Growing interest in publicly funded programs for young children has drawn attention to whether and how Head Start and other early childhood programs should be asked to prove their worth. Congress asked the National Research Council for guidance on how to identify important outcomes for children from birth to age 5 and how best to assess them in preschools, child care, and other early childhood programs.

The Research Council's new report concludes that well-planned assessments can inform teaching and efforts to improve programs and can contribute to better outcomes for children, but poor assessments or misuse of the results can harm both children and programs. The report offers principles to guide the design, implementation, and use of assessments in early childhood settings.

Federal agencies, states, school systems, and other organizations that evaluate early childhood programs or the children they serve should make the purpose of any assessment explicit and public in advance, the report says. For example, a state should specify whether an assessment will be used to help teachers gauge the progress of individual children or to help public agencies decide whether to continue a program's funding.

"The goal of the assessment should guide the choice of the assessment tools used, and assessments that will have widespread effects should meet high standards of rigor and validity," said Catherine Snow, a professor at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University and chair of the committee that wrote the report. "For example, using a standardized test with a sample of children in a program would be suitable if the goal was to determine whether the program is bringing children closer to national norms, but if the purpose is to guide instruction within a specific classroom, a nonstandardized assessment linked to the curriculum would be appropriate."

Effective assessment must be part of a larger system with a strong infrastructure to support children's care and education, the report says. Facets of this system should include clearly articulated standards for what children should learn and what constitutes a quality program. Other aspects include professional development opportunities, training to familiarize policymakers, teachers, and administrators with standards and assessments, and continuous monitoring to ensure that all elements of the system are working together to serve the interests of the children.

The report urges extreme caution in basing high-stakes decisions -- such as determining whether a program will receive continued funding or whether a child is eligible for services because of an identified disability -- on assessments of young children. Models such as those set forth in the No Child Left Behind Act strive to link yearly progress assessments to explicitly defined academic content areas for children in grades three through 12. It would be inappropriate to borrow this model unchanged and apply it to early childhood settings, the committee said, because well-defined academic content areas are not characteristic of excellent care and education for younger children.

Cutting a program's funding or imposing other negative consequences based on assessments of the participating children should happen only under certain conditions -- if the program has been given enough resources to meet expectations, for example, and if the level of children's development when they entered the program has been taken into account. Child assessment results should never be the only information considered. And a program should not be closed or restructured if doing so would have worse consequences for children than leaving it open, the report adds.

Likewise, decisions to penalize a teacher should never rest solely on findings from assessments of students in his or her classroom, without considering children's starting points, how the test is related to the curriculum, and whether the teacher has adequate support, professional development, and other resources.

Programs' quality should be evaluated based not only on how they affect children's academic skills such as language and mathematics, but also on whether they improve other important aspects of child development, such as social and emotional skills, the report says. While good measures of certain outcomes -- such as literacy and language development -- currently exist, tools to assess other abilities such as problem-solving and creativity remain underdeveloped, and more effort will be required to improve their quality.

In addition, the report notes, some assessment measures have only been tested with populations that do not represent the diversity of children enrolled in today's early childhood programs. Care should be used in assessing the status or progress of young children with special needs and those for whom English is a second language, because many existing instruments have not demonstrated their validity for these groups.

Full report:

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12446#toc

Most Late-talking Toddlers Catch Up by Age 7

The world’s largest study to date on language emergence has shown that 80 percent of children with language delays at age 2 will catch up by age 7. But this also means that for one in five late-talking toddlers, language delays persist.

The findings are part of a 10-year multiple-study research project directed by Mabel Rice, the Fred and Virginia Merrill Distinguished Professor of Advanced Studies and director of the Center for Biobehavioral Neurosciences in Communication Disorders at the Life Span Institute at the University of Kansas.

Funding for Rice’s research comes from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, one of the National Institutes of Health, and totals nearly $6 million.

Since 2002, Rice has worked with colleagues at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, to study the language development of single and twin children in the western part of the country. Their goal is to pinpoint possible environmental, neurodevelopmental or genetic risk factors in children with Specific Language Impairment.

Published in the April issue of the Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, the most recent project showed that a late start doesn’t necessarily predict ongoing language problems. Beginning with a study of 1,766 toddlers, the researchers found that boys are three times as likely as girls to be late-talking toddlers. Yet when the children were 7 years of age, no differences were found between girls and boys.

“Obviously some kind of mechanism kicks in for the boys,” Rice said. “Between the age of 2 and 7, they actually learn language faster than girls. After age 7, boys and girls stay on the same trajectory.”

Rice thinks the findings give a mixed message to parents worried about their child’s language development.

“For children who are still late talkers in school, it is important to provide early intervention and enrichment,” Rice said. “Parents should contact a speech pathologist if they have any concerns.”

According to Rice, by age 2, children should have a vocabulary of about 50 words and be starting to combine those words in two- or three-word sentences. A child with Specific Language Impairment scores within the normal range for nonverbal intelligence and has no hearing loss. Motor skills, social-emotional development and the child’s neurological profile are all normal. The only noticeable gap is in language development.

The data in her latest study also show that a mother’s education, income, parenting style and mental health does not predict when a child will start to talk. This seems to debunk the widely held belief that parents or a poor home environment are to blame for a late-talking toddler, according to Rice.

“In our large and diverse sample, children in families with limited means have as good a chance at starting to talk as those in families with lots of resources,” said Rice.

In the next phase of her research, Rice will study language development in twins, collaborating with a medical geneticist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, to look for a genetic basis of Specific Language Impairment.

Rice said the children in the data pool in western Australia are similar to Kansas children, both ethnically and socioeconomically. Rice’s studies are, in fact, using the largest language data pool ever collected that is representative of Kansas families.

Study: Starting kindergarten later gives students only a fleeting edge

New research challenges a growing trend toward holding kids out of kindergarten until they’re older, arguing that academic advantages are short-lived and come at the expense of delaying entry into the workforce and other costs.

The findings show older kindergartners fare better academically largely because they learn more before starting school, not because age improves aptitude, said Darren Lubotsky, a University of Illinois economics professor who co-wrote the study.

Older students post higher test scores than younger peers during the first few months of kindergarten, but their edge soon fades and nearly vanishes by eighth grade, according to the study, which will appear in the Journal of Human Resources.

“If it were true that older kids are able to learn at a faster rate, then the differences in test scores should get bigger as kids progress and the material gets more difficult. But we really see the opposite,” Lubotsky said.

The findings counter decades of research linking age to academic achievement that has led states to push back kindergarten entrance age deadlines and convinced more parents to start children later than the once-traditional age of 5.

In 2002, nearly 21 percent of 5-year-olds were not yet enrolled in kindergarten, up from less than 10 percent in 1980, according to the study, co-written by former U. of I. economist Todd Elder, now a professor at Michigan State University.

Though older students have an early edge based on an extra year of skill development, the study maintains that older and younger students learn at the same pace once they enter school, based on a review of federal education data.

The study found, for example, that older kindergartners scored 24 percentage points higher than younger peers on standardized reading tests, but the gap narrowed to less than 4 percentage points by eighth grade.

“Kids learn a lot before kindergarten, especially if they’re in preschool. One way to think about it is that the oldest kid in kindergarten has about 20 percent more life experience,” Lubotsky said. “But once they start, they basically learn at the same rate.”

Based on the findings, Lubotsky says parents and lawmakers need to weigh costs and benefits as they consider when to start kids in kindergarten.

“Older kids may do better at first, but there’s a tradeoff,” he said. “They’re also a year in school behind other kids their own age. At the end of the line, somehow that year will catch up to them. They start work a year later, and parents have an extra year of child-care costs if they delay entry. So it’s not free.”

Lubotsky says the study also found that wide age gaps caused by holding kids back from kindergarten have both positive and negative effects on younger students.

On one hand, younger students tend to score higher on tests when they have older classmates, who may help tutor their peers or simply set higher standards that others seek to achieve, Lubotsky said.

But the study also found that having older classmates makes it more likely that younger peers will be held back or diagnosed with learning disorders such as attention deficit disorder.

