May 2008
No. 40

Copyright
© 2008 AICE

READING

Reading First did not have statistically significant impacts on student reading comprehension test scores

Created under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, the Reading First program provides assistance to states and districts in using research-based reading programs and instructional materials for students in kindergarten through third grade and in introducing related professional development and assessments. The program's purpose is to ensure that increased proportions of students read at or above grade level, have mastery of the essential components of early reading, and that all students can read at or above grade level by the end of grade 3. The law requires that an independent, rigorous evaluation of the program be conducted to determine if the program influences teaching practices, mastery of early reading components, and student reading comprehension. This interim report presents the impacts of Reading First on classroom reading instruction and student reading comprehension during the 2004-05 and 2005-06 school years.

The evaluation found that Reading First did have positive, statistically significant impacts on the total class time spent on the five essential components of reading instruction promoted by the program. The study also found that, on average across the 18 study sites, Reading First did not have statistically significant impacts on student reading comprehension test scores in grades 1-3. A final report on the impacts from 2004-2007 (three school years with Reading First funding) and on the relationships between changes in instructional practice and student reading comprehension is expected in late 2008.

Full report:

http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pdf/20084016.pdf

Teacher Knowledge of Literacy Content: Evaluation of Delaware Reading First

In 2003, to improve the reading achievement of its kindergarten to third grade children, Delaware launched a five year, federally funded initiative called Delaware Reading First (DERF). A central component of the multi-faceted project was teacher training and professional development in Scientifically Based Reading Research (SBRR) practices.

Program resources were directed each year toward teacher improvement goals, beginning with mandatory summer training institutes prior to Years 1 and 2 for all kindergarten to third grade general education, special education, and instructional support teachers in schools receiving DERF funding. On-site literacy coaches worked full-time in each school, providing additional support and information to teachers as they translated SBRR content into practice.

As part of a five-year DERF program evaluation, this technical report examines teachers’ changes in literacy-related content knowledge, their sense of self-efficacy as reading teachers, and their perceptions and beliefs about early literacy instruction.

Findings presented here are based on the analysis of two data sets. The first is a baseline set of 175 surveys from summer 2003 and the second includes 202 surveys of DERF k-3 grade teachers from fall 2007. In addition, a subset of 48 teachers’ with both baseline (summer 2003) surveys and year 5 (2007) responses was used for pre-post analysis.

Results in Brief

Reading Knowledge Scores

Teachers participating in the program for four years showed significant improvement in their reading knowledge scores.

Teachers with four years of program experience score significantly higher than those who are new to the program.

Improvement in reading knowledge scores is not steady or predictable as teachers’ number of years in the program increases.

There is no relationship between the teachers’ years of prior teaching experience at the start of the program and their change in knowledge after four years in DERF.

Ratings of Self-Efficacy

After four years in the program, teachers’ ratings of their preparedness for teaching reading and for teaching struggling readers increased significantly.

Teachers’ sense of self-efficacy positively correlates with their reading knowledge scores.

Beliefs about Early Reading Instruction

Teacher beliefs regarding code-based principles of early reading instruction increased significantly.

Conclusions & Recommendations

• The comparison of teachers who had just started the program with those with one or more years of experience in the program indicates that program participation is associated with higher reading knowledge scores.

• Despite these findings, the performance variability observed between each group and the absence of a consistent pattern of improvement over the years makes it difficult to conclude that more years of experience in the program results in better performance.

• In short, program participation is associated with change in performance, but the extent to which the length of participation is a factor in that change is unclear.

• Limitations to this study could include differences in teacher characteristics and/or differences in form and quality of professional development and coaching. Technical issues such as modes of survey administration could also affect the results observed among the teachers who were in the program for four years.

Full report:

http://www.rdc.udel.edu/reports/t080301.pdf

What Kids are Reading: The Book Reading Habits of Students in American Schools

This is the first comprehensive report to provide detailed information about the books school children are actually reading.

Renaissance Learning answers the following questions:

· What books do students in each grade read most often,  overall and by gender?

· What books do students in each grade in each U.S. census region read most often?

· What books do students in the top 10% of reading achievement read most often?

Featuring contributions from popular children’s authors Mary Pope Osborne, S.E. Hinton, Daniel Handler, and Christopher Paul Curtis, this report represents an important contribution to the research on reading practice.

Report:

http://www.renlearn.com/whatkidsarereading/ReadingHabits.pdf

New Literacy Ph.D. Will Change the Teaching of Reading

School psychologists, speech-language pathologists, reading teachers, classroom teachers and school administrators at all levels will be among those enrolling in MTSU’s new Ph.D. in Literacy Studies degree. This program will come face to face with why the National Assessment of Education Progress consistently shows that an average of four out of 10 children fail to read at grade level by fourth grade.

The interdisciplinary doctorate is based on the idea that narrow expertise in a single area does not equip graduates to understand the many factors that support successful literacy.

The new doctoral is a first-of-its-kind partnership that has emerged from the Center for the Study and Treatment of Dyslexia at MTSU, a hands-on learning lab that may be the only one of its kind in the nation. The Dyslexia Center is a unit within the College of Education and Behavioral Science where professionals with different backgrounds work together to improve educational outcomes for children with dyslexia. The doctorate has been shaped and will be governed by faculty representing several academic departments: educational leadership, elementary & special education, dyslexic studies, psychology, sociology, English (linguistics) and communication disorders. Program faculty are listed at http://mtsu.edu/~literacy/faculty.html.

“This degree is important because it reflects the direction of the institution as manifested in the academic master plan, which identifies areas that are strategic, for the discipline and for the region,” commented Dr. Kaylene Gebert, MTSU executive vice president and provost. “This program will be a fulcrum for additional research projects … and for bringing students to MTSU who will learn from the very best faculty.”

Dr. Diane J. Sawyer, holder of the Katherine Davis Murfree Chair of Excellence in Dyslexic Studies at MTSU, explained that in formulating the course of study for the Ph.D. in literacy, program faculty from many areas looked at what the research in each of their disciplines reveals about how people learn to read and how teachers need to understand the teaching of reading.

“We looked at a curriculum, stemming from both research and practice, that typical preparation programs do not provide,” Sawyer said. “We’re bringing together neurobiology and neuropsychology to help people understand that the learning of reading really does involve the brain. It also involves the culture and environment in which one learns—and so we included the socio-cultural aspect as well.”

A practicum will require students to go out into the field and test what they’re learning and then bring back the reality of the field to their classrooms, Sawyer said.

“We’re looking across disciplines to bring people into the study of literacy in an interdisciplinary way—and to take their learning back into their respective fields to enhance the educational process,” she noted.

“Because of the unique, interdisciplinary and comprehensive approach that characterizes this degree, it really fills a void in the learning environment,” stated Dr. Gloria Bonner, dean of MTSU’s College of Education and Behavioral Science.

“Given the crisis in the schools, and in particular ‘No Child Left Behind’ and the achievement gap that is really expanding, this ought to have tremendous appeal.”

A key question that reflects the bottom-line meaning of this new degree is … How will the pedagogical issues and academic jargon trickle down and really affect the child in elementary school who is struggling with reading?

“If we don’t catch [this struggle] before grade four, it has implications for the rest of their academic career,” Bonner observed.

One goal of the program is to train professionals who can support changes in how and when schools identify and help struggling readers.

“The models by which schools identify and support at-risk and low-performing students are changing,” explained Dr. Stuart Bernstein, director of the MTSU Dyslexia Center. “The current model is nicknamed ‘wait to fail’ because schools are forced to wait until children have fallen many years behind the other children in their grade before certain resources can be brought to bear.

“A new model called ‘Response to Intervention’ represents a departure in which frequent focused assessments are closely tied to instructional decisions so that children can get help at the point when they do not learn something rather than years later,” Bernstein continued. “However, this shift requires that the classroom teacher, reading specialists, curriculum supervisors, even principals understand the nuances of literacy assessment and how to shape instruction based on those more focused assessments. The Ph.D. in Literacy Studies will address this. … We can no longer train reading professionals in just one narrow domain,” Bernstein added. “They need training that is broad and the opportunity to integrate this spectrum of knowledge.”

Sawyer says that schools need to “get beneath the scores” to reach a better understanding of where learning has broken down. “Traditionally, what those who teach reading have learned about measurement is that tests give you scores and that children are scaled on those scores—and if you have a particular kind of score, you’re in trouble,” she pointed out. “But there’s no instruction that helps them to understand where and how learning has broken down. So we use the shotgun approach, thinking that more of the same must be appropriate because they didn’t get it the first time. But we don’t know why or where specifically that breakdown was.”

It is Sawyer’s vision that the new doctoral degree will produce a greater understanding of learning and of both the strengths and weaknesses of current reading assessment tools and instructional practices.

“It’s looking underneath the scores to the humanity,” she summarized.

Sawyer and Bernstein point out an interesting paradox. On one hand, four out of 10 children cannot read and comprehend at grade level. Similarly, four in 10 adults can’t read an average newspaper. Yet, reading is “one of the most over-studied things on the planet,” Bernstein notes. “It’s like talking about the weather—everybody does it. The over-studying of reading results in too much information of varying quality, and it’s hard for anyone at any point in the process to understand what has a good chance of working and what doesn’t.”

Once the new degree is launched in the fall, Sawyer and her team plan to hold a series of roundtable sessions composed of classroom teachers, principals, parents, professionals and doctoral students to discuss the learning process and reading instruction.

“We hope to attract people who are good at what they do and want to become even better,” Sawyer said. “It takes very bright and dedicated educators to rethink what they know to be right and good, to analyze their successes and failures and to reach out for new learning experiences that will enable them to arrive at new concepts.”

To learn more about the new Ph.D. in Literacy Studies degree, including course requirements, visit http://www.mtsu.edu/~literacy/info.html or call Dyslexic Studies at 615-898-5642.

MATH AND SCIENCE

Closing the Achievement Gap in Math and Science

The latest results from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Math and Science Partnership (MSP) program show not only improved proficiency among all elementary and middle school students, but also a closing of the achievement gaps between both African-American and Hispanic students and white students in elementary school math, and between African-American and white students in elementary and middle-school science.

Since 2002, the MSP program has supported institutions of higher education and K-12 school systems in partnering higher education faculty from science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines with K-12 teachers. Through the program, STEM faculty provide professional development and mentoring to math and science teachers to deepen their content knowledge in their field of expertise--all with the goal of better preparing students in these subjects.

The MSP program currently supports 52 such partnerships around the country that unite some 150 institutions of higher education with more than 700 school districts, including more than 5,200 schools in 30 states and Puerto Rico. More than 70 businesses, numerous state departments of education, science museums and community organizations are also partners.

