Wallace Foundation study: Leadership matters in student achievement

29 Jul

In New research: School principal effectiveness, moi said:

The number one reason why teachers leave the profession has to do with working conditions. A key influencer of the environment of a school and the working conditions is the school principal.

Gregory Branch, Eric Hanushek, and Steven Rivkin are reporting in the National Centerfor Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Educational Research report, Estimating Principal Effectiveness:

VI. Conclusion

An important facet of many school policy discussions is the role of strong leadership, particularly of principals. Leadership is viewed as especially important in revitalizing failing schools. This discussion is, however, largely uninformed by systematic analysis of principals and their impact on student outcomes….

The initial results suggest that principal movements parallel teacher movements. Specifically, principals are affected by the racial and achievement distribution of students in schools, and this enters into mobility patterns. Yet the common view that the best leave the most needy schools is not supported.

An important element of the role of principals is how they interact with teachers. Our on-going analysis links principals to measures of teacher effectiveness to understand how principals affect teacher outcomes. http://www.caldercenter.org/upload/CALDER-Working-Paper-32_FINAL.pdf

See, Principals Matter: School Leaders Can Drive Student Learning http://www.huffingtonpost.com/Karin%20Chenoweth/principals-matter-school-_b_1252598.html?ref=email_share

In lay person speak, what they are saying is that a strong principal is a strong leader for his or her particular school. A strong principal is particularly important in schools which face challenges. Now, we get into the manner in which strong principals interact with their staff – is it an art or is it a science? What makes a good principal can be discussed and probably depends upon the perspective of those giving an opinion, but Gary Hopkins of Education World summarizes the thoughts of some educators:

Top Ten Traits of School Leaders

Last month, 43 of the Education World Principal Files principals participated in a survey. The result of that survey is this list of the top ten traits of school leaders, presented in order of importance.

1. Has a stated vision for the school and a plan to achieve that vision.

2. Clearly states goals and expectations for students, staff, and parents.

3. Is visible — gets out of the office; is seen all over the school.

4. Is trustworthy and straight with students and staff.

5. Helps develop leadership skills in others.

6. Develops strong teachers; cultivates good teaching practice.

7. Shows that he or she is not in charge alone; involves others.

8. Has a sense of humor.

9. Is a role model for students and staff.

10. Offers meaningful kindnesses and kudos to staff and students.

http://www.educationworld.com/a_admin/admin/admin190.shtml

These traits can be summarized that a strong principal is a leader with a vision for his or her school and who has the drive and the people skills to take his or her teachers and students to that vision. https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/new-research-school-principal-effectiveness/

Also see, Are rules which limit choice hampering principal effectiveness? https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/are-rules-which-limit-choice-hampering-principal-effectiveness/

The Wallace Foundation has several reports about principal effectiveness. Here is the press release from the Wallace Foundation about the report, The Making of the Principal: Five Lessons in Leadership Training:

Research Points to Five Essential Steps to Get Better Trained Principals in All Schools

June 26, 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Jessica Schwartz
The Wallace Foundation
212-251-9782

Angie Cannon
The Hatcher Group
301-656-0348

New Wallace Foundation “Perspective” is Second in Series about School Leadership

NEW YORK (June 26, 2012) – Strengthening university-based principal-preparation programs and boosting on-the-job training for new principals could help school districts develop more effective principals, according to a report released today by The Wallace Foundation.

The Making of the Principal: Five Key Lessons in Leadership Training distills insights from school leadership projects and major research studies supported by the foundation since 2000. The report notes that although notable progress has been made in revamping how principals are prepared for their jobs, much more remains to be done to improve university-based principal training programs – long criticized as weak and unselective – and to ensure that novice principals receive effective professional development.

“If we want to meet our goals for improving our public schools, we must strengthen the training programs that prepare our principals to lead,” said Jody Spiro, director of education leadership at Wallace. “Research shows that effective principals are essential to turning around troubled schools, and among in-school factors are second only to teaching in their influence on student achievement. Investing in their preparation and support is a cost-effective school improvement strategy.”

