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Chicago Public Schools’ Teacher Hiring Successes, Challenges Illuminated in New Analysis by The New Teacher Project Analysis Shows Chicago Schools Benefit from EffectiveSchool Staffing Policies, but Hire New Teachers Too Late and Lack Effective Performance Evaluation Procedures The New Teacher Project (TNTP) today released the results of an extensive analysis of the teacher hiring and school staffing rules and processes in Chicago Public Schools (CPS). TNTP’s research suggests that Chicago faces many challenges common to urban school districts in its efforts to secure high-quality teachers, but also that the district benefits significantly from an unusually effective set of school staffing policies. The analysis was funded by the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation. The New Teacher Project’s research involved an in-depth examination of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) contract with CPS, interviews with school principals and district administrators, and surveys of principals, teachers, and prospective teachers. The organization’s FINAL ANALYSIS shows that:
The analysis is especially critical of Chicago’s flawed teacher evaluation system, noting that only 3 in 1000 teachers are rated “unsatisfactory” and that 88 percent of CPS schools—even those in which students are not succeeding—have not issued a single unsatisfactory rating in the last four years. “In failing schools in particular, one would expect to see unsatisfactory teacher evaluations, given that those schools are not achieving positive results or progress for students,” the study’s authors wrote. “However, of 87 failing schools studied, 69 (79%) did not issue a single unsatisfactory rating between 2003 and 2005.” On the other hand, CPS drew praise for hiring teachers based on mutual consent. “Chicago Public Schools stands out from many other urban school districts in that it requires mutual consent of both teacher and principal in its school staffing policies,” noted Timothy Daly, President of The New Teacher Project. “No teacher is slotted into a position without freely accepting it, and principals are not forced to hire teachers whom they do not want.” Daly urged officials to adopt the report’s recommendations to fix other aspects of the CPS system. “CPS and CTU officials now have the opportunity to work together on important new steps such as hiring teachers more efficiently; implementing a reassignment policy based on quality, not seniority; and putting in place a fair and rigorous performance evaluation process,” said Daly. Ariela Rozman, CEO of The New Teacher Project, praised district and union leaders for working together to achieve sensible staffing policies. “We commend Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union for their hard work on behalf of teachers and students,” said Rozman. “Although there is certainly room for improvement, in our judgment Chicago is one of the nation’s leading urban school districts in terms of the implementation of staffing policies and procedures that put the needs of students first. Chicago’s success in this respect is the direct result of the commitment and collaboration of CPS and the CTU.” The New Teacher Project’s full analysis and an executive summary are available at: HTTP://WWW.TNTP.ORG/OURRESEARCH/OTHERPUBLICATIONS.HTML. Graduation Matters: How NCLB Allows States to Set the Bar Too Low for Improving High School Grad Rates Despite the national focus on reforming America’s high schools, most states are setting woefully low goals for improving graduation rates and are not setting goals for ensuring that more low-income, minority, disabled and English language learner students graduate, according to a report released by The Education Trust. Graduation Matters: Improving Accountability for High School Graduation documents state-set goals for graduation rates under the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law, showing how improvement targets are often so low that they undercut the aim of significantly raising graduation rates. “One in four students who start ninth grade will not earn a diploma four years later, and the picture is even worse for low-income students and students of color,” said Daria Hall, Assistant Director for K-12 Policy at The Education Trust, and the report’s author. “Because current graduation rates are so low, we need targets that provoke action on behalf of students, not ones that condone the status quo.” Under the NCLB accountability provisions known as Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), U.S. high schools must meet state goals for educating all students in reading and math as well as graduating them on time. While the AYP provisions are explicit about procedures for setting proficiency targets in math and reading, the discretion the law gives states in setting graduation-rate goals and improvement targets has resulted in a wide range of expectations, as demonstrated in the report. For example, overall goals for graduation rates range from 95 percent in both Indiana and Iowa to 50 percent in Nevada. But even the most ambitious goals are undercut by improvement targets that are far too low. In fact, some states have set targets as low as one-tenth of one percent, and others have asked merely whether graduation rates have stayed the same – consigning students to attending schools that are not identified for any support or intervention, even in cases where graduating is a 50-50 proposition. “If we are serious about reforming our high schools, we have to get serious about meaningful accountability for student success in completing high school,” said Ross Wiener, Vice President of The Education Trust. “While progress may not come as quickly as we’d like, the improvements we’ve seen in New York City show us that, even under some of the most challenging circumstances, real change is possible.” According to the report, New York City has significantly improved its graduation rates over the last two years. And, while the district’s rates are still far too low, the gains that have been made since 2004 resulted in more than 3,000 more African American and Latino students leaving New York City high schools in 2006 with a diploma in hand. As low as state graduation rate goals may be, unlike accountability for reading and math achievement, NCLB only requires that high school graduation rate goals and improvement targets apply to overall averages, not to student groups. “By choosing to hold schools accountable only for overall graduation rates, policymakers are turning a blind eye to the persistent gaps that we know exist between poor and non-poor and White and minority student groups,” said Hall. “But, we also know that it doesn’t have to be this way.” Massachusetts, a recognized leader in holding its schools accountable for meeting high standards, takes responsibility for the graduation of low-income and minority students by going beyond what NCLB requires and applying its graduation rate goal to all student groups – not just the overall average – when making AYP determinations for high schools. Because of that decision, attention will be called to the performance of the low-income students and students of color who struggle most – an important first step in getting the support needed to the schools they attend. Rather than being viewed as exceptions to the rule, the stories from New York City and Massachusetts are prime examples for federal and state policymakers of what is possible for both real improvement and meaningful accountability throughout the U.S. The Education Trust report provides recommendations for policy changes at both the federal and state levels, including the following priorities for NCLB reauthorization:
“The pending reauthorization of NCLB provides a critical opportunity to translate local successes into legislative goals for the rest of the nation,” said Wiener. “We need to send a strong signal to high schools that we are willing to do what it takes to help them improve.” Graduation Matters: Improving Accountability for High School Graduation can be found online at http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/5AEDABBC-79B7-47E5-9C66-7403BF76C3E2/0/GradMatters.pdf Study of Texas' 10 Largest School Districts Reveals Large Spending Gaps on Teacher Salaries Two reports from The Education Trust document how schools serving more low-income and minority students are being denied their fair share of the state’s most experienced teachers Texas teachers working in schools with high numbers of poor and minority students earn significantly less than their counterparts at more affluent schools in the same district, according to two reports released by The Education Trust. Their Fair Share: How Teacher Salary Gaps Shortchange Poor and Minority Children in Texas document funding patterns in the state’s 10 largest school systems, showing how average teacher salaries vary dramatically between schools within the same district. The reports describe gaps in per-teacher spending, and how those gaps stack the deck against the academic success of low-income, Hispanic and African American children. “The problem is pretty straightforward,” said Kati Haycock, President of The Education Trust. “As teachers gain in experience and education, they often transfer to more affluent schools, taking their expertise – and their higher salaries – along with them. Districts can change those patterns by paying them more, assigning strong principals and significantly reducing class sizes. But most Texas school districts clearly aren’t doing enough of that.” The Education Trust examined total teacher compensation in the elementary, middle and high schools located in Arlington, Austin, Cypress-Fairbanks, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Bend, Fort Worth, Houston, Northside and San Antonio Independent School Districts, comparing how much each district pays its teachers in the schools serving the highest and lowest number of African American and Hispanic students, as well as the highest and lowest number of students from low-income families. The study found that in Austin, for example, teachers working in the city’s highest-poverty elementary schools earn an average of $2,668 less per year than those teaching at schools with the fewest low-income students. If the Austin Independent School District spent the same amount per-teacher at these schools, that would amount to an additional $2 million every year in the district’s high-poverty schools. District leaders typically argue that, while poor children may indeed have more inexperienced or undereducated teachers, the districts are actually spending more money in total on teachers in high-poverty and high-minority schools because they are assigning extra teachers to those schools. “Unfortunately, a reduction of one to three students per class doesn’t make much difference,” said Paul Ruiz, Senior Advisor at EdTrust-Southwest in San Antonio. “Instead of giving these students the more experienced teachers they need to catch up academically, their schools simply end up with more of the same inexperienced ones – and that isn’t a reasonable trade-off for these kids.” “Districts have traditionally thought in terms of the number of teachers they assign to each school, not how much each one of those teachers costs,” said Marguerite Roza, Senior Fellow at the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education. “Given the unequal resources found not only in these districts, but in school systems throughout the country, how could we possibly expect that we wouldn’t have an achievement gap?” In response to these inequities, The Education Trust is calling on school districts to restructure teacher compensation programs so that schools serving low-income students and students of color can compete for more experienced and more effective teachers. Those recommendations include:
