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November 2008 No. 50 Copyright © 2008 AICE |
It All Adds Up: Early Achievement in Math May Identify
Future Scientists and Engineers
10 years on, high-school social skills predict better
earnings than test scores
Common Standards for K-12 Education?: Considering
the Evidence: Summary of a Workshop Series
GED Testing Sees Its Highest Test-Taker Increase in
Seven Years, New Report Finds
Generational Gains in Postsecondary Education
Appear To Have Stalled, New ACE Report Finds
Demography Defeated: Florida's K-12
Reforms and Their Lessons for the Nation
Texas Public School Attrition Study, 2007-08 by
IDRA
Facing fears early may reduce childhood anxiety
New Study Explores Social Comparison in Early
Childhood
More Effective Treatment Identified for
Common Childhood Vision Disorder
Numbers and Types of Public Elementary and Secondary Schools From the Common Core of Data: School Year 2006-07 - First Look
First-Ever Comparison: Student Math Achievement in 11 Major U.S. Cities Versus Their International Peers
Students in Austin,
Boston, Charlotte, Houston, New York and San Diego Perform Better or Comparable
with International Peers in 4th and 8th Grades
Deficiencies in Student
Math Literacy Pose Potential Competitive
Disadvantage in Global
Marketplace
Students in six major U.S. cities are performing on par or better in mathematics than their peers in other countries in grades 4 and 8, according to a new study by the American Institutes for Research (AIR). However, students from five other major cities are not faring as well, and overall, U.S. student performance in mathematics falls off from elementary to middle school grades — and remains behind many industrialized nations, particularly Asian nations.
The
AIR study offers the first comparison between students from large U.S. cities
and their international peers. The study compares U.S. 4th grade students with
their counterparts in 24 countries and 8th grade students with peers in 45
countries.
The
study found that students in grades 4 and 8 from Austin, Boston, Charlotte,
Houston, New York and San Diego performed better or on par with their peers in
other countries. Students from Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, the District of
Columbia and Los Angeles performed below the international average.
When
comparing students who are “proficient” on two math benchmarks, the United
States places higher than the international average at grade 4 and grade 8.
However, the nation’s performance overall was significantly lower than that for
Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, Japan and the Flemish portion of Belgium at grade
4; for grade 8, the nation’s students also had fallen behind the Republic of
Korea, the Netherlands and Hungary.
The
AIR study uses a statistical linking strategy to combine results from the
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in 2003 and the Trends in
International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in 2003, when both
assessments were conducted within the United States in the same grades. Once
the linking was completed, it was possible to compare the more recent 2007 NAEP
results with the TIMSS results of 2003. This strategy led to meaningful
comparisons of urban districts and student performance nationally and
internationally at grades 4 and 8, using the index of the percent of students
at or above “proficient” levels as defined by the NAEP. The index was
calculated across all nations that participate in TIMSS, marking the first
opportunity for international math comparisons.
The
report, Counting on the Future: International Benchmarks in Mathematics for
American School Districts, uses comparisons to the overall average of 24 countries’
achievement at grade 4, and 45 countries at grade 8, but also looked at
comparisons with the average of 10 Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) countries at grade 4, and 12 OECD countries at grade 8. The
11 districts — Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Boston; Charlotte, N.C.; Chicago;
Cleveland; the District of Columbia; Houston; Los Angeles; New York; and San
Diego — voluntarily participated in the 2007 NAEP Trial Urban District
Assessment (TUDA) in Mathematics.
There
is much room for improvement. Overall, the United States and the 11 districts
fall in the middle of the international rankings at grades 4 and 8 — but some
of the nations included are developing countries with few resources, taking
part in their first international large-scale assessment. When compared with
“peer” OECD countries, the United States and the 11 districts are seen to have
lower rankings.
Full
report:
http://www.air.org/news/documents/Counting%20on%20the%20Future.pdf
It All Adds Up: Early Achievement in Math May Identify Future Scientists and Engineers
New
research published in the October issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the
Association for Psychological Science, suggests that there may be a way to
identify budding scientists and engineers and thus be able to guide them, from
a young age, to careers that will enable them to make the most of their
abilities.
Vanderbilt
University psychologists Gregory Park, David Lubinski and Camilla P. Benbow
wanted to see if early mathematical reasoning ability would be predictive of
future accomplishments in scientific and technical fields. The researchers
identified 1500 young adolescents who had scored in the top 1% on the math
portion of the SAT. Twenty-five years later, the researchers looked to see how
many of those youths had gone on to publish articles in peer-reviewed journals,
receive advanced degrees and earn patents. The researchers grouped the
participants according to the degrees they had earned, then examined within
each group the relationship between SAT math scores and scientific creativity
(as determined by journal publications and patents earned).
The
researchers found that there were more peer-reviewed journal authors and patent
holders in the doctorate group compared to the bachelor’s and master’s degree
groups. However, more interesting was the finding that within each advanced degree
group, adolescents who had scored highest on the SAT math test were most likely
to have authored a peer-reviewed scientific publication or to have earned a
patent as adults. Also, when the researchers looked only at participants who
earned graduate degrees from schools ranked in the top 15 for Science,
Technology, Engineering and Mathematics graduate programs, the participants who
scored highest on the SAT math test still achieved more scientific
accomplishments as adults.
The
authors note that “educational credentials are clearly important, as are
educational opportunities at outstanding universities, but that they cannot
fully substitute for ability. Our results suggest that, among other things,
individual differences in cognitive ability (even when measured in early
adolescence) are important to take into account when identifying and modeling
exceptional scientific and technical human capital.”
The
authors conclude that these findings are relevant because they “come at a time
when national initiatives and industries are searching for new methods to
identify and harness creative potential, particularly in science and
technology.”
Aligning
mathematics assessment standards
Five new reports from REL Southwest
that align mathematics assessment standards in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana,
Okalahoma, and New Mexico with the 2009 National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP) mathematics framework. These reports look at the extent to
which current state assessments standards cover the content on which the 2009
NAEP assessments will be based.
* Aligning mathematics assessment
standards: Texas and the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP)
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?projectID=168&productID=120
* Aligning mathematics assessment
standards: Arkansas and the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP)
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?projectID=168&productID=119
* Aligning mathematics assessment
standards: Louisiana and the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP)
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?projectID=168&productID=118
* Aligning mathematics assessment
standards: Oklahoma and the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP)
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?projectID=168&productID=117
* Aligning mathematics assessment
standards: New Mexico and the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP)
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?projectID=168&productID=116
“COUNTING ON GRADUATION”: MOST STATES ARE SETTING LOW EXPECTATIONS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION RATES
Among
industrialized nations, the United States is the only country in which today’s
young people are less likely than their parents to have earned a high school
diploma. Reversing this trend could hardly be more urgent.
Yet
policymakers in many states are setting graduation improvement targets that
won’t get our young people—or our nation—ready to compete in the
knowledge-driven world of the 21st century. According to “Counting
on Graduation,” a new report released today by The Education Trust, states must
ratchet up expectations for high school graduation, substantially and immediately.