“What we think is going on is that teachers are comparing younger kids to older classmates and the younger kids tend to stand out,” Lubotsky said. “They stand out either as not doing as well or they tend to stand out as being more hyperactive.”

“Older kids do better at first and younger kids do worse, but they catch up,” he said. “The thing is schools are making profound decisions based on these differences – differences that tend to fade away.”

Lubotsky says follow-up research is planned to determine whether the academic advantages of age continue to decline through high school.

“It’s clear the pattern is these academic differences get smaller as kids get older,” he said. “It doesn’t seem reasonable to us that there could be large long-term gains from starting kindergarten at an older age when there isn’t much of an effect for kids in eighth grade.”

Lubotsky says parents still need to weigh children’s needs and consider holding them back if they are immature, can’t sit still in class or have other issues that could affect learning. But he says the study’s bottom line is that kids are generally best served by starting school as early as possible.

“Kids get so much more out of just learning,” he said. “Whether they go to school earlier or later, that’s really not going to matter much at the end of the day.”

Slowing speech eases child's ability to listen

…Wichita State audiology professor Ray Hull would say the children heard something unusual and irresistible: an adult they can understand.

Because the trick to get children to listen to really hear and comprehend, whether they're toddlers or high school students isn't speaking up, Hull says.

It's slowing down.

According to Hull, the average adult speaks at a rate of almost 170 words per minute. But the average 5- to 7- year-old processes speech at a rate of only 120 words per minute.

The gap between what a child hears and what he or she understands can appear to parents and teachers as inattention, confusion or outright defiance.

"My daughter says, `My teacher talks so fast, I can't hear her,'" Hull said…

Complete article:

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/08/22/149254kspnchildlistening_ap.html

Calculators Okay in Math Class, If Students Know the Facts First

Calculators are useful tools in elementary mathematics classes, if students already have some basic skills, new research has found. The findings shed light on the debate about whether and when calculators should be used in the classroom.

"These findings suggest that it is important children first learn how to calculate answers on their own, but after that initial phase, using calculators is a fine thing to do, even for basic multiplication facts," Bethany Rittle-Johnson, assistant professor of psychology in Vanderbilt's Peabody College of education and human development and co-author of the study, said.

The research is currently in press at the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology and is available on the journal's Web site: http://tinyurl.com/5f8tgd .

Rittle-Johnson and co-author Alexander Kmicikewycz, who completed the work as his undergraduate honors thesis at Peabody, found that the level of a student's knowledge of mathematics facts was the determining factor in whether a calculator hindered his or her learning.

"The study indicates technology such as calculators can help kids who already have a strong foundation in basic skills," Kmicikewycz, now a teacher in New York City public schools, said.

"For students who did not know many multiplication facts, generating the answers on their own, without a calculator, was important and helped their performance on subsequent tests," Rittle-Johnson added. "But for students who already knew some multiplication facts, it didn't matter -- using a calculator to practice neither helped nor harmed them."

The researchers compared third graders' performance on multiplication problems after they had spent a class period working on other multiplication problems. Some of the students spent that class period generating answers on their own, while others simply read the answers from a calculator. All students used a calculator to check their answers.

The researchers found that the calculator's effect on subsequent performance depended on how much the students knew to begin with. For those students who already had some multiplication skills, using the calculator before taking the test had no impact. But for those who were not good at multiplying, use of the calculator had a negative impact on their performance.

The researchers also found that the students using calculators were able to practice more problems and had fewer errors.

"Teachers struggle with how to give kids immediate feedback, which we know speeds the learning process. So, another use for calculators is allowing students to use them to check the answers they have come up with by themselves, giving them immediate feedback and more time for practice," Rittle-Johnson said.

And, for many of the students, using calculators was simply fun.

"Kids enjoyed them. It's one way to make memorizing your multiplication facts a more interesting thing to do," Rittle-Johnson said.

"So much of how you teach depends on how you market the material -- presentation is very important to kids," Kmicikewycz added. "Many of these students had never used a calculator before, so it added a fun aspect to math class for them."

"It's a good tool that some teachers shy away from, because they are worried it's going to have negative consequences," Rittle-Johnson said. "I think that the evidence suggests there are good uses of calculators, even in elementary school."

TEACHING SCIENCE AS A LANGUAGE: A 'CONTENT-FIRST' APPROACH TO SCIENCE TEACHING

To talk about photosynthesis, you need to know a little Latin, a bit of French, some Greek, a word coined by a pair of French chemists in the 19th century, and a word of ancient origin that has been adopted and adapted by scientists around the world.

There's photosynthesis—New Latin. And glucose—a French modification of a Greek word. There's chlorophyll—coined by French scientists Pierre-Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Bienaimé Caventou. And chloroplast—part of the so-called International Scientific Vocabulary.

Those words are just part of the scientific vocabulary teachers will soon be writing on blackboards in fifth-grade classrooms across the country to explain the process by which green plants convert water, carbon dioxide and sunlight into carbohydrates and oxygen.

Usually, elementary school students are expected to learn the concepts and lexicon of photosynthesis—and other scientific subjects—simultaneously.

But according to a recent study by Bryan Brown, an assistant professor of education at Stanford, and Kihyun Ryoo, a doctoral candidate in Stanford's School of Education, students who learned the basic concepts of photosynthesis in "everyday English" before learning the scientific terms for the phenomenon fared much better on tests than students taught the traditional way.

Brown and Ryoo, who published the results of the study in the April 8 online issue of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, called their method the "content-first" approach.

"The results reveal that although learning the language of science remains a primary hurdle, students taught using our content-first approach demonstrated an improved conceptual and linguistic understanding of science," they write.

"Furthermore, as we examined each groups' differential performance [the students were randomly divided into two groups], it became clear that students' ability to communicate using scientific language was significantly impacted by this treatment."

Brown and Ryoo said the approach offers a way to tap into the rich intellectual resources of children and potentially reduce their anxiety about using scientific language.

The traditional approach

To help students master scientific lingo, teachers usually build word walls—interactive displays of the lingo, with graphics illustrating their links to photosynthesis. They hand out vocabulary lists. They use flash cards. They ask students to make up their own definitions.

But Brown and Ryoo say those techniques do not take into account that children learn new words as those words become valuable and meaningful to their lives.

"We knew what an apple was before we said 'apple,'" Brown said during a recent interview in his office at the Center for Education Research at Stanford. "We were hungry and saw an apple, and we were able to say, 'Give me that apple.' Need drove language acquisition."

In their article, "Teaching Science as a Language: A 'Content-First' Approach to Science Teaching," Brown and Ryoo write that the vocabulary of science presents unique challenges.

"In contrast to foreign language instruction, where students are learning new ways to express familiar ideas, science instruction often involves the presentation of new ideas expressed through new language," they write.

In a Spanish class, for example, students learn that mesa means table and silla means chair. But when fifth graders are studying plant growth, they learn that green plants make glucose inside a chloroplast filled with chlorophylls in a process known as photosynthesis.

"In science class, students get new words and new ideas simultaneously," Brown said. "We wanted to break that paradigm."

Testing a new approach

To test their theory that a "content-first" approach would boost comprehension, Brown and Ryoo designed an interactive software program that paralleled the activities of an actual science lesson on photosynthesis, a required subject in fifth grade.

They created two versions of the program, called Science of Wizardry.

One version, given to the treatment group, used alternate words and phrases to teach the basic concepts of photosynthesis. For example, it used "sugar" at the beginning of the program and segued into glucose later. It used "energy pigments" at first, and subsequently introduced chlorophylls. It used "energy pouch" as a temporary stand-in for chloroplast.

The second version of the software, which was given to the control group, used the alternate words once and then switched to scientific vocabulary for the rest of the lesson.

Except for the differences in language use, the software was identical in content and presentation, including drag-and-drop quizzes and experiments.

Brown and Ryoo gave the program an adventurous twist by adding a narrator for the first two parts of the lesson—a mandrake plant on a heroic quest.

"I need your help to save my friend Wendy," says the mandrake, which was depicted as a smiling sprite with leafy hair. "Wendy needs the healing powers of a full-grown mandrake plant. If you can help me grow, we can save my friend Wendy."