The report notes that over the past decade, more school districts have begun providing better mentoring and professional development to new principals. Districts have also pushed to raise the quality of “pre-service” principal training, while many states have tightened accreditation rules and adopted new standards to push universities and other training providers to improve.

Yet, the report notes that training offered at most of the 500-plus, university-based programs, where the majority of principals are trained, has failed to keep pace with the evolving role of principals as instructional leaders, that is, managers who focus on improving teaching and learning, not just administrative matters. Critics cite flaws including: nonselective admissions, curricula that fail to take into account the needs of districts and diverse student bodies; weak connections between theory and practice; faculty members with little or no experience as school leaders; and poorly designed internships.

The publication is the latest in a series of Wallace Perspectives, occasional reports that mine foundation-supported projects and research for insights to help solve difficult problems in education. The Making of the Principal draws on lessons from Wallace-supported scholarship by leading researchers (at institutions including the RAND Corporation, Stanford University, Vanderbilt University, the University of Washington, the University of Minnesota and the University of Toronto), as well as Wallace-funded projects in 24 states and numerous districts. The new Perspective concludes that five lessons could guide many more school districts as they devise ways to put strong principals in every school:

  • A more selective process for choosing candidates for training is the essen¬tial first step. Exemplary programs rigorously review candidates’ skills, experience and leadership dispositions. The best programs actively involve school districts in identifying, recruiting and screening candidates with the potential and desire to lead schools.
  • Aspiring principals need pre-service training that prepares them to lead improved instruction and school change, not just manage buildings. Exemplary programs offer curricula focused on improving instruction, coursework that applies theory to practice and well-designed internships.
  • Districts can and should do more to exercise their consumer power to raise the quality of principal training so that graduates better meet their needs. Training programs have a powerful incentive to improve when a district says it will only hire graduates of programs that meet its standards and needs.
  • States could make better use of their power to influence the quality of leadership training through standard-setting, program accreditation, principal certification and financial support for highly qualified candidates. In 2010, at least 23 states enacted 42 laws to support school leader initiatives, but states need to do more to build a pipeline of qualified school leaders.
  • New principals need high-quality mentoring and professional development tailored to individual and district needs. Since 2000, more than half of the states have enacted mentoring requirements, but it’s often merely a “buddy system,” with inadequately trained mentors.

A Perspective released earlier this year examined the five practices of highly effective principals. Subsequent reports in the Wallace series will focus on:

  • The district role in building a corps of effective principals that is big enough to improve teaching and learning district-wide.
  • The state role in improving school leadership.

This report and other materials can be downloaded for free from The Wallace Foundation’s Knowledge Center at www.wallacefoundation.org

####

The Wallace Foundation is an independent, national foundation dedicated to supporting and sharing effective ideas and practices that expand learning and enrichment opportunities for children. The foundation maintains an online library of lessons at www.wallacefoundation.org about what it has learned, including knowledge from its current efforts aimed at: strengthening educational leadership to improve student achievement; helping disadvantaged students gain more time for learning through summer learning and an extended school day and year; enhancing out-of-school time opportunities; and building appreciation and demand for the arts.

Citation:

The Making of the Principal: Five Lessons in Leadership Training

Published :

June 2012, 33 pages

Author(s) :

Lee Mitgang

Publishing Organization :

The Wallace Foundation

Topics :

School Leadership, Effective Principal Leadership, Principal Training

DOWNLOAD FULL REPORT (PDF) ›

Related Research and Resources

How Leadership Influences Student Learning ›

A landmark study reviews existing literature to demonstrate the powerful influence of education leadership on student achievement.

Learn more ›

Preparing School Leaders for a Changing World: Lessons from Exemplary Leadership Development Programs – Final Report ›

A groundbreaking report provides case studies and practical guidelines to help district and state policymakers reinvent how principals are prepared for their jobs.

Learn more ›

Districts Developing Leaders: Lessons on Consumer Actions and Program Approaches from Eight Urban Districts ›

What happens when urban school districts set out to improve principal training by flexing their consumer muscle? This report finds out.