Federal
law requires states to set benchmarks for improvements in reading and math
achievement and for graduating high school students on time. However, the
various methods states use to compute graduation rates obscure the reality that
too few students are completing high school on time. Nationally, one of every
four high school students fails to graduate on time. For African-American and
Latino students, that rate increases to more than one in three.
New
federal regulations, which are expected within the month, are likely to
increase transparency in this area by requiring all states to use a single,
reliable graduation rate calculation for all states and to ask schools to meet
graduation goals for specific groups of students. Currently, schools base
accountability only on overall averages, which ignores gaps between groups. So
the new regulations will be an important step forward.
However,
most state accountability systems still exhibit a surprising indifference
toward improving the high school graduation rates—and thus, the life chances—of
the state’s young people. And that has to change.
States have set a wide range of graduation-rate goals, from a
low of 50 percent in Nevada to a high of 95 percent in Indiana. But even goals
that appear impressive can be irrelevant when a state sets the accountability
bar low for year-to-year improvement. And more than half of all states have set annual
targets so low that they accept any progress at all from the previous
year.
For
example, if the state-set minimum target were met each year:
·
North Carolina’s high schools would not achieve the state’s current overall
graduation-rate goal until the year 2103. It would take an additional 95 years
for the state’s African-American students and 180 years for its Latino students
to reach the same goal.
·
African-American students in Maryland would reach their state’s goal in the
year 3117.
·
In Delaware, New Mexico and South Carolina, no student group will ever actually have to reach
the state goal as long as their current graduation rate is sustained each year.
Georgia,
for example, has abandoned lower expectations and set a new goal of 100 percent
graduation rates for every student group by 2014. To help schools achieve this,
the state launched an initiative that allows each high school to employ a
full-time graduation “coach.” Coaches identify students who show early signs of
dropping out, and work with them to develop individual achievement and
graduation plans. The coaches also provide training for parents and develop
partnerships with community organizations.
In
Mississippi earlier this year, the governor, legislators, and state and local
education and community leaders came together for a dropout prevention summit
held in conjunction with America’s Promise Alliance, a group that supports
states in raising high school graduation rates. The state legislature also
opened an office of dropout prevention within the state department of education
and set a goal to cut their dropout rate in half over the next five years. In
addition, each school district is being asked to develop a dropout-prevention
plan in consultation with educators, students and community members.
Full
report:
10 years on, high-school social skills predict better earnings than test scores
Ten
years after graduation, high-school students who had been rated as
conscientious and cooperative by their teachers were earning more than
classmates who had similar test scores but fewer social skills, said a new
University of Illinois study.
The
study's findings challenge the idea that racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic gaps
in educational attainment and earnings can be narrowed solely by emphasizing
cognitive skills, said Christy Lleras, a University of Illinois assistant
professor of human and community development.
"It's
important to note that good schools do more than teach reading, writing, and
math. They socialize students and provide the kinds of learning opportunities
that help them to become good citizens and to be successful in the labor
market," she said.
"Unless
we address the differences in school climates and curriculum that foster good
work habits and other social skills, we're doing a huge disservice to
low-income kids who may be entering the labor market right after high school,
especially in our increasingly service-oriented economy," Lleras added.
She
cited responses to employer surveys that stress the need for workers who can
get along well with each other and get along well with the public.
The
U of I study analyzed data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study,
which followed a diverse group of 11,000 tenth graders for 10 years, tracking
not only their scores on standard achievement tests but teacher appraisals of
such qualities as the students' work habits, their ability to relate well to
peers, and their participation in extracurricular activities, a proxy for the
ability to interact well with both students and adults.
The
teachers' assessments were then compared with the students' self-reported
educational attainments and earnings 10 years after high-school graduation.
Even
after controlling for students' achievement test scores, family socioeconomic
status, and educational attainment, Lleras found that such social skills as
conscientiousness, cooperativeness, and motivation were as important as test
scores for success in the workplace.
"You
could argue that the reason these behaviors matter is that kids who display
them are more likely to obtain a college degree and in turn have higher
earnings. Certainly that is part of it, but even after I controlled for
educational attainment, there were still significant effects," she said.
To
measure conscientiousness, the researcher ranked teacher responses to such
questions as: Does this student usually work hard for good grades? How often
does the student complete homework assignments? How often is this student tardy
to class?
To
measure cooperativeness and sociability, she ranked teacher assessments of how
well a student related to other students. Teachers were also asked to rank a
student's motivation or passivity.
Participation
in sports and school organizations also had strong effects on a student's
future educational and occupational success.
"For
African American and Hispanic students only, participation in fine arts led to
significantly better earnings compared to whites. This suggests that different
activities teach kids different kinds of skills and learned behaviors,"
she said.
Lleras
also emphasized the importance of improving school quality.
"Low-income
and racial minority students continue to be concentrated in lower-quality
schools with fewer opportunities for extracurricular participation, larger
class sizes, and lower teacher quality, all factors that are correlated with
poorer school-related attitudes and behavior," she said.
"If
the few resources that low-performing schools have are used solely for testing
and preparing students for tests, which is what many schools are doing to meet
the requirements set forth in No Child Left Behind, these schools will continue
to face challenges," she said.
"My
findings show that the most successful students are those who have not only
high achievement test scores but also the kinds of social skills and behaviors
that are highly rewarded by employers in the workplace," she said.
The
study appeared in the September issue of Social Science Research.
One
Dream, Two Realities
Perspectives of Parents on America's High Schools
Today
in America, there are approximately 25 million parents who have children in
American high schools. Their role in the educational achievement of their children
is profound. Students with involved parents, regardless of their family income
or background, are more likely to earn higher grades and test scores, enroll in
higher level classes, attend school and pass their classes, develop better
social skills, graduate from high school, attend college, and find productive
work. The opposite is true for students whose parents are less engaged.
Research confirms what common sense suggests: parents are central to the
educational success of their children.
Regardless
of incomes, education, and performance at the school, parents believe that
their involvement is central to their child's academic success. But parents
need an access point — a way in — and many are not finding it in their child's
school. Parents are clearly ready to help their children succeed academically,
but they need better information and tools from the schools to do so — ranging
from how to help with homework to how to get into college.
Full
report:
http://www.civicenterprises.net/pdfs/onedream.pdf
Common Standards for K-12 Education?: Considering the Evidence: Summary of a Workshop Series
Standards-based
accountability has become a central feature of the public education system in
each state and is a theme of national discussions about how achievement for all
students can be improved and achievement gaps narrowed. Questions remain,
however, about the implementation of standards and accountability systems and
about whether their potential benefits have been fully realized. Each of the 50
states has adopted its own set of standards, and though there is overlap among
them, there is also wide variation in the ways states have devised and
implemented their systems. This variety may have both advantages and
disadvantages, but it nevertheless raises a fundamental question: Is the
establishment of common K-12 academic standards, which states could voluntarily
adopt, the logical next step for standards-based reform?
The
goal of this book is not to answer the policy question of whether or not common
standards would be a good idea. Rather, the book provides an objective look at
the available evidence regarding the ways in which standards are currently
functioning, the strategies that might be used to pursue common standards, and
the issues that doing so might present.