In the first part of the lesson, everyone studied the basics of photosynthesis and conducted three experiments. In one experiment, the kids "grabbed" an umbrella off a bookshelf in a virtual classroom and placed it over a potted plant on a desk to deprive it of sunlight, and "opened" a window shade in the classroom to provide light to the one standing next to it.

They observed the plants for a week—shown by small calendar pages flying off the computer screen—as one thrived and the other withered.

In the second part of the lesson, students first took quizzes on the basics. Students in the treatment group were asked to correctly place boxes—containing a sun marked "light," droplets of air marked "air humans breathe out" and "good air that humans breathe in," and a white cube marked "sugar"—into blank boxes arrayed around a plant. Once they completed that task, the scientific terms—photons, carbon dioxide, oxygen, glucose—appeared in bold letters in the boxes. By clicking on each one, students got more detailed explanations of each concept.

During parts one and two of the lesson, the mandrake "grew up" to age 18, sprouted more leaves on its head and danced—to the sound of children cheering—as kids mastered the concepts and scientific language of photosynthesis. By the end of part two, they have saved Wendy.

In the final part of the lesson, students conducted seven experiments relying solely on scientific language. In one experiment in a virtual science lab whose shelves were filled with beakers, the students tested for the presence of carbon dioxide in water by using a dye that changes from blue to yellow when carbon dioxide is present.

While conducting the experiments, the kids recorded their hypotheses and observations on virtual blackboards on the computer screen, and in real workbooks at their desks.

The 49 students, who were randomly divided into two groups, worked at individual laptops and wore headsets. Brown and Ryoo did not provide any instruction. The students, including 28 boys and 21 girls, attended a K-6 public school in San Lorenzo, Calif.

Before starting the program, Brown and Ryoo tested the class to see how much they already knew about photosynthesis. The students then spent about four hours over the next two school days using the interactive software.

At the end of the second day, the students took the test—18 multiple-choice questions and eight open-ended questions—again. Brown and Ryoo also interviewed the students about their understanding of photosynthesis.

Promising results show need for more study

When they compared the pre-test and post-test performances of the students, Brown and Ryoo were elated by the results.

"The thing that we're most excited about is that the students in the treatment group"—which learned the basics in everyday English first—"got higher scores on every type of question—multiple choice and open-ended," Brown said. "They got higher scores when questions were asked in everyday language. They got higher scores when questions were asked in science language. And when they were asked to write answers to open-ended questions, they were much better at writing their ideas in science language."

Brown and Ryoo cautioned that the results are tentative because the test was short, the sample size was small, and they did not have as much information as they would have liked about each individual student's English language proficiency.

They said the findings suggest the need for further study in a larger population of students.

For her dissertation, Ryoo is studying the impact of the content-first approach and the use of computer simulation on science learning among 240 students attending four elementary schools in the Bay Area.

Brown said some people who have learned about the "content-first" approach have responded by asking, "Isn't that just good teaching?"

"My response to that is that there's no research to document what happens if you teach in this particular way, so how do teachers know it works?" he said. "And in the classrooms I've seen, teachers are not sophisticated in the way they teach good scientific language consistently."

Teachers often talk to students about the connection between words they know and the ones scientists use, Brown said. For example, a teacher might explain that "sorting" the animal kingdom into two major categories—invertebrates and vertebrates—is the same thing as "classifying" them to a scientist.

"This 'modeling' is a common practice," he said. "But putting students in situations where they're required to use the language, which is what we did in this study, is absolutely not common."

Piling on the homework – Does it work for everyone?

While U.S students continue to lag behind many countries academically, national statistics show that teachers have responded by assigning more homework. But according to a joint study by researchers at Binghamton University and the University of Nevada, when it comes to math, piling on the homework may not work for all students.

Published in the July issue of the Econometrics Journal, researchers found that although assigning more homework tends to have a larger and more significant impact on mathematics test scores for high and low achievers, it is less effective for average achievers.

“We found that if a teacher has a high achieving group of students, pushing them harder by giving them more homework could be beneficial,” said Daniel Henderson, associate professor of economics at Binghamton University. “Similarly, if a teacher has a low ability class, assigning more homework may help since they may not have been pushed hard enough. But for the average achieving classes, who may have been given too much homework in an attempt to equate them with the high achieving classes, educators could be better served by using other methods to improve student achievement. Given these students’ abilities and time constraints, learning by doing may be a more effective tool for improvement.”

According to co-author Ozkan Eren, assistant professor of economics at the University of Nevada, the study examined an area previously unexplored, namely the connection between test scores and extra homework.

“There has been an extensive amount of research examining the influences of students’ achievement, but it has been primarily focused on financial inputs such as class size or teachers’ credentials,” said Eren. “Our study examined the affect that additional homework has on test scores.” While past studies suggest that nearly all students benefit from being assigned more homework Henderson and Eren discovered that only about 40% of the students surveyed would significantly benefit from an additional hour of homework each night.

According to Henderson, the findings should be of particular interest to schools who have responded to the increased pressures to pass state-mandated tests by forcing students to hit the books even harder. “This does not mean that homework is unimportant for average achievers,“ says Henderson. “But it does mean that this population may also benefit from other activities such as sports, art or music, rather than additional hours of math homework.”

So what can teachers take away from the study? Henderson points out that every student is unique and while umbrella policies may benefit some, they generally cannot be applied to all.

“In my own personal experience I see that each semester requires a different approach,” says Henderson. “This is even true when I teach the same course twice in a semester. Different times of the day or lengths of classes require different methods. Just as different quality students require different approaches.”

Henderson also points out that repetition has been proven effective for some but not all subjects and what may have worked one academic year may need to be altered the next. “Teachers should consider quality over quantity when it comes to homework assignments,” he says. “In the end it should be up to the individual teacher to decide how to motivate and educate their students.”

According to Henderson, the learning process needs to remain a rich, broad experience.

“One of the most beautiful things about America to me is the creativity that we instill in our primary and secondary schools,” says Henderson. “I know that we lag behind many countries in test scores, but I believe we also produce some of the most creative, enthusiastic students in the world.”

Inheriting the City: the Children of Immigrants Come of Age

Much has been said about America’s new immigrants, yet what do we know about the sort of Americans they and their children are now becoming? For more than a decade, researchers at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Center for Urban Research have conducted the most comprehensive study ever undertaken of second-generation immigrants in New York City. The study examines their experiences growing up, their education, entry into the work force, their social and political lives, and how they establish their own families. The results have been published in a book, Inheriting the City: the Children of Immigrants Come of Age (Harvard University Press and the Russell Sage Foundation

Inheriting the City focuses on 18- to 32-year-old offspring of Dominican, West Indian, South American, Chinese, and Russian-Jewish immigrants, now living in the New York Metropolitan area. Each group is intensively examined and compared through information gleaned from a combination of 3,415 lengthy telephone surveys and 333 open-ended follow-up interviews. The book asks whether or not immigrants’ children are achieving the better life their parents sought in coming to America. The answer is not simply a matter of how much second-generation immigrants have “assimilated,” but also an exploration of just what assimilation means in today’s America. Since more than half of the population of New York are immigrants or children of immigrants, “How,” the authors ask, “does one define ‘mainstream’ in a truly multicultural city?” 

Through a combination of statistical comparisons, telling interviews and finely grained qualitative analysis, the authors identify and explore the myriad complexities of their subjects’ lives in the context of their own individual and family experiences, their national origins, other contemporary immigrant groups, native New Yorkers, and the waves of preceding immigrant groups.

Sample findings shared among second-generation groups: 

Language… The children of immigrants are overwhelmingly fluent in English.

Education… All second-generation groups fare better on average than either their immigrant parents or the members of native-born minority groups in terms of high school and college graduation. Dominicans — the group with the lowest educational attainment — still fared better than native Blacks or Puerto Ricans. Chinese and Russians fared better than native Whites.

Occupation… The children of immigrants are less occupationally segregated than their immigrant parents.