“District leaders need to be encouraged to resolve these inequities between their schools,” said Haycock. “We will never be able to give our low-income and minority students their fair shot at success until we give them their fair share of strong teachers.” The reports are available at: http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/763233CC-39EF-4467-B589- Busting the Myth That Poor Urban Schools Can't Succeed With the first bell of the new school year about to ring, a new book from the Urban Institute Press spotlights how urban schools serving low-income minority students can shine. "Good Schools in Poor Neighborhoods: Defying Demographics, Achieving Success," by Beatriz Chu Clewell and Patricia B. Campbell, with Lesley Perlman, combines solid data from original research with lively vignettes and vivid quotes from principals, teachers, parents, and students to present a picture of exceptional elementary schools in difficult academic environments. Based on three years of research, the book differs from many others in the "effective schools" literature by contrasting high-scoring elementary schools with their more typical, struggling counterparts in two disparate, anonymous school systems: one serving predominately African-American students in a large, declining northeastern city (called Cumberland City in the study) and one serving Latino students in a growing, southwestern urban area (called Rios Calientes). In each area, the grade schools studied have the same demographic profile and the same union contracts and other district constraints, so the researchers could uncover the characteristics, policies, practices, and activities that make a real difference in early educational performance. "As educational researchers, we know that while resources and socioeconomic factors play a role in student achievement, they are not the sole determinants of student success. Poor, urban schools can make a difference -- and some of them do," state Clewell, Campbell, and Perlman. Clewell is a principal research associate and director of the Program for Evaluation and Equity Research at the Urban Institute. Campbell, a former professor of research, measurement, and statistics at Georgia State University, is president of Campbell-Kibler Associates, where Perlman was a research associate. The Study and Its Findings In each of the two sites examined, participants in a National Science Foundation math and science improvement initiative, five highly effective and three typical elementary schools were selected. In these very different districts, the authors identified five characteristics that set successful schools apart from their lower-performing counterparts:
Although both cities' effective schools share characteristics that differentiate them from typical schools, external factors affect how these differences play out. Among the most striking differences between the two districts are contrasts in student performance levels, the role of state and district educational policies, and the demographic and economic outlook of the regions. The research, say the authors, has important implications for state and district policy as well as policy governing schools serving low-income minority students.
"Finally, a book with complex contextual analyses that turns conventional educational wisdom on its head," says Jacqueline Jordan Irvine, Candler Professor of Urban Education at Emory University. "The authors meticulously document that poverty can no longer be used as an excuse for low-achieving schools. This book is a powerful blueprint for policymakers, researchers, and practitioners who value high-quality, highly effective schools for all students." "Good Schools in Poor Neighborhoods: Defying Demographics, Achieving Success," by Beatriz Chu Clewell and Patricia B. Campbell, with Lesley Perlman, is available from the Urban Institute Press (paper, 6" x 9", 280 pages, ISBN 978-0-87766-742-1, $29.50). Order online at http://www.uipress.org Call 410-516-6956, or dial 1-800-537-5487 toll-free. Aging Adults Have Choices When Confronting Perceived Mental Declines Aging adults may joke about memory lapses and “early Alzheimer’s.” They may worry when they can’t understand a drug plan or lose track of the characters in a novel. But they have more control over their “cognitive vitality” than they may realize, says Elizabeth Stine-Morrow, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois, who has spent 20 years studying learning throughout the lifespan. Aging adults have choices in the way they allocate effort in everyday mental tasks like reading, Stine-Morrow said. They can compensate for subtle age-related changes rather than either giving in to them or giving up completely on the activity, she said. They also have choices in the way they stay mentally engaged and embrace challenges throughout their lifetimes and into older age. It’s all part of what she has playfully named the “Dumbledore hypothesis of cognitive aging,” based on a line from the headmaster Dumbledore in the third Harry Potter novel: “It is our choices … that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” Certain “fluid abilities,” or “mental mechanics,” do tend to decline with age, Stine-Morrow said, but it matters how we respond. “Minor glitches in the cognitive system can loom larger than they perhaps need to because we’ve got these preconceived ideas about what happens with aging,” she said. She will discuss her “Dumbledore hypothesis” on Aug. 19 at the American Psychological Association conference in San Francisco, in a presidential address for the Adult Development and Aging division. A paper on the subject has been accepted for publication in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science. In her reading research, Stine-Morrow, also a professor in Illinois’ Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, has paid particular attention to changes we make – or fail to make – in the way we process and regulate our reading as we age. More recently, she has initiated a program called Senior Odyssey, designed to engage older adults in team-based creative problem-solving and other brain-teasing challenges. After a pilot study, she is now at the start of a five-year, $2.8 million grant from the National Institute on Aging to develop the program and study its effectiveness. Much of her reading research has involved measuring small split-second differences in the way people move through text, and in how and where they pause, noting how those differences affect what they gain or remember from the text. She has found that older adults who remember more of what they’ve read tend to read differently from either younger readers or older readers who remember less. They had learned, consciously or unconsciously, that “in order to maintain the same level of comprehension and memory for text as you get older, you have to do it differently,” she said. One thing they do is to spend more time building a “situation model” at the beginning of a story or book. They take time to get a feel for the setting, to get to know the characters, and to get grounded in important details of the story. By doing so, they find it easier to integrate new information later on, Stine-Morrow said. “Page-turners are page-turners later (in a book or story); they’re rarely page-turners early on.” Older readers with good comprehension also spend more time at what Stine-Morrow calls the “micro level” of their reading, pausing longer and more often to integrate new concepts or to orient themselves to a change of setting in the text. “Younger adults who have a better memory (of what they’ve read) spend more time doing that conceptual integration, or what we call ‘wrap-up,’ at the ends of sentences, whereas older adults tend to do that more in the middle of sentences,” she said. In both cases, older readers with good comprehension have learned how to adjust their allocation of effort to compensate for losses in areas such as working memory and language-processing speed. Current research, yet to be published, is looking at how readers respond when they are coached on using these strategies. “Effort is a good thing; effort doesn’t mean you’re deficient,” Stine-Morrow said. “It’s just the nature of cognition that it requires effort. Every time you allocate effort, it increases your capacity to do that thing in the future. And that becomes even more important as we get older.” Aging adults can find themselves “embedded in cultural expectations about aging,” Stine-Morrow said. “They buy into cultural stereotypes of diminished cognitive capacity.” Drawing on another reference from Harry Potter, Stine-Morrow compares those cultural expectations to the “sorting hat” that Harry dons to select which house he will live in at the Hogwarts school. The hat tries to convince him of one choice, but Harry insists on another. In Stine-Morrow’s analogy, the “sorting hat of cultural expectations” suggests to aging adults that their abilities are in decline. If they listen, they may shy away from intellectual challenges, and in the process possibly hasten a real decline. “Fundamentally, it’s a choice,” she said. “We make the choice to listen to those murmurings of the sorting hat, or not.” Talking Both Quickly and Slowly Best Way to Teach Language Is it better to talk more measuredly to people learning a new tongue, or to chat with them at a faster pace that mimics everyday conversation? That question has sparked fevered debate among language educators for years. According to Yukari Hirata, associate professor of Japanese at Colgate University, the best strategy is to do both: Students improve the most when their teachers use techniques that combine both slow and fast rates of speaking. Hirata and two Colgate undergraduate researchers co-authored a study on the topic that was published in the June 2007 issue of The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Their research — which was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation — provides some insight into teaching a foreign language to non-native speakers. Volunteers in the study — all adults aged 18 to 23 — were trained to recognize Japanese sounds that are difficult to hear and distinguish. One set of subjects used a method where