Learn more ›

See, Study: The problem with principal training and how to fix it http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/study-the-problem-with-principal-training-and-how-to-fix-it/2012/07/29/gJQA1gL5HX_blog.html

Schools must be relentless about the basics for their population of kids.   

What does it Mean to Be Relentless About the Basics:      

  1. Students acquire strong subject matter skills in reading, writing, and math.
  2. Students are assessed often to gauge where they are in acquiring basic skills.
  3. If there are deficiencies in acquiring skills, schools intervene as soon as a deficiency assessment is made.
  4. Schools intervene early in life challenges faced by students which prevent them from attending school and performing in school.
  5. Appropriate corrective assistance is provided by the school to overcome both academic and life challenges.   

Resources:

The Performance Indicators for Effective Principal Leadership in Improving Student Achievement

http://mdk12.org/process/leading/p_indicators.html

Effective Schools: Managing the Recruitment, Development, and Retention of High-quality Teachers

http://www.caldercenter.org/upload/Effective-Schools_CALDER-Working-Paper-37-3.pdf

What makes a great principal?

http://www.greatschools.org/improvement/quality-teaching/189-what-makes-a-great-principal-an-audio-slide-show.gs

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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Colleges beginning to address student mental health issues

29 Jul

When parents are packing their children off to college, some are sending children to school who have some severe mental health and emotional issues. Trip Gabriel has an article in the New York Times which outlines the issues some students face while they are at college. In Mental Health Needs Growing At Colleges Gabriel reports:

Stony Brook is typical of American colleges and universities these days, where national surveys show that nearly half of the students who visit counseling centers are coping with serious mental illness, more than double the rate a decade ago. More students take psychiatric medication, and there are more emergencies requiring immediate action.

“It’s so different from how people might stereotype the concept of college counseling, or back in the ’70s students coming in with existential crises: who am I?” said Dr. Hwang, whose staff of 29 includes psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and social workers. “Now they’re bringing in life stories involving extensive trauma, a history of serious mental illness, eating disorders, self-injury, alcohol and other drug use.”

Experts say the trend is partly linked to effective psychotropic drugs (Wellbutrin for depression, Adderall for attention disorder, Abilify for bipolar disorder) that have allowed students to attend college who otherwise might not have functioned in a campus setting.

There is also greater awareness of traumas scarcely recognized a generation ago and a willingness to seek help for those problems, including bulimia, self-cutting and childhood sexual abuse.

The need to help this troubled population has forced campus mental health centers — whose staffs, on average, have not grown in proportion to student enrollment in 15 years — to take extraordinary measures to make do. Some have hospital-style triage units to rank the acuity of students who cross their thresholds. Others have waiting lists for treatment — sometimes weeks long — and limit the number of therapy sessions.

Some centers have time only to “treat students for a crisis, bandaging them up and sending them out,” said Denise Hayes, the president of the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors and the director of counseling at the Claremont Colleges in California.

“It’s very stressful for the counselors,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like why you got into college counseling.”

A recent survey by the American College Counseling Association found that a majority of students seek help for normal post-adolescent trouble like romantic heartbreak and identity crises. But 44 percent in counseling have severe psychological disorders, up from 16 percent in 2000, and 24 percent are on psychiatric medication, up from 17 percent a decade ago.

The most common disorders today: depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, alcohol abuse, attention disorders, self-injury and eating disorders.

If a student has had prior problems, the student and family should have a plan for dealing with issues like depression or eating disorders while the student is at college. Often that might include therapy sessions with a counselor near the college. Often, students and families do not want to seek help because many feel there is a stigma to mental illness.

Stephen Cesar has written an informative Los Angeles Times article about a new program to reach students with problems. In UC reaching out to depressed students online, Cesar reports:

The anonymous online conversation began after the student revealed that he planned to kill himself.