Earnings… All second-generation groups earn more than native African-American and Puerto Rican New Yorkers their age. The Russian-Jewish and Chinese second generation earns as much as comparable native Whites.

Crime… Members of all second-generation groups are less likely to have been arrested than are native African Americans and Puerto Ricans. South Americans, Dominicans and West Indians have arrest rates comparable to those of native Whites; those for Russian Jews and Chinese are far lower.

Friends and family… In many cases, the “social capital” — the network of friends and extended family who share the same immigrant origins — plays a role in keeping the second generation out of trouble, even among individually disadvantaged families.

Members of all second-generation groups live with their parents longer than do natives, regardless of race. They generally report greater comfort with multigenerational living and are less likely to regard leaving their parents’ homes as part of the transition to adulthood. This turns out to be a significant advantage in the New York housing market.

Role of women… Among the things the second generation likes about the United States is what most perceive as greater freedom for the women, compared to their parents’ home countries.

In almost all groups, women outperform men in school, although men continue to earn more.

Taking root… The second generation is here to stay. While Dominicans, South Americans, and West Indians retained far stronger ties to their home countries than Chinese or Russian Jews, in no case does a significant portion of any second-generation group plan to return to live in their parents’ home country. All have far fewer personal and financial ties there than do their immigrant parents.

Interest in and involvement in home country politics did not reduce interest and involvement in civic affairs in New York.

Sample findings of differences between second-generation groups:

Disadvantaged circumstances… Dominicans, the largest immigrant group in the city, are also the most disadvantaged in both the first generation and second generation.

Chinese immigrants often arrive with little education or knowledge of English, yet their children have generally overcome those limitations through high labor-force participation, two-parent and extended families, and unusual class diversity within the community.

Discrimination… Like African Americans, West Indians report high levels of racial discrimination, particularly from the police. Many grew up in single-parent households. Yet in part due to the support of multigeneration families, many own homes and have experienced considerable upward mobility.

Parental presence… The larger number of adults pooling household income and sharing child rearing in many immigrant families played an important role in second-generation success. More than two thirds of the South Americans, Russian Jews, and Chinese grew up in two-parent households; somewhat more than half of the West Indians, Puerto Ricans, and Dominicans did; and less than half of the native Blacks did. Yet among West Indians, single-parent families had a somewhat less negative effect than among native Blacks, perhaps due to larger number of adults available to support the household efforts.

Forming families… Family life varies considerably among the second-generation groups. The Chinese have the lowest percentage that are married or cohabitating, Dominicans the largest. South Americans are the most likely to marry outside their own group, native Whites and Chinese least likely. Chinese and native Whites also postpone marrying and having children the longest. There are more single parents among native Blacks, West Indians, and Puerto Ricans, while Dominicans and South Americans tend to marry young.

Civic engagement… Of the immigrant second-generation groups, West Indians were most likely to vote and be engaged with New York’s civic life. The Chinese and Russian Jews, the least likely, despite generally being better educated and better off financially.

Civic support… Many of the children of West Indian and Latino immigrants have been assisted by policies, programs, and institutions originally designed to benefit members of native minority groups.

In many areas of life, today’s second generation is choosing between traditional and “Americanized” ways. They differ from prior immigrant generations in that they have more pride in their own biculturalism, keeping some elements and discarding others as they go along. Yet this biculturalism in no way prevents their joining the “mainstream.” Indeed, in their cultural, economic, and social activities, the children of immigrants increasingly are the mainstream among young adult New Yorkers.

To buy the book:

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/KASINH.html

SAT® Scores Stable as Record Numbers Take Test

A record number of students in the class of 2008 took the SAT this year, with a higher percentage of first-generation students than last year and a high rate of minority student participation, the College Board announced today. This year’s average scores mirror those of last year, indicating that student performance held steady despite the increase in the number of test-takers.

The number of SAT takers rose to more than 1.5 million (1,518,859), an 8 percent increase from five years ago and a 29.5 percent increase from 10 years ago. The SAT continues to be the nation’s most widely taken standardized college admissions test. Combined with high school grades, the SAT is also the best predictor of college success.

Average scores for the class of 2008 remained stable at 502 for critical reading, 515 for mathematics and 494 for writing.

SAT Takers in the Class of 2008

· This year’s class is the most diverse class on record with historic increases in the number of Hispanic, African American and Asian American students taking the test.

· Minority SAT takers comprised 40 percent of all test-takers, up from 33 percent 10 years ago.

· The number of first-generation students has increased over the last decade and from last year. In the class of 2008, 36 percent were first-generation students, compared to 35 percent in the class of 2007.

· Females have narrowed the performance gap with males in critical reading, closing the gap to 4 points, compared with 7 points a decade ago, and females continue to outperform males on the writing section — by 13 points this year.

· A record number of students in the class of 2008 received fee waivers, with 221,962 students qualifying for and receiving them. This indicates an increase in the number of traditionally underserved students preparing for college success.

· The writing section of the SAT is the most predictive section of the test among all racial and ethnic minority groups.

· The inclusion of the writing section has also contributed to an increased emphasis on writing in the classroom.

Trends in Participation

Minority SAT takers have experienced substantial growth in participation during the last decade. Hispanics have expanded the most rapidly, more than doubling in number. Growth among Asian Americans and African Americans reached 61 percent and 52 percent, respectively.

Female students continue to form a majority of test-takers among all ethnic groups. Female students made up 57 percent of Hispanic and 57 percent of African American SAT takers in 2008. More than half of the Asian American (51 percent) and white test-takers (53 percent) were women.

Low-income students’ participation has also remained steady. These students are increasingly taking advantage of the College Board’s fee-waiver program, which granted $22 million in fee waivers and free services to qualifying students in 2008. About one out of every seven students in the 2008 cohort who took the SAT this year received free registration for up to two SAT tests and two SAT Subject Tests™, four free flexible score reports, and discounted SAT Readiness Program™ materials.

Value of Writing Section

The SAT’s writing section has proven to be the most predictive section of the test for determining first-year college performance, as evidenced by recent studies by the College Board and independent studies by the University of California and the University of Georgia. The College Board analysis, which evaluated data from about 150,000 students at 110 four-year colleges and universities, also found the writing section to be the most predictive for all students and therefore across all racial/ethnic minority groups.

· Of all three sections of the SAT, the writing section is the most predictive of students’ freshman year college performance for all students, demonstrating that writing is a critical skill and an excellent indicator of academic success in college.

· The writing section is also the most predictive section for all racial/ethnic minority groups, which demonstrates that the SAT is a fair and valid test for all students.

A 2007 College Board report found that the SAT writing section has been a factor in the increased emphasis that many high schools and middle schools are placing on writing skills. Notable proportions of teachers (61 percent) and administrators (54 percent) indicated that the SAT writing section had been a factor in the change in importance that their schools and districts had placed on writing.

Individual state reports are available here:

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/data-reports-research/sat/cb-seniors-2008

Other 2008 Reports & Supporting Materials

· Tables and Related Items

· College Attendance Patterns

Supplemental Materials

· SAT in Focus (.pdf/511K)

· Changes to the SAT Score-Reporting Policy (.pdf/515K)

The SAT Writing Section: Predicting College Success (.pdf/516K)

Research Plan to Boost Student and Teacher Safety, Well-Being and Academic Performance

Public schools in Cleveland can reduce violence, promote the mental health of students and improve conditions for learning and teaching by implementing reforms contained in a report by the American Institutes for Research (AIR), which follows a six-month audit of conditions in the city's schools.

The Cleveland Metropolitan School District and Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson asked AIR to conduct an audit that recommends steps to support the social and emotional learning of students. The audit followed a school shooting in 2007 in which a 14-year-old high school student shot two teachers and two students at his school and then took his own life. AIR's report focuses on steps the schools and the community can take to improve the school environment for students and teachers.

The audit found strengths along with weaknesses and "gaps" in the city's education and mental health services, and provides a strategy that builds upon existing strengths to address the depth and complexity of what is needed for improvement. AIR has been asked by the city and the school district to work with them to implement the plan.

