State-funded preschools served over one million children last year, yet public pre-K was unavailable for most 3- and 4-year-olds, according to the annual survey released by the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER).

Funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, The State of Preschool 2007 ranks all 50 states on the percentage of children served and spending per child. It also compares the number of quality benchmarks each state meets for the 2006-2007 school year. The survey found that enrollment, quality and state spending per child increased.

Yet, 12 states offered no state-funded preschool education and others faltered in their commitment to the quality of their early education programs. The report showed that nationally less than half of all 4-year-olds were enrolled in government-supported preschool education programs and one quarter received no preschool. For 3-year-olds the situation was worse, with only 15 percent enrolled in public programs and 50 percent receiving no early education.

Children from wealthy families can attend expensive private preschools while the federal Head Start program and most state-funded preschool education is targeted at lower income families.

Research shows that high-quality preschool education for disadvantaged children improves later high school graduation rates and college attendance, employment opportunities and earnings, even marriage rates. It lessens future crime, delinquency and teenage pregnancy. In economic terms, high-quality preschool education returns to the individual and the public up to $17 for each $1 invested. New studies find educational benefits for middle-income children as well.

Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming have no state-funded programs. Serious problems also exist in four states – California, Texas, Florida, and Ohio – that are home to one-third of all American preschoolers."

California, Texas, Florida, and Ohio are among only seven states that meet less than half of NIEER's quality benchmarks. All four spend less than the national average per child. Texas and California do not limit class size. Ohio, Florida and California do not require preschool teachers to have education comparable to public school teachers. Ohio serves not even 5,000 of its nearly 150,000 4-year-olds.

On a more positive note, the yearbook reported that in 2006-2007:

• Average state spending per child was $3,642, halting a trend of declining per-child commitments that had persisted since at least the 2002-2003 school year.

• More than one million 3- and 4-year-old children attended state-funded preschool education programs.   • Thirty states increased enrollment. Nationally, enrollment was up by 80,000.

• Eight states met higher quality standards. Yet, some states still require preschool education teachers to have little more than a high school diploma.

• Of the 26 states that served 3-year-olds, enrollment increased in all but five states. Overall enrollment of 3-year-olds was up 10 percent, mostly due to increases in Illinois, which became the first state to commit to serving all 3-year-olds.

Pre-K funding could be attached to state funding formulas for K-12 education to ensure that funds increase proportionally with enrollment as it expands and that funding per child is more dependable the authors say. They also said the federal government could play a vital role by providing an inducement to states to expand enrollment, particularly at age 3, by offering matching funds.

The 2007 Yearbook pointed out that one-quarter of all 4-year-olds and half of all 3s had no access to preschool education. State and federal regular preschool education, special education and Head Start combined served 39 percent of the country's 4-year-olds, and some attend private programs, leaving one-quarter of 4-year-olds with no preschool program at all. At age 3, state and federal programs combined to serve only 15 percent. Even with some others attending private programs, 50 percent of 3-year-olds had no access to a preschool education.

Other key findings in the yearbook include:

Access:

• Enrollment increases in most states tended to be modest, but some states made large gains. Enrollment increased by 52 percent in Tennessee, 33 percent in Pennsylvania, and 17 percent in Illinois, Florida, and New York.

• State pre-K programs served 22 percent of 4-year-olds and 3 percent of 3-year-olds nationwide.

• Three states with "Pre-K for All" served more than half of their 4-year-olds: Oklahoma (68 percent), Florida (58 percent), and Georgia (53 percent). When Head Start and preschool special education enrollments are taken into account, Oklahoma served 90 percent of all 4-year-olds; Florida, 71 percent; and Georgia, 65 percent.

Quality:

• North Carolina and Alabama once again met all 10 of the NIEER quality standard benchmarks. Eight additional states--Arkansas, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington--had a state-funded pre-K initiative meeting nine of the 10 benchmarks.

• Of the 38 states with preschool education programs, Kansas met the fewest benchmarks, three. Arizona, California, Florida, Maine, Ohio, and Texas met only four.

• Fewer than half the 38 pre-K states required all lead teachers in their programs to hold a bachelor's degree. Eight states did not require any state preschool teachers to have bachelor's degrees -- Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Minnesota, Ohio, and Washington.

Resources:

• The average state spending per child enrolled was $3,642. Compared to the previous year, this is an increase of $175 per child before adjusting for inflation (and an increase of $32 after adjusting for inflation).

• Of the 38 states with preschool education programs, state pre-K spending ranged from just over $3 million in Nevada, a state with about 72,000 3- and 4-year-olds, to $533 million in Texas, which has about 758,000 3- and 4-year-olds.

• States still spent much less per child on pre-K than on K-12.

• States continued to vary greatly in their per-child spending. New Jersey was the top ranked state, spending $10,494 per child. Twelve states continued to spend nothing on state pre-K.

The State of Preschool 2007 is available at

http://nieer.org/yearbook/pdf/yearbook.pdf

State Profiles are available at:

http://nieer.org/yearbook/states/

Playing numerical board games boosts number skills of low-income preschoolers

Playing numerical board games can improve low-income preschoolers’ number skills, offering a promising way to reduce the discrepancies in numerical knowledge between children from poor families and those from middle-income families.

That’s the main finding of a study that appears in the March/April 2008 issue of the journal Child Development. The study was carried out by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.

Children vary greatly in the math knowledge they bring to school, with children from poor families tending to have far less math knowledge than their peers from middle-class families. These differences appear to have large and long-term consequences, with proficiency in math at the start of kindergarten strongly predictive of math achievement test scores years later. The gap in math knowledge likely reflects differences in exposure at home to informal numerical activities, including numerical board games. Board games with consecutively numbered, linearly arranged spaces—think Chutes and Ladders—provide children with good opportunities to learn about the relation between numerals and their sizes.

Would providing low-income preschoolers with experience playing numerical board games improve their understanding of numbers"

In the study, preschool students from low-income backgrounds who attended Head Start centers played a numerical board game for four 15-minute sessions. The researchers found that this activity increased the children’s proficiency at counting, identifying printed numerals, comparing the relative sizes of numbers, and estimating the position of numbers on number lines. All of the gains remained nine weeks after the experience, and were comparable for African American and White children. Children who played an identical board game, except that the squares varied in color rather than number, did not improve any of the four skills.

“Playing numerical board games appears to be a promising (and inexpensive) way to improve preschoolers’ numerical knowledge and to reduce discrepancies in the numerical knowledge that children from low-income and middle-income families bring to school,” report Geetha B. Ramani, who is now assistant professor of human development at the University of Maryland, and Robert Siegler, Teresa Heinz Professor of Cognitive Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, the study’s authors.

Computer Games Can Make Kids More Social, Not Less

Contrary to common education wisdom, computer games and other technologies can foster community-building, a strong sense of identity and higher-level planning even in very young students, UC Davis researchers report.

"There is a lot of hemming and hawing among educators about the introduction of technology in the early grades," said Cynthia Carter Ching, associate professor of education at the University of California, Davis. "But the worst-case scenarios just don't pan out. Technology can facilitate creativity and social awareness, even when we don't design the use of it to do so. And when we do design technology activities with these things in mind, the possibilities are endless."

According to Ching, early childhood educators often argue that technology can squelch young children's creativity and social interaction in the classroom.

But in two recent studies of kindergarten and first-grade students, Ching has observed that children find ways to transform their experiences with technology into fun, highly organized group activities. She also found that technology-based activities can be explicitly designed to foster social reflection and advanced planning among young children.

In their first study, Ching and Wang observed children who chose to play a computer game during their free time. Though only one child could play at a time, the children negotiated turns and gave each other advice about how to play the game.

"Though this is hardly the ideal setting for social interaction and higher-level thinking, the children exhibited a great deal of executive planning skills and complex social negotiations without any guidance or interference from adults," Ching said.

In the second study, children were given digital cameras and told to create digital photo journals. The students displayed creativity and engaged in complex planning at every stage of the assignment, from how they framed their shots to how they chose to organize them to tell a story, Ching found.

"This study shows that rather than technology being something that children merely use, it can be a creative tool for increased reflection on social networks, friendships, relationships with teachers and a sense of self within the world of school," Ching said.

PROGRESS SLOW IN UPGRADING TEACHING AT POOREST SCHOOLS

New Citizens' Commission Report Urges Stepped Up Efforts

In a new report, The Continuing Challenge: Good Teachers for Disadvantaged Children, on teacher equity provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act, the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights finds that states are making some progress in reducing the quality gap between teachers at wealthy schools and teachers at poor schools, but that they still have far to go.

The Commission issued an earlier report, Days of Reckoning, on the subject in July 2006, finding that all but nine states were out of compliance with the requirement that by 2005 all teachers be highly qualified and that there were widespread violations of the mandate that states ensure "poor and minority children are not taught at higher rates than other children by inexperienced, unqualified or out-of-field teachers." Secretary Margaret Spellings did not dispute the finding but gave states until the end of school year 2006-2007 to meet the requirements.

The Commission's new report argues that no improvements are "more important than upgrading the quality of teaching for students in the poorest schools." William L. Taylor, Chairman of the Commission, said "The status quo of the education establishment is unacceptable. Unless the next President finds ways to bring highly qualified teachers into the classrooms of disadvantaged students, our education policies will not be a success." After examining current plans in a number of states including Illinois, Maryland, Ohio, Texas, and California, the Commission found that the Secretary's rejection of "flimsy plans" led some states to go back to the drawing board and devise methods for giving their education institutions the capability of producing change.

The report identifies promising practices in state plans that improve the source of supply, reform hiring practices, recruit and retain qualified teachers in high-needs schools, provide effective professional development and mentoring, improve standards, and diversify compensation and career opportunities.