“What should I do?” the sophomore asked a counselor at his Midwest college. “I figure you will probably tell me that killing myself is not a good idea, and I know that. But it does seem like a good option at the moment.”

The counselor hoped to persuade him to come in to see her, but first she had to build trust. They continued the discussion on the website, a tool used by the school to reach troubled students.

“It sounds as though you are very stressed and sometimes just having a safe ‘ear to bend’ is helpful?,” she wrote back.

It took more than a month, but eventually the student walked into the counseling center.

The online effort had worked.

In the fall, about 70 universities nationwide will have the service, including all 10 University of California undergraduate campuses. It is designed to bridge conversation between students who need help and those equipped to provide it.

Created by the New York City-based American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the program aims to identify troubled students anonymously through their responses to a voluntary survey they will receive a link to in an email that will be sent to everyone admitted to UC.

If survey answers raise red flags, a counselor will initiate contact and invite the student to continue communicating, still anonymously, via a dialogue on the website.

The goal is to have the student agree to a meeting. Studies suggest that about 80% of students who commit suicide had not sought services from counseling centers on their campuses, said Ann Haas, a project specialist for the foundation. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-uc-suicide-20120729,0,693193.story

The JED Foundation has some excellent resources for both parents and students dealing with mental health issues.

ULifeline has information about dealing with college mental health issues:

Complete a self-assessment to learn telling insights about your current state of mind…

STUDENTS

Learn more about protecting your emotional health and what to do if you or a friend are struggling with mental health issues. Continue…


Check out the Half of Us campaign, a project with mtvU that includes videos of your favorite artists and other students sharing how they’ve coped with mental health issues. Continue…

CAMPUS PROFESSIONALS

Sign in or Find out more about joining ULifeline

Parents must recognize the signs of distress and get help for their child. If you are a student in distress, get help because there are many different therapies to get you back on track.

See:

College Students Exhibiting More Severe Mental Illness, Study Finds

Health & Medicine

Mind & Brain

Reference

Mental Health Issues In Student Advising

How to Handle Holiday Stress

Resources for Parents & Students

Trauma Resources

Evaluation Resources

Mental Health Screening Tools

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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Are waivers to ‘No Child Left Behind’ providing accountability

28 Jul

All Politics is Local.

Thomas P. O’Neill

Moi would like to modify that quote a bit to all education is local and occurs at the neighborhood school. We really should not be imposing a straight jacket on education by using a one-size-fits-all approach. Every school, in fact, every classroom is its own little microclimate. We should be looking at strategies which work with a given population of children.

A Healthy Child In A Healthy Family Who Attends A Healthy School In A Healthy Neighborhood. ©

Motoko Rich writes in the New York Times article, States With Education Waivers Offer Varied Goals:

A report being issued on Friday by the liberal Center for American Progress shows that while some states have proposed reforms aimed at spurring schools and teachers to improve student performance, others may be introducing weaker measures of accountability.

“The increased flexibility of the waivers means that some states will experiment and move ahead,” said Jeremy Ayers, associate director of federal education programs at the organization, “while others may backtrack.”

The No Child Left Behind law has been up for reauthorization since 2007, but so far Congress has failed to pass a new version. The Obama administration has granted waivers to 32 states and the District of Columbia, freeing them from some of the most burdensome provisions of the law, including the requirement that all students must be proficient in reading and math by 2014.

The waivers allow states to select from a menu of new goals. According to the center’s report, eight states have chosen to cut in half the percentage of students not testing at grade level in reading or math within six years, while one state, Arizona, said it would make all its students proficient by 2020. The majority of states chose to set their own goals.

In reviewing those states’ waiver applications, the report’s authors wrote that it was difficult to discern if those states “meet the high bar” of setting rigorous targets.

The report also found that many states had not outlined how they would hold schools responsible for actually meeting their goals…. 

In reviewing the state waiver applications, the center found that 14 states plan to use growth in student test scores for 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation.

Teachers unions and state education officials have fought over how much weight to accord to student test scores. In New York, the two sides battled for more than two years before settling on a system earlier this year that would base 40 percent of a teacher’s evaluation on student achievement measures.