The current results are drawn from schools whose MSP projects target specific improvements in their math and/or science programs. The data used are student scores on state proficiency tests in math and science collected over three different school years. The figure at right shows how student subgroups within MSP projects focused on math improvements performed on math tests in the 2003-2004 and 2005-2006 school years, respectively. Among approximately 39,000 students at 160 schools, the scores of white students performing at or above the proficient level rose 4.6 percentage points between the 2003-2004 and the 2005-2006 school years. Meanwhile, the results for Hispanic and African-American students went a long way towards closing an identified achievement gap. The percentage of Hispanic students performing at or above proficient rose by 18.3 percentage points--from 35.9 to 54.2 percent--and those of African-American students rose by 17.9 points--from 27.6 to 45.5 percent. Although small in number, Asian-American students, special education students, and students with limited English proficiency also showed gains.

The rise in science scores among elementary students within MSP projects focused on science improvements was not quite as pronounced, as shown in the figure at right, with the percentage of Hispanic students scoring at or above proficient rising by 6.5 percentage points, those of African-American students by 15.8, and those of white students by 12.2. Science testing is not mandated in all states, and there was a smaller universe of schools--96 schools, with assessments for only 7,500 students--reporting science proficiency results. However, science testing promises to be an area of increasing focus in the states, because the No Child Left Behind act requires that all states implement science testing by 2009.

Similar analyses were conducted for MSP middle schools. Math scores were drawn from 151 schools within MSP projects focused on math improvements and representing about 95,000 students while science scores were drawn from 51 schools within MSP projects focused on science improvements and representing about 9,500 students. While both math and science scores went up in all subgroups, results were the most pronounced among African-American science students; the percentage of students performing at or above proficient rose from 15.9 percent to 23.5 percent over the period, and this closed the achievement gap with white students.

"I'm happy to see that schools' involvement in MSP projects is continuing to have a positive impact on student proficiency results," says NSF program director Dan Maki. "We're particularly excited about the progress being made among Hispanic and African-American students, as closing achievement gaps--while improving achievement for all students--has been a goal of the MSP program since its inception. We continue to monitor data for participating high schools, but we aren't seeing trends yet."

Currently, MSP projects are actively engaged in determining which strategies most strongly correlate to improved student performance. For example, the Milwaukee Mathematics Partnership, led by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, has a major objective of developing district- and school-based teacher leaders and distributing their expertise across Milwaukee's schools. The project has studied how often the teacher leaders effectively spend time with other teachers and strongly connect with networks of teachers, and found that schools in which teacher leaders play important roles demonstrate stronger student achievement results in mathematics.

Encouraging Girls in Math and Science

This Practice Guide was developed by an expert panel convened by the Institute of Education Sciences. It offers five recommendations to encourage girls in math and science. A summary of the research evidence and a level-of-evidence rating are provided for each recommendation.

Full paper:

http://dww.ed.gov/launcher.cfm?media/MathScience/Girls/TopicLevel/gms_practice_guide.pdf

New Diagnostic Assessment Method Boosts Math Achievement in 5th and 6th Graders; Suggests New Testing Paradigm

Two new studies show that teachers who successfully use a method called proximal assessment for learner diagnosis, or PALD, can boost the performance of fifth and sixth grade students in math.

The studies, led by Madhabi Chatterji, Associate Professor of Measurement- Evaluation and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, followed 972 students and 44 teachers in four East Ramapo, New York elementary schools for two years. Sixth graders taught using PALD scored significantly higher on standardized math tests than peers who weren’t exposed to the method. Fifth graders in PALD classrooms outperformed their peers in geometry, and sixth graders taught with PALD were stronger in long division than peers not taught with PALD. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

The method requires teachers to break down math problem solving – or any academic task they want students to learn -- into a set of connected skills and concepts required by students to solve the tasks. They organize the tasks by difficulty. They then assess student performance at each step to understand precisely where students make errors or show lack of understanding. The underlying philosophy of PALD is to re-conceive testing in general as a diagnostic process embedded within instruction, rather than simply as an instrument for testing students at the end of a semester or year or for sorting students by merit.

In one paper, “Proximal Assessment for Learner Diagnosis (PALD): A Study of Classroom Practices and Early Teacher and Student Outcomes”, Chatterji and colleagues Douglas Ready, Nancy Koh, Linda Choi and Radhika Iyengar compare classrooms in which teachers used PALD, with others at the same schools that did not, to assess how teachers’ use of PALD practices affected student achievement in math on local and standardized tests.

In another paper, “Mapping Cognitive Pathways in Mastering Long Division,” Chatterji and colleagues Nancy Koh, Howard Everson and Pearl Solomon present a case study of one class that was exposed to PALD-trained teachers in both grade 5-6, documenting changes in their learning gaps and cognitive development as they became experts in long division.

“The fundamental questions we are asking through this work are, ‘Can we train teachers to look at children and their learning processes more diagnostically? And if teachers gain the skills to conduct close-up examinations of where children’s learning stalls, would they take actions to turn things around?’” Chatterji says. “We were also interested in determining if signs of students’ progress will show up on standardized tests in the long run, and if the attitudes of both teachers and students towards tests and testing also change – will they come to believe more in diagnostic tests as an aid to teaching and learning?

“The answer to these questions, based on our preliminary studies, is Yes – particularly in terms of teacher attitudes towards assessment and student outcomes in grade 6 where more students had continuing exposure to PALD.” Some results in PALD fifth grade classes were on a par or inferior to those in non-PALD fifth grade classes. The authors believe that in these instances, the novelty of the PALD method for the teachers, lower levels of student exposure, and teachers’ lower math subject matter knowledge, might have all affected the PALD implementation and early outcomes.

The assessments of students that PALD-trained teachers use are based on “situated tasks” that draw on embedded concepts and skills. Thus, problems in long division are designed to reflect real situations in which a fifth or sixth grader will need to apply long-division skills. For example, children were asked: If cookies come in packs of 12, and there are 215 fifth graders in your school, how many packs of cookies must be purchased in order to give each fifth grader one cookie on the last day of school?

“It’s a more contextualized method of assessment, teaching and student evaluation that stresses diagnosis,” Chatterji says.” You wouldn’t say in the end, simply, whether a student got a problem right or wrong. You’d say what he or she did right, where the mistakes occurred, and what needs to be done to help the child take the next cognitive step to learn. So, PALD’s a much more fine-grained approach to analysis than current grading and standardized testing methods. And along the way, you’re teaching children meta-cognitive skills – that is, to think about what they’re learning and where they’re falling down.”

In conducting their studies at Hillcrest Elementary, El Dorado Elementary, Elmwood Elementary and Colton Elementary, Chatterji and colleagues at first met with some resistance from teachers who balked at the extra labor involved in implementing PALD methodology.

Initially teachers were up in arms because of the time it takes to implement PALD. But after a year, participant teachers became the greatest advocates for the PALD approach.

“Using proximal assessment to evaluate student understanding is an effective method to ensure positive student outcomes,” says Andrea LaMantia, a sixth grade teacher at Hillcrest Intermediate School in East Ramapo. “If a baseball player is not hitting, a coach would analyze his stance or batting grip and make adjustments accordingly. It’s the same in a classroom. If the teacher can determine at what point there is a breakdown in understanding, specific corrective measures can be taken.”

LaMantia says that while she initially thought using PALD would be time consuming, “in the long run, it saved time. Learning math is contingent on understanding embedded concepts. Students often give up once they get confused. Eliminating this confusion early in the process not only helps achievement but builds self-confidence as well.”

To see a full presentation of results from the two PALD studies at AERA conducted by the Chatterji group, visit Outcomes Executive Summary :

http://www.tc.columbia.edu/i/media/6563_AERAPALDOutcomesExecutiveSummary.pdf

and Mapping Cognitive Pathways :

http://www.tc.columbia.edu/i/media/6563_AERAPALDMappingCognitivePathwaysPaper.pdf

Math plus 'geeky' images equals deterred students

Images of math ‘geeks’ stop people from studying mathematics or using it in later life, shows research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

Many students and undergraduates seem to think of mathematicians as old, white, middle-class men who are obsessed with their subject, lack social skills and have no personal life outside maths. The student’s views of math itself included narrow and inaccurate images that are often limited to numbers and basic arithmetic.

The research revealed that many of the clichéd perceptions, which it identified are linked to the way in which mathematics and mathematicians are presented in popular culture. Although there has been an increase since 2006, the number of people in England and Wales choosing to study math has been in decline in the last decade. The subject’s negative portrayal in popular culture contributes to this lack of interest. The research went on to suggest using popular culture as one way to promote a more positive view of math.

Dr Heather Mendick and Marie-Pierre Moreau from London Metropolitan together with Prof Debbie Epstein of Cardiff University undertook a survey, focus groups and interviews with GCSE school students, final year mathematics undergraduates and post and undergraduate students in the social sciences and humanities.

Dr Heather Mendick, who led the project, said: “Given the narrow, negative clichés associated with math and mathematicians, it is hardly surprising that relatively few young people want to continue with the subject.

Dr Mendick continues “a substantial majority of both Year 11 and university students saw math as little more than numbers and mathematicians as old, white, middle-class men”

The notion of mathematicians as geeks was common both among those who identified with the subject and those who did not. Images of mathematicians Albert Einstein and John Nash were labeled as not normal, lacking social skills and being obsessive towards mathematics. But those students who chose to continue studying mathematics for A-level or at university were more likely to regard this obsession as indicating skill, commitment or devotion than madness. Some mathematics undergraduates – more particularly males – gave positive value to geek status, even though several went to considerable lengths to claim their own normality.

Dr Mendick concludes “This raises two important issues: first, we can see how popular culture is deterring many people from enjoying math and wanting to carry on with it and, second, it raises issues in relation to social justice as these images are mainly of white, middle-class men and so may discourage other groups disproportionately.”

EARLY EDUCATION

Children Better Prepared for School If Their Parents Read Aloud to Them

Young children whose parents read aloud to them have better language and literacy skills when they go to school, according to a review published online ahead of print in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

Children who have been read aloud to are also more likely to develop a love of reading, which can be even more important than the head start in language and literacy. And the advantages they gain persist, with children who start out as poor readers in their first year of school likely to remain so.

In addition, describing pictures in the book, explaining the meaning of the story, and encouraging the child to talk about what has been read to them and to ask questions can improve their understanding of the world and their social skills.

The review brings together a wide range of published research on the benefits of reading aloud to children. It also includes evidence that middle class parents are more likely to read to their children than poorer families.

The authors explain that the style of reading has more impact on children’s early language and literacy development than the frequency of reading aloud. Middle class parents tend to use a more interactive style, making connections to the child’s own experience or real world, explaining new words and the motivations of the characters, while working class parents tend to focus more on labelling and describing pictures. These differences in reading styles can impact on children’s development of language and literacy-related skills.

The Reach Out and Read programme in Boston has improved the language skills of children in low income families by increasing the proportion of parents reading to their children.

The programme provides books and advice to the parents about the importance of reading aloud. Parents who have been given books were four times more likely to say they had looked at books with their children or that looking at books was one of their child’s favourite activities, and twice as likely to read aloud to their children at least three times a week.