The Commission also makes recommendations to Congress, the Department of Education, State Education Agencies, School Districts, and Teachers' Unions focusing on quality data, increased transparency and enforcement. Among these are proposals to improve data collection, publish teacher quality plans and report on progress in eliminating teacher quality gaps. The report also calls for stronger enforcement including affording parents a right to go to court to redress violations, and to have the Inspector General of the Department of Education verify and audit data.

The report also identifies local practices that work to improve teacher equity including pay for performance, decreasing the role of seniority, involving parents and community members in decision making, professional development and enhancing advancement opportunities for teachers.

The full report is available at

http://www.cccr.org/downloads/TheContinuingChallenge.pdf

Researcher discovers how to ignite, retain female interest in the study of science

It might be surprising that 40,275 grams of slime, 4,030 ink dots, 3,876 M&Ms, 977 baby diapers, 489 cups of milk and a few electrified pickles can make a difference in the academic lives of adolescent girls, but it’s true.

A challenge at the forefront of science education is the lack of women entering science-related fields, especially chemistry. National studies have shown that girls begin to lose interest in these areas around grade five. University of Missouri researcher Sheryl Tucker is combating this issue through the creation of a program that has kept girls interested in science. A recent study, being published in this week’s Science magazine, found that Tucker’s program is making a difference.

Nearly a decade ago, the Magic of Chemistry was created to encourage female adolescents in grades four through six to discover and maintain an interest in the sciences. Since then, it has served more than 2,500 girls and evolved from a one-time program with 35 Girl Scout participants to a bi-annual partnership program of rotating workshops: “Case of the Unsigned Letter,” “Fun with Polymers” and “Chemistry of Color.

In each workshop young girls have the opportunity to take part in a variety of activities that include working with “goldenrod” indicator paper; creating slime, silly putty, and “moo glue;” and discovering the secrets of tie dying cotton. Each year, the workshops are organized in conjunction with National Girl Scout and National Chemistry weeks.

Through anecdotal research and a compilation of data, Tucker and MU assistant professor Deborah Hanuscin found that 81 percent of the girls who participated in the Magic of Chemistry professed an interest in learning more about science and the related careers. More than 40 percent of girls attended the workshops multiple times. Moreover, the outcomes of the workshops reflected the program’s goal of teaching girls about science and its relevance in their daily lives.

“There was a critical national need to start a program targeting young girls with the purpose of igniting and retaining their interest in science at an age where national studies indicate they begin to lose this curiosity,” said Tucker, an associate professor of chemistry and associate dean of the graduate school. “We must have girls entering the ‘pipeline’ before we worry about them leaking from it.”

Tucker has partnered with the Girl Scouts-Heart of Missouri Council, which spans 18 mid-Missouri counties, to provide junior Girl Scouts in grades four through six with an experience to build confidence and knowledge of their scientific abilities. This program provides hands-on, inquiry-based workshops on a college campus with female undergraduate and graduate student role models. Girls are encouraged to ask questions and think critically after completing experiments that include practical applications to the real world.

“We hope that performing hands-on experiments and seeing women scientists in action will inspire the girls to explore science as a possible career choice,” Tucker said. “For our country to reach its full potential, we must recruit the brightest people to science from all sectors of the population. We have shown that the Magic of Chemistry program can be part of the solution to closing this educational gap.”

SURVEY SHOWS SCIENCE EDUCATION NEEDS HELP IN UNITED STATES

Data gives new look at the opinions and thoughts of Americans on the critical topic of science

The good news is Albert Einstein trumps Britney Spears. The bad news is Spears trumps Stephen Hawking. The worse news is nearly half of Americans couldn’t name Einstein, Hawking or any other current scientist as a science role model for today’s youth, according to a new study on “The State of Science in America,” by Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.

When asked who today's youth look to as role models, half of U.S. adults listed off athletes and entertainers such as Britney Spears or Paris Hilton. But when asked about science role models for kids today, 44 percent were stumped. Only 4 percent could name a living scientist such as Hawking or Bill Nye, while 6 percent named businessman Bill Gates and the same percentage cited former vice president and environmentalist Al Gore.

Although they may not be able to name a scientist, U.S. adults do recognize the importance of science, as close to nine in ten (87 percent) agree they personally benefit from science every day. But when it comes to grasping science concepts, most admit they’re not sure they get it. Only one in four (26 percent) feel they have a good understanding of science.

Although the United States was the first nation to put a man on the moon and led the way in harnessing the energy of atoms, U.S. adults are now not impressed with how seriously America is taking science and the education our children are receiving in this discipline. In fact, 70 percent believe America is not currently the world leader in science. Looking ahead, U.S. adults are also pessimistic about the country’s ability to regain its leadership position as only 35 percent think the U.S. will be the world leader in science in the next 20 years.

Almost all U.S. adults agree this is a detriment to our nation – 96 percent say it is important for the U.S. to be a leader in science education.

While there are many factors influencing the perceived science leadership position of the U.S., certainly a significant factor is the science education children are receiving. For example:

• Eight in ten (79 percent) agree science is not receiving the attention it deserves in our nation’s schools.

• 44 percent feel the overall quality of today’s science education is worthy of a “C” grade or lower. Only 12 percent feel it is worthy of an “A” grade.

• Nearly nine in ten (87 percent) U.S. adults agree that, as a nation, we must begin to devote more funding toward science education.

Despite these daunting challenges, Americans recognize there are many ways to improve science education, some of which include providing:

• More hands-on classroom activities (97 percent).

• More professional development and training opportunities for teachers (94 percent).

• More parental involvement (94 percent).

In addition to these, there are many other things that can be done to increase engagement and involvement in science from America’s youth. In particular, parents and family have a role to play as nearly all (93 percent) of U.S. adults agree interest in science must be encouraged from an early age. Additionally, (93 percent) of U.S. adults agree science museums can help improve the quality of science education.

Cooperative classrooms lead to better friendships, higher achievement in young adolescents

Analysis finds competitive and individual-type learning lead to lower achievement, poorer social interaction

Students competing for resources in the classroom while discounting each others’ success are less likely to earn top grades than students who work together toward goals and share their success, according to an analysis of 80 years of research.

Competitive environments can disrupt children’s ability to form social relationships, which in turn may hurt their academic potential, according to researchers at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Cary J. Roseth, PhD, David W. Johnson, PhD, and Roger T. Johnson, PhD, reviewed the last eight decades of research on how social relationships affect individual behavior and achievement. Their findings are published in the current issue of Psychological Bulletin, published by the American Psychological Association.

The researchers examined 148 studies that compared the effects of cooperative, competitive and individualistic goals on early achievement and peer relationships among 12- to 15-year-olds. The studies included more than 17,000 adolescents from 11 countries and used four multinational samples. No one was excluded from the analysis because of gender, nationality, or academic or physical ability.

According to the studies, adolescents in classrooms that supported cooperative learning – studying together to complete a project or prepare for an exam – got along better with their peers, were more accurate on academic tests and achieved higher scores on problem-solving, reasoning and critical thinking tasks compared to adolescents who were in classrooms geared toward competitive learning – studying alone knowing that success would mean only one winner and plenty of losers.

Cooperative learning encouraged students to work together toward a goal by helping each other on tasks, sharing resources and information and trusting each others’ actions. This led to shared rewards.

Students in classrooms that supported individual learning studied alone or with very little interaction and were evaluated by a set of criteria that didn’t involve any comparison with others. Such an atmosphere did not affect friendships but the students had poorer academic outcomes than students in classrooms where teamwork was the norm.

Students who were in classrooms that focused on reaching goals in a competitive fashion, such as obstructing others' efforts, hiding resources and information and acting distrustful, had less social interaction, poorer friendships and lower achievement scores, according to the review. No differences were found between students who were in either competitive or individualistic environments on achievement measures or peer relationships.

The findings suggest that when teachers structured their classrooms more cooperatively, students felt more support and connection with their peers, had better success on academic tests and tasks, and sustained higher levels of achievement because of the better peer relations, said Roseth, the lead author.

“We know how crucial it is to keep young adolescents engaged in school and see this as an important finding for middle school educators,” said Roseth. “When teachers set up their classrooms in a cooperative way, both social and academic goals are met simultaneously. Students can interact, which is naturally what they want to do at this age, while also working on assignments together.”

This may also hold true for the adult worker whose organization supports cooperative interactions, Roseth said. “Some research has shown that high performing teams that cared about each other or had individuals who felt they had a good friend among them in business and industry succeeded in being more productive and effective.”

Full text of the article is available at http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/bul1342223.pdf

Does ADHD look the same in youth of different races?

Research published in the Journal of Attention Disorders looks at childhood ADHD in underrepresented minorities, reviewing controversy around evaluation, diagnosis, and obstacles faced by families, ending with recommendations for assessment and treatment. Studying causes and consequences of untreated ADHD in minority children, the article considers:

· evaluating the child’s physical and neurological responses

· assessing family history, including health issues

· building rapport between the family, the school and the health care provider

· recommendations, including psychotherapy, medication and behavioral interventions

· removing barriers such as lack of finances, health care providers and insurance

· maintaining cultural awareness and providing community educational campaigns

"A child of any race can be deeply affected by attention difficulties not only during school years but for a lifetime,” writes coauthor Heather Hervey-Jumper. “It is tragic that many minority children are not provided with culturally sensitive assessments when we have effective treatments that can start these children on a track of progress. Untreated attention disorders can cause devastating results and we believe there are solutions for children of all ethnic backgrounds."

The article, “Identifying, Evaluating, Diagnosing, and Treating ADHD in Minority Youth,” has been made available at no charge by SAGE for a limited time at http://jad.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/11/5/522.

Why don't kids walk to school anymore?

Maybe when we were their age, we walked five miles to school, rain or shine. So why don't most children today walk or bike to school?

It's not necessarily because they're spoiled, lazy or over scheduled. According to a University of Michigan researcher, concerns about safety are the main reason that less than 13 percent of U.S. children walked or biked to school in 2004, compared to more than 50 percent who did so in 1969.

"These concerns are strongly linked to the kind of physical environment children navigate between home and school," said Byoung-Suk Kweon, an environmental and landscape architecture researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR).