Given the controversy, education advocates fear that the new teacher evaluation systems could be pushed too quickly.

“If there is too much sloppy implementation,” said Amy Wilkins, vice president of the Education Trust, a research and advocacy group that supports using test scores as part of a teacher’s rating, “it will lose credibility and it will be very hard to get back that credibility.”

The Center for American Progress also reviewed how often states would identify their lowest performing schools. Very few states committed to reviewing the lowest 5 percent of schools every year, and the vast majority of the states did not specify how frequently they would do so….http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/education/varied-plans-for-states-with-waivers-no-child-law.html?_r=1&src=rechp

See, States Granted NCLB Waivers Offer Varying Goals For Helping Education Reform, According To Report http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/27/report-examines-goals-of-_n_1711111.html?utm_hp_ref=email_share

The Center for American Progress analyzed “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) waivers in the report, No Child Left Behind Waivers: Promising Ideas from Second Round Applications:

Ours is not an exhaustive or comprehensive analysis. The Department of Education has already reviewed applications in detail and made judgments on the merits of each. We took a qualitative look across all applications to see what states are doing and to bring attention to interesting or innovative ideas. A few findings
emerged from this review:
• Most states have changed and would change their policies and practices significantly from those under No Child Left Behind. Change has come as a result of various motivations and has led to some improvements and deliberate shifts in policy, several of which are captured by the waiver applications.
• The waiver process itself did not appear to stimulate new innovations aside from accountability, but was an opportunity to articulate a new vision for reform. A number of changes in each state are already underway and in various stages of implementation, but the application process prodded states to articulate a comprehensive plan for improving education.
• States have proposed interesting and promising ideas in each principle area. Some states are pushing new ideas, many of which are promising or innovative, by ensuring all students graduate college and career ready, developing differentiated accountability systems, and improving teacher and leader effectiveness.
• Very few states proposed detailed plans for reducing duplication and unnecessary administrative burden on districts and schools. The goal of the federal flexibility package is to offer needed relief to states; states could benefit from doing the same for their districts and schools.
• Very few states detailed how they would use their 21st Century Community Learning Center funding to increase learning time. About half the states rejected the opportunity for additional federal funding to lengthen the school day, week, or year and those that indicated that they would accept the funding offered little detail on how they would utilize the extra dollars.
• States are using various sources of funding to implement their plans. States do not receive new money under the waivers. As a result states demonstrated a willingness to pursue new reform without additional funding.
In the pages that follow, we outline themes across state applications in the major priorities laid out by the Department of Education—college- and career-ready standards, differentiated accountability systems, and supporting effective instruction and leadership. The fourth principle, reducing duplication and burden,
received scant attention in state applications, and as such is not covered in detail in this report. Our report concludes with recommendations for states and the Department of Education, summarized below.
1. States should be treated as laboratories of reform that set the stage for eventual reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Both successes and failures of waiver reforms can and should inform how the act is reauthorized.
2. The Department of Education should ask for, and states should offer, more detail on aspects of state plans. We call on states to provide better, clearer information on how they will ensure students have equitable access to effective teachers; how their school rating system is linked to their annual goals; how they will ensure districts and schools engage in comprehensive approaches to school turnaround; how they will increase learning time; and how they will reduce duplication and administrative burden on districts and schools.
3. The Department of Education should establish a clearinghouse to document and share tools, strategies, and lessons of implementation. In this way states and districts can learn from the successes and challenges faced and overcome by other states and districts.
4. States should learn from other states, either by joining consortia or replicating successful practices. States should consider forming partnerships or consortia with other states to build infrastructure as a group, as opposed to taking on an entire reform alone.
5. The Department of Education should increase its staffing and capacity to oversee and enforce implementation of waiver plans. The sheer variety and complexity of state plans, compared to No Child Left Behind, means the department will need to build capacity to ensure states turn their plans into reality.
6. States should implement their plans as part of a coherent strategy—with clear goals, mid-course corrections, and consequences for failure to make progress. Any of the innovations discussed in this report will fade quickly if they are not implemented with fidelity and persistence as part of a coherent approach to improving the K-12 education system.