Japanese sentences were delivered at a slow rate, a second group heard the same sentences spoken more quickly, and a third listened to the sentences uttered at both slow and fast rates. The volunteers were tested before and after they participated in the training. The results revealed that participants in the third group learned more than their colleagues, said Hirata. What’s more, training only with the fast rate was found to be least effective, she added. “In the very early stages of learning a language, speaking slowly to students does seem to be beneficial to them,” she explained. “But that’s not enough — they need to be talked to at a variety of rates.” She said she hoped her team’s work would be used by educators and developers of language software alike. “Knowing what works the best will help both teachers and learners.”Teaching Johnny to Read in the Real World The Status of Reading Instruction Institute, established recently by the International Reading Association, is soliciting proposals for a study of reading instruction in a representative sample of U.S. first and fourth grade classrooms. According to Institute director Karen Douglas, there are limitations in the current data describing reading instruction in the United States. “Existing data on reading instruction provide inadequate support for efforts to improve effective instruction for students at all levels of reading achievement. The National Center for Education Statistics asks some relevant questions in large-scale survey studies, but such studies are not designed to solicit in-depth information about what teachers do in teaching reading. Furthermore, many findings from scholarly studies of reading instruction cannot be generalized to the field because student samples are limited. The Institute intends to make use of available data, but there is a clear need for much more extensive descriptions of what is going on in classrooms and schools before reading professionals can identify specific actions to improve reading instruction and student achievement.” Douglas notes that IRA envisions a close collaboration between a contractor and the Institute to design and implement a rigorous study that captures complex teacher-student interactions that define classroom reading instruction. The study will be repeated at three year intervals, providing objective information and identifying instructional trends of interest to administrators, educators, and policymakers. “Too often, groups of activists, relying on inference rather than data, have claimed that children are not being taught properly and that schools are to blame,” according to Cathy Roller, IRA director of research and policy. “For some people, the “reading wars” of the 1980’s have never ended. Occasional articles continue to appear, touting the phonics method over whole language as though ardent followers of either approach are still wrestling for control of how children are taught to read. The shift to scientifically based instruction, a keystone of No Child Left Behind’s Reading First initiative, was expected to revolutionize reading instruction to such an extent that the achievement gap between children of various races, socioeconomic status, and home languages was to disappear completely by 2014. Unfortunately for children who struggle to read and for older students who never quite mastered this fundamental learning tool, Congress and the White House did not enact miracle. Four years of program implementation have not resolved questions of teaching practice. We owe all teachers and students a better shot at success.” For more information on the Status of Reading Instruction Institute, visit http://www.reading.org/resources/issues/status.html. Report Says Early-childhood Intervention Improves Well-being Through Young Adulthood Study is the first to show school programs have enduring impact Minority preschoolers from low-income families who participated in a comprehensive school-based intervention fared better educationally, socially and economically as they moved into young adulthood, according to a report by University of Minnesota professors Arthur Reynolds and Judy Temple. The study is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s (JAMA) Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. Reynolds is a child development professor in the College of Education and Human Development and Judy Temple is a professor in the department of applied economics and in the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. “This study is the first to show that large-scale established programs run by schools can have enduring effects into adulthood on general health and well-being,” Reynolds says. “Early childhood programs can promote not only educational success but health status and behavior.” Reynolds’ research group discovered that by age 24, children who were involved in preschool programs were more likely to finish high school, attend four-year colleges and have health insurance coverage, and less likely to be arrested for a felony, be incarcerated or develop depressive symptoms. For example, the preschool group had higher rates of high school completion with 71.4 percent finishing high school compared with a 63.7 percent finish rate among those in the non preschool group. Those who attended preschool also were more likely to have health insurance with 70.2 percent having insurance compared with 61.5 percent of those not in preschool. Those children in the program also had lower rates of felony arrests with 16.5 percent compared with 21.1 percent and lower depressive symptoms with 12.8 percent compared with 17.4 percent. The study directed by Reynolds is called the Chicago Longitudinal Study and began in 1986 to investigate the effects of government-funded kindergarten programs for 1,539 children in the Chicago Public Schools. Reynolds’ group studied the long-term effects of the Child-Parent Center in Chicago. A total of 1,539 low-income minority children who were born in 1979 or 1980 and attended programs at 25 sites between 1985 and 1986 were compared with 550 children who participated in alternative full-day kindergarten programs available to low-income families. The children were tracked through age 24 using various methods, including records from schools, Medicaid and county, state and federal agencies, as well as a survey completed by the participants between ages 22 and 24 years. “Early childhood interventions have demonstrated consistent positive effects on children's health and well-being,” according to background information in the JAMA article. The types of programs that have received the largest growth in public funding are preschool programs for mostly at-risk 3- and 4-year-olds that provide both educational and family services in a center-based environment. One such intervention, the Child-Parent Center program in Chicago, is available from preschool through third grade and features instruction by qualified teachers, low child-to-staff ratios, health and nutrition services and an intensive parent program that includes classroom involvement, field trips and home visits. Children who participated in the program during preschool and early school years also were more likely to be working full-time (42.7 percent vs. 36.4 percent), have completed more years of education and have lower rates of arrests for violent offenses (13.9 percent vs. 17.9 percent), and were less likely to receive disability assistance (4.4 percent vs. 7 percent). The fact that positive results of the program extend beyond educational achievements is not surprising given the links between education, mental and physical health and behavior, Reynolds and Temple said in the study. “Because expenditures for the medical care and justice systems comprise roughly 20 percent of the gross domestic product, the potential cost savings to governments and taxpayers of early childhood prevention programs are considerable.” “Children who participated in this program had a greater recognition that more and higher quality schooling is the way out of poverty,” Reynolds said. “Children who were enrolled in the CPC program were generally more socially engaged and educationally adept,” Reynolds said. “These benefits derived from the early impacts of the program on school readiness, achievement, and parental involvement in the children’s schooling.” The study was supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, as well as by the Foundation for Child Development, the National Institute for Early Education Research, the McCormick Tribune Foundation and the University of Wisconsin, Madison Graduate School. To learn more about the Chicago Logitudinal Study, see http://www.education.umn.edu/icd/CLS/Teaching to the Test is Not Such a Bad Idea While teaching to the test may seem like a dangerous classroom approach, Peter Afflerbach’s new book, Understanding and Using Reading Assessment, K–12, makes it clear that the problem is not in the teaching as much the test. Afflerbach, a professor at the University of Maryland, provides ample demonstrations of the benefits of classroom testing, with no ambivalence about the role assessment has played in instruction dating back to Socrates. What he does question is whether accountability-by-high-stakes-testing will generate the kinds of results education reformers promise. “Never has there been a more promising time for the productive use of assessment to help us understand students’ growth in reading. Yet, this promise is challenged by the frenzy of testing that threatens daily to change effective classroom teaching and assessment into a narrow, mechanistic approach to schooling.” School districts have made large investments in reading assessments that rely on simple and inferential reading because, in part, such tests can be easily scored by a machine. “A result is that to the degree that there is teaching to the test, there is teaching to low-level questions. They constrain the types of questions students respond to in classrooms,” Afflerbach observes. To illustrate, he contrasts two options. “Why would we ask middle school students to develop a theory of why poverty persists in East Africa when the high-stakes test question requires choosing, from alternatives, the capital of Tanzania? Teaching to the test is, in effect, teaching to an impoverished notion of what questions can tell us.” In part, Afflerbach attributes misunderstandings about the value of reading assessment to confusion about reading’s role in school, suggesting that everyone agrees on importance of reading but not on what it is, how children learn, and how reading is best taught. Reading “fits” into the lives of successful student readers, helping them achieve school-related and personal goals. The struggling reader, however, presents a different profile. “A struggling third-grade reader may already have four years, or half a lifetime, of below-average reading performance. He is reluctant to read and has routines to avoid reading situations — where his skills might improve. He views reading negatively and will not read on his own. This is not