"The greener the route, the more likely it is that children will walk and bike."

Using Geographic Information System (GIS) data combined with a survey of 186 parents of 5th through 8th grade students, Kweon found that parents were most concerned about the speed and volume of traffic students would encounter en route to school; the possibility of crime; and the weather.

"In Texas, where we lived when I conducted this study, our sons did not walk to school because we lived too far away," said Kweon, who is also affiliated with the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment. In general, she found, children who walk to school usually live less than three-quarters of a mile away.

"In Ann Arbor, they do walk to school. We have a 27 degree rule. If it's colder than that, we drive them; if it's warmer than that, they walk."

In her study, Kweon found that children use sidewalks, not bike lanes, when they ride to school. "Parents may be concerned about the safety of bike lanes, and they may be telling their children to ride on the sidewalk because it's safer," she said. "We may need to re-think how to place bike lanes in school walk zones."

To learn more about how the physical environment influences parents' perceptions of safety and their willingness to allow their children walk or bike to school, Kweon and colleagues conducted a series of laboratory-based simulation studies, testing six different pedestrian environments.

"It's very important for parents that there be a separation or buffer between traffic and the sidewalk," she said. "They are much more willing to let their children walk when this buffer is at least eight feet wide, and when there are also trees in this area." Trees not only provide shade, but also serve as a sort of vertical barrier between sidewalk and street.

Although improving the physical environment reduces parents' concerns for their children's safety, Kweon found that the social environment—especially the likelihood of crime—strongly affects parental perceptions of safety as well. Kweon hopes to conduct a related study in Detroit to examine how the intersection of social and physical factors influences the likelihood that children will walk to school.

By identifying environmental elements conducive to walking and biking to school, Kweon hopes her research may help improve children's physical health and reduce the incidence of childhood obesity, especially prevalent among minority children.

"Walking or biking to school helps children develop an early habit of engaging in physical activity, and that can lead to a healthier and more active and healthier population," she said.

Children who bully also have problems with other relationships

Students who bully others tend to have difficulties with other relationships, such as those with friends and parents. Targeting those relationships, as well as the problems children who bully have with aggression and morality, may offer ideas for intervention and prevention.

Those are the findings of a new study that was conducted by scientists at York University and Queens University. It appears in the March/April 2008 issue of the journal Child Development.

The researchers looked at 871 students (466 girls and 405 boys) for seven years from ages 10 to 18. Each year, they asked the children questions about their involvement in bullying or victimizing behavior, their relationships, and other positive and negative behaviors.

Bullying is a behavior that most children engage in at some point during their school years, according to the study. Almost a tenth (9.9 percent) of the students said they engaged in consistently high levels of bullying from elementary through high school. Some 13.4 percent said they bullied at relatively high levels in elementary school but dropped to almost no bullying by the end of high school. Some 35.1 percent of the children said they bullied peers at moderate levels. And 41.6 percent almost never reported bullying across the adolescent years.

The study also found that children who bullied tended to be aggressive and lacking in a moral compass and they experienced a lot of conflict in their relationships with their parents. In addition, their relationships with friends also were marked by a lot of conflict, and they tended to associate with others who bullied.

The findings provide clear direction for prevention of persistent bullying problems, according to Debra Pepler, Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology at York University and Senior Associate Scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children. Pepler, who is the study’s lead author, calls bullying “a relationship problem.”

“Interventions must focus on the children who bully, with attention to their aggressive behavior problems, social skills, and social problem-solving skills. A focus on the child alone is not sufficient. Bullying is a relationship problem that requires relationship solutions by focusing on the bullying children’s strained relationships with parents and risky relationships with peers,” according to Pepler. “By providing intensive and ongoing support starting in the elementary school years to this small group of youth who persistently bully, it may be possible to promote healthy relationships and prevent their ‘career path’ of bullying that leads to numerous social-emotional and relationship problems in adolescence and adulthood.”

Family wealth may explain differences in test scores in school-age children

A new study published in the March/April 2008 issue of the journal Child Development finds that family wealth might partly explain differences in test scores in school-age children. The study, conducted by researchers at New York University, also found that family wealth is positively associated with parenting behavior, home environment, and children’s self-esteem.

Prior research has documented the association between children’s cognitive achievement and the socioeconomic status of their parents as measured by education level, occupation, and income. Many of these studies focused on the effect of poverty—defined by family income—on children’s achievement, but household wealth (i.e., net worth) has received little attention.

This new study used new methods, including data from a new national study (the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its Child Development Supplement). It explored many functional forms and sources of wealth, looking at different mediating pathways of wealth from distinct sources, and analyzing how wealth affects children’s cognitive achievement at different stages of childhood.

The researchers found a marked disparity in family wealth between Black and White families with young children, with White families owning more than 10 times as many assets as Black families. The study found that family wealth had a stronger association with cognitive achievement of school-aged children than that of preschoolers, and a stronger association with school-aged children’s math than with their reading scores. Family wealth accumulated from different sources also was found to have a distinct influence on children at different developmental stages. Liquid assets, particularly holdings in stocks or mutual funds, were positively associated with school-aged children’s test scores. Family wealth was associated with a higher quality home environment, better parenting behavior, and children’s private school attendance.

The researchers suggest that the stronger impact of wealth on school-aged children may be because school-aged children benefit more from family wealth that is spent on educational resources that require substantial financial investment, such as private schools, extracurricular activities, and cultural experiences. Furthermore, older children may be more conscious of differences in wealth relative to their peers as they are exhibited in the quality of the learning environment, possessions, and the type of neighborhood where children live. These differences may influence their self-esteem and aspirations, which in turn are positively associated with their school performance.

“While wealth may help smooth consumption on a more short-term basis, the presence of wealth over time in a family (or extended family) may have a stronger impact of engendering a sense of economic security, future orientation, and the ability to take risks among all family members which, in turn, positively affect child development,” according to W. Jean Yeung, professor of sociology at New York University and the lead author of the study.

Despite the marked disparity in wealth between Black and White families, the study found little evidence that wealth by itself explains the test score gaps between Black and White children. Those gaps were found to become less meaningful when child and family demographic characteristics and parents’ income, education, and occupation were held constant. “Although wealth may not have a substantial short-term benefit in narrowing the Black-White achievement gap among young children, allowing and encouraging low-income families to accumulate wealth may improve family dynamics and foster a forward-looking attitude that may benefit children’s development in the long run,” said Yeung. “The financial effects of wealth would likely be observed later in life when school financing becomes an issue.”

Children with healthier diets do better in school

A new study reveals that children with healthy diets perform better in school

A new study in the Journal of School Health reveals that children with healthy diets perform better in school than children with unhealthy diets.

Led by Paul J. Veugelers, MSc, PhD of the University of Alberta, researchers surveyed around 5000 Canadian fifth grade students and their parents as part of the Children’s Lifestyle and School-Performance Study.

Information regarding dietary intake, height, and weight were recorded and the Diet Quality Index-International (DQI-I) was used to summarize overall diet quality. The DQI-I score ranges from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating better diet quality. Less healthful dietary components included saturated fat and salt, while healthy foods were classified by fruits, vegetables, grains, dietary fiber, protein, calcium and moderate fat intake.

A standardized literacy assessment was administered to the children. Multilevel regression methods were used to examine the association between indicators of diet quality and academic performance.

Students with an increased fruit and vegetable intake and less caloric intake from fat were significantly less likely to fail the literacy assessment. Relative to students in the group with the lowest DQI-I scores, students in the group with the best scores were 41 % less likely to fail the literacy assessment.

“We demonstrated that above and beyond socioeconomic factors, diet quality is important to academic performance,” the authors conclude. “These findings support the broader implementation and investment in effective school nutrition programs that have the potential to improve student’s diet quality, academic performance, and, over the long term, their health.”

Despite Little Experience, Teach for America Educators Outpace Veterans in Drawing Achievement From Students

Teach for America teachers may be new to the profession, but they are generally more effective than their experienced colleagues, finds a new Urban Institute analysis. On average, high school students taught by TFA corps members performed significantly better on state-required end-of-course exams, especially in math and science, than peers taught by far more experienced instructors. The TFA teachers' effect on student achievement in core classroom subjects was nearly three times the effect of teachers with three or more years of experience.

The study, "Making a Difference? The Effects of Teach for America in High School," is the first investigation of the impact of TFA in high schools. The report's authors, Zeyu Xu, Jane Hannaway, and Colin Taylor, analyzed North Carolina high school data produced between 2000 and 2006, including test scores, teacher characteristics, and student demographics.

Teach for America recruits and selects high-achieving college graduates, many of whom have no prior experience or coursework in education, and places them in needy schools after short but intensive training. Xu, Hannaway, and Taylor found that TFA corps members serving in North Carolina tended to have graduated from more selective colleges and universities and to have scored higher on the Praxis, a teacher-licensing exam.

These data warrant the attention of education policymakers concerned with teacher quality, says Jane Hannaway, director of the Urban Institute's Education Policy Center and the National Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER).

"School systems working to improve their neediest schools may find that focusing on teacher selection has a greater payoff in high schools than focusing on teacher retention," she says. "In our study, we don't know whether it was the strong academic credentials of TFA corps members or some kind of special motivation that came with being a TFA teacher that made the difference, but the results were clear: students performed better when they had an inexperienced TFA teacher than when they had a veteran educator at the blackboard."

"Making a Difference? The Effects of Teach for America in High School" is is available at http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=411642

Friedman Foundation Releases Annual ABCs of School Choice

The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice today releases the 2008 edition of its annual publication ABCs of School Choice. It provides detailed facts on all 21 school choice programs available in 13 states and the District of Columbia. These programs currently allow almost 190,000 students to attend private schools using public funds, representing the significant growth of both the number and size of school choice programs over the past several years.