No Child Left Behind Waivers: Promising Ideas from Second Round Applications
Jeremy Ayers and Isabel Owen July 2012
with Glenda Partee and Theodora Chanhttp://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/07/pdf/nochildwaivers.pdf

NCLB was an attempt to introduce accountability in education using a top down approach of federal mandate on what has traditionally been a local subject, management of schools.

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Chapter 1, first line
Russian mystic & novelist (1828 – 1910)

So it is with schools. There are certain elements that successful schools share. The Wisconsin Department of Education has a good guide about successful schools.  Chapter One, Characteristics of Successful Schools , lists key elements:

Chapter 1 describes the seven characteristics that comprise a successful school. Briefly, they are:

Vision: having a common understanding of goals, principles and expectations for everyone in the learning-community

Leadership: having a group of individuals dedicated to helping the learning-community reach its vision

High Academic Standards: describing what students need to know and be able to do

Standards of the Heart: helping all within the learning community become caring, contributing, productive, and responsible citizens

Family School and Community Partnerships: “making room at the table” for a child’s first and most influential teachers

Professional Development: providing consistent, meaningful opportunities for adults in the school setting to engage in continuous learning

Evidence of Success: collecting and analyzing data about students, programs, and staff

Like, unhappy families, failing schools are probably failing in their own way. Waivers are really just returning local control back to schools. It seems everything old becomes new once again, although a relentless focus on the basics never went out of style. As the Center for American Progress argues in the conclusion to No Child Left Behind Waivers: Promising Ideas from Second Round Applications, it is incumbent to make sure that states granted waivers are monitored to ensure there is accountability to make sure children in failing schools do not fall through the cracks.

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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Study: Teacher merit pay works in some situations

27 Jul

Teacher compensation is a hot education topic. The role of evaluations in compensation, merit pay, pay based upon credentials and higher pay for specialty areas are all hot topics and hot button issues. The Center for American Progress has a report by Frank Adamson and Linda Darling Hammond. In the report, Speaking of Salaries: What It Will Take to Get Qualified, Effective Teachers In All Communities  Adamson and Darling- Hammond write:

As Education Trust President Kati Haycock has noted, the usual statistics about teacher credentials, as shocking as they are, actually understate the degree of the problem in the most impacted schools:

The fact that only 25% of the teachers in a school are uncertified doesn’t mean that the other 75% are fine. More often, they are either brand new, assigned to teach out of field, or low-performers on the licensure exam … there are, in other words, significant numbers of schools that are essentially dumping grounds for unqualified teachers – just as they are dumping grounds for the children they serve….

Download this report (pdf)

Download the executive summary (pdf)

Melanie Smollin has an excellent post at Take Part, Five Reasons Why Teacher Turnover Is On The Rise Marguerite Roza and Sarah Yatsko from the University of Washington’s Centeron Reinventing Education have an interesting February 2010 policy brief.

In Beyond Teacher Reassignments: Better Ways School Districts Can Remedy Salary Inequities Across Schools Districts Roza and Yatsko report:

This brief addresses this concern by demonstrating that districts would NOT need to mandatorily reassign teachers. It shows that there are other ways to restructure allocations that do not systematically shortchange the neediest schools. Discussed here are four options that districts could pursue to remedy school spending inequities created by uneven salaries:

  • Option 1: Apply teacher salary bonuses to some schools to balance salaries

  • Option 2: Vary class size across schools to level spending

  • Option 3: Concentrate specialist and support staff in schools with lower-salaried teachers

  • Option 4: Equalize per-pupil dollar allocations

Download Full Report (PDF: 736 K)

Of all the issues about teacher compensation, one of the hottest is “merit pay.”