Complete
book:
http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12462#toc
GED Testing Sees Its Highest Test-Taker Increase in Seven Years, New Report Finds
The
number of adults who took the GED Tests in 2007 rose to nearly 729,000, and
almost a half million adults passed the test battery during the same period.
According to the 2007 GED® Testing Program Statistical Report, this is the highest
annual number of adults who have tested and the highest number who passed the
test battery since 2001. Just over 714,000 adults tested in 2006, for an
increase of almost 15,000.
U.S.
programs that significantly increased the amount of adult testers in 2007 were
Indiana, Mississippi, Connecticut, Nevada and Florida. Each state reported at
least a 10 percent increase. Additionally, 10 states reported an above-average
passing rate of 85 percent or higher in 2007: Iowa, Delaware, Kansas, Vermont,
Wyoming, Alaska, Idaho, Maine, North Carolina and Oregon. Administrators in
these states credit flexible program schedules and test preparation materials
such as free practice tests, one-on-one preparation and the Official GED Practice
Test (OPT) as the essential tools for facilitating higher pass rates.
The
2000 U.S. Census data indicates that more than 30 million adults—more than 16
percent—of the U.S. population are without a high school credential. A
separate report produced by Education Week estimated that more than 1 million
students would fail to graduate high school in the 2006-07 school year.
The 2007 GED® Testing Program Statistical Report is available as a
complimentary PDF download at
http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=GEDTS&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=28583
Generational Gains in Postsecondary Education Appear To Have Stalled, New ACE Report Finds
The
tradition of young adults in the United States attaining higher levels of
education than previous generations appears to have stalled, and for far too
many people of color, the percentage of young adults with some type of
postsecondary degree compared with older adults has actually fallen, a new
report by the American Council on Education (ACE) concludes.
According
to the Minorities in Higher Education 2008 Twenty-third Status Report, the percentage of young
adults aged 25 to 29 and older adults aged 30 and above with at least an
associate degree in 2006 was about the same, approximately 35 percent. For
Hispanics and American Indians, young adults have even less education than
previous generations.
In
2006, among older Hispanics, 18 percent had at least an associate degree, but
just 16 percent of young Hispanics had reached that same educational threshold.
Among American Indians, 21 percent of older adults had at least an associate
degree compared with 18 percent of young adults.
The
postsecondary educational attainment rates of African Americans remained
relatively the same for both age groups, at approximately 24 percent. Asian
Americans and whites were the only two groups where young adults were more
educated than prior generations. Sixty-six percent of young Asian Americans had
at least an associate degree compared with 54 percent of older Asian Americans.
The percentages for whites were 41 percent for young adults and 37 percent for
older adults.
“It
appears we are at a tipping point in our nation’s history,” said ACE President
Molly Corbett Broad. “One of the core tenets of the American dream is the hope
that younger generations, who’ve had greater opportunities for educational
advancement than their parents and grandparents, will be better off than the
generations before them, yet this report shows that aspiration is at serious
risk.”
The
examination of postsecondary attainment between young and older adults is one
of several new features found in this year’s report. It also contains
enrollment rates for Asian Americans and American Indians for the first time.
Previous reports were unable to do so because estimates could not be made
reliably due to small sample size.
The Minorities in Higher Education 2008 Twenty-third Status Report, made possible with
support from the GE Foundation, is widely recognized as the most authoritative
national source of information on advances made by students of color in higher
education. The report summarizes trends in high school completion, college enrollment,
college persistence, degrees conferred and higher education employment. The
report uses data from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for
Education Statistics (NCES) and the U.S. Census Bureau.
Among
the Report’s Key Findings:
·
Total minority enrollment
at the nation’s colleges and universities rose by 50 percent from 3.4 million
students to 5 million students between 1995 and 2005. White enrollment
increased from 9.9 million to 10.7 million, a gain of 8 percent.
·
Students of color made up
29 percent of the nearly 17.5 million students on America’s campuses.
·
Despite significant gains
in college enrollment rates for young people from all races, progress was
uneven and gaps widened. In 2006, 61 percent of Asian Americans aged 18 to 24
were enrolled in college compared with 44 percent of whites, 32 percent of
African Americans, and 25 percent of Hispanics and American Indians
respectively.
Additional
Findings:
High
School Completion
·
The
high school completion rate for African Americans aged 18 to 24 remained
relatively flat over the past two decades at about 76 percent.
·
Despite
improving their rate of high school completion from 59 percent to 68 percent,
Hispanics still had the lowest rate among all racial/ethnic groups.
·
Asian
Americans had the highest rate of high school completion at 91 percent.
- College
Enrollment
·
College
enrollment among African Americans rose by 46 percent between 1995 and 2005 to
nearly 2 million students.
·
The
increase in Hispanic enrollment led all racial/ethnic groups, up by 66 percent
to more than 1.7 million students. Hispanic enrollment grew faster at four-year
institutions than at two-year institutions.
·
Asian-American
enrollment increased to more than 1 million over the 10-year period between
1995 and 2005, up 37 percent.
·
American
Indian enrollment grew by 31 percent in the 10-year period, up from nearly
127,000 in 1995 to nearly 167,000 in 2005.
·
Regardless
of race, the gender gap in the college enrollment rate continued among young
people aged 18 to 24. Thirty-six percent of young men were enrolled in college
in 2006 compared with 44 percent of young women.
College
Persistence
·
College persistence rates
declined slightly, and these declines were more pronounced for students who
began at two-year institutions, especially for Hispanics.
·
Among students who began
at two-year institutions in 1995 and 2003, 55 percent of the 2003 freshmen were
still enrolled or had attained a certificate or degree anywhere in higher
education three years later, compared with 60 percent for the 1995 cohort. For
Hispanics, this rate dropped sharply from 62 percent to 54 percent.
·
Among students who began
at a four-year institution in 1995 and 2003, 81 percent of the 2003 cohort
persisted, compared to 83 percent of the 1995 cohort.
Degrees
Conferred
·
Minorities
outpaced whites in the percentage change in total degrees awarded at all levels
over the past decade. Minority women showed stronger gains than minority men at
all degree levels.
·
The
number of minorities earning associate degrees between 1995 and 2005 grew 84
percent to just over 201,000. The number of minorities earning bachelor’s
degrees over the same period grew 65 percent to 355,000.
·
Hispanics
nearly doubled the number of bachelor’s degrees received over the last decade
to more than 105,000. Hispanics also made dramatic gains in doctoral degrees
earned, rising from 950 in 1995 to more than 1,700 in 2005, an increase of 83
percent.
·
African
Americans more than doubled the number of master’s degrees earned from nearly
25,000 in 1995 to nearly 53,000 in 2005. During the same period, the number of
doctoral degrees earned by African Americans increased 84 percent from nearly
1,600 to nearly 2,900.
·
During
the past decade the number of Asian-American men receiving doctoral degrees
dropped by 10 percent, while the number of Asian-American women receiving these
degrees increased by 74 percent.
Degrees
Conferred by Field
·
In recent years,
minorities and whites both experienced declines in the number of bachelor’s
degrees earned in computer sciences. They also lost ground in engineering over
the decade at the doctoral degree level.
Employment
in Higher Education
·
Although minorities have
made gains as college faculty, administrators and presidents over the last
decade, whites still fill the overwhelming majority of these positions.