Click here to view the paper in full: http://press.psprings.co.uk/adc/may/ac106336.pdf

RAND Study Provides Primer for Using Economics to Help Guide Early Childhood Policy Initiatives

A growing body of economic research suggests that public investment in early childhood programs may be able to lower public costs for social services by improving children's long-term welfare, according to a new RAND Corporation report.

Such research could promote a reorientation of child and human services toward investment and prevention, moving away from the current system that seeks to "treat" problems that develop later in life, according to the report.

But economic analysis of early childhood programs does not necessarily result in clear direction about what is the single best approach to any problem, according to researchers. Instead, economic research is more likely to highlight a spectrum of promising services and provide guidance about how to choose an optimal level of each program.

The RAND report is intended to provide policymakers with a primer about how economic analysis can help set agendas for early childhood policy and identify the economic benefits of targeting certain groups for help.

"Economic analysis increasingly plays a role in the debate on the merits of early childhood programs, but many people are unprepared to participate in the discussion," said Rebecca Kilburn, the report's lead author and an economist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "The report is intended to provide clarity and structure for making use of such research."

Interest in using economics to help analyze early childhood policies has grown as business CEOs, Federal Reserve Bank analysts, and Nobel Prize-winning economists have called for increased public spending on early childhood programs.

Two overarching concepts from economic research have become important in discussions of early childhood policy -- human capital theory and monetary "payoffs" from investments in early childhood programs.

Human capital theory is an economic model that provides a framework that brings together current thinking about early childhood policy, including the concept that later skills build on skills developed earlier in life. The theory accounts for such concepts as nature and nurture, and the idea that capabilities involve multiple dimensions.

Probably the most widely recognized intersection between economics and early childhood policy is in the analysis of the costs and benefits of early childhood programs such as home visiting and preschool. Such analysis typically compares the costs and benefits of early childhood programs to determine the "rate of return" the public will receive for money spent on such efforts.

A growing body of program evaluations shows that investments in early childhood programs can generate government savings by, for example, reducing the need to provide social services later in life or by improving individuals' earnings, which then generates more tax revenue.

Kilburn and co-author Lynn Karoly write that an increasing body of knowledge has demonstrated how poorly U.S. children fare compared to their counterparts in other developed countries. Research has shown that U.S. babies increasingly are born with low birth weights, elementary-age children are overweight and asthmatic at growing rates, and more than 700,000 children spend time in foster care each year.

In addition, research from the fields of neuroscience, developmental psychology and program evaluation has shown how early experiences help determine how a person's brain develops and that effective early intervention strategies can improve a wide range of outcomes from childhood through early adulthood.

While many studies have found that the cost of early childhood programs can produce long-term benefits that offset their costs, not every early childhood program does so, according to the RAND report.

In addition, researchers caution that evidence suggests that the returns from early childhood programs may decline under certain conditions. While monetary benefits can remain positive for universal programs, the rate of return may be higher when programs are targeted toward the groups likely to benefit from them the most, according to the report.

There also is recognition that the benefits from early childhood interventions may be tied to the quality of those interventions, but higher quality often costs more. Unless funding grows, researchers say, shifting toward higher quality may mean that fewer children can be served.

The study, "The Economics of Early Childhood Policy: What the Dismal Science Has to Say About Investing in Children," is available at

http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/OP227/

WRITING

Teens reach linguistic peak in online chat

LOL, OMG and TTYL: parents and teachers worry that teenagers’ use of these and other forms of online shorthand is harming their language skills. Perhaps they will take comfort from a study suggesting that instant messaging (IM) actually represents “an expansive new linguistic renaissance”.

Sali Tagliamonte and Derek Denis at the University of Toronto, Canada, say teenagers risk the disapproval of their elders if they use slang, and the scorn of their friends if they sound too buttoned-up. But instant messaging allows them to deploy a “robust mix” of colloquial and formal language. In a paper to be published in the spring 2008 issue of American Speech, the researchers argue that far from ruining teenagers’ ability to communicate, IM lets teenagers show off what they can do with language.

“IM is interactive discourse among friends that is conducive to informal language,” says Denis, “but at the same time, it is a written interface which tends to be more formal than speech.”

He and Tagliamonte analysed more than a million words of IM communications and a quarter of a million spoken words produced by 72 people aged between 15 and 20. They found that although IM shared some of the patterns used in speech, its vocabulary and grammar tended to be relatively conservative. For example, teenagers are more likely to use the phrase “He was like, ‘What’s up?’” than “He said, ‘What’s up?’” when speaking - but the opposite is true when they are instant-messaging. This supports the idea that IM represents a hybrid form of communication.

Nor do teens use abbreviations as much as the stereotype suggests: LOL (laugh out loud), OMG (oh my god), and TTYL (talk to you later) made up just 2.4 per cent of the vocabulary of IM conversations - an “infinitesimally small” proportion, say the researchers. And rumours of the demise of you would appear to have been greatly exaggerated: it was preferred to u a whopping 9 times out of 10. Tagliamonte and Denis suggest that the use of such short forms is confined mostly to the youngest users of IM.

FOREIGN LANGUAGES

U.S. Critical Foreign Languages Effort Doubling: 32 States, 5 Languages

A 32-state, national security effort to train both teens and teachers in critical foreign languages will more than double in size and scope this summer and include younger students, says the program's coordinator at the University of Maryland.

The STARTALK Program - administered by the University of Maryland National Foreign Language Center with funding from the U.S. Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Defense - will offer 81 programs this summer in five critical languages: Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Persian and Urdu, with space for more than 2,600 students and nearly 1,100 teachers. (See below for program listing by state.)

Last summer the program debuted with 34 programs in 21 states, taught only Arabic and Chinese, involved about one-third as many participants and did not include middle school-age students.

Teaching critical foreign languages at a much younger age along with consistent follow-up instruction can help increase students' ultimate mastery of the subject. STARTALK aims to jumpstart the nation's limited capability to do this.

The program targets current and prospective teachers to prepare them for instruction in K through 16 environments, as well as middle and high school students.

"Many European and Asian nations start foreign language instruction in the fourth grade, and the truth is that the United States just doesn't have the ability to do this on a wide scale right now," says Catherine Ingold, STARTALK administrator and director of the University of Maryland National Foreign Language Center.

"As a nation, we lack many of the basics needed to teach critical foreign languages to younger students, and that hurts us across the board - in national security, business, government and daily life," Ingold adds. "We need to train teachers to work with younger students, and we have to develop classroom materials of the highest quality. The good news is that there's a hunger for this kind of instruction. Our success last year demonstrates that."

CULTURAL HERITAGE SPEAKERS

Most of the STARTALK programs recruit heritage speakers, people with a cultural connection to a language, as both students and teachers. The children may have a little exposure to the language through their family experiences, or may be starting from scratch, but wish to learn more about their roots. Cultural heritage speakers proficient in the language also represent a vital pool of potential teachers. But, they may lack teaching skills or the necessary certification.

STARTALK PROGRAMS

The programs vary widely from summer camp settings to a more traditional classroom. Some programs offer total immersion, while others offer more modest training to give students a head start at learning an unfamiliar foreign language. Some programs offer a bridge for students so they dont lose ground over a long summer.

Many offer separate but simultaneous programs to train both students and teachers. This is especially important for the teachers who often need the experience in order to get state certification.

"The one constant is quality," Ingold says. "We're building up the nation's capability to meet future security and economic needs. So it's important that we use the best techniques and materials and do the job right."

FUNDING

The $10 million funding for STARTALK comes from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the U.S. Department of Defense. The University of Maryland National Foreign Language Center coordinates the selection and awarding of grants to program providers. It also works to maintain high standards in all the programs and teaching materials.

STARTALK is one of more than a dozen programs in the National Security Language Initiative announced by President Bush in 2006. The Initiative seeks to expand and improve the teaching and learning of strategically important world languages that are not widely taught in the United States.

The University of Maryland National Foreign Language Center is dedicated to understanding and addressing the nation's needs for languages other than English. The Center implements that mission through intensive and innovative strategic planning, research and development in cooperation with academic institutions and organizations in the United States and abroad.

The University of Maryland is also home to National Flagship Programs in Arabic and Persian, a national language laboratory, the University of Maryland Center for Advanced Study of Language, the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute Center for Persian Studies and other major language research and education initiatives.

PROGRAMS LISTED BY STATE

Note: Participants from all 81 programs will be in Washington, D.C. for training, June 8-June 10.

Complete listing by state: http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/Startalk/statelisting.cfm

Complete listing by language: http://www.startalk.umd.edu/program-info/2008/

State Index

ARIZONA (2 programs): Prescott and Tempe

ARKANSAS (1 program): Beebe and Gravette

CALIFORNIA-Southern (8 programs): L.A., Orange County, Pasadena, San Bernardino, San Diego, Ventura

CALIFORNIA-Northern (8 programs): Atherton, Berkeley, Palo Alto, San Francisco

CONNECTICUT (3 programs): Glastonbury and Wallingford

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA (4 programs)

HAWAII (2 programs): Honolulu

ILLINOIS (6 programs): Chicago

INDIANA (2 programs): Bloomington

IOWA (1 program): Ames

KANSAS (1 program): Overland Park Distance-Learning

KENTUCKY (3 programs): Highland Heights, Louisville

LOUISIANA (1 program): Baton Rouge

MARYLAND (5 programs): Columbia, Frederick, Montgomery County, Silver Spring

MASSACHUSETTS (3 programs): Boston

MICHIGAN (1 program): Dearborn

MINNESOTA (3 programs): Bemidji, Cass Lake and Vergas

MISSISSIPPI (1 program): Oxford

MONTANA (1 program): Missoula

NEW JERSEY (2 programs): Edison, New Brunswick and Princeton

NEW MEXICO (2 programs): Albuquerque

NEW YORK (5 programs): New York City, Queensbury

NORTH CAROLINA (1 program): Boone

OHIO (5 programs): Columbus, Cleveland, Dayton, Kent

PENNSYLVANIA (1 program): Philadelphia

RHODE ISLAND (2 programs): Smithfield

SOUTH CAROLINA (1 program): Florence

TEXAS (2 programs): Dallas-Fort Worth, Euless, Houston

UTAH (4 programs): Provo

VERMONT (2 program): Colchester

VIRGINIA (6 programs): Arlington, Fairfax, Richmond

WASHINGTON (3 programs): Seattle

WISCONSIN (1 program): Beloit

MISCELLANEOUS

Socrates in the classroom develops students' thinking and changes the distribution of power

When students have the opportunity to participate in “Socratic seminars” on a regular basis, a different classroom culture evolves. The students collaborate more and more voices are heard. The students develop their thinking skills in a cooperative and investigative atmosphere. This is shown in a new dissertation in Pedagogy by Ann S Pihlgren at the Stockholm University in Sweden.

The Socratic dialogue is a particular way of developing children’s, as well as adults’, thinking skills through cooperative dialogue where significant human ideas and values are discussed. By participating in Socratic seminars regularly every other week, preschool children and older students develop their thinking skills. The seminars address literature and art work, with questions such as these: is Pippi Longstocking is a good friend, is Jack is stupid or smart when he sells his mother’s cow for some beans or are we born good or evil. In the beginning the students have difficulty expressing their thoughts, but with time their ability to express themselves and to examine ideas critically and logically develops.