Dylan Matthews writes in the Washington Post article, Does teacher merit pay work? A new study says yes:

There’s very good evidence that teacher quality matters a lot in terms of student performance in school and success later on in life. The economist Raj Chetty of Harvard, for example, has found that students randomly placed with more experienced kindergarten teachers not only perform better on tests but earn more and save more for retirement as adults, are likelier to go to college, and go to better colleges than their peers with less experienced teachers. Eric Hanushek of Stanford estimates that a good teacher – defined as at the 84th percentile, or one standard deviation above the mean for you stats nerds – provides students with test scores associated with an increase of between $22,000 and $46,000 in lifetime earnings.

Findings like these lead some to favor “merit pay” regimes that include student test scores as a determinant of teachers’ salaries. This has met opposition from teachers’ unions and testing skeptics, who argue that it would result in teaching-to-the-test at the expense of actual learning. For a long time, the data has been mixed on merit pay. Two studies from Mathematica Policy Research in 2010 that found little benefit, while a study in Nashville found mild benefits for fifth graders but none for other students.

That has changed with the publication of a new paper (pdf) by Harvard’s Roland Fryer, the University of Chicago’s Steven Levitt (of Freakonomics fame) and John List, and UC San Diego’s Sally Sadoff. The authors went into nine K-8 schools in Chicago Heights, a city 30 miles south of Chicago, and randomly selected teachers (who had to consent, which 93.75 percent did) to take part in a merit pay scheme. The students affected were overwhelmingly low-income, with 98 percent receiving free or subsidized lunches. Teachers in the experiment were offered $80 per percentile improvement in student test scores, for a maximum reward of $8,000, compared to a typical teacher salary of $50,000.

The authors split teachers in the study into a control group, who were not offered any rewards, a “gain” group, which was promised rewards of up to $8,000 at the end of the school year, and a “loss” group, which was given $4,000 upfront and asked to pay back any rewards they did not earn. The idea behind the latter group was that loss aversion should motivate teachers to perform better than they would if they only stood to gain more money. Additionally, the gain and loss groups were split, with a “team” group being rewarded on the basis of theirs and fellow teachers’ test scores, and the “individual” group being reward only on the basis of their own scores. The conclusion: it worked, and it worked almost twice as well when the money was given at the start and then taken away…. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/07/23/does-teacher-merit-pay-work-a-new-study-says-yes/

One might ask why “merit pay’ seemed to work in the situation studied?

Jordan Weissmann writes a provocative analysis of the study in the Atlantic article, A Very Mean (But Maybe Brilliant) Way to Pay Teachers:

But Levitt, Fryer and Co. argue that there’s a serious problem with merit pay. So far, they say, there’s been scant evidence that it actually works. Studies of teacher incentive programs in Tennessee and New York City failed to find any signs that they improved student learning. In the New York experiment, which Harvard’s Fryer conducted, the impact may have even been detrimental. 

Enter loss aversion. The authors theorized that instead of offering a lump-sum bonus to teachers come summertime, it might be more effective to give instructors money upfront, then warn them that they would have to pay it back if their students didn’t hit the proper benchmarks. Rather than tap into teachers’ ambition, they’d tap into their anxiety.

To test their idea, the authors designed an experiment for the 2010-2011 school year involving 150 K-8 teachers from Chicago Heights, a low-income community in Illinois. The instructors were randomly assigned to a control group or one of two main bunches, which I’ll shorthand as the “winners” and the “losers.” The winners agreed to work under a traditional year-end bonus structure, where they could make up to $8,000 extra based on their students’ standardized test scores. The losers were given $4,000 off the bat and informed that if their students’ turned in below-average results, they’d have to pay a portion of it back commensurate with just how poor their scores were. On the flip side, an above-average performance could earn them additional bonus money, up to the full $8,000. 

The authors then divided the winners and losers again so that some teachers would be rewarded based on their results as a group, and others would be rewarded based on their results as individuals. 