In
2005, minorities represented 17 percent of all college administrators; 16
percent of full-time faculty and 13 percent of college presidents.
Demography Defeated: Florida's K-12 Reforms and Their Lessons for the Nation
Jeb
Bush campaigned for governor on a clear and bracing set of education reforms in
1998. Having won office, he immediately pursued a dual-track strategy of
education reform: standards and accountability for public schools, and choice
options for dissatisfied parents. Florida lawmakers followed these reforms with
additional measures, including instruction-based reforms; the curtailing of
“social promotion,” which advances students to higher grades regardless of
academic achievement; merit pay for teachers; and additional choice measures.
This
study examines the 10-year impact of these reforms and finds remarkable
improvement in Florida’s test scores. Between 1992 and 1998, Florida’s
already-low fourth-grade National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)
reading scores were declining. In 1999, when these reforms were enacted, nearly
half of Florida fourth-graders scored “below basic” on the NAEP reading test,
meaning that they could not read at a basic level. But by 2007, less than a
decade after the education reforms took effect, 70 percent of Florida’s
fourth-graders scored basic or above. Florida’s Hispanic students now have the
second-highest statewide reading scores in the nation, and African-Americans
score fourth-highest when compared with their peers.
In
fact, the average Florida Hispanic student’s score is higher than the overall
average score for all students in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas,
California, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma,
Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Florida Hispanic students
eligible for a free or reduced- price lunch under federal poverty guidelines
also outscore the statewide averages of some of these states, including
Arizona. Florida’s African-American students outscored two statewide averages
for all students in 2007 and were within striking distance of several more.
Florida’s success proves that demography is not destiny in K-12 education, with
the right set of reform.
Complete
report:
http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/Common/Img/Demography%20Defeated.pdf
Texas Public School Attrition Study, 2007-08 by IDRA
At
Current Pace, Schools will Lose Many More Generations of Students
Texas schools are losing one
student every four minutes – that’s one-third of our students. The Intercultural
Development Research Association has released detailed
findings from its latest study showing that the high school
attrition rate is 33 percent, the same as it was 22 years ago. In Texas for
2007-08, 44 percent of Hispanic students, 38 percent of Black students, and 18
percent of White students were lost from public school enrollment.
A supplemental analysis indicates that, based on
one statistical scenario of Texas attrition rate history, the state will not
reach an attrition rate of zero until 2044. At this pace, the state will lose an
additional 2.6 million students.
Attrition
rates are an indicator of a school’s holding power, or ability to keep students
enrolled in school and learning until they graduate. IDRA has used the same
methodology since its inaugural statewide study in 1986. IDRA conducted Texas ’
first-ever comprehensive statewide study of high school dropouts using a high
school attrition formula to estimate the number and percent of students who
leave school prior to graduation. The study in 1986 was the state’s first major
effort to assess the school holding power of Texas public schools.
The
annual attrition studies since then include county-level data by race and ethnicity. Trend graphs of high school attrition in each Texas county are available
online.
IDRA
research shows that between 1985-86 and 2007-08, more than 2.8 million secondary students have
been lost from public school enrollment in the state.
“It
is high time that Texas take a new course,” said Dr. Robledo Montecel.
“Investment in change must go beyond discrete dropout prevention programs. It
must reflect our full commitment to providing for quality public schools in all
neighborhoods for children of all backgrounds.”
A
school with a high dropout rate must make a concerted effort to reconfigure
part or most of its structure and practices to ensure that it meets these three
goals: (1) strengthen relationships among students, school staff and families;
(2) improve teaching and learning in every classroom every day; and (3) if
necessary, reallocate budget, staff and time to achieve goals one and two that
lead to increased student achievement and graduation rates.
IDRA’s Quality School
Action Framework shows how communities and schools can work together
to identify weak areas and strengthen public schools’ capacities to improve the
holding power of schools.
IDRA
also has developed a set of principles for policymakers and school leaders. IDRA’s online School Holding Power web portal helps community and
school partners examine their school data and plan joint action to improve
school holding power. The portal can be accessed free at http://www.idra.org/portal/.
The
main IDRA web site also lists vital components for successful dropout prevention based on a review
of research and IDRA’s 25 years of experience with its highly-successful
dropout prevention program, the Coca-Cola Valued Youth Program.
Complete
report:
After years of hard work and
spending hundreds of millions to raise the level of student performance,
educators, political and civic leaders, and parents still have not produced the
results they expect.
Now we know why:
“A basic flaw in these
improvement efforts is that they look to the education finance system for
solutions when the system itself is the problem," according to a team of
nationally respected education scholars.
That observation arises from
a five-year, in-depth examination of K-12 school finance in the United States.
The group's conclusion is
simply put:
“The bottom line is that
education finance needs to be redesigned to support student performance.”
According to Jacob Adams of
the Claremont Graduate University, “States will never educate all students to
high standards unless they first fix the finance systems that support America's
schools.
“These systems dictate how
much is spent, who gets what, how resources are used, and which outcomes are
tracked. Unfortunately, the way they do these things no longer matches the
results we expect from schools.”
Adams chaired the group that
conducted the study and has issued its report, Funding Student Learning:
How to Align Education Resources with Student Learning Goals.
The 39-page report summarizes
the work of eleven scholars. It both describes the problems with state school
finance systems and offers solutions.
“Funding student learning
requires more than merely adjusting funding levels, tinkering with distribution
formulas, creating new programs, imposing another sanction, or singling out
hot-button issues,” Adams says. “The system itself must be transformed so that
resources can better support the ambitious learning goals the public now
demands.”
Key ingredients in the recipe
for fixing broken school finance systems are:
·
Allow
dollars to follow students to their schools
·
Integrate
resource decisions with instructional plans; measure and analyze results of
different expenditures
·
Actively
support continuous student improvement
·
Define and
fund a research and development agenda that expands what we know about
effective resource use
·
Make
resource use and academic achievement central to financial reporting practices,
and use funding contingencies to create fair and meaningful accountability
The full report is available at
http://www.crpe.org/cs/crpe/download/csr_files/pub_sfrp_wrkgrp_oct08.pdf
Facing fears early may reduce childhood anxiety
Helping
children face their fears may be more productive than focusing on other
techniques to help them manage their anxieties, according to research presented
at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent
Psychiatry in Chicago.
The
research, which identified similarities between cognitive behavioral therapy
administered in a clinical practice and protocols recommended in common
treatment manuals, showed that as children were taught to face their fears,
their ability to function increased.
The
study also showed that children were able to complete exercises exposing them
to their fears much earlier than suggested in the treatment manuals. The more
children focused on other techniques for managing their anxieties, however, the
less improvement they showed in functioning.
Stephen
Whiteside, Ph.D., from Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., explained that more
research into treatment options for childhood anxiety needs to be conducted.
"We have children face their fears and we teach them techniques for
managing their anxiety, but research isn't advanced enough to show which
element should be the main part of treatment or whether both parts are
necessary for improvement," he says.
Dr.