The study included seven groups of children, five to sixteen years old. The groups were filmed during three years of philosophizing in the classroom and the films were analyzed. The interaction in the classroom was positively influenced, according to Ann S Pihlgren. The teacher dominated less, more students spoke and the students gradually took over the responsibilities of the teacher to promote exploration in the dialogue. The ability to use the Socratic seminar is learned by students and teachers through practice and by testing the rules of the seminar. The students construct a supportive group culture through their silent interaction, where gestures, glances, and body language are used to show not only support or sympathy for each other, but also cooperation with each other when someone attempts to disturb or to provoke the dialogue. The teacher role changes to one of support, ensuring that the analysis is fruitful and that the dialogue is respectful.

Socratic methods have developed independently in various countries. They all describe a set of methodological steps to attain similar objectives. An opening question is answered by all participants and followed by cooperative, critical analysis. Finally, the new ideas are connected to the everyday life experience of the participants.

It seems as if this ritualized structure and the nurturing culture of the seminar provide a safe circle, helping the participants to try new, bold ideas that they might otherwise not have tested, Ann S Pihlgren says. By cooperating when examining the ideas they also seem to learn a way to address problems on their own without teacher intervention.

To work with methods connected to the ancient philosopher Socrates may seem out-of-date in a modern school, but that is absolutely not the case, Ann S Pihlgren states.

The Socratic seminars have been seen as a complement to traditional classroom teaching for hundreds of years. But it is not easy to learn how to stage them to get positive effects. It is especially hard for teachers, who often fall back to their traditional, controlling “teacher” roles. The dissertation offers excellent tools for teachers who want to develop students’ thinking and to foster cooperative group dialogue.

Socrates in the Classroom. Rationales and Effects of Philosophizing with Children: http://www.diva-portal.org/su/theses/abstract.xsql?dbid=7392 .

States Making Progress Defining What Students Should Learn

Union Recommends Two Options for States To Improve Their Standards

Some states are making discernible progress in writing clear, specific, content-focused standards that define what students are expected to learn in every grade or course in English, math, science and social studies, according to a report released today by the American Federation of Teachers, which also offers advice for states whose standards need improvement.

In its latest review of state standards, “Sizing Up State Standards 2008,” the AFT used new, more rigorous criteria because it is so important that states clearly define what students are expected to learn. For the 2008 report, states met the AFT criteria if their standards were clear, specific and content-focused. Standards were analyzed for all grades in each of the four core subjects.

“While some states are demonstrating dramatic improvement in the quality of their standards, far too many states are lagging behind,” said Antonia Cortese, AFT executive vice president. “Well-written grade-by-grade or course-by-course standards are critical because they drive curriculum, professional development, instruction and assessments, and provide guidance to textbook publishers.”

Sixteen states have the highest scores for their standards, with Virginia leading the group with a score of 100 percent. The report also found that Arkansas, Indiana and Louisiana made dramatic improvements over the years, even with the AFT’s more challenging criteria. Others with at least 75 percent of their standards meeting AFT criteria are Alabama, California, Georgia, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia.

However, the AFT found that 35 states have inferior standards overall, including seven that lack clear standards for any grade or subject—Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Faring almost as poorly is a second group of states that meet the AFT’s criteria in fewer than 25 percent of grades and subjects—Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Vermont and Wyoming.

“We know states can do it, so we have to keep the pressure on the ones that are lagging,” Cortese said. Referring to the No Child Left Behind Act, she said, “Unfortunately, NCLB has derailed the standards movement by overemphasizing testing. But tests and test results are meaningless if states don’t clearly define what students are expected to learn.”

The AFT recommended two options to remedy this persistent, but fixable, situation. “Either a state could use top-rated standards as a model, or states within a region could get together as a consortium to jointly develop standards, curricula and assessments. Either way, it’s time for states to get this right,” Cortese said.

Included in the report are examples of high-quality content standards and weak ones. The AFT evaluation of standards was based on whether they are detailed, explicit, grade-specific and focused on content.

Key findings from the report’s analysis of content standards include:

• English and social studies standards generally are weaker than math and science standards. Twenty-four states have strong math standards, and 22 have strong science standards. However, only eight states have strong English standards, and only two have strong social studies standards (see Table 3).

• High school standards are the weakest (see Table 4), with just 25 percent of states having strong English standards and 47 percent having strong math standards. Too often, high school standards are clustered (e.g., one set of standards for grades 9-12) instead of being grade-specific or, better still, course-specific.

• States with weak standards have three main problems: Standards are repeated from grade to grade, are clustered for a range of grades (e.g., 9-12), or are incomplete or vague.

The report not only includes specific recommendations for improving content standards, but also recommends that states provide instructional guidance and teacher resources to help teachers bring the standards into the classroom.

“Sizing Up State Standards 2008” is available at www.aft.org/standards2008.

Related articles on the report can be found in the American Educator’s Spring 2008 issue at http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/spring2008/index.htm.

The AFT’s 2006 “SmartTesting” report, which showed that few states align their standards with their assessments, is available at http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/downloads/teachers/Testingbrief.pdf.

New Study Looks at Early Implementation and Outcomes of the Smaller Learning Communities Program

The Smaller Learning Communities (SLC) program was established in response to growing national concerns about students too often lost and alienated in large, impersonal high schools, as well as concerns about school safety and low levels of achievement and graduation for many students. Authorized under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the SLC program was designed to provide local educational agencies with funds to plan, implement, or expand SLCs in large high schools of 1,000 students or more.

The SLC legislation allows local educational agencies to implement the most suitable structure or combination of structures and strategies to meet their needs.

The Implementation Study of Smaller Learning Communities: Final Report was designed to study the early implementation of the SLC program. The study based its findings on data from 119 grantees from among those funded in 2000 in the first cohort of grantees and surveyed in the spring of 2002 and fall 2003. The report also used data from in-depth case studies of 18 grantees that intended to use freshman or career academies to structure a smaller learning community.

Major implementation and outcome findings from the study included:

Implementation Findings

· The most prevalent SLC structures were freshman and career academies.

· Most participating schools chose to implement one or more SLC strategies, with block scheduling and teacher teams the most popular choices.

· Smaller Learning Community-related professional development, although provided by nearly all schools, was not very extensive.

· Most schools reported they applied for SLC funds to increase overall student academic achievement, academic achievement of at-risk students and student motivation.

· Schools reported a number of factors limiting effective SLC implementation, including scheduling and logistical issues, physical space, lack of teacher SLC professional development, and school staffing needs, especially in terms of core academic teachers and guidance counselors.

While the study was primarily focused on implementation issues, some limited data on outcomes from the first Annual Performance Reports (APRs) are included in the report along with a number of limitations and cautions in interpreting the data. The data were based on school overall statistics observed immediately before and after participation in the federal program, and in no way imply a causal connection.

· The data suggest an upward trend in student extracurricular participation before and after program participation.

· There was a statistically significant positive trend in the percentage of 9th-grade students being promoted to 10th grade during the post-grant period.

· There was also a downward trend in the incidence of violence in SLC schools over time.

· The data suggest increases in the percentage of graduating students who reported they planed to attend either two- or four-year colleges.

· There were no significant trends observed in academic achievement, as measured by either scores on statewide assessments or college entrance exams over the short period of the study.

For a complete copy of Implementation Study of Smaller Learning Communities: Final Report:

http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/other/small-communities/final-report.pdf

Turning Around Chronically Low-Performing Schools

Contents - IES PRACTICE GUIDE

The goal of this practice guide is to formulate specific and coherent evidence-based recommendations for use by educators aiming to quickly and dramatically improve student achievement in low-performing schools. Although schoolwide reform models exist, most assume a slow and steady approach to school reform. They do not seek to achieve the kind of quick school turnaround we examine in this practice guide. That is not to say that schools using a packaged schoolwide reform model could not experience dramatic and quick results. Often the differentiating factors are the intensity of the turnaround practices and the speed of putting them in place.

The authors’ expectation is that a superintendent, a principal, or a site-based decision-making council can use this practice guide to help plan and execute school turnaround strategies. The target audience includes school administrators and district-level administrators, key because they can help break down policy and administrative barriers and ease the implementation of intensive school turnaround practices. This guide can help them develop practice and policy alternatives for immediate implementation in schools.

The guide includes specific recommendations and indicates the quality of the evidence that supports the recommendations. It also describes how each recommendation can be carried out. The examples are from case studies but should not be construed as the best or most effective ways to carry out each recommendation. Instead, the examples illustrate practices noted by schools as having had a positive impact on the school turnaround. Note that the specific ways the practices were implemented varied widely, depending on each school’s context.

The authors are a small group with expertise in various dimensions of this topic. Several are also experts in research methodology. The evidence they considered in developing this document ranges from expert analyses of turnaround practices to case studies of seemingly effective schools and to correlational studies and longitudinal studies of patterns of school improvement. In all cases, they paid particular attention to patterns of findings replicated across studies. But all recommendations had to rely on low levels of evidence, as defined by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Practice Guide standards. The authors could not find any studies that fit the high-quality experimental and quasi-experimental study standards of the What Works Clearinghouse (http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc) and that would provide the strongest evidence of causal validity.

The authors have taken findings from research and described how a practice or recommendation might unfold in school settings. Our aim is to provide sufficient detail so that educators have a clear sense of the steps needed to follow the recommendation.

A unique feature of practice guides is the explicit and clear delineation of the quality and quantity of evidence that supports each claim. To do this, they used a semi-structured hierarchy suggested by IES. This classification system uses both the quality and the quantity of available evidence to help determine the strength of the evidence base grounding each recommended practice/

Complete guide:

http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/pdf/Turnaround_pg_04181.pdf

NEW REPORT: ASIAN AMERICAN STUDENTS DON'T BENEFIT FROM NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT

MAJOR REFORMS NEEDED

At the first-ever National Asian American Education Advocates Summit held at Columbia University last month, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), a 34-year old civil rights organization, released its new report detailing several provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) that must be overhauled in order to meet the needs of Asian American students.

AALDEF’s report, Left in the Margins: Asian American Students and the No Child Left Behind Act, demonstrates how Asian Americans who are English Language Learners (ELLs) are currently set up to fail under NCLB. Citing Census statistics and numerous examples in school districts around the country, AALDEF illustrates how this marginalized community is falling through our public education system’s cracks. Left in the Margins puts a spotlight on particular school districts where Asian American ELL students are the most visible and also highly vulnerable due to the lack of appropriate services.

Margaret Fung, AALDEF executive director, said: “Since the No Child Left Behind law was enacted, we have not seen significant improvements in the quality of public education. Instead, Asian Americans— especially immigrant, poor and non-English speaking students—have been left behind to fend for themselves in securing basic educational services."