surprising—why would he do something when he’s repeatedly failed,” Afflerbach observes, noting that high-stakes test preparation my simply aggravate an already bad situation. “Reading assessments can provide valuable information to parents, taxpayers, administrators, policymakers, teachers, and students. What’s most important is that we match assessments to particular purposes and audiences, recognizing that how we measure achievement must be informed by the nature of the reading we expect of students,” Afflerbach concludes. Baby DVDs, Videos May Hinder, Not Help, Infants' Language Development Despite marketing claims, parents who want to give their infants a boost in learning language probably should limit the amount of time they expose their children to DVDs and videos such as “Baby Einstein” and “Brainy Baby.” Rather than helping babies, the over-use of such productions actually may slow down infants eight to 16 months of age when it comes to acquiring vocabulary, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute. The scientists found that for every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants understood an average of six to eight fewer words than infants who did not watch them. Baby DVDs and videos had no positive or negative effect on the vocabularies on toddlers 17 to 24 months of age. The study was published today in the Journal of Pediatrics. “The most important fact to come from this study is there is no clear evidence of a benefit coming from baby DVDs and videos and there is some suggestion of harm,” said Frederick Zimmerman, lead author of the study and a UW associate professor of health services. “The bottom line is the more a child watches baby DVDs and videos the bigger the effect. The amount of viewing does matter.” Co-authors of the study are Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrics researcher at Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute and a UW professor of pediatrics, and Andrew Meltzoff, co-director of the UW’s Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences. The paper is part of a larger project looking at the trajectory of media viewing in the first two years of life and examining the content of what is being watched and its effects on young children. A paper published last spring by the same researchers showed that by 3 months of age 40 percent of infants are regular viewers of television, DVDs or videos and by the age of 2 this number jumps to 90 percent. For both papers, the researchers conducted random telephone interviews with more than 1,000 families in Minnesota and Washington with a child born in the previous two years. Television, DVD and video viewing were divided into four categories: baby DVDs and videos; educational TV programs, DVDs and videos such as “Sesame Street, “Arthur” and “Blue’s Clues”; children’s non-educational television shows and movies such as “Sponge Bob Square Pants,” “Bob the Builder” and “Toy Story,” and adult television such as “The Simpsons,” “Oprah,” and sports programming. “The results surprised us, but they make sense. There are only a fixed number of hours that young babies are awake and alert. If the ‘alert time’ is spent in front of DVDs and TV instead of with people speaking in ‘parentese’ – that melodic speech we use with little ones – the babies are not getting the same linguistic experience,” said Meltzoff, who is the Job and Gertrud Tamaki endowed chair in psychology at the UW. “Parents and caretakers are the baby’s first and best teachers. They instinctively adjust their speech, eye gaze and social signals to support language acquisition. Watching attention-getting DVDs and TV may not be an even swap for warm social human interaction at this very young age. Old kids may be different, but the youngest babies seem to learn language best from people,” Meltzoff said. “In my clinical practice, I am frequently asked by parents what the value of these products is,” said Christakis. “The evidence is mounting that they are of no value and may in fact be harmful. Given what we now know, I believe the onus is on the manufacturers to prove their claims that watching these programs can positively impact children’s cognitive development.” As part of the telephone interviews, which took about 45 minutes to complete, a standard inventory for measuring infant language development was used. Parents of the 8 to 16 month olds were asked how many of a list of about 90 words their child understood. Typical words on this list included choo choo, mommy and nose. Parents of the 17 to 24 month olds were asked how many words on a similar list they had heard their child use. Typical words from this list were truck, cookie and balloon. Parents also were asked about how often they read books or told stories to their children. Daily reading and storytelling were associated with slight increases in language skills, not a surprising finding since both activities foster language development, Zimmerman said. The researchers believe the content of baby DVDs and videos is different from the other types of programming because it tends to have little dialogue, short scenes, disconnected pictures and shows linguistically indescribable images such as a lava lamp. By contrast, children’s educational programs, which make up the largest viewing category at this age, are, crafted and tested to meet developmental needs of preschool children. “We don’t know for sure that baby DVDs and videos are harmful, but the best policy is safety first. Parents should limit their exposure as much as possible,” said Zimmerman. “Over the course of childhood, children spend more time watching TV than they do in school. So parents need to spend as much time monitoring TV and other media viewing as they do in monitoring their children’s school activities.” The researchers believe more research is required, particularly to examine the long-term effects of baby DVDs and videos on children’s cognitive development. Personal Finance Classes Help More in College than High School Adults who took a high school personal finance class don’t do any better on a test of investment knowledge than those who didn’t take such a class, a new study found. And while college classes on personal finance do seem to help improve adults’ knowledge of investment topics, neither high school or college classes spurred students to save more of their money, researchers found. Those who saved more than average tended to have personal financial experiences, such as owning stock, as well as a higher income. “We need to find ways to make high school finance classes more relevant and helpful to students,” said Jonathan Fox, co-author of the study and associate professor of consumer sciences at Ohio State University. “Although college classes do have more of a positive impact, not everyone goes to college or takes college-level personal finance classes. That’s one reason why we need better ways to promote financial literacy and positive financial practices like saving and planning for retirement.” Fox conducted the study with Tzu-Chin Martina Peng, a doctoral student in consumer sciences, Suzanne Bartholomae, an adjunct assistant professor in human development and family science, and Garrett Cravener, a law student, all at Ohio State. Their results were published in a recent issue of the Journal of Family and Economic Issues. The study involved 1,039 alumni of Ohio State who took part in an online survey about past and current financial experiences, income, savings and other issues. The survey included a test of investment knowledge, which probed how much people knew about stocks, bonds, interest rates, investment risks, and related issues. The results showed that about 20 percent of respondents had participated in a college-level personal finance course, and 17 percent took a high school course. Only a small number (47 people) had taken courses at both levels. Respondents could score from zero to 10 on the investment test. Those who took only a college class scored more than a full point (or letter grade in academic terms) better than those who took only a high school personal finance course. Those who took only a high school course did not do better than respondents who did not take any class on personal finances. Somewhat surprisingly, those who took a college class also scored higher on investment knowledge than did those who took both a high school and a college class. However, so few people took classes at both levels that it is difficult to make much of that finding, Fox said. Why would college classes be more effective than those in high school? Fox said one reason may be that college classes are longer and more comprehensive and likely to include more information on investment topics. In addition, the lessons of a personal finance class hit closer to home for college students who manage money every day. “College students may be paying rent, tuition, cell phone bills, and dealing with financial aid issues,” Fox said. “They can see the importance of financial literacy.” The best way to improve high school personal finance classes may be to interject some real-world financial issues into the curriculum, according to Fox. “Ideally, the students could use their own family’s finances and budget as a way to get into the subject in a realistic way,” he said. That doesn’t have to pose privacy issues, he said. Students could add or subtract zeros from their family’s income, or the class could discuss issues just in percentage terms, such as how much of each family’s income is devoted to housing. The study showed the value of real-life financial experiences in improving knowledge. For example, study respondents who held a bank account before age 18 had scores more than 5 percent higher than those who didn’t. Those with higher income, and those working in business also had higher levels of knowledge about investment issues. Men also tended to score higher than women. While people who took personal finance classes didn’t save more than others, respondents with real-life life financial experiences did tend to save more. Respondents who held stock before the age of 16 had a savings rate about 1.5 percent higher than others, while those who currently held stocks saw a 3.5 percent increase in household savings rates. As expected, higher income was also linked to higher savings. Fox said the results of the study suggest more emphasis should be given to financial education beyond high school. “Right now, most financial education classes are aimed at high school students. While we should improve those courses, we also need to be aware of the benefits of teaching personal finance in college and other settings, such as the workplace, where we can reach engaged adult learners,” Fox said. Breakfast Not On the Schedule for Many Students In Breakfast in America's Big Cities, the Food Research and Action Center surveyed 23 large school districts, which were selected on the basis of size and geographic representation. Breakfast participation rates in some of America's largest cities, including Chicago, Denver, and New York, badly lag the