Whiteside also says that treatment manuals suggest introducing exposure --
having children face their fears -- late in the treatment process. "We
wondered whether we could begin exposures closer to the beginning of the
process," Dr. Whiteside says. "If we focused on exposures and didn't
provide anxiety management techniques, would kids still get better?"
According
to Dr. Whiteside, treatment that was shorter and began exposures earlier than
standard manuals recommended not only improved the children's ability to
function but also could to be more cost-effective.
New Study Explores Social Comparison in Early Childhood
It
has been shown (and probably experienced by all of us) that performing worse
than our peers on a particular task results in negative self-esteem and poorer
subsequent performance on the same task. How people respond when their peers
perform better than they do has been studied in a variety of age groups and it
turns out that preschoolers have thicker skin than adults do! Previous research
has shown that preschoolers (4-5 year old children) maintain positive
self-evaluations and high levels of performance even when they see that their
peers have out-performed them. This is thought to occur because young children
believe that achievement differences between themselves and their peers are
adaptable; in other words, they think that if they try harder, they will be
able to do as well as their peers in the future.
A
new study by University of Michigan psychologists Marjorie Rhodes and Daniel
Brickman questions these previously held conclusions about preschoolers’
behavior, by demonstrating that young children do indeed respond negatively
when they perform more poorly than a peer—if that peer is of the other gender
(e.g., if a girl learns that a boy has performed better than her, or vice
versa). The participants (4- and 5-year-olds) were asked to complete a timed
circle-tracing task (i.e. they were told to fill in circles as quickly as
possible) and then were told that either a same-gender, other-gender or
gender-unidentified peer performed better on the task than they did (i.e.
completed more shapes). After receiving this information, the researchers made
sure that the study participants understood the comparison, and then asked them
to evaluate how well they performed on the task. The children were then asked
to complete the circle tracing task a second time—this time, they were told
that they did better than the peer had done—and then were asked to assess their
performance again.
The
results, reported in the October issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the
Association for Psychological Science, were intriguing. It turns out that
preschoolers are very sensitive to gender information- children’s behavior
critically depended on the gender of the peer. Children who were told about a
same-gender or gender-unidentified peer improved their performance across the
two trials of the tracing task (i.e. they completed the task more quickly the
second time). They also increased their self-evaluations after the second
trial. In contrast, the majority of children who were told about an
other-gender peer performed more poorly on the second trial (i.e. they
completed the task more slowly). Also, even though all children were led to
believe that they performed better than the peer on the second trial, children who
had been told about other-gender peers did not increase their self-evaluations.
These results indicate that when preschoolers see that they have performed more
poorly than a peer of the other gender—even just one time—there are lasting
negative consequences on behavior and self-concept. The authors conclude that
“these findings have implications for the origins of social comparisons,
category-based reasoning, and the development of gender stereotypes and
achievement motivation.”
Baby Talk: The Roots of
the Early Vocabulary in Infants’ Learning From Speech
Although
babies typically start talking around 12 months of age, their brains actually
begin processing certain aspects of language much earlier, so that by the time
they start talking, babies actually already know hundreds of words. While
studying language acquisition in infants can be a challenging endeavor,
researchers have begun to make significant progress that changes previous views
of what infants learn, according to a new report by University of Pennsylvania
psychologist Daniel Swingley. The report, published in the October issue of Current
Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological
Science, describes an increasing emphasis among researchers in studying
vocabulary development in infants.
Infants
have a unique ability to discriminate speech-sound (phonetic) differences, but
over time they lose this skill for differentiating sounds in languages other
than their native tongue. For example, 6 month old babies who were learning
English were able to distinguish between similar-sounding Hindi consonants not
found in English, but they lost this ability by 12 months of age. Since the
1980s it has been known that infants start focusing on their language’s
consonants and vowels, sometimes to the exclusion of non-native sounds. More
recently, researchers have increasingly focused on how infants handle whole
words.
Recent
research has shown that during infancy, babies learn not only individual speech
sounds but also the auditory forms of words; that is, babies are not only
aware of the pieces that make up a word, but they are aware of the entire word.
These auditory forms of words allow children to increase their vocabulary and
help them to eventually develop grammar. Although they may not know what the
words mean, children as early as 8 months start learning the phonological
(sound) forms of words and are able to recognize them—and just being familiar
with the words helps increase the children’s vocabulary. Studies have shown
that 18 month old children who are familiar with a word’s form are better at
learning what it means and are also able to differentiate it from similar
sounding words.
Knowing
word forms may also contribute to children’s inferences about how their
language works. For example, 7.5 month olds do not recognize words as being the
same if they are spoken with different intonations or by a man and a woman.
However, by 10.5 months of age, babies recognize the same words despite changes
in the speaker or the intonation used. Another interesting finding was that
although children learning a language can distinguish between long and short
vowels, they interpret this difference according to the rules of their
language. For instance, Dutch 18-month-olds considered tam and taam to be different words,
while English 18-month-olds did not—showing children’s early learning of how
each language uses vowel length.
How
can researchers find out what young children know about words and the forms of
words while children have only just begun to talk? One method takes advantage
of the fact that even young toddlers like to look at images or objects that we
name. In these experiments, the children’s eye movements are tracked while they
are looking at two objects (for example, an apple and a dog). The researcher
will say the name of one of the objects and see if the child’s eyes move to
that object. In this way, researchers can change the sound of the words
slightly (for example, instead of “dog” say “tog”) and see if the baby will
look at the dog the same amount, as if indifferent to the change, or less, as
is the case with adults who know that “dog” cannot be said as “tog.” The
results of those studies showed that the children were less likely to look at
the correct object when it was mispronounced, indicating that by one year of
age, children are able to recognize mispronunciations of words.
This
new research in language acquisition indicates that infants learn the forms of
many words and they begin to gather information about how these forms are used.
The author notes that “these word forms then become the foundation of the early
vocabulary, support children’s learning of the language’s phonological system,
and contribute to the discovery of grammar.”
In
addition, there is a relationship between young children’s performance in word
recognition and their later language achievement. The author concludes that
“testing very young children’s ability to interpret spoken language, whether by
identifying novel words as novel or by comprehending sentences, may prove a
more sensitive predictor of children’s language outcomes than simpler tests of
speech-sound categorization."
Claims
Made About The Value of Competition
A
new multi-national study released by Education Next shows that competition
from private schools improves achievement for both public and private school
students and decreases the amount spent per pupil. Until now, no study has
systematically measured the causal impact of competition by looking at
variation across countries. Using data from 29 countries, Brown University’s
Martin R. West and University of Munich economist Ludger Woessmann find that
competitive pressures from private schools broadly increase the productivity of
school systems.
Using
data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), West and Woessmann noted
that a 10 percent increase in enrollment in private schools improves PISA math
test scores by more than 9 percent of a standard deviation, nearly equal to a
half of a year’s worth of learning. For science and reading, a 10 percent
increase in private school enrollment generates an improvement of more than 5
percent of a standard deviation -- more than one-fifth of a grade-level. And in
educational spending, a 10 percent increase in the private school enrollment
leads to a $3,209 reduction in spending per student -- on average, more than 5
percent of the total education spending per student through age 15 for OECD
countries.
“The
results suggest that public school students profit nearly as much from
increased private school competition as do a nation’s students as a whole,”
West and Woessmann write.