This year's publication features the addition of the Georgia's new voucher program for special education students, which the Friedman Foundation recently ranked second in the nation for adherence to the Friedman gold standard of school choice for all. Six other programs in Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio and Pennsylvania have expanded since the last edition.

The ABCs of School Choice explains each program in detail, including criteria for eligibility and program regulations, the data on the number of participants, and the average voucher value being used and the number of private schools available.

The report is available here:

http://www.friedmanfoundation.org/friedman/downloadFile.do?id=102

NEW STUDY SHOWS THAT TEACHER-STUDENT

RELATIONSHIPS MOTIVATE STUDENTS TO COMPLETE HIGH SCHOOL

California Students Identify Factors that Motivate them Toward or Discourage them from Graduating

The latest report from the California Dropout Research Project (CDRP) finds that teacher-student relationships have a strong influence on students’ decisions to stay in school. The study investigates why California students drop out, and compares at-risk students with their more resilient peers. In a survey of 133 predominantly Latino California ninth graders from five high schools across California, most report they are engaged and want to graduate, regardless of their risk for dropping out.

The report is the latest in a series of 15 policy and statistical briefs on California’s dropouts conducted by CDRP, a research program based at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Last month, the CDRP policy committee—composed of researchers, policymakers and educators—released a state policy agenda identifying short-term and long-term recommendations for improving California’s high school graduation rate.

According to the most recent report, entitled Giving a Student Voice to California’s Dropout Crisis, factors that motivate students to stay in school include support from teachers, counselors, athletic coaches and other adults. Students said that just one caring adult could influence them to complete high school.

One student explained, “When you have somebody that’s actually going to be there for you and really support you in all your school educational needs… it boosts you up, you feel better about yourself and your education.”

In addition to fostering student relationships with teachers, relevant coursework, such as elective classes that teach pertinent skills and trades, and career education would encourage students to continue going to school.

For many students, family responsibility plays an equally important role in the motivation for dropping out as it does for staying in school. “For me, family comes first,” said one Northern California student, “before anything and before my education.”

Family responsibility may not fall within the scope of a school’s capacity; however teachers could better address the issue if they had a deeper understanding of the challenges their students face.

Other factors that play a part in a student’s motivation for dropping out include lack of peer relationships and school safety. Several students mentioned how violence in their communities and schools determine whether or not they attend classes. A previous report by the CDRP indicates that missing too many days of school was the reason most cited for dropping out.

Students recognize that in this tough budget climate there is a shortage of resources that contribute to the difficulty their schools face for improving graduation rates. While most ninth graders—regardless of their risk for dropping out—want to graduate, they understand the threats to their success for completing high school and indicate how important it is for early intervention and support from teachers to keep them in school.

The report can be viewed at

http://www.lmri.ucsb.edu/dropouts/download.php?file=policybrief8.pdf

From High School to the Future: Potholes on the Road to College

Since 2004, the Consortium on Chicago School Research has tracked the postsecondary experiences of successive cohorts of Chicago Public Schools graduates and examined the relationship among high school preparation, support, college choice, and postsecondary outcomes. The goal of this research is to help CPS, other urban districts and national policy makers understand what it takes to improve the college outcomes for urban and other at-risk students who now overwhelmingly aspire to college. CCSR's first report in this series, From High School to the Future: A First Look at Chicago Public Schools Graduates' College Enrollment, College Preparation, and Graduation from Four-year Colleges, showed that increasing qualifications is the most important strategy to improving students' college participation, access to four-year and more selective colleges, and ultimately college graduation rates.

This second postsecondary report looks beyond qualifications to examine where students encounter potholes on the road to college. The findings reveal that Chicago students at all levels of qualifications do not successfully navigate the daunting process of enrolling in four-year colleges and too often default to colleges for which they are overqualified. For CPS students who reported aspiring to a four-year degree, only 41 percent took the steps necessary in their senior year and ultimately enrolled in a four-year college. This drop off is even worse for Latino students who wanted to earn a bachelor's degree, with only 46 percent applying and 30 percent enrolling in a four-year college in the fall after graduation—a gap that persisted regardless of students' immigration status. Furthermore, only about a third of CPS students who aspire to complete a four-year degree enroll in a college that matches or exceeds their qualifications. While "match" is just one consideration in finding the right college fit, it is an important one because earlier Consortium research demonstrated that graduation rates among the most popular Illinois colleges varies dramatically—even among students who graduate with a grade point average of 3.5 or above.

The study relies on qualitative and quantitative data for CPS seniors in 2005—student and teacher surveys, transcripts, college enrollment data reported by the National Student Clearinghouse, and student interviews. Consortium researchers spent nearly two years interviewing and tracking the academic progress of 105 students in three Chicago high schools. The ten case studies included in the "Potholes" study each highlight a student who struggled at a different point in the postsecondary planning process.

Full report:

http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/publications/CCSR_Potholes_Report.pdf

Case studies:

http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/downloads/9641ccsr_potholes_casestudies.pdf

Virginia High School Safety Study

-- Each April, concerns about school safety rise as the anniversaries of the shootings at Colorado's Columbine High School and Virginia Tech approach. Despite these and other publicized cases of school violence, new research from the University of Virginia finds that conditions in Virginia high schools are generally safe and that serious acts of violence are rare.

The Virginia High School Safety Study results are now being released.

A principal goal of the study is "to examine school discipline, safety practices and student support efforts across Virginia's high schools," Cornell said. One component of this project - coordinated by the Curry School's Virginia Youth Violence Project - is the school climate survey. It was administered to ninth-grade students and teachers in spring 2007 as part of the Commonwealth of Virginia's 2006-07 school safety audit program. Of 314 public high schools in Virginia, 296 submitted student surveys and 291 submitted teacher surveys. Approximately 7,400 ninth-grade students and 2,500 ninth-grade teachers completed the online survey.

Because it was conducted in April and May of 2007, it was possible to compare responses of students before and after the Virginia Tech shooting, said Cornell, the project director. The shooting had negligible effect on student perceptions of school safety conditions or reports of being bullied or victimized in other ways. However, the largest change was observed in student willingness to seek help for threats of violence. Prior to the shooting, 72 percent of ninth-grade students reported that they would report a classmate who talked about killing someone; after the shooting, the rate was 80 percent.

"It was good news to see the high numbers of students who were willing to seek help for a violent threat, particularly since we know that many acts of violence have been prevented when schools knew about threats and investigated them," Cornell said. "We would like to see even higher numbers, so it is important for teachers to emphasize to their students the difference between snitching for personal gain and seeking help to prevent someone from being hurt."

Among the study's findings:

Ninth-grade students generally perceive their teachers as supportive and encouraging and they regard their school rules as strict, but fair. The schools with the lowest levels of victimization were schools in which the students reported that rules were strictly enforced, but that teachers were caring and supportive.

These findings support the theory of "authoritative school discipline" being developed by Gregory, a project investigator. Her work has found consistently that students do best in classrooms that have both a high degree of discipline and a teacher that communicates warmth and support.

Most ninth-grade students believed their friends do not support breaking school rules, with the exception of copying homework assignments. They disavowed aggressive attitudes. They expressed willingness to seek help from their teachers if a student brought a gun to school or talked about killing someone, but were much less willing to seek help for bullying. Only about half of the students said they like school. Most students said they found school boring, but nevertheless reported that they work hard and want to get good grades.

When asked about the general school climate, nearly three-fourths reported that students were teased about their physical appearance, about half reported teasing about sexual topics, and about one-third reported that students are often put down because of their race or ethnicity. However, about three-fourths also indicated that new students are made to feel welcome and that students from different neighborhoods get along. More than 80 percent agreed that "students at this school accept me for who I am."

Most ninth-grade teachers regarded their school rules to be fair, but had mixed opinions about enforcement. Most teachers thought that students would be caught if they got in a fight or cut class, but were less confident about students who smoke or wander the halls. Only about half thought that school rules were rigorously enforced and most did not regard their dress codes as strict. Nevertheless, most teachers expressed confidence in how their administrators handle school discipline. They also agreed that administrators are supportive of teachers and treat them fairly.

The large majority of teachers reported an atmosphere in which students are free to seek help for problems such as bullying. Almost all teachers claimed that they personally encourage students to come to them for help. They consistently reported that their schools foster the social and emotional development of their students, provide instruction to prevent substance use and have programs to resolve conflicts and provide character education. Most teachers also indicated that students are challenged to do thoughtful academic work.

Teachers reported low rates of victimization for problems such as physical attacks at school. No teacher reported having a weapon pulled on him or her, but about one in five reported verbal threats, two in five reported obscene remarks or gestures, and four out of five reported being spoken to in a rude or disrespectful manner by a student.

Overall, about half of the teachers regarded bullying as a problem at their school, although a large majority reported that new students are made to feel welcome and that students from different neighborhoods get along. More than half reported that students tease one another about physical appearance and sexual topics, but fewer than one-third reported that students are often put down because of their race or ethnicity.

There was modest agreement between ninth-grade students and teachers in their perceptions of school rules. Predictably, teachers were more likely than students to judge the rules to be fair and students were more likely than teachers to perceive the rules as strictly enforced. There was moderate agreement between students and teachers in their perception of how closely students are supervised at school, although teachers were more likely than students to think that students will be caught for various infractions.

There was high agreement between students and teachers in identifying what kinds of security measures (e.g., security cameras, security guards, and metal detectors) are in use at school. There was low agreement, however, in awareness of so-called "zero-tolerance" policies for infractions such as bringing a gun, BB gun, toy gun, drugs or alcohol to school.

Other issues addressed in the survey and found in the report include student and teachers' perceptions of school climate associated with student enrollment, poverty and minority status, and correlates of student and teacher victimization with schoolwide Standards of Learning passing rates.

Ninth grade was selected for the survey primarily because it is the first year of high school and therefore permits longitudinal study of the ninth-grade cohort as they proceed through 12th grade, Cornell explained. "In addition, ninth-grade students account for approximately 45 percent of the disciplinary infractions that take place in high schools. These are the students most likely to get into trouble and so understanding how to help them adjust to high school is critical to their success."