national average, and nearly half of the of urban districts studied (11 out of 23) fail to provide breakfast on a daily basis to a majority of their low-income students. The survey found that school strategies that make breakfast part of the school day were the most effective ways to reach children. These strategies include universal breakfast, where all children can eat regardless of income, "grab and go" breakfast from carts in the hallway, and breakfast in the classroom. According to the report, the five school districts — Portland, Newark, Minneapolis, Detroit, and Los Angeles — that most heavily used these options served an average of 72.5 low-income students with breakfast for every 100 low-income students that ate school lunch during the 2005-06 school year. "We need to reach more children with breakfast. It's a fast and long-lasting way to improve children's learning and behavior, foster healthy eating habits, reduce school nurse visits, and end hunger," said Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC). “By making it an essential part of the school day, we see that more children participate and have a healthy start to their day." Numerous studies have shown that breakfast improves learning and attendance, and reduces behavior problems and visits to the school nurse. Beyond the positive impact on learning, breakfast improves children’s diets and helps build healthy habits. Over the past 20 years, obesity rates have doubled among children and tripled among adolescents. Children who start the day with breakfast are less likely to be obese. School breakfast participation was far lower in districts that only used these methods in just a few schools: They reached just 46.1 low-income students with breakfast for every 100 that ate lunch. And, the remaining seven districts that did not use any of these methods reached only 44.2 low-income students out of every 100 that ate lunch. "The first day of school is fast approaching. Now is the key time for school districts to think about the school year and plan ways to improve participation," added Weill. School districts identified a number of barriers to student participation, many of which could be addressed with more flexible breakfast options. A vast majority of districts found that time was a factor — from students not having enough time in the morning to eat, to tight bus schedules that get students to school too late to participate. Low participation means that these school districts also are missing out on the opportunity to access additional federal funding. For each day a low-income child missed out on breakfast, the school lost $1.27 in federal nutrition funding for every child who would have received a free breakfast, and $0.97 for every child who would have received a reduced-price breakfast. FRAC estimated that if each surveyed district was able to reach 70 low-income children with breakfast for every 100 that received free and reduced-price lunch, more than 578,785 additional students would have eaten a healthy school breakfast every day in the 21 districts below this level, and districts would have received an additional $129.4 million in federal child nutrition funding. About the Report For this report, FRAC surveyed 23 large urban school districts across the country on school breakfast participation rates and policies. FRAC measures the reach of the School Breakfast Program by comparing the number of low-income children that participate in breakfast to those that receive free and reduced-price school lunch. The full report can be accessed at: www.frac.org/pdf/urbanbreakfast07.pdf. The Nation’s Report Card: Economics 2006 This report presents results of the first ever National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) U.S. economics assessment in 2006. National results for a representative sample of students at grade 12 are reported in terms of students’ average economics score on a 0–300 scale, and in terms of the percentage of students attaining each of three achievement levels: Basic, Proficient, and Advanced. The national results show that on average male students scored higher than female students, and White and Asian/Pacific Islander students scored higher than other racial/ethnic groups. Students from schools in large cities had lower average scores than students from schools in other locations. Students from families with higher levels of parental education scored higher, on average, than their peers from families with lower levels of parental education. Most 12th-graders reported some exposure to economics content during high school. The report also includes sample assessment questions and examples of student responses. Economics Content Areas The economics assessment had three content areas, defined in the framework developed by the National Assessment Governing Board. Market Economy The first content area is Market Economy, which focuses on the economic decisions of individuals, businesses, and institutions. It is similar to the content area usually referred to as microeconomics.
National Economy The second content area is National Economy. Concerned with issues dealt with in macro-economics, questions in this area focus on the sum of economic decisions made within a national economy, such as the following:
A fourth example is a question on the effect of increases in interest rates on consumer borrowing. This is a "constructed-response question," which requires a written answer. This type of question constituted about 17 percent of the questions on the assessment. A student who received full credit wrote, "People will borrow less money when interest rates increase because it will be more expensive to do so." A student who received partial credit wrote, "People will probably borrow less money if the interest rates are increased. In the end people will end up paying back more than what they borrowed." The answer doesn't explain why an increase in interest rates leads to a decline in borrowing, and for this reason the student received only partial credit. International Economy The International Economy area deals with trade across international borders and the benefits and costs for consumers, producers, and governments that flow from trade. Sixty-three percent could determine the effect of a decrease in oil production on oil-importing countries.
The full report can be accessed at: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2007475 Advanced Mathematics and Science Coursetaking in the Spring High School Senior Classes of 1982, 1992, and 2004 This report presents new time series data on the coursetaking patterns in mathematics and science for the spring high school graduating classes of 1982, 1992, and 2004. Coursetaking information was derived from high school transcripts collected by NCES in the following three studies:
The analysis addresses overall trends, as well as trends within various subgroups defined by sex, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), expectations for future educational attainment, and school sector. The report examines trends in academic coursetaking in both mean credits earned in math and science and in the highest course level that high school graduates completed in the two subjects. Some key findings are as follows: First, in mathematics, academic coursework increased from, on average, 2.7 total credits in 1982 to 3.6 total credits in 2004. In addition, graduates shifted from taking lower level mathematics courses to taking more advanced courses. For example, the percentage of graduates who persisted through the mathematics curriculum into the two most advanced levels—precalculus and calculus—tripled between 1982 and 2004. At the subgroup level, while students in each of the four SES quartiles increased their participation in advanced mathematics over time, some disparities increased—for example, the difference between the highest and lowest SES quartiles in precalculus and calculus coursetaking went from 18 percentage points in 1982 to 35 percentage points in 2004. Second, in science, the average number of credits increased from 2.2 total credits in 1982 to 3.3 total credits in 2004. Further, graduates shifted in significant proportions from taking lower level science courses to taking upper level ones. At the subgroup level, despite increased completion of advanced-level science courses by graduates from all school sectors, Catholic and other private school students remained more likely than their public school counterparts to complete advanced-level courses in science. The full report can be accessed at: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2007312 Reluctant Readers May Prefer E-Books The goal of this study was to allow disinterested fourth grade students to read from a WHD and find out if they might be stimulated to do more reading. The graduate students talked to the students about the WHDs and found that they were very eager to listen and to try something new. They didn’t need explanation of the features; they had them figured out pretty well on their own. They were very comfortable with the technology, and one of the kids even thought that they were “a lot like PDAs.” While walking through the various features and functions of the eBook, the students were highly proactive and asked good questions. They were all very thrilled about the fact that they could draw on the WHD with the stylus and also use the highlight option to mark important words. Many of them were sharing their ideas and showing each other how to draw, highlight and use the other features. They were especially excited that they could take them home and show them off to their families. There were only two or three students in the entire class who were indifferent to the WHDs. Fifteen students used the WHDs in class and at home for a period of two weeks. The teacher also used the device to teach in class. They read two books. At the end of the reading time the students answered a survey’s with questions focused on learning about their experience and any opinions or suggestions they might have. A 1-5 Likert scale was used with 5 as the highest rating. Survey Results – The answers to the questions on the survey were as follows:
To see complete article: http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=6787#more-6787 Online Writing Lab's Top Five Grammar Requests Purdue University's online writing lab receives millions of visitors a year, and here are the questions people most frequently ask. "Without a doubt our No. 1 request for help is about formatting research papers for college or high school students," says Tammy Conard-Salvo, associate director of the Writing Lab, which is housed in the Department of English. "The most common questions are about citing sources, especially electronic sources." "People may be surprised to learn it's not just students asking questions. Our tutors and educators are even asked to settle bets between colleagues, friends or spouses about everyday grammar questions." Here are the other questions that round out the top five queries received by the Online Writing Lab, known as OWL:
The online resource, located on the Web at http:// owl.english.purdue.edu, provides more than 200 printable resources on starting and revising a writing project, business and technical writing, Web research, and research papers. These resources provide punctuation and grammar rules, guides to effective organization, tips on the writing process and how to cope with writer's block. The site also includes style guides for the popular Modern Language Association and American Psychological Association citation formats. The lab also offers a grammar hotline, at 765-494-3723, staffed by writing lab specialists. Questions also can be submitted online from the Web site. Tutors will respond to questions from anyone in the world, Conard-Salvo says. MacArthur Announces $2 Million New Digital Media and Learning Competition The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has announced a public competition that will award $2 million in funding to emerging leaders, communicators, and innovators shaping the field of digital media and learning. The competition is part of MacArthur's $50 million Digital Media and Learning initiative that aims to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life. "An open competition is an excellent way to identify and inspire new ideas about learning in an increasingly digital world," MacArthur Foundation President Jonathan Fanton said. "We do not yet know how much people are changing because of digital media, but we hope that this competition will help support the most innovative thinking about learning, the formation of ethical judgments, peer mentoring, creativity, and civic participation, all of which are increasingly conducted online." Awards will be given in two categories:
The open competition will be administered by a network of educators and digital innovators called "HASTAC" (the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory). HASTAC was founded and is primarily operated at two university centers, the University of California Humanities Research Institute and the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University. HASTAC has a network reaching more than 80 institutions globally. The choice of HASTAC, one of a new breed of "virtual institutions," reflects MacArthur's goals in promoting next-generation learning. Applications will be judged by an expert panel of scholars, educators, entrepreneurs, journalists, and other digital media specialists. "We are already teaching a generation of students who do not remember a time before they were online," said Cathy N. Davidson, John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University and co-founder of HASTAC. "Their social life and informal learning are interconnected. They don't just consume media, they customize it. These students bring fascinating new skills to our classrooms, but they also bring an urgent need for critical thinking about the digital world they have inherited and are shaping." As part of their prize, awardees will receive special consultation support on everything from technology development to management training. Winners will be invited to showcase their work at a conference that will include venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, educators and policy makers seeking the best ideas about digital learning. Applications are due Oct. 15, 2007 and prizewinners will be announced in January. Detailed information on the competition is available online at www.dmlcompetition.net. "With the digital media and learning initiative, the MacArthur Foundation is playing a leading role in reshaping both institutional and informal learning practices," said David Theo Goldberg, HASTAC co-founder and director of the University of California's Humanities Research Institute. "Traditional learning practices are being supplemented and supplanted by new digital media, which both enable and extend their reach through virtual institutions like HASTAC. This is a natural partnership." Year-Round Schools Don't Boost Learning, Study Finds Students in “year-round” schools don't learn more than their peers in traditional nine-month schools, new research has found. “We found that students in year-round schools learn more during the summer, when others are on vacation, but they seem to learn less than other children during the rest of the year,” said Paul von Hippel, author of the study and research statistician in sociology at Ohio State. The problem with year-round schools may be that they don't actually add more school days to the 180 typically required, von Hippel said. Instead of a three-month summer vacation, year-round schools typically have several breaks of three to four weeks spread throughout the year. The total number of school days and vacation days remains unchanged, but they are distributed more evenly over the calendar. Although school districts often adopt year-round schedules to help alleviate overcrowding, some educators have claimed that eliminating the long summer vacation will provide academic benefits for students. “The results don't support that claim,” von Hippel said. Von Hippel presented his results Aug. 11 in New York City at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. One supposed benefit of year-round calendars is that they do away with the slowdown or loss of learning that students commonly experience over the summer. But “year-round schools don't really solve the problem of the summer learning setback – they simply spread it out across the year,” von Hippel said. The study used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, a national survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Education. Von Hippel examined reading and math test scores of children in kindergarten and first grade in 748 public schools and 244 private schools from around the country. Scores from students in 27 public schools classified as year-round (none of the private schools had a year-round calendar) were compared to scores of students in schools with traditional calendars. Nearly all of the year-round schools were in urban and suburban areas, and most were in the West. Children attending year-round schools were mostly Hispanic and tended to be somewhat poorer than average, but their poverty was moderate rather than severe. Year-round schools also tended to have problems with overcrowding. In fact, year-round schedules are often adopted to cope with crowding. By staggering students' schedules, year-round schools can arrange for some students to be in session when others are on vacation; in this way, schools can accommodate more students than they could on a traditional nine-month calendar. Von Hippel said he was able to take into account issues such as poverty and overcrowding when comparing scores to ensure that comparisons between test scores in year-round and traditional schools were fair. Reading and math tests were given to students at the beginning and end of kindergarten and first grade; comparing these test scores allowed von Hippel to estimate the amount learned during kindergarten, during the summer between kindergarten and first grade, and first grade. Over a twelve-month period, average test score gains were less than 1 percent larger in year-round than in nine-month schools – which von Hippel said is “an absolutely trivial difference.” Some proponents of year-round schools argue that they may do the most good for students that come from especially poor families. This study found mixed results for that argument, he said. Compared to other students, disadvantaged children did seem to gain slightly more in reading test scores in year-round schools than they did in nine-month schools. However, these students from poor families saw no increase in math scores in year-round compared to traditional schools. “There may be a slight advantage for students from the poorest families in attending year-round schools, at least when it comes to improving their reading,” he said. While the results of the study contradict one major argument for year-round schools, von Hippel said this should not be taken as an argument against year-round schedules. “On purely academic grounds, I wouldn't advocate a year-round calendar, but I can't recommend against it, either,” he said. If a school has a non-academic reason for adopting a year-round calendar – such as coping with overcrowding – it can do so without any major harm to academics. And if it already has a year-round calendar, there is no academic reason to switch back. This research was supported in part by grants from the Spencer Foundation and the National Institute for Child Health and Development. Childhood Obesity Indicates Greater Risk of School Absenteeism, Penn Study Reveals In the first study of how weight may affect school attendance, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University have found that overweight children are at greater risk of school absenteeism than their normal-weight peers. The study of more than a thousand 4th, 5th and 6th graders in the Philadelphia school system also determined that body mass index, or BMI, is as significant a factor in determining absenteeism from school as age, race, socioeconomic status and gender, formerly the four main predictors. The study found that overweight children were absent on average 20 percent more than their normal-weight peers. “At this young age, children are not necessarily experiencing the health problems that will likely confront them later in life unless serious intervention takes place,” said Andrew B. Geier, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychology in the School of Arts and Sciences at Penn. “However, they are missing school at a greater rate than their peers, setting themselves up for the negative fallout that accompanies absenteeism. What’s keeping them from school, more than heath issues, is the stigma and the bullying that accompanies being overweight. Future research should explore this additional, very damaging side effect of being overweight.” The study builds on others that show that the medical and psychosocial consequences of being overweight are numerous and still being discovered. The disadvantages that arise from missing school such as increased drug use, increased rates of pregnancy and poor academic performance have been previously documented. Meanwhile, the rate of childhood obesity has tripled in the United States during the past 25 years. The four indicators of increased absenteeism among school children have traditionally been race, socioeconomic status, age and gender. Young men from economically disadvantaged, minority populations were considered at greater risk for school absenteeism, and that remains true; however, in this study, BMI was a better indicator of poor classroom attendance than these traditional factors or any others. Researchers attempted to control for the socioeconomic differences among students by selecting inner-city schools that were homogeneously among the city’s poorest. More than 80 percent of students at these schools were eligible for free and reduced-cost meal plans. The findings are reported in the August issue of