"Schools can not do this work alone," said David Osher, a managing research scientist at AIR and the report's lead author. "Many Cleveland students, families and educators confront daily the impacts of poverty, environmental toxins and trauma. Fortunately, they live, attend school and work in a city rich in human and cultural capital and good will."

The report's recommendations, which would be implemented over the next five years, include:

- Freeing up guidance counselors and school psychologists so they have more time to counsel students, while recruiting graduate students with backgrounds in social work and school psychology to assist them.

- Eliminating or modifying rules and procedures that are counter-productive, like reassigning "problem students" to other schools.

- Training school administrators, teachers and security staff to use positive approaches to discipline rather than reactive and punitive actions, to develop student social and emotional competence and to better understand and communicate with their students.

- Developing an early warning and intervention system to identify potential mental health issues.

- Engaging with parents and caregivers to help them understand the important role they play in supporting their children's education and well-being.

The full report, "Cleveland Metropolitan School District Human Ware Audit: Findings and Recommendations," is available at http://www.air.org/news/documents/AIR_Cleveland_8-20-08.pdf

Troubled Children Hurt Peers' Test Scores, Behavior

Troubled children hurt their classmates' math and reading scores and worsen their behavior, according to new research by economists at the University of California, Davis, and University of Pittsburgh.

The study, "Externalities in the Classroom: How Children Exposed to Domestic Violence Affect Everyone's Kids," was published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research and is available online at http://papers.nber.org/papers/w14246 .

Scott Carrell, an assistant professor of economics at UC Davis, and co-author Mark Hoekstra, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Pittsburgh, cross-referenced standardized test results and school disciplinary records with court restraining order petitions filed in domestic violence cases for more than 40,000 students enrolled in public elementary schools in Florida's Alachua County for the years 1995 through 2003.

The researchers linked domestic violence cases to 4.6 percent of the elementary school students in their sample. These children scored nearly 4 percentile points lower on standardized reading and math scores than their peers whose parents were not involved in domestic violence cases. (A percentile score reflects the percentage of scores that fall below it; a student who scores in the 51st percentile on a test, for example, has scored higher than 51 percent of all students who took that test.) In addition, the children from households linked to domestic violence were 44 percent more likely to have been suspended from school and 28 percent more likely to have been disciplined for bad behavior. The impact was seen across genders, races and income levels.

Not only did children from troubled homes suffer, however: Test scores fell and behavior problems increased for their classmates as well.

Troubled boys caused the bulk of the disruption, and the largest effects were on other boys. Indeed, Carrell and Hoekstra estimate that adding just one troubled boy to a class of 20 children reduces the standardized reading and math scores of other boys in the room by nearly two percentile points. And adding just one troubled boy to a class of 20 students increases the likelihood that another boy in the class will commit a disciplinary infraction by 17 percent.

Troubled girls, in contrast, had only a small and statistically insignificant impact on the test scores or behavior of their classmates. The study did not investigate the reasons for the gender differences.

Across all students, having a troubled student in a class reduced classmates' combined test scores by nearly 1 percentile point and increased their likelihood of getting into disciplinary trouble at school by 6 percent.

The researchers conducted sophisticated statistical tests to ensure that they were observing only the impacts of a troubled child on classrooms, not the impact of broader socioeconomic issues in the community. They compared classes from the same grade in the same school over time; some years the classes had troubled students, some years they did not. They also compared how siblings performed when one student was in a class with troubled classmates and another student from the same family was in a class with fewer troubled students.

"Our findings have important implications for both education and social policy," Carrell and Hoekstra write. "First, they suggest that policies that change a child's exposure to classmates from troubled families will have important consequences for his or her education outcomes. In addition, the results also help provide a more complete measure of the social costs of family conflict."

The research does not suggest that all disruptive schoolchildren come from families that experience domestic violence, nor are all children from domestic violence disruptive, Carrell emphasized.

"There are many reasons for disruptive classroom behavior; domestic violence is one particularly good indicator of a troubled child," Carrell said.

TWELVE STATES ADMINISTER ALGEBRA II END OF COURSE EXAM TO MEASURE COLLEGE PREPAREDNESS

Report Shows States Working Jointly to Set the Bar Higher for High School Graduates and Improve College Readiness

Achieve has released its annual report on the first-of-its-kind multi-state exam. The exam was developed jointly by 14 states based on shared expectations of what students need to learn to be prepared for college mathematics courses. The test represents an ongoing policy shift in the states that includes more rigorous and common mathematics standards and exams and Algebra II as a required course.

The test was administered in the spring of 2008 to nearly 90,000 students in the following states: Arizona, Arkansas, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington. Maryland and Massachusetts are also members of the ADP Algebra II partnership and will administer the exam when an online version becomes available in 2009.

That students did not do well on this exam the first time out is no surprise, continued Cohen. This exam sets a much higher bar than current high school exams. Currently, too many students graduate from high school believing they are prepared for college level work, but soon find they are not. In fact, nearly one-quarter of first-year college students must take remedial courses in mathematics.

Download the report.:

http://www.achieve.org/2008Algebra2report

Cash Incentives for Students and Teachers Boosts Performance on SAT and Advanced Placement Tests

A cash incentive program that rewards both teachers and students for each passing score earned on an Advanced Placement (AP) exam has been shown to increase the percentage of high ACT and SAT scores earned by participating students, and increase the number of students enrolling in college, according to new research by Cornell University economist Kirabo Jackson published in the fall issue of Education Next. The program appears to have the biggest impact on African American and Hispanic students, boosting participation in AP courses and exams.

The Advanced Placement Incentive Program (APIP) is targeted to Texas schools serving predominantly minority and low-income students. On average, there is a 22 percent increase in the number of students scoring above 1100 on the SAT or above 24 on the ACT in schools with the APIP. The increase rises each year the program is in place so that by the third year there is roughly a 33 percent increase.

The percentage increases in students achieving higher SAT and ACT exam scores are similar among white, African American, and Hispanics students—about 5 percentage points from the third year on. However, the differences in impact relative to the prior performance of each group are sizable, notes Jackson. While there is about a 12 percent relative increase in white students scoring above 1100 on the SAT or above 24 on the ACT, there is a 50 percent relative increase for Hispanics and an 80 percent relative increase for black students.

Additionally, there is roughly an 8 percent increase in the number of students who enroll in a college or university in Texas in APIP schools.

To gauge the effects of the APIP, Jackson compared the change in performance of students (before and after adoption) in schools that adopted the program to the change in performance, over the same time period, for students in other Texas schools that had been selected for participation but where the program had not yet been implemented.

“These outcomes are likely the result of stronger encouragement from teachers and guidance counselors to enroll in AP courses, better information provided to students, and changes in teacher and peer norms,” Jackson explains.

APIP students receive between $100 and $500 for each exam score of 3 or above (out of a possible 5) in an eligible AP subject. Lead teachers receive an annual salary bonus of between $3,000 and $10,000, and an additional $2,000 to $5,000 bonus opportunity based on results. Pre-AP teachers earn an annual supplement of between $500 and $1,000 per year for extra work. AP teachers receive between $100 and $500 for each AP score of 3 or higher earned by an 11th or 12th grader enrolled in their course. The total cost of the program ranges between $100,000 and $200,000 per school per year. Private donors defray between 60 and 75 percent of the total cost of the program, and the district covers the remainder.

The APIP was first implemented in 10 Dallas schools in 1996 and has been expanded to include more than 40 schools in Texas. By the 2008–09 school year, 61 schools in Texas will have adopted the program. Responding to the success of the APIP in Texas, New Mexico and New York City adopted similar programs. The National Math and Science Initiative awarded grants to Arkansas, Alabama, Connecticut, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Washington to replicate the APIP and plans to expand these programs to 150 districts across 20 states.

Read “Cash for Test Scores” online:

http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/27020009.html

or in PDF format

http://media.hoover.org/documents/ednext_20084_70.pdf

A Violent Education

Corporal Punishment of Children in US Public Schools

223,190 students nationwide received corporal punishment at least once in the 2006-2007 school year, according to data from the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the United States Department of Education.