Because the survey was conducted only on ninth-grade students and teachers, the results cannot be assumed to reflect the perceptions of all students in the school. The results provide an assessment of high school climate from the perspective of ninth-grade students and their teachers, and not necessarily those of older students, Cornell noted.

Over the next few years, the overall Virginia High School Safety Study will continue its examination of how various school safety and security practices, such as bullying prevention, video surveillance and zero-tolerance policies, influence school climate and student behavior, Cornell said.

To download a copy of this first full report (132 pages) or the executive summary (10 pages), go to http://youthviolence.edschool.virginia.edu

ARE TEACHERS' UNIONS REALLY TO BLAME?

Teachers' unions get most of the blame when restrictive labor contracts prevent school districts from changing teachers' working conditions. But Katharine Strunk, assistant professor of education at the University of California, Davis, argues for a "more holistic" analysis of the effects of teacher contracts on a district's allocation of resources and subsequent student outcomes.

Restrictive contracts may result from strong teachers' unions, but districts may also champion contracts that contain restrictions in order to recruit teachers, Strunk noted.

"No one else is looking at contracts in this way," Strunk said. "Some districts' teacher contracts are nearly 400 pages long, with virtually every detail in a teacher's work life spelled out. No one provision could be to blame for poor student performance."

In her research, Strunk has found that more restrictive contracts are associated with higher salaries for teachers. Districts with more restrictive contracts also spend less on items that have a direct impact on students, from books and supplies to guidance counselors. She calculates that in a typical, medium-sized district, a more restrictive teachers' union contract translates to a decrease in available funds for non teacher salary expenditures equivalent to the cost of about 130 classroom computers.

"Unfortunately, school funding in California is a zero-sum game," Strunk said. "When you spend more in one area, you have to spend less in another."

Though Strunk did not find a correlation between more restrictive contracts and student test scores, she argues that the trade-offs do affect students.

"Reducing or eliminating things like counselors or textbooks can hit kids really hard," she said.

INEQUALITIES IN DENVER TEACHER COMPENSATION SYSTEM

The Denver Public Schools Retirement System may be ill-designed to recruit top quality new teachers or to retain the best senior ones according to a new report.. The paper looks specifically at the pension plan, which can represent more than half of total compensation for senior employees but little additional compensation for junior employees.

“The system is lopsided. It is great if you plan to stay with DPS your entire career and it is lackluster if you don’t,” said Tony Lewis, Executive Director of the Donnell-Kay Foundation. “We’ve put ourselves in a situation where we give new teachers almost no financial incentives to come, mid-career teachers can’t afford to leave even if they want to, and the most senior teachers and principals are incented to leave their jobs when some of them should be encouraged to stay.”

The paper asserts that:

• Employees during the last decade before retirement earn over 100% of their salary in incremental pension benefit every year while employees in their first two decades of employment earn less than 6% on average;

• A teacher in her last decade of employment will earn three to four times the total annual compensation (pension plus salary) of a teacher in her first decade of employment;

• DPS will pay many teachers an annual pension (before inflation) that is higher than what their average salary was during employment.

“The bottom line is that if we want the best teachers, we have to find a way to pay them a competitive salary from day one,” said Van Schoales, Program Officer at the Piton Foundation. “But when half of a teacher’s total compensation is tied up in a pension they can’t collect until they’re in their mid 50s or 60s, we’re never going to attract and keep enough of our best college graduates into teaching.”

Full text of the paper:

http://www.dkfoundation.org/PDF/DPSPensions-Report-3-17-08.pdf

Why Public School Budgets Ratchet Upward

When school administrators have opportunities to increase district budgets and few disincentives for doing so, the budgets may well rise. But do these budgetary increases result in better educations for students? Often no.

These are among the findings in "Budget Adjustments in Response to Spending Variances: Evidence of Ratcheting of Local Government Expenditures," a study published in the December 2007 Journal of Management Accounting Research.

The study, by Dr. Elizabeth Plummer of the M. J. Neeley School of Business at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth and Dr. Tanya M. Lee of Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh, was the first to examine the phenomenon of "ratcheting" in the public sector.

Ratcheting refers to how administrators respond to government overspending and under spending. If a governmental unit's expenditures exceed its budget (overspending), the administrators respond by increasing the budget for the next year. If, however, the unit under spends, administrators are not as likely to adjust next year's budget downward.

"Our study shows that school administrators react more to overspending than to under spending. When they overspend, they ratchet up the budget for the next year. But under spending is seen as transient so they don't ratchet down by the same proportion," says Dr. Plummer.

"Even when we looked for legitimate reasons for this behavior and controlled for it in our study, we still found ratcheting upward but not equally downward," she says. "Our results are consistent with undesirable growth in government." 

Plummer and Lee chose to investigate this behavior among school districts because of the economic impact of school spending on local taxpayers, and the budget-boosting incentives and opportunities inherent in the system.

"We did not find evidence that more spending necessarily equates with better schools. In general, ratcheting does not seem to be desirable behavior," says Dr. Plummer.

The study examined the year-to-year budgets for the 1,034 school districts in Texas for an eight-year period and found per-student incremental rises in all categories (total expenditures, operating expenditures, instructional expenditures, and non-instructional expenditures) in nearly every year. All amounts were adjusted to 2002 dollars, to account for inflation.

While ratcheting occurred across all categories, it was most evident among non-instructional expenditures.

"Instructional budgets exhibit more accountability. They're not soft numbers like those for non-instructional budgets," explains Dr. Plummer.

Instructional costs include teacher salaries and educational supplies, and are tied to hard numbers such as enrollment. Non-instructional costs are less well-defined. They include administrative overhead and social services such as counseling.

Without an objective standard, non-instructional costs are more easily manipulated upward, such as by labeling more students as having special needs and thus requiring more resources.

Incentives for administrators to increase budgets include heightened prestige from heading bigger-budget districts. They also include enhanced job security and opportunities for promotion resulting from that prestige, funding to increase salaries, money for perks, and the chance to build financial slack into the budget as a comfort factor. 

While controls exist to guard against unnecessary budget increases, they're often not as tight as they could be. The study shows that stricter constraints are often effective.

"We found less ratcheting in environments where there was more accountability," says Dr. Plummer. "Specifically, ratcheting was weaker for school districts in environments with more competition from neighboring school districts and for districts with more voter influence."

Other budget constraints include legislative and regulatory limits on property-tax hikes for school expenditures, financial reporting and review requirements, and reporting by local news media.

Plummer and Lee believe their results are generalizable to other states, because school financing systems are similar from state to state. 

Ratcheting has a real impact on taxpayers, Plummer says. As school budgets rise, so do the tax bills of property owners.

"The money has to be well spent to be worth it. More money doesn't necessarily mean better services. Most taxpayers don't know how their dollars are being spent because often there isn't enough accountability," she says.

Plummer and Lee say local policy makers could become more alert for signs of ratcheting while examining school spending, especially non-instructional budgets. Such watchfulness may be particularly beneficial in regions having little competition among districts or weak voter involvement in district decisions.  

No Child Left Behind Act: Education Actions Could Improve the Targeting of School Improvement Funds to Schools Most in Need of Assistance

Under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA), the federal government provides millions of dollars annually to assist schools that have not met state academic goals. In the 2006-2007 school year, over 10,000 such schools were identified for improvement. NCLBA requires states to set aside 4 percent of their Title I funds to pay for school improvement efforts. GAO was asked to determine (1) the extent to which states have set aside these funds and used other resources for school improvement, (2) which schools received improvement funds and the extent funds are tracked, (3) the activities states and schools have undertaken and how activities are assessed, and (4) how Education supports states' improvement efforts. GAO administered a survey to state education officials and received a 100 percent response rate, matched survey data to an Education database, and conducted site visits to five states.

The GAO reports that the statutory requirement--known as a hold-harmless provision--has limited some states' ability to target the full 4 percent of Title I funds for school improvement to low-performing schools. However, many states have used other federal and state funds for this purpose. While the hold-harmless provision is designed to protect school districts from reductions in their Title I funding, it has also kept 22 states from setting aside the full portion of Title I school improvement funds since 2002 because they did not have enough funds to do so after satisfying the hold-harmless provision.

To address this, The Department of Education has proposed repealing the hold-harmless provision. However, it is not known how removing this provision would affect districts protected by it. In addition to Title I funds, 38 states have dedicated other federal funds, and 17 have contributed state funds for school improvement. Though states generally target improvement funds to the most persistently underperforming schools, some states did not fulfill key NCLBA requirements. Specifically, 4 states did not follow all requirements to ensure that schools most in need of assistance received funds. Although The Department of Education monitors how states allocate improvement funds, it did not identify this issue. Also, 4 states were unable to provide a complete list of schools that received improvement funds, as required by law.

The Department of Education has not provided guidance on this requirement and does not monitor compliance with it. Schools and states are engaged in a variety of improvement activities, and most states use student data and feedback to assess activities. Most states reported that schools receiving improvement funds used the funds for professional development and for reorganizing curriculum or instruction time. Nearly all states assisted schools with school improvement plans and professional development. Most states use student achievement data and feedback from schools and districts to assess improvement activities.

The Department of Education provides a range of support for school improvement, including technical assistance and research results. Nearly all states want more help, such as more information on promising improvement practices. The Department of Education has a new Web site to provide additional resources and plans to collect more information on promising practices through a new grant program.

Full report:

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08380.pdf

Effects of School Consolidation

School consolidation affects the students and teachers who move to a new school more than it affects students and teachers in the receiving school, a new study by University of Arkansas researchers found. The study also indicated that students affected by consolidation were more resilient and able to adapt quicker to their new settings than their teachers and parents.

The history of consolidation in Arkansas goes back about 100 years, according to Marc Holley, a doctoral student at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville who was part of the research team. Despite that, consolidation remains a controversial method of education reform, he said.