Key recommendations from AALDEF’s report propose several major changes in NCLB:

· Provide targeted language services for Asian American ELLs, since nearly a quarter of all Asian American students are ELLs. Among those between the ages 5 and 17, over half of Hmong Americans, 39% of Vietnamese Americans, and 34% of Bangladeshi Americans are ELLs.

· Use absolute numerical thresholds and/or population ratios in smaller districts or counties (rather than states) to determine the need for native language materials. Asian American ELLs are densely populated in specific neighborhoods throughout the country. For example, Vietnamese-speaking ELLs in Seattle constitute 16% of all ELLs in the city, but only 4% of the total ELL population in the state of Washington. If native language materials were available only for language minority groups that made up at least 10% of ELLs in a state, then large numbers of Vietnamese-speaking ELLs would not benefit from native language materials.

· Use multiple forms of assessment to measure ELL student achievement and limit the use of testing-based sanctions to abate high dropout rates among ELL students. In New York City, the class of 2006’s ELL population had a dropout rate of 30% compared to 6.9% of all students citywide.

· Provide states with funds to hire more ESL specialists, bilingual education specialists, and teachers bilingual in Asian languages. Although Vietnamese is the second most common native language of ELLs in California, there is only one bilingual teacher for every 662 Vietnamese-speaking students in the state.

· Provide states with more funds to translate school documents, hire interpreters, and conduct community education for immigrant families. Over 40% of Vietnamese, Korean, and Chinese households are linguistically isolated.

· Require every state to collect comprehensive student data that is disaggregated by ethnicity, native language, socioeconomic status, ELL status, and ELL program type. Without this information, the educational needs of individual groups are concealed and will remain unaddressed.

Copies of Left in the Margins: Asian American Students and the No Child Left Behind Act are available at www.aaldef.org/docs/AALDEF_LeftintheMargins_NCLB.pdf.

The Effect of Special Education Vouchers on Public School Achievement: Evidence From Florida’s McKay Scholarship Program

This paper evaluates the impact of exposure to a voucher program for disabled students in Florida on the academic performance of disabled students who remain in the public school system. The authors utilize student-level data on the universe of public school students in the state of Florida from 2000-01 through 2004-05 to study the effect of the largest school voucher program in the United States, the McKay Scholarship Program for Students with Disabilities (McKay), on achievement in math and reading by students who have been diagnosed as disabled and remain in the public school system.

This paper is the first empirical evaluation of the impact of exposure to a voucher program designed to allow students with disabilities to enroll in schools other than their local public schools on the achievement of disabled students who remain in their local public schools. Vouchers for disabled students are the fastest-growing type in the United States. Programs similar to McKay are currently operating in Ohio, Georgia, and Utah and have been recently considered by other states.

Highlights of the study include:

· Public school students with relatively mild disabilities made statistically significant test score improvements in both math and reading as more nearby private schools began participation in the McKay program. That is, contrary to the hypothesis that school choice harms students who remain in public schools, this study finds that students eligible for vouchers who remained in the public schools made greater academic improvements as their school choices increased.

· Disabled public school students’ largest gains as exposure to McKay increased were made by those diagnosed as having the mildest learning disabilities. The largest category of students enjoying the greatest gains, known as Specific Learning Disability, accounts for 61.2% of disabled students and 8.5% of all students in Florida.

· The academic proficiency of students diagnosed with relatively severe disabilities was neither helped nor harmed by increased exposure to the McKay program.

Full paper:

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/pdf/cr_52.pdf

Thirteen Cleveland schools lauded for promising practices in urban education

The Cleveland and George Gund foundations have released a report, Cleveland Schools that are Making a Difference, which highlights 13 urban schools recognized by independent researchers for inspired leadership, thoughtful curriculum, innovative instructional practices and well-cultivated community and parental involvement.

Schools featured in the report are:

· Louisa May Alcott (Cleveland Metropolitan School District – CMSD)

· Citizens’ Academy (charter)

· Cleveland School of the Arts (CMSD)

· Benjamin Franklin (CMSD)

· The Intergenerational School (charter)

· Joseph Landis (CMSD)

· Miles Park (CMSD)

· Orchard School of Science (CMSD)

· St. Francis (parochial)

· St. Martin de Porres (private Catholic)

· St. Thomas Aquinas (parochial)

· SuccessTech (CMSD)

· Urban Community School (private Catholic/Christian)

In 2007, the foundations engaged independent researchers to provide tangible evidence that quality education can be — and has been — created in a cross section of schools located in the City of Cleveland. The goal of the project was to identify, describe and share best practices that exist within Cleveland’s traditional public, private, parochial and charter schools that make a positive difference in students’ achievement.

To ensure independence and objectivity, the foundations contracted with the New York-based Institute for Student Achievement and the National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University, to act as principal investigators. A local consulting firm, Candor LLC, provided analysis of student achievement data that was used to identify schools for this project.

All 13 schools selected for this report met several key criteria: they were operating in the 2004-05 school year; the majority of students were economically disadvantaged; and they were demonstrating progress in student achievement gains as evidenced from state report card data, value-added student achievement data, standardized test scores and graduation rates.

Researchers conducted site visits, reviewed data and interviewed students, teachers, principals and parents. They looked at six dimensions that research shows are critical factors in positively impacting student learning: shared vision; strong curriculum, quality and diverse instructional methods; use of multiple data types to drive instruction and student outcomes; presence of a nurturing, safe learning environment; and positive professional development opportunities for teachers and staff.

Dr. N. Gerry House, a nationally recognized urban education leader who currently serves as president and chief executive officer of the Institute for Student Achievement, said the report is unique for bringing together four types of schools — traditional public, private, parochial and charter — all serving the same student population. House spoke today at the Cleveland City Club, where the report was released.

“We hope that others, both within and beyond Cleveland, will learn from what these schools do,” House said.

The project evolved from the foundations’ larger strategy to help create a portfolio of new, excellent schools in Cleveland. Both the Cleveland and Gund foundations have dedicated substantial resources to support new schools in Cleveland. Foundation grants totaling $1.5 million have supported research, planning and start-up support for new schools in Cleveland, including the Cleveland School of Science and Medicine that opened in 2006, CMSD’s four single-sex elementary schools that opened in 2007 and two new science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) high schools scheduled to open this fall. The foundations granted another $1 million to open and staff the Office of New and Innovative Schools at CMSD, which will assume overall strategy and supervision of the District’s new opportunity schools, and have also supported various new Cleveland charter and private schools.

Helen W. Williams, program director for education for the Cleveland Foundation, said that while Cleveland is fortunate to have the high-performing schools highlighted in the report, the list is by no means exhaustive; there are several other schools in Cleveland that could easily be recognized for their achievements.

“This report shows that no single system or type of school — traditional public, private, parochial or charter — has a monopoly on effective education,” Williams said. “These 13 urban schools are remarkably similar in their commitment to and track record of making a significant difference in the lives of their students.

“As the report illustrates, these schools share common attributes that explain their success — quality principals, teachers, curricula and school cultures.”

Ann K. Mullin, senior program officer for The George Gund Foundation, said the intent of the study was to identify Cleveland schools that demonstrate successful outcomes for children.

“There are great schools in Cleveland,” Mullin said. “We wanted to show that Cleveland parents have some high quality options for their children: schools where children and adults feel safe; where principals and teachers and parents all work together for the benefit of their students; where students are held to high expectations and are prepared to be successful in higher education, the workplace and as contributing members of the community.”

The full report:

http://www.clevelandfoundation.org/uploadedFiles/VitalIssues/PublicEducationReform/Cleveland%20Schools%20That%20Are%20Making%20a%20Difference%20-%20Full%20Report.pdf

Good Buildings, Better Schools: An Economic Stimulus Opportunity

Weak economic conditions has prompted discussion of using federal stimulus spending on our nation's school buildings to spur near-term economic growth by creating high quality jobs. Mary Filardo, Executive Director for the 21st Century School Fund recently released, "Good Buildings, Better Schools: An economic stimulus opportunity with long-term benefits.", This paper was written for the Economic Policy Institute.

Full paper:

http://www.21csf.org/csf-home/publications/GoodBuildingsBetterSchools-EPI-Paper.pdf

MAJOR RECOMMENDATIONS TO TRANSFORM NEW JERSEY HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION UNVEILED

Proposed Course Requirements, Testing System, and Teacher Supports Announced

A suggested framework for preparing every New Jersey student for college and the workplace was unveiled today, the result of a multi-year study on improving high school education in the state. The policy paper, entitled NJ STEPS: Re-Designing Education in New Jersey for the 21st Century, provides recommendations of the New Jersey High School Redesign Steering Committee that focus on five areas, including standards and high school graduation requirements, assessment alignment, teachers and school leaders, learning communities and personalized education, and P-16 alignment.

Standards and High School Graduation Requirements: A major goal of the Steering Committee is to help align New Jersey high school standards and graduation requirements to college and workforce entry requirements. According to reviews by Achieve Inc., New Jersey’s high school standards and graduation requirements in language arts literacy and mathematics did not specifically reflect the knowledge and skills necessary for success in credit-bearing coursework in higher education or entry-level, well-paying jobs. Currently, New Jersey does not require all students to complete a college and work-ready curriculum to graduate from high school, and local graduation requirements also vary widely.

As a result, the Steering Committee presented their proposed NJ STEPS Graduation Requirements, which include requiring all students to learn Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, Biology, Chemistry, and .5 years of Economics, along with current state requirements to earn a high school diploma.

Assessment Alignment: The Steering Committee also proposed a new approach for testing students on the content they would learn through the proposed NJ STEPS Graduation Requirements. A new Language Arts Proficiency Assessment, along with End of Course exams in math (Algebra I, Algebra II, and Geometry), and science (Biology and Chemistry) would replace the New Jersey High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA).

Teachers and School Leaders: The Steering Committee proposed a partnership with key stakeholders to research, identify, and implement appropriate recruitment initiatives for teachers and education leaders. Additional suggestions include evaluating and improving teacher preparation programs in the state, and evaluating and implementing proven models of professional development for New Jersey educators.

Learning Communities and Personalized Education: The Steering Committee recommends redesigning high schools as “learning communities” that utilize personalized learning approaches to prepare and support students in meeting the new standards and high school graduation requirements. Specific recommendations include providing increased technical assistance to local education leaders, and implementing data-based decision making programs.

P-16 Alignment: The Steering Committee recommends creating a P-16 Council that would work to ensure a seamless and aligned system of public education from preschool through four years of college. This diverse group should include key leaders from P-16 education, business, industry, trade unions, government, parents, and the overall community.

State of New Jersey Commissioner of Education Lucille Davy presented the recommendations included in the High School Redesign Steering Committee’s policy paper to the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education and State Board of Education. “The Steering Committee has a clear vision for public education in New Jersey, which is to educate all students to prepare them to lead productive, fulfilling lives,” said Davy. “The recommendations set forth in this policy paper are the result of extensive research, in-depth consultation with many organizations and individuals throughout the state, and careful consideration of the issues.”

