of individual opportunity and our collective capacity to succeed in the knowledge-based global economy. Addressing these disparities is critical because:

· Education and training beyond high school is a prerequisite for employment that supports a middle-class life. This is a reality for most Americans.

· Seventy-eight million Americans are reaching or approaching retirement age, and this is the best-educated generation in the United States—both currently and historically.

· As the nation’s demography changes, large proportions of the younger generations are among those who are least well-served by the U.S. system of education currently: those whose educational opportunity and attainment reflect the disadvantages of race, income, and geography.

Persistent Disparities

To make significant headway in increasing the educational attainment of its population and thereby its comparative standing internationally, the United States must address disparities in educational opportunity and achievement among Americans. These persistent gaps must be closed if the United States is to meet its workforce needs and compete globally.

First, the high school graduation rate (the percentage of ninth graders who complete a standard high school diploma in four years) has decreased for all racial and ethnic groups over the past three decades, and differences between racial and ethnic groups persist. By the middle of this decade:

. the national on-time high school graduation rate was 77.5%,

. the rate for African Americans was 69.1%, and

. the rate for Hispanics was 72.3%.1

Meanwhile, a growing number of high school students are taking longer to complete or are leaving high school without a standard diploma; some who drop out earn GEDs but are less likely to enroll in any form of postsecondary education and those who do enroll are less likely to complete a certificate or degree.

In addition, disparities in college access are closely linked to race/ethnicity and income. While college attendance has increased for all groups over the past three decades, gaps in enrollment among racial/ethnic groups have not diminished. For high school graduates, 73% of whites, 56% of blacks, and 58% of Hispanics enroll in college the next fall.2 In terms of family income, 91% of high school students from families in the highest income group (family income of $100,001 or more) enroll in college. The enrollment rate for students from middle-income families (family income between $50,001 to $100,000) is 78% and for those in the lowest income group (family income between $0 and $20,000) the rate is 52%.3

The racial and ethnic disparities that exist in preparation for and access to college are also found in college completion rates. For example, 59% of white students complete a bachelor’s degree within six years of enrolling in college. In contrast, 47% of Hispanic students, 41% of African Americans, and 39% of Native American students complete a bachelor’s degree within six years.

Finally, the state-by-state variation in educational performance represents another source of disparity and inequity for Americans. As reflected in the Measuring Up state report cards and grades, the likelihood of graduating from high school prepared for higher education, enrolling in college, and graduating from an affordable college or university differs enormously by state of residence. Here are some examples:

. High school freshmen in California, compared with their peers in Massachusetts, are 17% less likely to enroll in college by age 19. High school freshmen in Pennsylvania are 12% less likely to enroll than those in South Carolina or Utah.

. Half of young adults (ages 18 to 24) are enrolled in college in Rhode Island, while only 18% are in Alaska. Young adults are 15% more likely to be enrolled in college in Iowa than in Georgia, and 11% more likely to be enrolled in Massachusetts than in Texas.

Given our relative decline internationally and the gaps in higher education performance within our borders, no state can afford to maintain the status quo. As Measuring Up 2008 reveals, even the best-performing states have gaps in performance they need to—and can—address. Narrowing those gaps will improve educational and economic opportunity in those states and for the nation as a whole.

Dimensions of the National Deterioration of College Affordability

The deterioration of college affordability throughout the United States has contributed to the disparities in higher education opportunity and attainment. There are several dimensions to this national and state problem.

First, college tuition continues to outpace family income and the price of other necessities, such as medical care, food, and housing (see Figure 5). Whatever the causes of these tuition increases, the continuation of trends of the last quarter century would place higher education beyond the reach of most Americans and would greatly exacerbate the debt burdens of those who do enroll.

Second, the erosion of college affordability has been exacerbated not only by increased tuition, but also by relatively flat or declining family incomes. As a result of these trends, the financial burden of paying for college costs has increased substantially, particularly for low- and middle-income families, even when scholarships and grants are taken into account (see Table 1).

Third, students who do enroll in college are taking on more debt to maintain their college access. More students are borrowing (see Figure 6), and they are borrowing more. Over the last decade, student borrowing has more than doubled (see Figure 7).

Another dimension of the problem of college affordability involves the financial aid priorities of colleges and universities, which are not in synch with public policy priorities. Currently, students from middle- and upper-income families receive larger grants from colleges and universities than students from low-income families receive (see Table 2).