“Consolidation has been around a long time, but there’s not much in the literature about what the experience is like for people who live through it,” said Holley, who is working on a doctoral degree in public policy with a specialization in education policy. He formerly worked as a private school administrator and teacher.

Several waves of consolidation reduced the number of school districts in Arkansas in the 20th century. The latest round occurred as a result of the Lake View School District lawsuit against the state in which the Arkansas Supreme Court declared that the state’s process of school funding was unconstitutional.

By the spring of 2007, 57 public school districts had been restructured as a result of Act 60, which mandated the closing of districts with fewer than 350 students. The university researchers interviewed students, teachers and administrators at four school districts in the state that were geographically and racially diverse. Several administrators of other districts declined to be interviewed, Holley said.

“The ones that spoke with us had achieved relatively successful consolidation,” Holley explained. “Ones that experienced greater controversy refused, and that’s a shame. That information could have been very helpful. Some districts that anticipated consolidation took a more proactive approach while others fought it tooth and nail.”

Keith Nitta, assistant professor of educational policy at the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock, will present a paper on the study today at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in New York. The Clinton School is part of the University of Arkansas System and includes faculty from the University of Arkansas.

Because the interviews took place in districts where consolidation was less contentious, that makes it difficult to generalize the research findings, Nitta explained.

The study was unique in including experiences of both people in a school that moved and in a school that received new students, Nitta said. Other researchers either interviewed only those who moved or did not differentiate responses from the two groups in their findings.

Students, teachers and administrators who moved to a new school as a result of consolidation routinely reported they were extremely anxious about finding their place in a new school setting, but students, teachers and administrators in receiving schools rarely reported significant anxiety about the merging of populations. Nitta said the students in both groups appeared more flexible than adults, reporting that their negative feelings disappeared within a few months, while some teachers said they did not feel comfortable in their new surroundings after two years.

The majority of students, teachers and administrators reported that larger class sizes did not have a negative effect on academic support for students. Teachers said curriculum posed challenges, such as merging two sets of textbooks. “When the teachers in receiving schools saw differences, such as larger class sizes, they didn’t always attribute them directly to the consolidation,” Nitta said. “People who moved were more likely to see the differences as directly related to consolidation.”

Another commonly heard criticism of consolidation is that students will be on buses much longer than otherwise. The researchers found that not to be true. “Parents are concerned about an increase in commutes,” Holley said. “We did not find a significant increase due to consolidation. It was usually 10-15 minutes at the most.”

“The experience for those who moved was much more traumatic than for those who received new students and teachers,” he said. “You would think it would be equally traumatic. Also, the students adapted easier than the adults. One teacher who moved to a new school said the new students accepted her but the other teachers didn’t.”

Teachers who moved to a new school also reported a less close relationship with new students and their parents.

The researchers made some recommendations based on their findings: • Parents and teachers need to realize that student interests must be the priority, and particular attention must be paid to communicating about the school changes. When the school board and superintendent were transparent in their plans, for example, telling teachers up front if a reduction in force would be necessary and giving parents a chance to voice their opinions, the community tended to be more willing to accept logistical difficulties or interschool tension, Nitta said. • School districts that merge should adopt new symbols such as mascot and school colors instead of one district’s identity being consumed by the other. Three of the four locations where the researchers conducted interviews had taken that step. • Some aspect of the school being closed should be preserved. One district opened a museum with school memorabilia in one of the buildings that was closed, and another divided its sports program, playing football at one campus and basketball at the other. Keeping a building open for use such as a community center also was helpful.

These measures will help lessen the negative impact on the community, another often-cited argument against school consolidation, Holley said.

“There is a loss of community feeling,” he said. “That’s why it is particularly important to keep something open in the district that’s closing.”

An administrator at one school went so far as to require all teachers to change classrooms so that the new ones wouldn’t be the only ones required to adjust to new surroundings.

The study found benefits to students in consolidated districts from a greater variety of advanced courses to take and more extracurricular activities, although some students reported greater competition to take part in some activities such as sports.

The paper can be found at http://www.uark.edu/ua/oep/.

English Learners in California: What the Numbers Say

Of California's 6.3 million public school students in 2006-07, 1.6 million (25%) were considered English learners (EL). Although the vast majority of ELs in the state are Spanish-speaking, more than 50 languages are represented in the state's EL population. English learners are distributed throughout the state and across grade levels, with the highest concentration of EL students in the lowest grade levels.

EdSource's new report, English Learners in California: What the Numbers Say, describes the state's English learners, their primary languages, what grades they are in, and where they live. The report also describes the process by which students are designated as English learners, the CELDT test used to measure English proficiency, and how they are reclassified as fluent English proficient (RFEP). It also discusses variations in English proficiency, differing reclassification rates from district to district, and how these students are meeting the state's rigorous academic standards.

The paper can be found at:

http://www.edsource.org/pdf/ELStats0308.pdf

Report from the Governor's Committee on Education Excellence:

Students First: Renewing Hope for California

In April 2005, Governor Schwarzenegger established The Governor's Committee on Education Excellence (GCEE) to recommend changes and reforms that would lead to a more effective education for California's students. The committee was charged with analyzing current conditions, best practices, and research to find ways to improve California's public school system, with a particular emphasis on governance, finance, teachers and administrators.

The committee's report, released March 14, calls for systemic reform that includes strengthening teaching and leadership, ensuring fair funding that rewards results, streamlining governance and strengthening accountability, using data wisely, and creating a foundation for continuous improvement.

Full report:

http://californiaschoolfinance.org/LinkClick.aspx?link=/portals/0/PDFs/GCEE/GCEE_Report_2008.pdf

Nationally Representative CDC Study Finds 1 in 4 Teenage Girls Has a Sexually Transmitted Disease

3.2 Million Female Adolescents Estimated to Have at Least One of the Most Common STDs

A CDC study estimates that one in four (26 percent) young women between the ages of 14 and 19 in the United States – or 3.2 million teenage girls – is infected with at least one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases (human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, herpes simplex virus, and trichomoniasis). The study, presented today at the 2008 National STD Prevention Conference, is the first to examine the combined national prevalence of common STDs among adolescent women in the United States, and provides the clearest picture to date of the overall STD burden in adolescent women.

Led by CDC’s Sara Forhan, M.D., M.P.H., the study also finds that African-American teenage girls were most severely affected. Nearly half of the young African-American women (48 percent) were infected with an STD, compared to 20 percent of young white women.

The two most common STDs overall were human papillomavirus, or HPV (18 percent), and chlamydia (4 percent). Data were based on an analysis of the 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

“Today’s data demonstrate the significant health risk STDs pose to millions of young women in this country every year,” said Kevin Fenton, M.D., director of CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention. “Given that the health effects of STDs for women – from infertility to cervical cancer – are particularly severe, STD screening, vaccination and other prevention strategies for sexually active women are among our highest public health priorities.”

“High STD infection rates among young women, particularly young African-American women, are clear signs that we must continue developing ways to reach those most at risk,” said John M. Douglas, Jr., M.D., director of CDC’s Division of STD Prevention. “STD screening and early treatment can prevent some of the most devastating effects of untreated STDs.”

CDC recommends annual chlamydia screening for sexually active women under the age of 25. CDC also recommends that girls and women between the ages of 11 and 26 who have not been vaccinated or who have not completed the full series of shots be fully vaccinated against HPV.

The study of STDs among teenage girls is one of several presented today at the 2008 National STD Prevention Conference that highlights the significant burden of STDs among girls and women, and identifies creative prevention strategies for reducing the toll of STDs in the United States.

Contraceptive services represent missed opportunities for STD screening, prevention

Two other studies featured at the conference point to missed opportunities for STD testing, and underscore that it is critical for STD screening to be included in comprehensive reproductive health services for young women.

A study by CDC’s Sherry L. Farr and colleagues found that while the majority of sexually active 15- to-24 year-old young women (82 percent) receive contraceptive or STD/HIV services, few receive both (39 percent). In addition, only 38 percent of a subset of young women who reported receiving contraceptive services associated with unprotected sex (e.g., pregnancy testing) also received STD/HIV counseling, testing or treatment, which indicates that many women at high risk are not receiving necessary prevention services.

A separate study, by CDC’s Shoshanna Handel and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, examined STD screening rates among young women seeking emergency contraception, which would suggest recent unprotected sex. The study found that just 27 percent were screened for chlamydia or gonorrhea. A significant proportion of those women (12 percent) had a positive test result, highlighting the need for routine chlamydia and gonorrhea screening at emergency contraception visits.

Innovative programs provide models for effective STD prevention

Other research from the conference highlighted creative programs that are effectively screening and treating people with STDs, and identifying those most at risk.

A CDC-funded confidential chlamydia screening program in high school-based health clinics in California resulted in high rates of screening among those seeking contraceptive or STD services (range: 85-94 percent). It also revealed significantly higher infection rates among African-American women than white women (9.6 percent versus 1.7 percent).

A study by New York City health officials assessed the effectiveness of an express visit option, allowing patients at city clinics to be tested for STDs without a doctor’s exam. Comparing data before and after express visits were routinely offered, researchers found that the express visit option made it possible for an additional 4,588 tests to be performed, and increased STD diagnoses by 17 percent (2,617 versus 2,231).

Comprehensive Sex Education Might Reduce Teen Pregnancies

New research suggests that comprehensive sex education might lead to less teen pregnancy, and there are no indications that it boosts the levels of sexual intercourse or sexually transmitted diseases.

“It is not harmful to teach teens about birth control in addition to abstinence,” said study lead author Pamela Kohler, a program manager at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Parents and educators have long argued over whether students should get instruction in birth control or simply learn how to say no. At issue is which approach will best postpone sex.

Kohler and colleagues examined the results of the 2002 national survey and focused on heterosexual teens ages 15 to 19. The findings — based on responses from 1,719 teens — appear in the April issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.