The recommendations of the Steering Committee were derived from two years of public meetings with more than 1,000 educators, members of the public, and education stakeholders, such as the special education and career and technical education communities.

As the report indicates, given budget constraints at the state and local levels, it is expected that additional resources for these recommendations must be found through strategic reallocations. In addition, the report indicates that these reforms are to integrated with the Department of Education’s other school reform initiatives, including the Partnership for 21^st Century Skills Initiative and the Secondary Education Initiative.

For more information visit www.njhighschoolsummit.org

Full report:

http://www.state.nj.us/highereducation/PDFs/HS_Redesign_Report_April_2008.pdf

Young children rely on one sense or another, not a combination, studies find

Unlike adults, children younger than eight can’t integrate different forms of sensory input to improve the accuracy with which they perceive the world around them, according to a pair of studies reported online in Current Biology, a publication of Cell Press, on May 1st.

The findings suggest that the perceptual systems of developing children might require constant recalibration—through the use of one sense to fine-tune another and vice versa, according to the researchers. They might also reflect inherent limitations of the still-developing brain.

“ Kids have to stay calibrated while they are growing all the time—their eyes get farther apart and their limbs longer,” said David Burr of Università Degli Studi di Firenze, who led one of the studies. Under these conditions, “they may use one sense to calibrate the other.”

“ It could be adaptive for humans not to integrate sensory information while they are still developing,” agreed Marko Nardini of the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development at Birkbeck College, University of London. “But there might also be constraints on what children can do. It’s possible that brain development needs to take place to make integration possible.” Nardini led the other of the two studies with colleagues at Oxford University’s Visual Development Unit.

The studies followed earlier findings that showed that adults can integrate information obtained visually with that obtained through the sense of touch, optimally weighting each sense according to its reliability in a given situation.

In the new study, Burr’s team first had children complete a task in which they were asked to judge which of two blocks was taller on the basis of touch or visual information or some combination of the two. In another set of experiments, the children were asked to judge which of two bars was oriented more counterclockwise.

Their studies revealed that the ability to combine sensory information doesn’t develop in children until about the age of eight. Prior to that, integration of visual and touch-derived spatial information (also known as haptic information) is far from optimal, they reported, with either vision or touch dominating totally even in conditions where the dominant sense is far less precise than the other. However, they found no evidence that either vision or touch acts as a “gold standard,” always dominating the other.

In the task involving size discrimination, their results fit with the old notion that ’touch educates vision,“ Burr noted. “At first it looked like that was what was happening,” he said, “but in the case of orientation tasks, the opposite occurred. It’s doesn’t just go in one direction.”

At eight to ten years of age, children’s integrating skills become optimal, as in adults, they showed.

Nardini’s group made a similar discovery while studying the navigating skills of children versus adults. Navigation depends both on attending to visual landmarks and on keeping track of one’s own movement (self-motion), they explained.

In their study, children and adults attempted to return an object to its original place in an arena, using visual landmarks only, non-visual self-motion information only, or both.

Adults—but not four- to five-year-olds or seven- to eight-year-olds—got better at the task when both information sources were available, they found.

Further observations supported the notion that adult behavior was best explained by sensory integration, while children’s behavior suggested they were alternating between using the two types of information. The findings led them to conclude that people can integrate spatial cues nearly optimally to navigate, but that this ability depends on an extended developmental process. “ We already know that kids are more liable to get lost and disoriented,” Nardini said, “but this study suggests that a specific reason for that is poor ability to integrate different kinds of spatial information.”

It might also explain how adults manage to improve on all sorts of tasks over time, he added. “It demonstrates how adults build on their perceptual abilities not just by improving individual senses, but also by getting better at integration.”

Study Shows Children's Web Sites May Be Entertaining, But May Also Make Kids Cry; Most Popular Sites Commercialized; Some 'Sell' Kids' Creations Back to Them

Publishers of many major children's Web sites should do a better job disclosing sales and advertising information to parents, especially as more kids at younger ages go online to play and meet friends, says a study released today by Consumer Reports WebWatch and the Mediatech Foundation of Flemington, N.J. For the study, parents in 10 families used video cameras to keep journals, providing insights into the way children use sites such as Club Penguin, Webkinz, Nick Jr., Barbie.com and others. Footage from those journals, which can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/cwwkids, illustrates how young children respond to advertising and marketing tactics online.

The study, "Like Taking Candy from a Baby: How Young Children Interact with Online Environments," used ethnographic methods and focused on young children, ages 2? to 8. It can be found in its entirety online at: http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/pdfs/kidsonline.pdf

Some key findings:

- Children as young as 2 1/2 years of age are able to go online.

- The most popular young children's sites are moderately to heavily commercialized. When rated by our test parents on a scale from 1 (not commercialized) to 5 (extremely commercialized), the 21 sites considered in this study scored a mean rating of 3.47.

- Web sites frequently tantalize children, presenting enticing options and even threats that their online creations will become inaccessible unless a purchase is made. Some sites show attractive options that invite a click, but lead to a registration form instead. Some sell a child's prior experience - a room they've built for a virtual pet, for instance - back to them, using statements such as, "If you cancel your membership, then your belongings will go into storage and will be automatically retrieved when you re-subscribe."

- Most sites we observed promote the idea of consumerism. The most common technique uses a reward-for-work basis, awarding "points, coins or dollars" for success and achievement that can then be used to "buy" items such as clothing, makeup, big-screen TVs or other accessories for virtual pets or avatars.

- The games we observed vary widely in quality, in educational value, and in their developmental match with children's abilities. Such mismatches often result in frequent cries for help.

"There's no doubt young children love to go online, and we observed examples of wholesome, good quality, Web-delivered content," said Warren Buckleitner, the study's author. "But after watching ten hours of typical online play, we were shocked at the extent of manipulative behavior. This study shows that no one - neither parents nor publishers - really knows what is going on when children start up a browser. Ideally, the sites kids encounter should be designed by people with degrees in child development instead of MBAs."

"There's nothing more painful than watching a young child cry," Buckleitner said. "But unfortunately, that's the end result for too many children who are spending time with 'state-of the-art' children's online content."

The study makes these and other recommendations for parents:

- Keep an eye on the screen. Set up the home computer in a central location so you can see what your child is doing. Lend a hand or suggest an activity that matches your child's interests or abilities and pay attention to the directions his or her activities take.

- Be suspicious of "free" offers. As in the real world, free lunches are rare, and this is a concept children can't understand. Don't expect young children (and many adults) to understand the well-worn caution: "If something looks too good to be true, it probably is."

- Read before you click. Before you or your children click on the "I agree" button, scour terms-of-use agreements and privacy policies to make sure you aren't agreeing to share information you don't want known. At worst, publishers make such disclosures inconvenient to read and awkward, so you are tempted to click an agreement and move on. Those emotions can be amplified when you have an anxious toddler pressing you. Also, don't download software before verifying it won't alter your computer's settings.

"We believe parents need a more complete picture of the Web sites where their young children are spending an increasing amount of time," said Beau Brendler, director of Consumer Reports WebWatch. "One test family spent $1,316 in a year on stuffed animals on a single site. Some sites play for profit on a child's emotions to the degree we saw begging, tantrums and even tears in the videos."

The study will be available at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center's inaugural symposium, "Logging Into the Playground: How Digital Media Are Shaping Children's Learning" on Friday, May 9, in New York City. Details at http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/events/index.html

Methodology

This study used ethnographic methodology and cannot be considered representative of any whole population. A total of 15 children participated in the study from ten families, all residing in Hunterdon County, New Jersey -- six girls and nine boys, ranging in age from 2 years 9 months, to 8 years 3 months, with the mean age just under 5 1/2 years (5.36 years). All families had high-speed Internet access. Nine used Windows operating systems, one used Macintosh.

The 'choking game,' psychological distress and bullying

Ontario teens continue to exhibit troubling behavior

Ontario’s youth are experiencing a different kind of high -- approximately seven percent (an estimated 79,000 students in grades 7 to 12) report participating in a thrill-seeking activity called the “choking game”, which involves self-asphyxiation or having been choked by someone else on purpose. The 2007 Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey (OSDUHS) revealed these new data, as well as indicators and trends on the psychological health of Ontario’s youth, in the Mental Health and Well-Being Report released today by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) for Children’s Mental Health Week.

Other new topics in the 2007 OSDUHS showed that approximately three percent (or 35,000 students) reported a suicide attempt in the past year. About one in ten students rate their mental health as poor, with females more likely to do so than males (16 percent versus 7 percent). About nine percent of students may have a video gaming problem (indicated by symptoms such as loss of control, withdrawal, and disruption to family or school), with males significantly more likely than females to indicate this problem (16 percent versus 3 percent).

As Dr. Jürgen Rehm, senior scientist at CAMH and study spokesperson, explains, “We included questions on the choking game and video gaming to reflect the ever changing behavioural patterns of young Ontarians. Overall, the results are not alarming, but indicate that Ontario youth overall show a relatively high degree of distress and potentially self-harming behavior.”

Dr. David Wolfe, director of CAMH’s Centre for Prevention Science notes that adolescents have always had a fascination with altered states. “Activities such as the choking game are not new, but it is important that parents are aware of these behaviours and are prepared to speak with their children about the dangers of these and other risky activities.”

This year’s report also shows a stable but high rate of elevated psychological distress, with 31 percent of students reporting symptoms of depression, anxiety or social dysfunction. In addition, about 21 percent of students visited a mental health professional a least once during the past year. This is a significant increase from 2005, when only 12 percent of students reported visits.

“This is an encouraging sign,” commented Dr. Rehm, “as it shows, that psychological and mental health problems are less stigmatized, and students and their families become increasingly aware that professional services can help overcome these problems.”

Bullying continues to be a problem with Ontario youth, with stable but elevated rates of approximately 30 percent of students reporting being bullied at school since September. The most prevalent form of being bullied is verbal attacks (23 percent), while four percent are bullied physically, and three percent are usually victims of theft or vandalism.

The report points to the key role parents and teachers play in the development of adolescents. “Bullying continues to be a problem in our schools and can have significant effects on the mental health and well-being of adolescents,” says Dr. Wolfe. “It is crucial that schools find ways to address these forms of abuse and violence, so that students feel safe. Young people need to know that the lines of communication are open and they can speak to school administrators and parents about their problems. And similarly, parents need to be open and honest with kids and arm them with the necessary tools to make healthy decisions."

Executive Summary:

http://www.camh.net/News_events/News_releases_and_media_advisories_and_backgrounders/ExecSummaryMH2007_English_Final.pdf

Ready to Innovate: Are Educators and Executives Aligned on the Creative Readiness of the U.S. Workforce?

November 2007, The Conference Board and Americans for the Arts, in partnership with the American Association of School Administrators, surveyed public school superintendents and American business executives (employers) to identify and compare their views surrounding creativity. Overwhelmingly, both the superintendents who educate future workers and the employers who hire them agree that creativity is increasingly important in U.S. workplaces, yet there is a gap between understanding this truth and putting it into meaningful practice. Among the key findings of this research:

· 85 percent of employers concerned with hiring creative people say they can't find the applicants they seek.