“Spending on education is also reduced,
suggesting that school systems are more efficient if they are more
competitive.”
West
and Woessmann gathered information on the mathematical, scientific, and reading
literacy of nearly 220,000 students in 29 of the 30 OECD countries. They were
also able to obtain PISA information on student background characteristics and
reports on the characteristics of each student’s school, including school
resources and whether the school was public or private.
West
and Woessmann’s innovative approach to measuring the impact of competition
between private and public schools capitalized on the historical fact that the
amount of competition in education today has in large part been influenced by
the Catholic Church’s decision in the 19th century to build an alternative
system of education wherever the state religion was not Catholic. The
researchers estimated the statistical relationship between the size of the
Catholic population in 1900 and the extent of private schooling today and used
the estimate to isolate the causal effect of private school competition on the
achievement of individual students. Countries with larger shares of Catholics
but without an official Catholic state religion in 1900 have significantly
larger shares of privately operated schools in 2003 and their students perform
significantly better on the PISA test.
In
the Netherlands, more than three-quarters of 15-year-old students attend
privately operated schools. Private school shares in Belgium, Ireland, and
Korea are well above one-half. By contrast, the share of students attending
privately operated schools in Greece, Iceland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway,
Poland, Sweden, and Turkey is below 5 percent. Just over 6 percent of the
American 15-year-olds sampled by PISA attended private schools.
American
students ranked 24th among the 29 OECD countries included in this study in
mathematics, performing almost three-quarters of a grade level behind the OECD
mean and almost three grade levels behind the three highest performing
countries: Finland, Korea, and the Netherlands. The performance of
American students in science and reading was also well below average.
Full
report:
http://media.hoover.org/documents/ednext_20091_54.pdf
"MathThematics"
The National Center for Education
Evaluation and Regional Assistance within the Institute of Education Sciences
has released a What Works Clearinghouse intervention report in the middle
school math topic area. The report
looks at "MathThematics", a mathematics curriculum for grades 6
through 8 that combines activity-based, discovery learning with direct
instruction. See how the Clearinghouse rated this intervention and read the
report at
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/middle_math/maththematics/
Study
Debunks Myth That Early Immigrants Quickly Learned English
Joseph
Salmons has always been struck by the pervasiveness of the argument. In his
visits across Wisconsin, in many newspaper letters to the editor, and in the
national debates raging over modern immigration, he encounters the same
refrain:
“My
great, great grandparents came to America and quickly learned English to
survive. Why can’t today’s immigrants do the same?”
As
a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of German who has extensively
studied European immigrant languages in the Midwest, Salmons discovered there
was little direct research available about whether this “learn English or bust”
ethic really existed.
To
research the topic, Salmons and recent UW-Madison German Ph.D. graduate Miranda
Wilkerson delved into census data, newspapers, books, court records and other
materials to help document the linguistic experience of German immigrants in
Wisconsin from 1839 to the 1930s. Their paper appears in the current issue of
the journal American Speech.
Focusing
on German immigrants was a logical choice, Salmons says, since they represented
the biggest immigration wave to Wisconsin in the mid-1800s, “and they really
fit this classic view of the ‘good old immigrants’ of the 19th century.”
What
Salmons and Wilkerson found was a remarkable reversal of conventional wisdom:
Not only did many early immigrants not feel compelled out of practicality to
learn English quickly upon arriving in America, they appeared to live and
thrive for decades while speaking exclusively German.
In
many of the original German settlements in the mid-1800s from southeastern
Wisconsin to Lake Winnebago and the Fox Valley, the researchers found that
German remained the primary language of commerce, education and religion well
into the early 20th century, Salmons says. Some second- and even third-generation
German immigrants who were born in Wisconsin were still monolingual in German
as adults.
“These
folks were committed Americans,” says Salmons. “They participated in politics,
in the economy, and were leaders in their churches and their schools. They just
happened not to conduct much of their life in English.”
One
of the richest quantitative sources for the study came from the 1910 U.S.
Census, which is digitized and available through the Wisconsin Historical
Society. Wilkerson analyzed self-reports on the languages adults spoke in areas
of heavy German settlement, which included nine townships in seven counties
across southeastern and central Wisconsin.
Examples
include the communities of Hustisford in Dodge County; Hamburg in Marathon
County; Kiel in Manitowoc County; Germantown in Washington County; and Belgium
in Ozaukee County.
In
1910, the researchers still found robust populations of German-only speakers in
these communities. The census identified 24 percent German-only speakers in
Hustisford, 22 percent in Schleswig (Manitowoc County), 21 percent in Hamburg
and 18 percent in Kiel.
These
numbers did not only represent first-generation immigrants, but included many
born in the United States. Of the self-reported German-only speakers in the
census, 43 percent from Germantown were born in the U.S., followed by 36
percent in Schleswig, 35 percent in Hustisford and 34 percent in Brothertown
(Calumet County).
“What
this means for the learning (or non-learning) of English here is telling: after
50 or more years of living in the United States, many speakers in some
communities remained monolingual,” the authors wrote. “This finding provides
striking counterevidence to the claim that early immigrants learned English
quickly.”
Salmons
points to other straightforward evidence of how viable the German language
remained in Wisconsin. Through state history, there were more than 500
German-language newspapers published in Wisconsin. Those small-town papers
often consolidated into larger-circulation papers in the 20th century and
remained commercially available into the 1940s.
Some
other interesting findings from published data include:
• A 1932 paper on
19th century immigration to northern Milwaukee stated that “English was not
even necessary for their day-to-day interactions. Every person they came in
contact with could speak German at least as well as English. In Ozaukee County,
there is evidence that the Irish families who lived scattered among the Germans
could speak German.”
• The researchers found correspondence in the 1890s
from school districts to the office of the state school superintendent that
were written entirely in German. This is after the Bennett law of 1889 that
required schools to be taught in English.
• They also found records in a
UW-Madison dissertation about Lebanon, Wis., from a Lutheran church in the
community that was “introducing one sermon each month in English, on a trial
basis.” That decision was made in 1929.
One
of the remarkable findings in the census was that being a German-only speaker
“did not act as a barrier to opportunity in the work force,” says Salmons.
While they expected to find these people on the fringes of the mainstream
economy, instead they found a wide range of occupations represented, including
teachers, clergymen, retail merchants, blacksmiths, tailors, yard foremen and
surveyors, in addition to farmers and laborers.
“The
key issue seemed to be whether they had a big enough German-speaking community,
where they had a critical mass for people to be comfortable being monolingual,”
Salmons says. “There was no huge pressure to change in those communities.”
The
look at century-old language patterns seems especially salient in the modern
political culture, where “English-only” movements are cropping up everywhere
and there is considerable debate about how quickly new Spanish-speaking
immigrants should be assimilating a new language.
As
evidence of how heated the rhetoric has become, the paper references a 2006
comment from popular talk show host Michael Reagan, who stated that “hordes of
immigrants … are chattering away in their native language and have no intention
of learning English.”
Adds
Reagan: “Can you blame them? They are being enabled by all those diversity
fanatics to defy the age-old custom of immigrants to our shores who made it one
of their first priorities to learn to speak English and to teach their
offspring to do likewise. It was a case of sink or swim.”