After reviewing the results, which researchers weighted to reflect the U.S. population better, the researchers found that one in four teens received abstinence-only education. Nine percent — particularly the poor and those in rural areas — received no sex education at all. The other two-thirds received comprehensive instruction with discussion of birth control.

Teens who received comprehensive sex education were 60 percent less likely to report becoming pregnant or impregnating someone than those who received no sex education.

The likelihood of pregnancy was 30 percent lower among those who had abstinence-only education compared to those who received no sex education, but the researchers deemed that number statistically insignificant because few teens fit into the categories that researchers analyzed.

While they also did not reach statistical significance, other survey results suggested that comprehensive sex education — but not abstinence-based sex education — slightly reduced the likelihood of teens having engaged in vaginal intercourse. Neither approach seemed to reduce the likelihood of reported cases of sexually transmitted diseases, but again the results were not statistically significant.

The findings support comprehensive sex education, Kohler said.  “There was no evidence to suggest that abstinence-only education decreased the likelihood of ever having sex or getting pregnant.”

Don Operario, Ph.D., a professor at Oxford University in England, said the study provides “further compelling evidence” about the value of comprehensive sex education and the “ineffectiveness” of the abstinence-only approach.

Still, the study does not show how educators should implement comprehensive sex education in the classroom, said Operario, who studies sex education. “We need a better understanding of the most effective ways of delivering this type of education in order to maximize audience comprehension and community acceptability.”

Kohler PK, Manhart LE, Lafferty WE. Abstinence-only and comprehensive sex education and the initiation of sexual activity and teen pregnancy. J Adolesc Health 42(4), 2008.

Minnesota Parents Support Birth-Control Education

Minnesota students might learn different things about the birds and the bees depending on where they go to school, but their parents appear to support openness about most sex-related topics.

A majority of 1,605 parents surveyed said that they wanted children to learn about contraceptives, sexual abuse and sexually transmitted diseases. Only about a third felt uncomfortable with discussions of sensitive subjects like sexual orientation and abortion.

Overall, “parental support for comprehensive sex ed is strong,” said lead study author Marla Eisenberg. “Parents want many different topics covered and think they should be addressed relatively early.”

It is not clear how many students in Minnesota receive comprehensive sex education, she said. However, anecdotally, “we know that many districts, schools and teachers are afraid to take on comprehensive sexuality education out of fear of controversy in the community,” said Eisenberg, an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota.

Nationwide, some schools prefer to offer so-called abstinence-only education, which emphasizes the importance of avoiding sex until marriage and downplays the effectiveness of contraception.

The new telephone survey, the first of its kind in several years, took place in 2006 and 2007. Nearly two-thirds of 2,546 parents with school-age children responded when contacted by researchers. About 96 percent were white and about 73 percent were female.

The findings appear in the April issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Of those surveyed, 89.3 percent said they supported comprehensive sex education with instruction about the use of birth control; slightly less than 10 percent of parents supported abstinence-only education.

Almost all of those interviewed — 99 percent — supported instruction about sexual anatomy, and more than 90 percent agreed with instruction on topics like birth, sexually transmitted diseases, assertiveness skills and pregnancy. With the exception of abortion, most parents wanted the topics discussed before high school.

Eisenberg said she was surprised to find that support for comprehensive information about birth control among more than 85 percent of those who described themselves as Catholics, evangelical Christians and conservatives.

Amy Bleakley, a researcher with the Annenberg Public Policy Center in Philadelphia, called the survey “well done” and said it reflects other U.S. findings from the South and West.

“The government continues to fund abstinence-only programs despite public opinion and scientific evidence that support more comprehensive sex education,” Bleakley said. “Parents and educators need to get more involved and more outspoken about their opinions so that their representatives in Washington take this issue more seriously.”

Curbing teen drinking difficult in urban areas

Keeping middle schoolers from alcohol is a tougher task in the inner city than in rural areas, even for experts armed with the best prevention programs, a new University of Florida study shows.

A three-year, three-pronged prevention program did little to keep Chicago middle schoolers from drinking or using drugs, despite its prior success in rural Minnesota, where the program reduced alcohol use 20 to 30 percent, UF and University of Minnesota researchers recently reported in the online edition of the journal Addiction.

“The intervention found to be effective in rural areas was not effective here, which really surprised us,” said Kelli A. Komro, a UF associate professor of epidemiology in the UF College of Medicine and the study’s lead author. “This is an important finding to realize this program was not enough. The bottom line is this: Low-income children in urban areas need more, long-term intensive efforts.”

Adolescents who drink by age 15 -- about half of teens -- are more likely to struggle in school, abuse alcohol later in life, smoke cigarettes and use other drugs than those who don’t. Even worse, exposure to alcohol at a young age may damage the developing brain, according to a 2007 U.S. Surgeon General report.

“Almost any problem kids might have, alcohol increases that risk,” Komro said.

By targeting middle-school-age children, the UF and University of Minnesota team hoped to reduce these risks. The researchers studied 5,812 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders from mostly low-income communities in Chicago, randomly dividing the neighborhoods into two groups: those who would participate in the prevention program and those who would not.

The program, a tweaked version of what Komro and her colleagues developed for their Minnesota study, included three preventive approaches to relay the message that drinking is not acceptable in school, at home and in the community.

In participating schools, an alcohol prevention curriculum was used in the classroom. Students led these sessions because the prevention messages are more accepted when they come from peers rather than teachers, Komro said. The family component included homework assignments that parents and children could complete together, organized events for families, and educational postcards with helpful hints that were sent to parents. For the community aspect of the program, researchers hired organizers to work with community volunteers to change the risks and problems with teen drinking in their neighborhoods.

But at the end of the study, year-end surveys showed no difference in alcohol use among the teens who took part in the project and those who did not. At least 70 percent of the schools in the neighborhoods that did not use the program had some form of drug and alcohol prevention program in the schools. It’s unlikely these programs skewed the results of the study though, Komro said. UF’s prevention program was larger and more comprehensive than the other school-based programs and researchers would have detected a difference among the students had it worked.

One particular problem surfaced during the community component of the project. The organizers struggled to rally some community members around the cause, often having to explain why they should be concerned about adolescent alcohol use. That gave researchers some insight into why the program did not work there.

“People in these areas are concerned with housing, they’re concerned with gangs and other drug use,” Komro said. “There was a whole upfront effort where we had to educate people about how alcohol was related to those other issues, and that it was an important issue to think about with their young people.

“We know from other studies in low-income, urban neighborhoods, there is a higher concentration of alcohol outlets, compared to suburban or rural areas. There were a lot of alcohol ads around these schools and a greater density of pro-alcohol messages these children are exposed to. You mix that with the poverty level and it’s just a high-risk environment.”

Despite the overall results, there were positive findings that researchers hope to build on, Komro said. Of all the components, the family interventions had the most significant effects. And one aspect of the community project worked well: Half of the community teams went to stores that sold alcohol and asked merchants not to sell to underage kids. In those communities, the ability of young people to buy alcohol went down 64 percent.

“While the findings may not be what the investigators were hoping for, they reported them fully and openly, and this is good for the field,” said Brian Flay, a professor of public health and director of the Research Prevention Center at Oregon State University. “Science can advance properly only when both positive and negative findings are reported.”

Understanding teen attitudes critical to quit message

Teen attitudes to smoking need to be re-examined if anti-smoking health campaigns are to be effective, according to Hunter researchers.

Researchers from the Centre for Health Research and Psycho-oncology (CHeRP) have reviewed 78 international studies, drawing some important conclusions about adolescent smoking and peer pressure, sales-to-minor laws, and young people’s views on nicotine addiction. Flora Tzelepis from CHeRP said the review concentrated on information from focus groups and interviews with young people.

“In relation to peer pressure, teenagers rarely identify bullying or teasing as coercive factors that lead to smoking,” Ms Tzelepis said. “The desire to fit in with the group is far more influential and pervasive and this is what needs to be tackled in education programs rather than the simplistic ‘Just say no’ type of message.

“It is clear that tough laws are unlikely to stop young people from obtaining tobacco products, with young people reporting a number of ways of getting around these restrictions. This suggests that governments should not invest too heavily in enforcing sales-to-minors laws in the belief they will play a major part in stopping young people from smoking.

“Disturbingly, mid-teens experimenting with tobacco tend to see cigarette addiction as something which happens to older people. Older teens who smoke regularly can readily accept they are addicted, but this realisation frequently comes too late for such an entrenched addiction.”

Can involvement in extra-curricular activities help prevent juvenile delinquency?

Gender-specific research published by SAGE in Crime & Delinquency

The study, conducted by Northeastern University researchers, looked separately at delinquency and risky behaviors for both young men and young women in a suburban high school and how involvement in outside activities influenced those behaviors. The findings provided interesting, and, in some cases, surprising results.

While they found that involvement in extra-curricular activities definitely seemed to minimize the risky behaviors, there seemed to be a “tipping point” where too much participation had a counter-effect. They also found that nontraditional activities for each gender (such as sports for girls and church for boys) provided a greater protection from delinquency. The researchers believe that extracurricular involvement helps deter delinquency by reducing unstructured time, providing incentives to conform, and creating avenues for attachments with other pro-social peers and adults.

“Young people who participate in sports and both community and church activities report significantly less serious delinquency as well as less problem drinking and risky sexual behavior,” writes co-author Sean P. Varano, Ph.D. “A healthy and measured dose of involvement in extracurricular activities is good for young people.”

The Crime & Delinquency article, “Social Control, Serious Delinquency, and Risky Behavior: A Gendered Analysis,” written by Jeb A. Booth, Ph.D., formerly of Northeastern, Amy Farrell, Ph.D., and Sean P. Varano, Ph.D., both currently at Northeastern University, has been made available from SAGE at no charge for a limited time at http://cad.sagepub.com/cgi/rapidpdf/0011128707306121v1 .