While corporal punishment is legal in 21 states, it is used more heavily in some states than others. In Texas alone, OCR data show that 49,197 students were subjected to corporal punishment during the 2006-2007 school year, more than in any other state. In Mississippi, 7.5 percent of schoolchildren were paddled at least once during that same school year, the highest percentage in the nation.

This ACLU and Human Rights Watch report is based on research in Mississippi and Texas in 2007 and 2008.

Full report:

http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/humanrights/aviolenteducation_report.pdf

High School Dropout and Graduation Rates in the Central Region

This report presents comprehensive and detailed information on grades 7-12 dropout rates and on high school graduation rates in the Central Region. Dropout and graduation rates are presented for the region as a whole and for each state in the region, by gender, race/ethnicity, locale, and grade. The rates provide a comprehensive reference for state and local educators and policymakers on the student subgroups most at risk of not completing high school.

Full report:

http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?id=156

State Policies on Teacher Evaluation Practices in the Midwest Region

This REL Technical Brief describes state-level policies and procedural requirements for guiding teacher evaluation practices at the district level in the seven states served (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin). Building on the Issues & Answers report, Examining District Guidance to Schools on Teacher Evaluation Policies in the Midwest Region (Brandt et al. 2007), this technical brief reveals how teacher evaluation practices are addressed by state policies and other state-level initiatives that include teacher evaluation features.

Full report:

http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?id=154

Calculating the Ability of Within-School Teacher Supply to Meet the Demands of New Requirements: The Example of the Michigan Merit Curriculum

This second technical brief is in response to a request from Michigan Department of Education representatives and the Center for Educational Performance and Information for assistance in estimating Michigan's capacity to adequately staff its high schools to meet the course requirements of the new Michigan Merit Curriculum. The study team devised a formula to estimate the number of additional full-time equivalent (FTE) teachers needed for each subject at each Michigan high school. The formula was calculated using Michigan-specific values for key variables. Such an analysis may be particularly useful when new graduation or course requirements are being planned. Schools can adjust the variables in the formula (such as class size and number of periods taught by each FTE teacher), to fit their own needs.

Full report:

http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?id=155

Education needed to decrease teens' misconception about emergency contraception

Targeted health education may help urban, minority adolescent women better understand how the emergency contraception pill works and eliminate some misconceptions about side effects, confidentiality and accessibility, according to a study by The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Researchers interviewed 30 African-American females ages 15 to 19 seeking care at Children's Hospital's emergency department. The patients returned after their visit for a one hour interview about history of sexual activity and pregnancy, religious beliefs, and attitudes and beliefs about pregnancy and the emergency contraception pill (ECP). After answering several knowledge-based questions about ECP, the teens watched a 3-minute video about ECP before answering the attitude and belief questions.

The study, which appears in the August 2008 issue of Pediatrics, found that half of the participants who were not sexually active had not heard of ECP. Nearly all of the sexually active participants had heard of ECP but were unable to answer follow-up questions, such as the correct timing of use. Respondents said family and friends are important influences on whether they would use ECP and expressed concerns about confidentiality and availability of the drug.

"By outlining specific barriers to use in this population, we provide a framework for future early interventions, such as parent education and addressing confidentiality concerns," said pediatrician Cynthia J. Mollen, M.D., M.S.C.E., lead author of the study. "Multiple misconceptions such as side effects that are not known to occur and concerns about confidentiality, exist in this population, and may influence future use."

About 750,000 young U.S. women between the ages of 15 and 19 become pregnant each year, and unintended teen pregnancy is a major public health issue. Many U.S. women are unaware of how emergency contraception works and where to find it. ECP is a safe and effective form of contraception, which can be used to prevent pregnancy when other forms of contraception (like birth control pills or condoms) have not been used or have failed, Mollen said. ECP can be taken up to five days after unprotected intercourse, and is most effective the sooner it is taken.

Those interview participants expressed concern about side effects such as feeling sick or vomiting, and effectiveness of the pill. Some participants described ECP as easier, more effective and faster to use than oral contraceptives. When asked to describe the type of person who would use ECP, participants painted a generally negative picture.

The researchers said that conversations about ECP with teens need to address specific concerns for that age group, such as side effects of the medication and confidentiality issues. Since users of ECP were portrayed negatively by participants, healthcare providers may also offer portraits of actual users and the similarity to oral contraceptives, the researchers concluded.

Parents' Expectations, Styles Can Harm College Students' Self-Esteem

“Mom and Dad are going to flip out over my 3.3 GPA and failure to land a top internship.”

Such anxieties, common among college students, can harm self-esteem and make it more difficult to adjust to school. But a new University of Central Florida study has found that students' anxieties often are based on exaggerated perceptions of what their parents expect.

The problem, UCF psychologist Kimberly Renk says, is that many parents and students hold different perceptions of what the parents' expectations are. Students often are trying to meet goals far tougher than the ideals their parents have in mind.

The study, which involved surveys of 174 students and 230 of their parents, is published online in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence and is scheduled for the September edition.

A separate study by Renk -- published this summer in the Journal of Family Issues -- is among the first to examine how parenting styles remain a strong influence on how students adjust to college. Students reported making smoother transitions to college if they have at least one parent whose style combines warmth, a demanding nature and democracy -- the same combination that is best for young children.

Renk, the mother of a kindergartner and an infant, directs UCF's Understanding Children and Families laboratory, which seeks to better the lives of children and their families through research, clinical work and community service.

She said parents' influences on college students may be growing at a time when cell phones and other technology make it easier for students to stay connected with and rely on their parents.

"Many people still assume that parenting ends when a child turns 18, but in our culture today, there is a longer extension of adolescence," Renk said. "Adulthood is starting later."

Renk and then-UCF doctoral student Allison Kanter Agliata began their study of parental expectations by surveying 174 freshmen and sophomores. With the students' permission, they then collected 138 surveys from mothers and 92 from fathers. Questions focused on perceptions of personal maturity, academic achievement and dating. Other questions covered how well parents and students thought they communicate with each other.

While most students were meeting or exceeding their parents' expectations, many still thought they were falling short, and those students reported lower self-worth and more trouble adjusting to college.

In light of that finding, Renk recommends that schools and universities teach assertive communication skills to parents and students to help them avoid unnecessary stress about expectations.

In the second study, Renk and then-doctoral student Cliff McKinney found that students who perceive that they have at least one authoritative parent -- someone whose style combines warmth, a demanding nature and democracy -- adjust better to college than students whose parenting styles are too authoritarian, permissive or neglectful.

Several studies by Renk and other researchers have shown the benefits of authoritative parenting for younger children.

For parents who may be concerned that they have been too permissive or too authoritarian, it's not too late to change, Renk said. She added that it takes time for parents to change their styles and that they should not give up if they fail at first.

"Everything is not lost if you are the parent of a college student and trying to do a better job," she said. "If you are open and ready to listen to what they have to say, that will help you build a stronger relationship."

Community Colleges: A Special Supplement to The Condition of Education 2008

Among the report's findings:

* Among high school seniors who enrolled immediately in a postsecondary institution in the fall of 2004, 30 percent enrolled in a community college.

* About two-thirds of these immediate community college enrollees reported that they planned to pursue a bachelor's degree or higher when they were still high school seniors; the other one-third reported that they expected an associate's degree or less would be their highest attainment.

* Community colleges enroll larger percentages of nontraditional, low-income, and minority students than 4-year colleges and universities.

* In fall 2006, about 62 percent of community college students were enrolled part time compared with a quarter of students at 4-year institutions.

* Compared to 4-year institutions, community colleges rely more heavily on part-time faculty and staff. In addition, compared with the faculty and staff at 4-year institutions, the main activity of a greater percentage of community college faculty and staff is teaching compared to research or administrative duties.

The full text of "Community Colleges: A Special Supplement to The Condition of Education 2008" (in HTML format) can be viewed at http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2008/analysis/

Stanford School of Education to begin posting papers online

In a move designed to broaden access to faculty research and scholarship, the School of Education at Stanford recently adopted a policy requiring its faculty members to make their scholarly articles available for free to the public.