· Employers concerned with hiring creative people rarely use profile tests to assess the creative skills of potential employees. Instead, they rely on face-to-face interviews.

While 97 percent of employers say creativity is of increasing importance, only 72 percent say that hiring creative people is a primary concern.

Article discussing this research:

http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=53690

Democracy at Risk: Calling Federal Role in Education “Inconsistent and Shortsighted,” Education Innovators Propose Alternative Agenda

Report Urges Nation to Pay off Education Debt, Introduce Marshall Plan For Teachers, and Invigorate Research and Community Involvement

Federal education policy is “inconsistent and shortsighted,” despite 25 years of education reform sparked by the release of A Nation at Risk -- and has left the United States further behind than it was in 1983. A report released today by the Forum for Education and Democracy says that we need to transform the federal role in education to meet longstanding student achievement and equity goals. This new role should include fully funding federal commitments to low-income students, investing in a “Marshall plan” for teachers and school leaders, refocusing research on educators’ needs, and deepening community ties to their schools.

The report, Democracy at Risk: The Need for a New Federal Policy in Education, was written by prominent educators and policy experts who have launched effective alternative schools, charter schools, and school improvement networks. It notes that the United States’ education system and democracy are even more at risk than at the release of A Nation at Risk.

Today, the United States ranks 21st of 30 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries in science and 25th in mathematics. The nation has fallen from first to 14th in higher-education participation. Precipitous declines also have taken place outside of school. The report cites research showing that more students live in poverty and lack health care than 35 years ago, and that democratic engagement measured by voter knowledge, trust among citizens, and the strength of social networks is declining.

The report is intended to be a road map for federal policy, to guide a new president, secretary of education, and Congress as they debate the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It builds on lessons learned from other nations and innovative schools created by local educators and community members. Confronting old constraints, communities across the nation have developed new curricula, teaching, and assessment strategies; changed how schools operate; and created learning communities that could drive ongoing improvement. Under federal policy today, these kinds of schools are constrained rather than enabled, the report challenges.

“While other countries have made strategic investments and transformed their schools to produce results, we have demanded results without investing in or transforming schooling,” says Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University, who is a convener of the Forum and served as a co-author of the report. Other authors include notable education scholars and innovators.

The report argues that many promising initiatives have been developed recently, but a long-term policy to take them to scale has been absent. A new strategy would require intensive and highly focused research and development; a skilled teaching and leadership force; support for new organizational designs; and investments in low-wealth schools to ensure they have the capacity to maintain productive strategies.

“Checklists and sanctions do not help communities develop each student’s unique potential,” said George Wood, the Forum’s executive director and principal of Federal Hocking Middle School in Stewart, Ohio. “This report is about empowering every community to provide a world-class education to every student.”

Key Recommendations

Paying off the education debt. “Just as questionable fiscal policies have saddled our young people with an enormous monetary debt, our nation faces a huge educational debt resulting from hundreds of years of unequal educational and economic opportunity,” the report says. By underfunding the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and other statutes, the federal government has reneged on its commitment to advance equity. The government pledged to fund 40 percent of the extra costs of educating students with additional needs, but currently only funds 17 percent. In addition to meeting this obligation, the government should link state funding to increases in equity, create an “opportunity index” that evaluates school resources, alongside reports of student progress. It also should invest in out-of-school learning supports, including health care for children and early learning opportunities.

Investing in a new “Marshall plan” for teachers and school leaders. For $4 billion, the government could underwrite the preparation of 40,000 teachers annually, as well as seed 100 top-quality urban teacher education programs, ensure mentors for every new teacher hired, and dramatically improve professional learning opportunities for teachers and principals. The report also calls for the creation of a national school leadership academy, a West Point for education leaders.

Supporting education research and innovation. The federal government needs to become much more actively involved in gathering and sharing promising educational practices to help educators. Federal assistance can support states’ development of innovative assessments that measure problem-solving and critical thinking skills. It should return the National Assessment for Educational Progress to its original form, as an open-ended performance assessment. The federal government also should give sustained attention to helping educators’ better serve English-language learners and special-needs students. “We need to restore the balance between research that tells us how we are doing and research that tells us what we can do to improve education,” said Sharon Robinson, president of the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education and a former assistant secretary of education. “With the federal government’s support, we can do a much better job of trying to evaluate good ideas and share them with educators.”

Engaging and educating local communities. The federal government should engage in a coordination offensive, making schools true hubs of communities and gateways to social services for students and community members. It can provide incentives for community-directed experimentation and participation in school change, urge employers to give parents a day of leave each year to meet with teachers and participate in school life, and provide much-needed resources, such as school translators for parents.

A Net Savings for the Nation Taking lessons from successful nations and our own recent past, Democracy at Risk documents what it would take to provide high-quality teaching and eliminate equity gaps. It provides data indicating that equity gaps were nearly eliminated in the 1970s, and can be again. The report’s proposals can be funded for a total of $29 billion annually, or less than one month in Iraq or 10 percent of the cost overruns indentified in federal weapons programs. The spending will more than pay for itself in increased economic activity and reduced spending on remediation programs. Lost wages and taxes and increased social service costs for dropouts cost the nation $200 billion annually. Deficits in basic skills for high schools graduates cost the nation another $16 billion in remediation and lost productivity. In the long run, these proposals would save far more than they cost.

STUDY: KIDS THINK EYEGLASSES MAKE OTHER KIDS LOOK SMART

Young children tend to think that other kids with glasses look smarter than kids who don’t wear glasses, according to a new study.

Children between the ages of 6 and 10 who were surveyed for the study also thought that kids wearing glasses looked more honest than children who don’t wear glasses.

Otherwise, the survey suggested that children don’t tend to judge the attractiveness of their peers who wear glasses when asked about their appearance, potential as a playmate or likely athletic abilities.

The findings might give children some comfort when they are fitted with their first pair of eyeglasses, said lead study author Jeffrey Walline, assistant professor of optometry at Ohio State University.

“If the impression of looking smarter will appeal to a child, I would use that information and tell the child it is based on research,” Walline said. “Most kids getting glasses for the first time are sensitive about how they’re going to look. Some kids simply refuse to wear glasses because they think they’ll look ugly.”

The study is published in the May issue of the journal Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics.

Walline surveyed children in this age range because they are more likely to be prescribed eyeglasses than contact lenses. Generally, children with nearsightedness are diagnosed with myopia and receive their first corrective lenses at around age 8. Teen-agers were not surveyed because they are routinely fitted with contact lenses if they want them.

For the study, Walline and colleagues assembled a series of 24 pairs of pictures of children for comparison. The children in each pair differed by gender and ethnicity, and each pair included one child with glasses and one child without glasses.

Eighty young children – 42 girls and 38 boys – were surveyed. Of those, 30 kids (38 percent) wore glasses, 34 had at least one sibling with glasses and almost two-thirds had at least one parent who wore glasses.

The questionnaire featured six questions, many based on similar studies in adults. When presented with each pair of photos, the participants were asked which of the two children pictured: would you rather play with; looks smarter; looks better at playing sports; do you think is better looking; looks more shy; and looks more honest?

On average, two thirds of the participating children said they thought that kids wearing glasses looked smarter than kids not wearing glasses. And 57 percent of the participants said they thought kids with glasses appeared to be more honest. Both kids with and without glasses thought other kids wearing glasses looked smarter.

Walline said the findings suggest that media portrayals associating spectacles with intelligence may be reinforcing a stereotype that even young children accept.

In the case of the other four questions in the survey, the answers were not consistent enough to suggest that glasses made a difference in how the kids felt about the pictures they were examining.

Other trends emerged, however, that had nothing to do with whether the kids in the pictures were wearing glasses and which supported conventional wisdom about kids’ opinions. Both boys and girls said they thought that boys appeared to be better at playing sports. Boys indicated they would rather play with boys, and girls said they would prefer playing with girls. Both boys and girls thought the opposite gender looked more shy. Girls also were more likely than boys to pick their own gender when asked which child looked more honest.

The fact that the question of attractiveness yielded no significantly different answers for children with or without glasses suggests that kids don’t automatically consider kids with glasses to be unattractive, Walline said.

“The concern about attractiveness with glasses seems to be more internal to a particular child rather than an indicator of how they’ll feel about other people who wear glasses,” Walline said.

Both Boys and Girls Negatively Affected By Sexual Harassment

A new study in Psychology of Women Quarterly explored the outcomes of sexual harassment on both boys and girls. While girls were harassed more frequently, boys were indirectly yet negatively affected through a school climate that tolerates the harassment of girls.

The study, led by Alayne J. Ormerod, PhD, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, examined the relationship among peer-to-peer sexual harassment, school climate, adult-to-student harassment, and outcomes for the students. Approximately 300 girls and 250 boys were surveyed from seven public high schools in the Midwest.

Girls had more frequent, upsetting experiences of peer harassment. Girls also reported more frequent and distressing harassment from school personnel than boys. Male students reported fewer, less upsetting experiences of harassment. Consequently, they had fewer stress-related consequences directly associated with harassment.

However, the damaging effects of harassment extended beyond those who were directly harmed by it. For girls and boys, a school climate associated with experiences of sexual harassment was related to feeling unsafe while at school, withdrawal from school, and feelings of lowered self-esteem.

For boys, a negative climate, that is, a climate tolerating the harassment of girls, was the major variable associated with negative psychological, health and educational outcomes. Given that boys are harassed less frequently and rate their experiences as less upsetting, these findings suggest that boys may suffer negative consequences regardless of whether they are the targets of harassment.

“We hope these findings inform teachers, administrators, and policy makers for high schools when they develop policy and procedures related to sexual harassment,” the authors conclude. “When students believe that teachers and administrators do not actively intervene in harassing behavior toward girls, it has negative consequences for all students: both boys and girls, and targets and non-targets.”

Post 9/11: NYC Muslim Public School Students Feel Safe, But Hyper-Aware of Religious Identity

Contrary to expectations – and the fears of many parents -- Muslim youth have generally felt comfortable, safe and fairly content in New York City public schools since the events of September 11^th, 2001, according to a new study conducted by researchers at Teachers College. Yet these young people – even those who are not religious -- have been made hyper-conscious of their religious identity.

The results of the study -- Muslim Youth in New York City Public Schools: Religiosity, Education and Civic Belonging –were presented and discussed on April 30^th at an all-day conference at Teachers College.

About one in 10 students in New York City’s public schools is Muslim – more than 100,000 in all. More than 600 Muslim and non-Muslim students in public and private schools were surveyed for the Teachers College study, which also included focus groups and ethnography. The study found that Muslim youth in public schools have high self esteem, perform well or better academically than their non-Muslim peers and are active in extra-curricular activities. The vast majority (95 percent) report that some, most or all of their school friends are non-Muslim, while seven in ten non-Muslim students surveyed reported that some of their friends are Muslim.

Yet the post-9/11 environment has heightened the value of Islam as a marker of identification for Muslim students.