the journal Obesity. National Science Board Approves National Action Plan for 21st Century Stem Education The National Science Board (Board) unanimously adopted a motion to release for public comment a draft action plan to address critical 21st century needs in the nation's STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education system. Two overarching actions stressed in the plan are increasing coordination of STEM education--both horizontally among states and vertically through grade levels--and increasing the supply of qualified K-12 STEM teachers. This national action plan lays out strategies to better enable and encourage stakeholders from local, state and federal governments, as well as nongovernmental STEM education stakeholder groups, to collaborate. The goal is to produce a numerate and scientifically literate society and to increase and improve the current STEM education workforce. In recognition of the essential lead role of local and state jurisdictions in the nation's P-12 education system, one of the Board's recommendations would require that federal STEM education programs coordinate their activities with local and state education bodies, and a variety of stakeholder groups, through a new Congressionally chartered non-federal National Council for STEM Education. Among its other recommended actions, the Board would also bolster STEM education programs at the National Science Foundation in order to address the needs of the U.S. for a competitive, well-educated workforce. The Board developed this action plan, in part, based on a request from Congress in 2005. The Board held three public hearings around the U.S. and established a federal advisory committee, the Commission on 21st Century Education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, to provide advice as the Board developed its action plan. The Board is actively seeking public comments on the plan and hopes to integrate public comment into a final version for Board approval and release at its next meeting on October 3, 2007, the day before the historic 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik. National Average ACT Score Rises Again as College Readiness Continues to Improve Among U.S. High School Grads
The national average ACT composite score rose in 2007 for the third time in the past five years. The percentage of U.S. high school graduates who are ready for college-level coursework continued to grow as well. Members of the high school graduating class of 2007 who took the ACT—a record 1.3 million students—earned an average composite score of 21.2 on the college admission and placement exam, up from 20.8 in 2003 and from 21.1 last year. Scores improved on all four required subject-area tests included in the exam—English, mathematics, reading and science. Each test is scored on a scale of 1 to 36, with the composite score being the average of the four individual required test scores. The results also suggest a growing number of U.S. high school graduates are prepared for college-level coursework. The percentage of ACT-tested graduates who met or surpassed ACT's College Readiness Benchmarks, indicating they are ready to succeed in specific first-year credit-bearing college courses, has improved over the past five years in all four subject areas. Steady growth in college readiness is evident in both math and science, the two subject areas in which students have typically been least prepared for college. The percentage of test-takers who met or surpassed the College Readiness Benchmark on the ACT Math Test was up for the third consecutive year, increasing from 40 percent in 2004 to 43 percent in 2007, while the percentage who met or surpassed the benchmark on the ACT Science Test was up for the second year in a row, increasing from 26 percent in 2005 to 28 percent in 2007. In addition, the proportion of students who met or surpassed the College Readiness Benchmarks in all four subject areas increased by 2 percentage points compared to last year, from 21 to 23 percent. "These upward trends show more students are graduating from high school with the academic skills they need to succeed in college and workforce training programs," said Richard L. Ferguson, ACT's chief executive officer and chairman of the board. "We still have a long way to go in ensuring that all high school graduates are prepared for the next level, but the progress we're seeing is very encouraging. Changes in academic achievement generally take time to develop." Scores have trended upward for nearly all racial/ethnic groups since 2003. All groups with the exception of African American graduates posted an increase on their ACT composite score this year compared to last, with Asian American students showing a sizable gain of 0.3 point. Scores for African American students this year are 0.1 point higher than in 2003, but have fluctuated slightly in the intervening years, dropping 0.1 point this year compared to last. Core Course Rigor Called into Question Despite the increases in college readiness indicated by this year's score report, the ACT results suggest that core courses offered in U.S. high schools, by and large, still need more rigor to adequately prepare students for success in college coursework, particularly in math and science. The results indicate students must typically take additional courses beyond the recommended core curriculum in order to be college ready. "Too often, core courses in our high schools fail to teach students the essential knowledge and skills they need to succeed in first-year college courses such as college algebra and college biology," said Ferguson. ACT has long recommended that students take a minimum core curriculum of four years of English and three years each of math (Algebra 1 and higher), social studies and science to prepare for college. Among 2007 ACT-tested graduates who took Algebra 1 and 2 and geometry—the minimum core coursework in math—a meager 15 percent met or surpassed the College Readiness Benchmark on the ACT Mathematics Test, indicating that they are ready to take a college algebra course. By comparison, 40 percent of those who took trigonometry in addition to the core courses met or surpassed the benchmark. Similarly, only 20 percent of the graduates who took general science, biology, and chemistry—the minimum core coursework in science—met or surpassed the College Readiness Benchmark on the ACT Science Test, indicating that they are ready to take a college biology course, while 40 percent of those who took physics rather than general science met or surpassed the benchmark. "Although it's always a good idea to take additional courses beyond the core in high school, taking the basic core curriculum should enable most students to be ready for their first year of college," said Ferguson. "We must take the steps necessary to ensure that the core courses offered in our high schools are rigorous and provide students with the essential skills they need to succeed in college-credit courses after they graduate." Statewide Use of ACT Increases More and more states are taking steps to help their high school graduates become college ready by requiring all students to take the ACT as part of their statewide academic assessment programs. Colorado and Illinois have been administering the ACT to all public school 11th-grade students since 2001. Both states have seen significant improvement in the percentage of their graduates who meet ACT's College Readiness Benchmarks since 2002. In addition, Michigan began administering the ACT to all 11th graders this past spring, and both Kentucky and Wyoming will join the ranks next year. Wyoming will offer students the choice of taking either the ACT or ACT's WorkKeys exams, which measure workforce skills. A number of other states are in various stages of discussion in the statewide adoption process. Racial/Ethnic Groups Participation in the ACT has been rapidly increasing among African American and Hispanic graduates over the past five years, far outpacing overall growth. Since 2003, the number of African American test-takers has increased by 18 percentage points, while the number of Hispanic test-takers has increased by 23 percentage points. The overall number of ACT-tested graduates has increased by 11 percentage points during this same span. Asian American students again earned the highest average composite score at 22.6, followed by Caucasian students at 22.1, American Indian/Alaska Native students at 18.9, Hispanic students at 18.7 and African American students at 17.0. Results from ACT's EXPLORE and PLAN assessments, which are precursor exams to the ACT designed to help 8th- and 10th-grade students prepare for the future, point to likely improvement in college readiness among racial/ethnic minority students in the future. EXPLORE results for 2007 indicate that increased percentages of both African American and American Indian/Alaska Native 8th graders are on target to becoming college ready in all four subject areas than were in 2003. Similarly, PLAN 2007 results show a greater percentage of Hispanic 10th-grade students are on track to becoming college ready in all four areas than were in 2003. Gender Males in the class of 2007 earned an average composite score of 21.2 on the ACT, while females earned an average score of 21.0, both unchanged from last year (6 percent of students chose not to record their gender). Males continued to earn higher average scores than females on ACT's math and science tests, while females again earned higher average scores than males on the English and reading tests. Uses of ACT Scores The overwhelming majority (90 percent) of all four-year colleges and universities in the U.S. report using ACT scores in their admission decision-making process. This percentage has not changed significantly over the past 30 years. According to the 2005 Admission Trends Survey by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, test scores are the second-most important factor used in undergraduate admission decisions, following high school grades. The majority of all four-year U.S. colleges and universities also use ACT scores for placement purposes. More than 60 percent of those institutions use ACT scores to help place students into first-year courses that match their academic skill levels. Placing students in the right courses is one important factor in helping them stay in college and persist to graduation. ACT Writing Scores ACT also offers an optional Writing Test, which was introduced in February 2005. Students who opt to take the Writing Test are asked to write an essay response to a given prompt. Scores on the Writing Test, which range from 2 to 12, are reported separately and are not included in the ACT composite score. The average score on the ACT Writing Test dropped slightly from 7.7 last year, the first year in which writing scores were reported, to 7.6 in 2007. The exam was taken by 41 percent of all test-takers in the class of 2007, a slight increase from 36 percent last year. About the ACT The ACT is a curriculum-based achievement exam designed to measure the academic