The school's faculty unanimously approved the new "open access" policy in June, becoming the first education school in the nation to enact a mandatory policy.

An estimated 30 universities around the world have adopted similar plans.

Deborah Stipek, dean of Stanford's School of Education, said its faculty acted out of a sense of duty to the students, teachers and schools that could benefit from their research.

"Educational researchers have a responsibility to ensure that their findings are accessible to anyone who can use the new knowledge to improve student learning," Stipek said. "This policy is more than a symbolic stand. It will have the tangible effect of making the most recent findings related to effective education available to the people who can use them the most—policy makers, administrators and teachers."

Under the new policy, faculty members in the School of Education will give Stanford University a worldwide, nonexclusive license to post their articles online at no cost to readers, as long as the articles are properly attributed to the authors and are not sold for a profit.

Faculty members may request waivers from the policy.

John Willinsky, a professor of education at Stanford who presented the proposal to faculty, said the people who will benefit the most from the new policy are those who lack access to university libraries, which make journals available to students, faculty and staff.

Willinsky, the Khosla Family Professor of Education at Stanford, said the vast majority of scholarly journals—80 percent—are available online, but only to subscribers in most cases. A small percentage of those journals will sell articles to individuals.

Willinsky said the School of Education's new website will have a search page, which will allow visitors to look for articles by topic, keyword and author. In addition, articles will be available using search engines such as Google Scholar.

"The repository will be a public site, a place people can turn to, knowing they can read the latest research and scholarship published by Stanford's education faculty, without having to have a credit card in hand," he said.

Citing industry statistics, Willinsky said the public has free access to only about 15 percent of the 1,600 education journals published worldwide.

Earlier this year, Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Law School adopted open access policies in separate, unanimous votes. Willinsky said he based Stanford's policy on the one approved by Harvard Law School.

Such open access policies have been the subject of heated debate in recent years.

"Discussions of the concept of open access to scholarly information are increasingly marked by highly charged rhetoric and an unfortunate polarization of opinion," the Association of American University Presses said in a 2007 statement.

The group, which represents 130 nonprofit academic publishers in the United States and abroad, said open access policies entail risks and benefits to the "entire system of scholarly communications" that are not yet fully understood.

"Knowledge carries costs for its production, and requires—in addition to the scholar's own work—knowledgeable editorial selection and careful vetting, and—regardless of a final digital or print format—quality in copyediting, design, production and distribution," the statement said.

The group said that nonprofit scholarly publishers have an obligation to confront the economic, legal, technological and philosophical challenges to the existing system, but warned that the costs of changing the system must be taken into account.

Willinsky said the School of Education's new policy recognizes the valuable contribution publishers make to the system by granting publishers rights to the final, published version of the article as it appears in journals, while giving Stanford the right to post the author's final, peer-reviewed version of the article on a university website.

Performance Patterns for Students with Disabilities in Grade Four Mathematics Education in New York State

This report describes the mathematics performance of fourth-grade students with disabilities across schools categorized by need-to-resource capacity and compares their performance by school with that of general education students across New York State from 2003 to 2005. It finds that the percentage of students with disabilities scoring proficient increased over time and that the proficiency gap between this subgroup and general education students narrowed by 1 percentage point.

Full report:

http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?projectID=158&productID=107

Trying to Satisfy Too Many Agendas Slows School Reform

Despite investments, community goodwill and some good ideas, a vexing question remains in the age of school reform: Why has so much hope and effort led to disappointment?

Beginning in the late 1980s, the Chicago Public Schools, like many urban school systems, launched a series of initiatives to reorganize schools, improve teaching and encourage parental participation.

The changes in Chicago not always have met the expectations of proponents, wrote Charles Payne in his new book, So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools.

The results of national school reform efforts also have led to some disappointment.

A lack of trust among teachers and principals and parents frequently creates dysfunction in schools, noted Payne. The organizational infrastructure frequently frustrates well-intended reforms, and support for high-quality instruction and teacher-student relationships is often absent.

Tension among members of the business community, who promote sound management and accountability, and progressive educators, who favor a student-centered agenda, also has left the promise of reform unfulfilled.

Payne, the Frank P. Hixon Professor in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago and a leading scholar of school reform, noted that other cities have gone through similar bouts of reform, but few had Chicago’s advantages. Other cities lack the scrutiny that has come from the Consortium on Chicago School Research and the valuable news coverage of education by the local media, he said. 

The Consortium on Chicago School Research (at the University of Chicago) is the closest thing we have to a Manhattan Project on urban schools, and from its inception, it has maintained a commitment to combining quantitative and qualitative work, affording its work a complexity that cannot be achieved when the two are separated,” Payne said. 

CPS administrators take the recommendations of the Consortium seriously. It led to a relationship between the schools and research community rarely seen among the nation’s largest school systems. Those recommendations have led to positive changes, including an emphasis on reducing dropouts and increasing college-going rates. 

Payne, who is a member of the University’s Committee on Education, uses findings from the consortium, his research and reporting by the city’s media to explore the problems that plague this school system and others.

“Chicago enjoys an unprecedented quality of educational journalism,” he said. Catalyst: Voices of Chicago School Reform has put a spotlight on the schools, as have the Chicago Tribune and other local media outlets. 

In his visits to schools, Payne learned that social relationships were key to student success. “Students wanted to perform well because of their teachers,” he said.

Likewise, he observed that the Consortium found trust among teachers was an important factor in improving schools. In schools where trust among adults improved over time, student achievement also improved. 

Implementing new curriculums often is seen as a way to boost achievement, but that implementation often is poorly supported.

Among Payne’s recommendations is one that educators are discussing nationally—establishing standards for implementation that recognize the time and money needed to initiate meaningful reforms and a way to gather data that helps educators learn from the implementation.

Implementing a new mathematics curriculum, for instance, which moves from memorization to an inquiry-based approach, could require five days of pre-implementation professional development, continued professional development and active involvement from the principal.

Without that level of commitment, reforms are likely to be ineffective, he said. 

The increased visibility from the research community and media has been part of a citywide interest in education that includes business leaders. Ensuing political tensions have led to misunderstandings that have slowed the pathway of reform.

Payne suggests that both sides begin to listen to each other. Advocates of the liberal perspective can learn from those who talk about sound management practices in schools, while advocates of a conservative perspective also could learn from the other side, said Payne.

Child Poverty High in Rural, Urban America

New data indicate that more than 13 million children are living in poverty, 22 percent of rural children and 25 percent of children living in central cities, according to a new report released by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. The report, based on U.S. Census Bureau data released today, finds that on average, rates of child poverty are persistently higher in rural parts of the country relative to suburban areas and share similar rates with many central cities.

“Because poverty is closely linked to undesirable outcomes in areas such as health, education, emotional welfare, and delinquency, we take child poverty seriously as a measure of children’s well-being,” says report author Sarah Savage, a research assistant at the Carsey Institute and Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of New Hampshire. The data are based on the official U.S. Office of Management and Budget poverty measure of $21,027 for a family of two adults and two children.

The Carsey report finds that in 17 states, particularly those in the South and Southwest, rural child poverty is higher than rates in both suburban and urban areas. In 2007, the rural child poverty rate in ranges from a low of just seven percent in Connecticut to a high of 35 percent in Mississippi. Other key findings include:

• At the national level, the rural child poverty rate is nine percentage points higher than in suburban areas and approaches the rate in central cities (25 percent).

• In 17 states, rural child poverty is higher than rates in both suburban and urban areas.

• In Mississippi, rural poverty exceeds suburban poverty by 18 percentage points, followed by Arizona and South Dakota (15 percentage points), and Louisiana (14 percentage points).

• Thirteen southern states all have rural child poverty rates above 25 percent in 2007, which reflects the pervasive child poverty problem in the rural South. This trend is consistent with 2005 data.

To download a copy of the report, go to http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/publications/FS_RuralChildPoverty_08.pdf.