“These kids are hyper-conscious of being Muslim whether they are religious or not,” says Louis Cristillo, the Teachers College faculty member who led the three-year study. “It’s as if they’re another racial group – ‘the Muslims.’ They themselves will say ‘the Muslims’ and ‘the Americans’ and ‘the white folks.’ But that hyper consciousness has not been imposed upon them in their schools. It’s generated by the constant news coverage of their religion, typically framed by very negative coverage. If you’re a Muslim, you’re in the news every single day, and it’s been like that since 9/11.”

Among the study’s other key findings:

· Eight in ten Muslim public school students surveyed in the study think their schools are “pretty cool” and 85 percent say they feel safe. When asked in focus groups to say if they would switch to any other school if given the chance, virtually all the students said they like would stay where they are.

· Yet the school environment isn’t wholly welcoming. Seventeen percent of Muslim public school students, most of whom are of either African American, Arab or South Asian ancestry, report having been the object of bigotry, often in the shape of teasing or offensive taunting about Islam or being a “terrorist.” Arab students are twice as likely to be targeted, and girls more often than boys.

· Most Muslim students feel pretty comfortable with their Muslim identities and harbor few serious doubts about their religious convictions. Only 12 percent of those in public schools and 9 percent of those in private schools were prone to doubting the tenets of Islam, compared to 30 percent of non-Muslims who expressed doubts in their faith traditions. Muslim students were about half as likely as Christian students to admit some doubts.

· Yet nearly one in three Muslim public school students say that 9/11 made them feel uncomfortable about their Muslim identity. And while 43 percent feel that Americans in general are respectful and tolerant towards them, 69 percent thinks that mainstream society is suspicious of them, and nearly all feel that discrimination against Muslim Americans has increased since 9/11. Nearly two-thirds believe that a Muslim wearing Islamic attire would face discrimination in the workplace.

· Twenty-eight percent of Muslim students report being stopped by a law enforcement officer as a result of racial profiling; 12 percent report being turned down for a job; 11 percent report suffering the destruction of property; and 7 percent said they have been physically assaulted.

· Only 9 percent of Muslim students report having tried to pass as someone of a different ethnic or racial group, but 29 percent have at some point used a non-Muslim sounding name.

Complete study:

http://www.tc.columbia.edu/i/media/6581_MUSNYCReport.pdf

Estimated 750,000 Problem Gamblers Among America's Youth

Gambling activity is widespread among U.S. adolescents and young adults ages 14 through 21, according to a study conducted by researchers at the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions (RIA).

Results of the first national survey of its kind show problem gambling -- described as gambling with three or more negative consequences (for example, gambling more than you intended or stealing money to gamble) in the past year -- occurring at a rate of 2.1 percent among youth 14 to 21. That percentage projects to approximately 750,000 young problem gamblers nationwide.

In addition, 11 percent of the youth surveyed gambled twice per week or more, a rate that describes frequent gambling. Sixty-eight percent of the youth interviewed reported that they had gambled at least once in the past year.

"In a society where young people are increasingly exposed to gambling influences, there is cause for concern," said John W. Welte, Ph.D., principal investigator on the study.

The results were available on line in December 2007 and will be published in the June 2008 issue of the Journal of Gambling Studies.

A total of 2,274 U.S. youth were surveyed from August 2005 through January 2007 for this study. Interviews were conducted in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The national, random-digit-dial telephone survey was sampled from all phone numbers in the U.S.

The rates of problem gambling found in the study are not, in fact, as high as the rates of problem gambling found in eight previous studies conducted in smaller jurisdictions by other research teams, according to Welte. Five of those studies were school surveys that obtained data only from youth attending that school or residing in one state or one region of the country. Others were telephone surveys using age-targeted population samples. Welte said, "The 2.1 percent rate of problem gambling for our national study has a 95 percent confidence level, making it unlikely that we found a lower problem gambling rate by chance."

Welte is a senior research scientist at RIA and a national expert in the epidemiology of substance abuse and gambling. His co-investigator on the study is Grace M. Barnes, Ph.D., a senior research scientist at RIA and a national expert in substance use pertaining to adolescents, parenting and families.

"As might be expected, all statistically significant results showed that greater gambling involvement is associated with aging into an adult status," Welte stated. "In fact, gambling may be associated with the transition into adulthood."

The RIA researchers examined pivotal times of life for youth (employment, student status, living independently from parents, and marriage) and found gambling increased with each major life change. Those who worked full-time were more likely to gamble, those who were not students were more likely to gamble frequently (twice a week or more) and those who lived independently were more likely to gamble and to be problem gamblers (three or more negative consequences during the past year).

"We compared problem gambling rates among youth with problem gambling rates among adults from our national study of U.S. adults in 2000," Welte said. "As far as gender, it seems likely that females' gambling involvement tends to emerge in adulthood, while male involvement can be high in adolescence. We found identical problem gambling rates for adult males and young males (4 percent). We found adult females gambling rates were much higher (3 percent) than that of young females (less than one-tenth of a percent). In other words, problem gambling is almost non-existent among female adolescents and young adults."

Black youth were less likely to have gambled than white youth; but if they gambled, it was likely to be more frequent (30 percent vs. 12 percent respectively). Asians as a racial group showed the lowest gambling involvement. Native Americans were found to have a higher rate of frequent gambling (28 percent) when compared to whites (9 percent) as well as to be higher on measures of problem gambling. This could be a reflection of the rapid spread of legal gambling venues on Native American reservations. Generally, low socioeconomic groups were less like to gamble, but if they did, were more likely to be problem gamblers. The highest socioeconomic groups are associated with the lowest gambling involvement.

Religion was related to having gambled in the past year with every religious group except Catholics, who were less likely than Protestants (except Baptists), to have gambled at all. Other religions (which include Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist, Jehovah's Witnesses and others) had a lower rate of having gambling in the past year (42 percent), but if they gambled, they had higher rates of frequent gambling than any other religious group. Similarly, Baptists were less likely than other Protestants to have gambled in the past year, but if they gambled, they had higher rates of frequent gambling. The study was funded by a $1.8 million grant from the National Institute on Mental Health.

After-school Activity Reduces Excess Weight Gain in Adolescent Girls

The middle school years is the time when time kids spend begin to spend less time in physical activity, a growing concern as youth obesity rates rise. A new study of middle school girls shows that after-school programs, in addition to school physical education classes, may be one answer to reducing obesity in teens. The just-released results of the Trial of Activity for Adolescent Girls (TAAG) showed that moderate to vigorous after-school physical activity, in programs that can range from hip hop dancing to surfing, can modestly increase the amount of physical activity for young teenage girls, to the point that it could prevent excess weight gain of about two pounds per year. If sustained, that extra activity could prevent a girl from becoming overweight as a teenager or adult. Results are published in the article, “Promoting Physical Activity in Middle School Girls,” in the March issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Deborah Young, professor and interim chair of the department of epidemiology and biostatistics in the University of Maryland, College Park, School of Public Health, was a researcher on the TAAG study. Below she answers questions about the study and increasing physical activity in adolescent girls.

BACKGROUND: The TAAG study found that programs which linked schools in six geographic regions of the U.S. with community partners (such as the YMCA or YWCA, local health clubs, and community recreation centers) increased time spent in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity among the middle-school female students by about two minutes per day, or 80 calories a week. This finding occurred after three years of the intervention, but not after two years.

TAAG showed a reduction of 8.2 minutes of sedentary behavior in girls in the intervention schools. Furthermore, the best results were seen in programs offered between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays, which suggest that after-school programs are more effective than programs offered at other times, such as morning weekdays and weekends. The study results, say the authors, support the need for schools and community programs to work together to provide opportunities for physical activity programs in after-school settings. The study was supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health.

Professor Deborah Young  University of Maryland, College Park School of Public Health

Q: Why did you study only girls? Young: While physical activity declines in both boys and girls across adolescence,  it declines at a greater rate in girls. Also, previous studies indicate that boys and girls at this age tend to prefer different types of activities and have different reasons for being active. So we would have had to design distinct programs for boys if we included them.

Q: What was the purpose of studying after-school activities and not just school phys ed programs? Young: We wanted to take a comprehensive approach to altering the environment in which girls are likely to be physically active. Physical education is often only conducted two to three times per week in the schools. A high quality PE class may only get 50 percent of the time in physical activity -- which may be less than 20 minutes or so. So while a major focus of TAAG was on improving physical activity in PE class, we also wanted to provide more opportunities for girls to be active. From early studies we did preparing for TAAG, we found that there weren't many after-school physical activity opportunities for girls at this age -- especially for girls who are "athletes" or play on highly skilled travel teams. So providing after-school programs filled a gap.

Q: What did you find out about motivating girls at this age to stick with physical activity? Young: To get and keep girls active, we took a comprehensive approach. We developed lessons for the teachers to teach on motivation and goal setting, and gave students an opportunity to practice those skills. We worked with the PE teachers to promote choice in PE class, which from early work the girls said they would like. It might have been a choice of skill level or a choice of activities during class. Many of the programs were short -- sometimes only four weeks in length -- so girls wouldn't get bored. The promotional campaigns were designed to be motivational. For example, in some schools, classes competed against each other in the pedometer challenge.

Q: What kinds of activities did they do? Young: After school programs included Hip-Hop dance, walking clubs, lacrosse clinics, swimming programs, training for a 5K road race. One site had surfing lessons! Schools and community agencies worked to provide a number of different activities that would appeal to different girls -- athletes and non-athletes.

Q: The prevention of weight gain of two pounds a year seems small. What does this mean in the big picture? Young: Prevention of weight gain wasn't a goal of the study, so if we were aiming to influence weight gain we might have seen even greater results. However, given the rise of the obesity epidemic, any weight gain prevention on a population level is important. Also, two pounds per year add up to 20 lbs in 10 years -- an amount that could significantly impact an adult's health status.

Q: The paper points to difficulty of funding programs like this. What are some ways communities might address that challenge? Young: Committed volunteers can be a valuable resource. If a responsible adult can lead a physical activity class even for as few as four weeks, that's a start. The more volunteers that can do this, more programs can be provided. Transportation to and from off-site programs, like the YMCA, is always a problem -- so again, working with volunteers to schedule carpools can help. At the broader level, the comprehensive approach needs to be taken at the school level. If schools can find funds to pay a stipend to teachers to coordinate programs like TAAG and ensure that teachers are trained to implement programs, the programs are more likely to be sustained.

Q: Were you surprised by any of the results of the study? Young: We were surprised that the control group at the end of the second year of the intervention was as active as it was. We didn't see changes after two intervention years, but did after three years, which we believe was because of an especially active control group. We were also somewhat surprised that at the third year of intervention, after which the program champion directed the intervention, physical activity levels in the intervention schools were identical to the second year, in which there was a more full implementation of the program.

Q: Where can students and families find more information about the value of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity? Young: There are a number of excellent web sites -- including this by NHLBI:  http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/heart/obesity/wecan/