MORE MINORITIES GO TO COLLEGE, BUT MANY DON'T GRADUATE

Even though the number of black and Hispanic students entering college has increased dramatically over the last 30 years, students from these groups still lag well behind white students in earning college degrees, according to researchers at the University of California, Davis.

In its 1978 decision in "Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke," the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a higher education institution could consider race in admissions for the purpose of achieving a diverse student body. In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 209, ending consideration of race in public education; similar referendums have passed or are under consideration in other states.

Michal Kurlaender, assistant professor of education at UC Davis, and co-author Erika Felts, a graduate student in sociology at UC Davis found that between 1972 and 1992, the percentage of black high school graduates who entered college rose from 46 percent to 69.5 percent and the percentage of Hispanic high school graduates who went to college climbed from 47 percent to 70 percent. However, the college completion rate for both groups fell. In 1975, 38 percent of all blacks and 40 percent of all Hispanics who entered college completed their bachelor's degrees. By 2004, the percentages had dropped to 33 percent for blacks and 34 percent for Hispanics. The researchers based their conclusions on an analysis of data released in 2004 by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Center for Education Statistics.

Kurlaender cites a number of possible causes for the opposing trends. First, under-represented minority students entering college today are more likely than students 30 years ago to enter four-year colleges as transfer students from two-year colleges, to be among the first in their families to go to college and to attend college part-time. In addition, under-represented minorities are more likely to be low-income and dependent on financial assistance to complete their degrees, to be placed in remedial courses once they enter college and to attend institutions where faculty mentoring, class size and student participation in college activities may be less than optimal. All of these factors can contribute to low graduation rates.

Bridgeport CT Schools Analyzed

A report from the international consulting firm of Cambridge Education urges more uniformity in how Bridgeport students are tested and disciplined in schools across the city.

For instance, according to the consultants, there needs to be a uniform discipline code applied to all of the schools that spells out how and why suspensions are meted out.

The school district also needs to limit the number of new initiatives it tries and focus on the most significant ones designed to raise student achievement.

Recommendations focus on how the city's educators need more consistency in what and how they teach.

http://extras.connpost.com/Bridgeport_final_report.pdf

National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities Survey Gives Early Snapshot of Impact of Credit Crunch on Student Loans at Private Colleges and Universities

A significant number of private colleges and universities report reductions in student loan availability and borrower benefits, according to the results of a survey conducted by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.

"While the comments offered by survey respondents indicate that there is little evidence of the credit crunch limiting access to student loans at the specific time of the survey, the data collected serves as a warning flare," said NAICU President David L. Warren.

"There is widespread uncertainty about what the full extent of the credit crunch and its impact on student borrowers will be, and what safeguards the federal government will have in place to avert a crisis," Warren said. "Institutions are looking for national guidance."

Private Label Loans

Of NAICU's 952 members, 315 institutions -- or 33 percent -- responded to the survey. Of the 176 responding institutions that reported receiving information from "preferred" lenders about their ability to make non-federal private label loans for the 2008-09 academic year:

- 46 percent said that one or more of their lenders are

tightening credit requirements for private label loans;

- 43 percent said that one or more are no longer providing

private label loans;

- 30 percent said that one or more are reducing or

eliminating borrower benefits; and

- 20 percent say that one or more lenders are increasing

interest rates.

Another 111 institutions reported they participate in non-federal, private label loans, but had not gotten any information from "preferred" lenders.

The NAICU survey asked institutions that participate in non-federal student loans what actions they would take if lenders were no longer available to some or all of their students to meet their financial needs. Of the 228 respondents participating in private label loans that answered the question:

- 20 percent would offer budget counseling;

- 15 percent would increase institutional funding for loans;

- 15 percent would direct students toward other outside

scholarships or alternative loans;

- 12 percent would increase institutional funding for grants

or work study;

- 11 percent would increase PLUS loans; and

- 6 percent would offer tuition payment plans.

For a number of reasons, 48 percent of the 228 respondents said they had no plan in place to respond to a shortage in private-label loans. Some institutions have not received indications that their individual lenders and students will be affected significantly by the credit crunch. Many do not have the financial resources needed to make up for a shortfall in private loans. Others indicate the uncertainty in the markets and among federal officials has placed their planning on hold.

Sixty percent of the 284 respondents participating in private-label loans that answered the question "how important is private student loan borrowing to your institutional financial health?" said they are either "very important" or "critically important" to their institutional financial health. Twenty-three percent reported private-label loans are "somewhat important" to their financial health. Eighteen percent said they were either "not very important" or "not at all important."

Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP)

Of the 211 responding institutions that reported receiving information from "preferred" lenders regarding their ability to make loans through the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) for the 2008-09 academic year:

- 68 percent said that one or more of their lenders are

cutting borrower benefits on FFELP loans, and

- 57 percent said that one or more of their lenders are no

longer providing FFELP loans.

(Note: When Congress reduced FFELP subsidies in 2007 to increase funding for Pell Grants and other student aid, cuts in borrower benefits were widely anticipated, and are not necessarily directly attributable to the current credit crunch.)

About the Survey

NAICU surveyed its 952 member institutions March 3-14. A total of 315 institutions responded, for an overall response rate of approximately 33 percent. Eighty-eight percent of respondents participate in FFELP loans, and 76 percent of respondents participate in private-label student loans. Twelve percent of responding institutions participate in the William Ford Direct Loan Program, compared to 16 percent of all private, not-for-profit institutions.

About NAICU

NAICU serves as the unified national voice of independent higher education. With nearly 1,000 member institutions and associations nationwide, NAICU reflects the diversity of private, nonprofit higher education in the United States. NAICU members enroll 85 percent of all students attending private institutions. They include traditional liberal arts colleges, major research universities, church- and faith-related institutions, historically black colleges, Hispanic-serving institutions, single-sex colleges, art institutions, two-year colleges, and schools of law, medicine, engineering, business, and other professions.

Survey results and questionnaire are available at

http://www.naicu.edu/studentloansurvey .

UH report shows college students making the grade online, in class

'Hybrid class' proves more successful for students than traditional class settings

The lives of today’s college students have always included computers and the Internet. That technology now has moved from the ether into instruction.

A technical report from a University of Houston Department of Health and Human Performance researcher finds that students in a “hybrid class” that incorporated instructional technology with in-class lectures scored a letter-grade higher on average than their counterparts who took the same class in a more traditional format.

Brian McFarlin measured the student involvement and academic performance of a traditional class—Kinesiology 3306—from fall 2004 to fall 2005. He compared those measurements with those of students in the hybrid class, offered as an alternative from summer 2006 to fall 2007.

“One reason we offered the hybrid class in the first place was because students said they wanted it,” said McFarlin, a researcher and assistant professor. “Their formal evaluations of the class indicated the traditional class didn’t take advantage of instructional technologies available, and that these technologies could give them additional help and access to course material outside of class time.”

Hybrid classes are growing in popularity and practicality for students and professors, at UH and on campuses across the country, because of the presentation of material and the accessibility and flexibility to students. For example, an upper-level business law and ethics class in the UH Bauer College of Business reaches more than 1,000 students each academic year because of its flexible, hybrid offerings.

In addition, the UH Graduate Futures Studies has been experimenting with hybrid classes for the last five years. Houston students attend class in classrooms, but students as far away as Australia also take and participate in classes. To date, there has been limited literature addressing the effectiveness of such classes, McFarlin said.

McFarlin’s traditional kinesiology class met twice a week for a 90-minute lecture in a large auditorium. He used Microsoft PowerPoint slides with Flash media to present course material. He reported that, as is customary in large auditorium classes, interaction was minimal between students and professor.

His hybrid class met once a week for a traditional 90-minute lecture, but augmented the lesson with various forms of instructional technologies. The second lecture each week was administered by WebCT, an online venue for students to review course material. An animated character of McFarlin—an interactive SitePal avatar created by OddCast of New York—welcomed students to the site and provided class announcements. In addition, McFarlin

narrated material for upcoming lectures using Articulate Studio software, so students could prepare for the next class at their own pace.

“One major advantage of the Articulate software is that it enhances the appearance of standard PowerPoint files by allowing the course designer to add self-test questions, provide a search function and a navigation menu,” McFarlin said. “Once students completed the online lecture, they were required to take a WebCT quiz on the material. The majority of students scored between 90 and 100 percent.”

In the classroom, students of the hybrid class used a remote control-looking device called a “radio frequency in-class response system.” They purchased these devices on campus as part of the class requirements. At the beginning of class, students were asked exam-like questions about the previous lecture and used the device to select the answers. At the end of class, they answered questions regarding the lecture they had just heard. The devices recorded their responses and let McFarlin know which part of his material needed more explanation. The technology also kept track of attendance.

“Final grades in the hybrid class were on average a letter grade higher than those in the traditional format,” McFarlin said.

“Students could choose a content delivery method that matched their style, so we believe they were better able to comprehend the material.” In addition, comments in evaluations indicated students preferred the self-paced nature of the hybrid class.

Future hybrid classes would provide a “frequently asked questions” feature, hosted by an animated SitePal avatar, McFarlin said.

Beyond the improvement of student grades, McFarlin believes that hybrid courses can benefit large college campuses struggling with space management issues.

“For instance, in the present hybrid course, we only needed to have access to a classroom for one and a half hours a week,” he said.

“That means two courses could be taught in a classroom that would normally be dedicated to one traditional lecture course.”

McFarlin admits there are some shortcomings. Online instruction doesn’t allow the instructor to confirm the identity of a student completing an assignment. He notes that creating the online course material is time-consuming, especially when implementing various technologies. Still, his student’s success prompted him to offer Kinesiology 3306 only in a hybrid format.

“In the end, I have expanded my own instructional capacities and provided a better learning experience to my students,” McFarlin said.

“The key to success with instructional technology is to keep the focus on student-related outcomes and learning. This was my objective.”

His findings are published in the journal “Advances in Physiology Education” and can be viewed at http://advan.physiology.org/.