Plotting School Choice

The Challenges of Crossing District Lines

Allowing students to transfer to schools across district lines is gaining more attention as a strategy for reformers looking to reduce economic and racial segregation in public education and give students in failing schools a better chance to achieve. A number of organizations, including the nonpartisan Century Foundation and the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights have endorsed the idea. Interdistrict choice, they argue, would allow students in low-performing schools—schools that often have high concentrations of low-income and minority students—to move to higher-performing schools with very different economic and racial profiles.

Many of these same organizations have pushed for including interdistrict choice in the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The law requires that students in low-performing schools be allowed to transfer voluntarily to higher-performing schools within their school system. But because there are so few higher-performing-school options for such students, only a tiny fraction of them have been able to take advantage of the intradistrict transfer opportunity.

But permitting students to move further, beyond school system boundaries, is unlikely to increase most students’ educational opportunities significantly. A new Education Sector analysis of school performance information suggests that only a limited number of students in a limited number of locations are likely to benefit from interdistrict choice—and even then only if carefully crafted policies succeed where many past programs have failed.

Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping technology of school performance information in California, Texas, and Florida, Education Sector has found that factors such as long distances to higher-achieving schools and limited capacity in such schools can sharply limit the ability of students to take advantage of interdistrict opportunities.

Studies of existing multidistrict choice programs have found that a lack of information for parents and inadequate transportation subsidies for disadvantaged families also limit the scope of many interdistrict choice programs. And there is little research evidence to support the premise that moving students to a higher-performing school alone will result in improved student achievement. In fact, many interdistrict choice programs have failed to produce the improved student performance and socioeconomic integration that interdistrict choice advocates envision. Some may have actually increased racial segregation.

Read the full report: Plotting School Choice: The Challenges of Crossing District Lines.

http://www.educationsector.org/usr_doc/Interdistrict_Choice.pdf

School or the Streets

The Fight Crime: Invest in Kids hasa released a report called “School or the Streets,” showing that increasing graduation rates by 10 percentage points will prevent 3,000 murders and 175,000 aggravated assaults in America every year.

Research shows that high school dropouts are three and a half times more likely than graduates to be arrested and eight times more likely to be incarcerated. Nineteen of the top 25 largest U.S. cities have school districts where 40 percent or more of students do not graduate on time. Nearly 70 percent of all inmates in our nation’s prisons failed to earn a high school diploma.

Long-term benefits of early childhood education and care include higher graduation rates, college enrollment and income levels, and lower crime rates. A study of Chicago’s Child-Parent Center, a high-quality early education program, showed that kids left out of the program were 70 percent more likely to have been arrested for a violent crime by age 18 than those who participated in the program.

http://www.fightcrime.org/reports/fcik-dropout-nat.pdf

Creating and Sustaining Urban Teacher Residencies: A New Way to Recruit, Prepare, and Retain Effective Teachers in High-Needs District

The urban teacher residency (UTR) model represents a powerful response to the longstanding challenges of how to recruit, prepare, and retain bright and capable teachers for high-needs urban schools. Chicago’s Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL) and the Boston Teacher Residency (BTR) demonstrate promising approaches to attracting a new pool of talented and diverse recruits, preparing them to be successful in urban classrooms, and keeping them in high-needs schools and subjects.

Somewhat reflective of the medical residency model that pairs professional course work and embedded clinical experience, UTRs are founded on the belief that new teachers in urban schools should enter the classroom with a minimum of one year of guided clinical experience in an urban classroom. Residents integrate their master’s level coursework with an intensive full-year classroom residency alongside experienced, prepared Mentors before becoming teachers of record in their own classrooms. Several core policy principles undergird UTRs, including: the selective recruitment of highly qualified candidates, the expectation that teachers are extensively prepared before they begin to teach, a focus on meeting the needs of high-needs school districts, and an approach that offers high-quality support for their graduates after they become teachers of record.

http://www.teachingquality.org/pdfs/AspenUTR.pdf

For Public School Teachers, Evidence Supports Eliminating Pay for Credentials in Favor of Increasing Starting Salaries and Rewarding Performance Improvements

To strengthen recruitment and retention of quality teachers in public education, use the money currently spent rewarding teachers for extra credentials to give all beginning teachers higher salaries and larger raises in the first years of teaching. That way teachers will be rewarded for the strong improvement they make early in their career. So proposes Duke University economist Jacob Vigdor in the fall issue of Education Next.

Districts should employ an evidence-based salary schedule similar to the salary practices found in professions such as medicine and law, says Vigdor. “Doctors and lawyers reap the full rewards of competence in their profession within 10 years of entrance. Teachers must wait three times that long, even though evidence suggests that they become fully competent in their profession just as quickly,” he points out.

Vigdor notes that the available evidence suggests that the connection between extra credentials (such as getting a master’s degree) and teaching effectiveness is very weak. But the connection between a few more years of experience and teaching effectiveness is substantial. However, the effectiveness of a teacher does not change much after a teacher has been in the classroom for about five years.

“There is little doubt that credentials and additional years of experience beyond the first few years matter far less to teacher effectiveness than they do to teacher compensation as it is currently designed,” Vigdor writes.

In North Carolina, as in most states, teacher salaries increase steadily with experience, while improvements in teachers’ effectiveness as measured by student test-score gains rise quickly for just a few years and then level off. North Carolina teachers also receive rewards for attaining advanced degrees, and for becoming certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). A master’s degree entitles a teacher to a permanent 10 percent increase in salary. Teachers with doctoral degrees earn a permanent 15 percent differential relative to those with bachelor’s degrees, even though evidence generally shows that these credentials have little or no association with better student achievement. Teachers with NBPTS certification receive a permanent 12 percent boost in salary. Although there is evidence to indicate that NBPTS-certified teachers are more effective, the student performance differential is probably not as great as the salary differential.

The savings accrued by eliminating rewards for credentials that have no proven association with better student achievement could be invested back into starting salaries for teachers. Using data from the actual characteristics of North Carolina public school teachers, Vigdor anticipates that starting salaries could be increased by 25 percent with zero net cost to taxpayers.

Vigdor recognizes the impact his suggested reform model would have on academic institutions that grant advanced degrees to teachers. Without the promise to teachers of a guaranteed salary increment, enrollment in master’s-level programs would undoubtedly decrease. However, this could lead graduate programs in education to re-focus their efforts on improving teachers' ability to educate students. Were new evidence to indicate that these reformulated programs actually improve teacher effectiveness, the salary schedule could be amended to reward teachers who complete them.

An immediate transition to a new flat schedule would also have adverse impacts on teachers who lose their salary differentials. These impacts could be avoided by “grandfathering” existing teachers while placing newly hired teachers on the new schedule, an option that would cost taxpayers about $50 per family per year.

“Scrap the Sacrosanct Salary Schedule” is available at:

http://media.hoover.org/documents/ednext_20084_36Vigdor.pdf

What Works

The National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance within the Institute of Education Sciences has released three new intervention reports from its What Works Clearinghouse (WWC). These latest publications focus on interventions for early childhood education, middle school math, and dropout prevention.

"Breakthrough to Literacy" is a curriculum for students in preschool through third grade that introduces them to a book-a-week throughout the year. The book serves as a focal point for classroom activities with whole group and small group instruction. The curriculum also offers independent learning activities, including computer-based instruction, that allow students to progress at their own pace. Read the WWC's "Breakthrough to Literacy" intervention report at http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/early_ed/btl/

"Mathematics in Context" is a middle school mathematics curriculum for grades 5 through 8. The curriculum teaches students to explore the relationships among different domains of mathematics (such as algebra and geometry) and to develop strategies for reasoning through problems, encouraging students to collaborate on problem solving. The WWC's "Mathematics in Context" intervention report is available at

http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/middle_math/math_context/

The "New Century High Schools Initiative" is a program designed to improve large, underperforming high schools by transforming them into small schools with links to community organizations. The schools choose a curriculum that has a theme or career focus, such as engineering, health science, or theater. Each school partners with a community organization that can participate in curriculum development, school management, after-school activities, or other operational aspects of the school. To read the WWC's intervention report on the "New Century High Schools Initiative" go to

http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/dropout/new_century/