skills that are taught in schools and deemed important for success in first-year college courses. The average national scores for each required subject test included in the ACT in 2007 were: English – 20.7, Math – 21.0, Reading – 21.5, and Science – 21.0. The ACT is scored on a scale of 1 to 36, with 36 being the highest possible score. ACT scores are accepted at all major colleges and universities across the nation. The test is administered in all 50 states and is taken by the majority of graduates in 26 states. To see full national and state reports: http://www.act.org/news/data/07/index.html Study Explores the Online Behaviors of U.S. Teens and 'Tweens A new study released by the National School Boards Association and Grunwald Associates LLC exploring the online behaviors of U.S. teens and ‘tweens shows that 96 percent of students with online access use social networking technologies, such as chatting, text messaging, blogging, and visiting online communities such as Facebook, MySpace, and Webkinz. Further, students report that one of the most common topics of conversation on the social networking scene is education. Nearly 60 percent of online students report discussing education-related topics such as college or college planning, learning outside of school, and careers. And 50 percent of online students say they talk specifically about schoolwork. “There is no doubt that these online teen hangouts are having a huge influence on how kids today are creatively thinking and behaving,” said Anne L. Bryant, executive director of the National School Boards Association. “The challenge for school boards and educators is that they have to keep pace with how students are using these tools in positive ways and consider how they might incorporate this technology into the school setting.” Students report they are engaging in highly creative activities on social networking internet sites including writing, art, and contributing to collaborative online projects whether or not these activities are related to schoolwork. Almost half of students (49 percent) say that they have uploaded pictures they have made or photos they have taken, and more than one in five students (22 percent) report that they have uploaded video they have created. Today, students report that they are spending almost as much time using social networking services and Web sites as they spend watching television. Among teens who use social networking sites, that amounts to about 9 hours a week online, compared to 10 hours a week watching television. “Our study showed that 96 percent of school districts say that at least some of their teachers assign homework requiring Internet use,” said Peter Grunwald of Grunwald Associates. “What this means is that schools may be starting to use the Internet and other technologies more effectively. In the future, schools that incorporate social networking tools in education can help engage kids and move them toward the center of the learning process.” While most schools have rules against social networking activities, almost 70 percent of districts report having student Web site programs, and nearly half report their schools participate in online collaborative projects with other schools and in online pen pal or other international programs. Further, more than a third say their schools and/or students have blogs, either officially or in the context of instruction. The report, “Creating & Connecting: Research and Guidelines on Online Social and Educational Networking,” is based on three surveys: an online survey of nearly 1,300 9- to 17-year-olds, an online survey of more than 1,000 parents, and telephone interviews with 250 school districts leaders who make decisions on Internet policy. The study was carried out with support from Microsoft, News Corporation, and Verizon, and does not necessarily represent the views of the underwriters. Relocating Poor Families to More-Affluent Neighborhoods Doesn’t Necessarily Lead to Improved Student Achievement New research published in the fall issue of the Hoover Institution’s journal Education Next shows that relocating poor families to less poor neighborhoods may not be enough to lead to improved academic achievement for those families’ children. A randomized evaluation of the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) program--a federal housing program piloted in five major U.S. cities that sought to relocate poor families by providing housing vouchers--shows that, contrary to expectations, moving families out of high-poverty neighborhoods has no overall positive impact on children’s learning. Using data on more than 5,000 children between the ages of 6 and 20, researchers Lisa Sanbonmatsu, Jeffrey Kling, Greg Duncan, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn compared the educational outcomes of children whose families were offered housing vouchers through a lottery with those of children in families who entered the lottery but were not offered vouchers. During the first four years of the program, more than 4,000 families applied for the housing vouchers in the five pilot cities--Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. A lottery was used to randomly assign each family to one of three groups: those receiving unrestricted housing vouchers that could be used to rent in the private market in any neighborhood; those receiving restricted vouchers that could be used only in neighborhoods with a poverty rate of less than 10 percent; and those who did not receive either voucher. Families using a restricted housing voucher moved to neighborhoods with poverty rates 28 percentage points lower on average than the neighborhoods of similar families who didn’t receive a voucher. For families using the unrestricted vouchers, the average poverty rate was 17 percentage points lower than the neighborhood in which they would have lived. The improvements in the schools attended by the children of families using vouchers were more modest. Children in restricted voucher families attended schools with only slightly higher scores on state exams. The schools also had about 10 percent fewer minority students and almost 13 percent fewer students eligible for the federal lunch program. Unrestricted vouchers produced changes about 30 to 50 percent as large. The MTO program, however, had no overall impact on student test scores. For children whose families had a restricted voucher, no statistically significant increase was seen in combined reading and math test scores. There was also no evidence of an advantage for children whose families had an unrestricted voucher. Neither were the impacts of the program more favorable for younger children, who had spent fewer years in high-poverty neighborhoods and were thus possibly more amenable to change. In addition, no statistically significant differences were found in behavior or attitudes toward school between children from families with and without vouchers. Students from both restricted and unrestricted voucher families and the control group had similar numbers of behavior problems and were as likely to have repeated a grade, been suspended in the last two years, or had a parent or guardian called to the school to discuss a problem the child was having. The authors suggest various reasons for the program’s limited benefit. Families who used vouchers took steps later that undid some of the potential advantages of their initial moves to middle-class neighborhoods in subsequent moves. Moreover, many families who remained in their new neighborhoods found that the poverty rate increased around them. Although families with vouchers moved to less impoverished neighborhoods, most did not move to racially integrated ones. School choice may have allowed families that moved with vouchers to continue sending their children to schools in their old neighborhoods. Notably, the neighborhood improvements did not involve moving to truly affluent neighborhoods. It may be the case that children from low-income families who moved into high-income suburbs would experience notable improvements in academic achievement. Moving poor families to neighborhoods that, while less poor, have schools that are only marginally better than those in the original neighborhoods is unlikely to solve the children’s academic problems, note the authors All Over the Map: Explaining the Educational Outcomes in the Moving to Opportunity Program Stefanie DeLuca of Johns Hopkins University and her colleagues conducted in-depth interviews with families who participated in the Baltimore Moving to Opportunity (MTO) program to find out why the program did not have the expected results for educational achievement. DeLuca’s interviews portray the frightening conditions many MTO families saw in their children’s schools and the concerns they had for their children’s well-being. Yet, as DeLuca explains in the article, published in the fall issue of the Hoover Institution’s journal Education, these fears and realities did not always translate into efforts to remove their children from those environments. “Poor mothers and their children juggle myriad extreme conditions, and schooling is not always on the top of the list,” writes DeLuca. “Murder, crippling drug addiction, suspicious landlords, diabetes, and depression took center stage in the lives of many, if not most, MTO families we interviewed. While neighborhood change could be a necessary condition to protect children and improve their schooling, it is not sufficient in light of the deep morass of issues that characterizes the lives of the urban poor.” DeLuca points out that the Baltimore MTO interviews provide a reminder that poor families “are not just wealthy families without a bankbook. Poor parents often have less information about school choice programs and school quality than do middle-class parents. Poor families may approach opportunities, and in particular may secure schooling for their children, in ways that diverge from many research models of educational decision making. Williams v. California: The Statewide Impact of Two Years of Implementation Conditions at California's lowest-performing schools are improving, a new report has found. Schools are fixing unsafe and decrepit classrooms, hiring more qualified teachers, and providing textbooks to students who just three years ago had none. The changes are the result of the 2004 settlement of Williams v. California, an ACLU/SC lawsuit targeting desperate conditions for the state's poorest students. "The Williams case has provided millions of California students with the basic essentials they need to succeed," said Brooks Allen, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California’s Statewide Williams Implementation Attorney and co-counsel for the plaintiffs. "But Williams is a beginning, not an end. The minimum standards it sets are the foundation on which California must build in order to ensure that every child has access to a high-quality education." Read the full report: http://www.decentschools.org/settlement/WilliamsReportWeb2007.pdf |
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