Conclusion

Measuring Up 2008 identifies clearly the key areas of improvement and decline in higher education performance in the United States. States have made some modest advances, but these improvements are overshadowed by larger gains by other countries, and by the deterioration of college affordability throughout the United States. The relative erosion of our national “educational capital” has occurred at a time when we need more people to be college educated and trained because of Baby Boomer retirements and rising skill requirements for new and existing jobs.

Meanwhile, states are grappling with substantial budget shortfalls. In this fiscal cycle, state leaders face a crucial choice in determining state policy for higher education. They can respond to their current budget crises in the usual patterns of the past, by allowing tuition and student aid policy to play second fiddle to institutional finance. States that select this course will most likely see precipitous tuition increases, cuts in student financial aid, and drops in college access. Further, if states take this path in being passive and complicit in allowing the brunt of the financial distress to be passed to students and families, then our national and state gaps in college access and completion will worsen, and college affordability will continue to deteriorate.

But states have another option: to establish state policies for tuition and student aid that balance the financial burden for higher education among states, the institutions of higher education, and students and families. This is both a short- and long-term strategy that makes state policy more transparent, grounds it in the needs and financial circumstances of state residents, establishes college affordability as a priority, protects educational opportunity, and in the process helps to meet the needs of states and the nation for a well-educated workforce and citizenry.

National Report:

http://measuringup2008.highereducation.org/print/NCPPHEMUNationalRpt.pdf

State Report Cards

http://measuringup2008.highereducation.org/states/report_print.php

E-Learning can have positive effect on classroom learning, scholar says

Traditional classroom teaching in higher education could learn a thing or two from online teaching, otherwise known as e-learning, according to a University of Illinois professor who studies computer-mediated communication, information exchange and the Internet.

Caroline Haythornthwaite, a professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, says that the value of e-learning has been underrated at the college level, and that some of its methods and techniques can augment traditional classroom learning.

“Compared to the more traditional educational paradigm – the broadcast model, where knowledge is delivered from professor to student from on-high – e-learning turns teaching and learning into a shared endeavor,” she said.

E-learning is defined as technology-based learning. Lectures, homework, quizzes and exams are delivered almost entirely or completely online. In some instances, no in-person interaction takes place over the length of the course.

A global economy hungry for customized, portable and on-demand educational platforms coupled with the Internet’s rise to dominance as the ubiquitous medium of information delivery means that e-learning is increasingly gaining respect as an innovative and viable pedagogical tool, especially for subjects that require multimedia, collaboration tools (wikis, blogs and course-management systems, for example), and other bandwidth-hungry applications prevalent today.

At Illinois, Haythornthwaite teaches in classrooms real and virtual in the college’s 13-year-old LEEP program, a distance-education program that enables graduate students to complete a master of science in library and information science, a certificate of advanced study or a K-12 library and information science certificate online.

For the current crop of more than 700 students seeking a master’s degree through GSLIS at Illinois, a little more than half are online students.

Haythornthwaite said she enjoys the robust interaction with her online students.

“With the online classes,” she said, “I interact with my students more frequently, dropping into asynchronous discussion daily for a half-hour or an hour. With my traditional classes, I might see them once a week for three hours. If there’s a news article I want my online students to read, I can post it and discussion can begin right away. With my classroom students, if I e-mail them an article on Tuesday and we meet for class on Friday, that’s one of many things we might discuss. The impact isn’t quite as immediate.”

Compared with the traditional, face-to-face classroom learning that centers on instructors dictating content and pedagogy, e-learning is a more learner-friendly alternative, also allowing the role of a teacher to be quite different in an e-learning environment, Haythornthwaite said.

“Since there’s an emphasis on more learner-centric activities than traditional lecture-based classroom learning, the teacher is more of a facilitator in an online classroom,” she said. “Not only does that enhance the collaborative nature of online learning, it also motivates students to be much more engaged and to take more responsibility for what they’re learning.”

However much e-learning may reshape education, Haythornthwaite noted that it’s not necessarily meant to supplant classroom learning, but is more of a supplement to it. She cited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s example of putting all of its classroom materials online for non-commercial use in 2001 as an example of how “blended learning” can be created from a mixture of e-learning and classroom interaction.

“No one stopped going to class when all that material was posted,” she said. “It simply changed the delivery method and broadened the scope of knowledge available.”