Salmons
says their study suggests that conventional wisdom may actually have it
backwards — while early immigrants didn’t necessarily need English to succeed
and responded slowly, modern immigrants recognize it as a ticket to success and
are learning English in extremely high percentages.
Early Exposure to Drugs, Alcohol Creates Lifetime of Health Risk; Carnegie Mellon Professor Co-Authors New Study on Teen Drinking, Drug Abuse
People
who begin drinking and using marijuana regularly prior to their 15th birthday
face a higher risk of early pregnancy, school failure, substance dependence,
sexually-transmitted disease and criminal convictions that lasts into their
30s, according to a study co-authored by Carnegie Mellon University Professor
Dan Nagin.
Published online by the journal Psychological Science, the study sorts out the
difficult question of whether these adverse outcomes are restricted only to
drug-abusing adolescents who were already troubled or whether they also occur
to drug-abusing teens who weren't troubled. The answer is that both types of
adolescents are affected, according to Nagin, the Teresa and H. John Heinz III
University Professor of Public Policy and Statistics. He was part of a team of
researchers from the U.S., Britain and New Zealand that analyzed data tracking
of the health of nearly 1,000 New Zealand residents from birth through age 32.
Half of the study subjects who were using alcohol and marijuana regularly
before age 15 were already troubled kids who came from an abusive, criminal or
substance-abusing household and had behavior problems as children. The other
half, who were from more stable backgrounds without histories of behavior
problems, also ended up in poorer health in their 30s.
"These findings challenge certain perceptions regarding teens and drug and
alcohol use," Nagin said. "For example, the idea that we shouldn't be
concerned when teens abuse drugs and alcohol, because the kids are just
experimenting. It's clear from this data that early exposure to drugs and
alcohol can make even a good kid veer off on a bad trajectory."
The study found the "good kids," who did not have behavior problems
as children and didn't have any family risk factors, but began using drugs and
alcohol before age 15, ended up being 3.6 times more likely to be dependent on
substances at age 32. They were also more likely to have a criminal conviction
and a herpes infection.
"This also challenges the conventional wisdom that kids who abuse drugs
and alcohol were already troubled before they started using," Nagin noted,
adding that whether already troubled or not, adolescents who regularly used
drugs and alcohol all had poorer health as adults. The study was not concerned
with a teen who tries alcohol a couple of times or who occasionally smokes
marijuana at a party, he said, adding that its focus was on those who used drugs
and alcohol regularly before age 15.
The
Effect of Gamma Waves on Cognitive and Language Skills in Children
New
studies conducted by April Benasich, professor of neuroscience at Rutgers
University in Newark, and her colleagues reveal that gamma wave activity in the
brains of children provide a window into their cognitive development, and could
open the way for more effective intervention for those likely to experience
language problems.
“Research
into the adult brain has shown that gamma activity is the ‘glue’ that binds
together perceptions, thoughts and memories,” notes Benasich. “Little research,
however, has been conducted into the development of gamma activity in the
infant brain and its possible connection to cognitive and language skills.”
Benasich
and her research team are the first to look at “resting” gamma power in the
frontal cortex, the “thinking” part of the brain, in children 16, 24 and 36
months old. In an article published online and in an upcoming issue of Behavioral
Brain Research,
Benasich offers significant new insight into the likely role gamma activity
plays in supporting emerging cognitive and language abilities during the first
36 months of life.
Gamma
waves are fast, high-frequency, rhythmic brain responses that have been shown
to spike when higher cognitive processes are engaged. Research in adults and
animals suggests that lower levels of gamma power might hinder the brain’s
ability to efficiently package information into coherent images, thoughts and
memories. However, until now little has been known about the developmental
course of gamma power in children.
Analyzing
the children’s EEGs (electroencephalograms), Benasich and her research team
found that those with higher language and cognitive abilities had
correspondingly higher gamma power than those with poorer language and
cognitive scores. Similarly, children with better attention and inhibitory
control, the ability to moderate or refrain from behavior when instructed, also
had higher gamma power. There were no differences in gamma power based on
gender or socio-economic status.
The
measurements were obtained by placing a soft bonnet with 62 sensors on the
heads of the children as they sat on a parent’s lap and quietly played. In
separate tests, children were evaluated for their emerging language and
cognitive skills. The researchers looked both at children from families with
normal language development and those at higher risk for problems because they
were born into families with a history of language disorders. As suspected, the
group of children with a family history of language impairments showed lower
levels of gamma activity.
“We
believe that maturation of the brain mechanisms that support gamma activity and
those critical for mounting normal language and cognitive development may be
occurring simultaneously,” says Benasich. “We seem to have identified a window,
during a period of sustained and dramatic linguistic and cognitive growth, that
can help us to better determine where a child is developmentally.”
Such
an understanding could provide for earlier and more effective intervention. For
example, if a child is found to have lower than average resting gamma,
intervention and learning methods could be instituted as a preventative
measure. Such early intervention possibly also could result in increasing gamma
power in the frontal cortex.
In
her other related research, Benasich has discovered that how well infants
distinguish differences in successive rapidly occurring tone sequences is a
good predictor of future language problems and that it can be determined as
early as three months whether a baby will struggle with language development.
These latest findings appear to show that the emergence of strong gamma
activity is critical for linguistic and cognitive development and that children
at risk for language impairments may lag in this process.
“Having
strong bursts of gamma appears to assist the brain in making the neural
connections needed for effective language development,” says Benasich. “By
measuring gamma activity in the frontal cortex, which is the last brain area to
mature and is used to make decisions and solve problems, we may be able to tell
how well the brain is developing in general.”
Being
able to determine a child’s level of development could allow for more effective
treatment at a critical point in time when the brain is laying the foundations
for cognition and language and establishing efficient connections for future
learning. From 16 to 36 months, there is a dramatic explosion of linguistic and
cognitive growth; children rush headlong into language, rapidly developing
their skills, increasing from a vocabulary of 100 words to 1,000 words,
learning that words stand for objects, and that words not only are associated
with a specific object but categories, such as “dog” representing not just a
single animal but all dogs.
“During
this intense learning period, they are little scientists in their environment
putting things together and figuring things out,” says Benasich. “Lower levels
of gamma power in the resting brain may provide a ‘red flag’ indicating that a
child will experience language or attentional problems. Knowing that may allow
us to provide effective intervention during this critical learning period.”
U
of Minnesota study is the first to show direct link between health-related
behaviors and grades
Lack
of sleep, excessive computer screen time, stress and more hurt college
students' GPAs
Lack
of sleep, excessive television/computer screen time, stress, gambling, alcohol
and tobacco use and other health-related issues are taking a toll on college
students' academic performance, according to a study released by the University
of Minnesota Boynton Health Service.
"Our
study shows that there is a direct link between college students' health and
their academic achievement. This is the first time that anything like this has
been published where Grade Point Average is linked to all these
behaviors," said Dr. Ed Ehlinger, the director and chief health officer of
the University of Minnesota Boynton Health Service.
The
report, "Health and Academic Performance: Minnesota Undergraduate
Students," is part of one of the most comprehensive studies of college
students' health in the nation. About 24,000 students from 14 Minnesota
colleges and universities were randomly selected to participate in this study
and 9,931 completed the 2007 College Student Health Survey Report. The results
only include undergraduate students from two-year and four-year institutions.
All five University of Minnesota campuses were included in the survey.
In
the results, 69.9 percent of college students reported they were stressed and
32.9 percent of those students said that stress was hurting their academic
performance. In fact, the mean GPA for students saying stress impacted their
academics was 3.12, compared with the 3.23 mean GPA for students who didn't
believe it was affecting their academics. "While this may seem like a
small difference in GPA, when you are looking at over 9,000 students the impact
of this difference is huge," Ehlinger said.
Twenty
percent of students reported that sleep difficulties impacted their academics.
In fact, those students who reported getting fewer nights of adequate sleep had
a mean GPA of 3.08 compared with a 3.27 mean GPA for those who do not report
sleep deficiencies.
"The
more days students get adequate sleep -- the better GPAs they attain,"
Ehlinger said. "There is a direct link between the two."
When
it comes to excessive television and computer use (not including academic use),
30.4 percent of students surveyed reported excessive screen time. Thirteen
percent of those with the issue reported that it impacted their studies; these
students had a lower mean GPA of 3.04 compared with a mean GPA of 3.27 for
those who said the problem did not impact them.
"Turning
off the computer or TV and going to sleep is one of the best things our
students can do to improve their grades," Ehlinger said.
Students
who reported that they had smoked during the past 30 days had a 3.12 mean GPA
compared with a 3.28 mean GPA for students who reported not smoking. The study
revealed surprising information for students who even smoke infrequently.
"Even
students who smoked once or twice in a month had lower GPAs than those who
didn't smoke," Ehlinger said. "Using tobacco to calm down or 'to be
social' is lowering students' grades."
Ehlinger
hopes that this study's results will spur college students to change behavior
and for colleges to pay more attention to the health of their students.
"We
hope this information helps students make wise decisions," Ehlinger said.
"If you're investing a lot of time and money in your education, do you
really want to waste your investment on behaviors that interfere with your
academic success?"
The
report also includes information on mental health, health insurance, physical
activity levels, financial issues, drug use, injury, sexual assault and alcohol
use.
Members
of the public, along with students and health officials, should pay attention
to the results of this report, because the health of college students is
important to society, Ehlinger said.
"College
students are so important for our economic development -- the development of
our society," Ehlinger said. "One way to protect that investment in
our future is to help them stay healthy."
Student
Victimization in U.S. Schools Results From the 2005 School Crime Supplement to
the National Crime Victimization Survey.
This report provides estimates of
student victimization as defined by the 2005 School Crime Supplement (SCS) to
the 2005 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). NCVS is the nation's
primary source of information on crime victimization and the victims of crime
in the United States and the SCS is a supplement to NCVS that was created to
collect information about school-related victimization on a national level.
This report incorporates findings from
student respondents ages 12-18 in grades 6-12 that were interviewed during the
2005 school year. It shows that student victims of crime are more likely to
report conditions of an unfavorable school climate, security measures at
school, and exhibit fear and avoidance behaviors. Additional topics covered in
this report include the prevalence and type of student victimization at school
and selected characteristics of victims, including their demographic
characteristics and school type; and victim and nonvictim reports of the
presence of gangs and weapons and the availability of drugs.
To view, download and print the report as a PDF file, please
visit: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2009306
More Effective Treatment Identified for Common Childhood Vision Disorder
Scientists
have found a more effective treatment for a common childhood eye muscle
coordination problem called convergence insufficiency (CI). For words on a page
to appear in focus a child's eyes must turn inward, or converge. In CI, the
eyes do not converge easily, and as a result, additional muscular effort must
be used to make the eyes turn in.
While
the majority of eye care professionals treat children diagnosed with CI using
some form of home-based therapy, a new study concludes that office-based
treatment by a trained therapist along with at-home reinforcement is more
effective. The research, reported in the Oct.13 issue of Archives of
Ophthalmology,
was funded by the National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes
of Health.
The
12-week study, known as the Convergence Insufficiency Treatment Trial (CITT),
found that approximately 75 percent of those who received in-office therapy by
a trained therapist plus at-home treatment reported fewer and less severe
symptoms related to reading and other near work. Symptoms of CI include loss of
place, loss of concentration, reading slowly, eyestrain, headaches, blurry
vision, and double vision.
"This
NEI-funded study compared the effectiveness of treatment options for
convergence insufficiency," said Paul A. Sieving, M.D., Ph.D., director of
the NEI. "The CITT will provide eye care professionals with the research
they need to assist children with this condition."
The
CITT, which included 221 children age 9 to 17, is the first to compare three
forms of vision therapy and a placebo therapy option. The first therapy was the
current treatment standard known as home-based pencil push-up therapy, an
exercise in which patients visually followed a small letter on a pencil as they
moved the pencil closer to the bridge of their nose. The goal was to keep the
letter clear and single, and to stop if it appeared double. The second group
used home-based pencil push-ups with additional computer vision therapy. The
third attended weekly hour-long sessions of office-based vision therapy with a
trained therapist and performed at-home reinforcement exercises. The last group
was given placebo vision activities designed to simulate office-based therapy.
After
12 weeks of treatment, nearly 75 percent of children who were given the
office-based vision therapy along with at-home reinforcement achieved normal
vision or had significantly fewer symptoms of CI. Only 43 percent of patients
who completed home-based therapy alone showed similar results, as did 33
percent of patients who used home-based pencil push-ups plus computer therapy
and 35 percent of patients given a placebo office-based therapy.
"There
are no visible signs of this condition; it can only be detected and diagnosed
during an eye examination," said principal investigator Mitchell Scheiman,
O.D., of Pennsylvania College of Optometry at Salus University near Philadelphia,
Pa. "However, as this study shows, once diagnosed, CI can be successfully
treated with office-based vision therapy by a trained therapist along with
at-home reinforcement. This is very encouraging news for parents, educators,
and anyone who may know a child diagnosed with CI."
Impacts of Comprehensive Teacher
Induction: Results from the First Year of a Randomized Controlled Study."
This report presents implementation
and impact findings for beginning elementary school teachers after one year of
induction services. The study
tests whether comprehensive teacher induction affects teacher retention rates,
classroom practices, and student achievement, compared to the induction
programs that districts normally provide. Beginning teachers in schools randomly assigned to receive comprehensive
induction services were offered weekly mentoring from a full-time mentor,
opportunities to observe other teachers in their classrooms, and professional
development workshops on topics such as classroom management and lesson
planning.
Two comprehensive induction providers
were included in the study - the Educational Testing Service and the NewTeacher
Center at the University of California-Santa Cruz.
Read more at: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20094034.asp
Numbers and Types of Public Elementary and Secondary Schools From the Common Core of Data: School Year 2006-07 - First Look
This report presents findings on the
numbers and types of public elementary and secondary schools in the United
States and the territories in the 2006-07 school year, using data from the
Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey of the Common Core of Data
(CCD) survey system.
To view, download and print the report
as a PDF file, please visit:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2009304