Come vacation time, the losers had won. In math, paying teachers a year-end bonus had no statistically significant effect. When teachers had money to lose, though, their students over performed. The impact was large — the equivalent of improving a teacher’s skills by one full standard deviation — and the pattern held whether teachers were compensated as a group or as individuals. The authors’ data on reading scores turned out to be shakier, since most students ultimately had more than one instructor working with them on language skills, but it indicated a similar trend. 

In short, they found that merit pay can work. You just have to be tricky, and a little bit mean, with how you implement it…. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/07/a-very-mean-but-maybe-brilliant-way-to-pay-teachers/260234/#.UBHCJts3U6I.email

Citation:

Enhancing the Efficacy of Teacher Incentives through Loss Aversion: A Field Experiment*

Roland G. Fryer, Jr.

Harvard University

Steven D. Levitt

The University of Chicago

John List

The University of Chicago

Sally Sadoff

University of California San Diego

Abstract

Domestic attempts to use financial incentives for teachers to increase student achievement have been ineffective. In this paper, we demonstrate that exploiting the power of loss aversion—teachers are paid in advance and asked to give back the money if their students do not improve sufficiently—increases math test scores between 0.201 (0.076) and 0.398 (0.129) standard deviations. This is equivalent to increasing teacher

quality by more than one standard deviation. A second treatment arm, identical to the loss aversion treatment but implemented in the standard fashion, yields smaller and statistically insignificant results. This suggests it is loss aversion, rather than other features of the design or population sampled, that leads to the stark differences between our findings and past research. 

What the various studies seem to point out is there is no one remedy which works in all situations and that there must be a menu of education options.

Resources:

A Lively Debate Over Teacher Salaries                         http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/01/05/a-lively-debate-over-teacher-salaries/

Are Teachers Overpaid?                                                http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/01/02/are-teachers-overpaid/

Some Teachers Skeptical of Merit Pay                   http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/01/13/some-teachers-skeptical-of-merit-pay/

Related:

Washington D.C. rolls out merit pay                  https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/washington-d-c-rolls-out-merit-pay/

Report from The Compensation Technical Working Group: Teacher compensation in Washington                   https://drwilda.wordpress.com/tag/teacher-recruitment/

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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Portfolio school districts

25 Jul

The Great Lakes Center for Education Research & Practice has a great introduction piece to “portfolio districts.” In the 2010 Executive Summary of Urban School Decentralization and the Growth of “Portfolio Districts” Kenneth J. Saltman of DePaul University writes:

The premise of the portfolio strategy is that if superintendents build portfolios of schools that encompass a variety of educational approaches offered by different vendors, then over time school districts will weed out under-performing approaches and vendors; as a result, more children will have more opportunities for academic success. This brief examines the available evidence for the viability of this premise and the proposals that flow from it.

The portfolio district approach merges four strategies:

1) decentralization; 2) charter school expansion; 3) reconstituting/closing “failing” schools; and 4) test-based accountability. Additionally, portfolio district restructuring often involves firing an underperforming school’s staff in its entirety, whether or not the school is reconstituted as a charter school. In this model, the portfolio district is conceptualized as a circuit of “continuous improvement.” Schools are assessed based on test scores; if their scores are low, they are subject to being closed and reopened as charters. The replacement charters are subsequently subject to test-based assessment and, if scores remain disappointing, to possible closure and replacement by still other contractors…. This perspective considers public schools to be comparable to private enterprise, with competition a key element to success. Just as businesses that cannot turn sufficient profit, schools that cannot produce test scores higher than competitors’ must be “allowed” to “go out of business.” The appeal of the portfolio district strategy is that it appears to offer an approach sufficiently radical to address longstanding and intractable problems in public schools Although the strategy is being advocated by some policy centers, implemented by some large urban districts, and promoted by the education reforms proposed as part of the Obama administrations Race to the Top initiative, no peer-reviewed studies of portfolio districts exist, meaning that no reliable empirical evidence about portfolio effects is available that supports either the implementation or rejection of the portfolio district reform model. Nor is such evidence likely to be forthcoming. Even advocates acknowledge the enormous difficulty of designing credible empirical studies to determine how the portfolio approach affects student achievement and other outcomes…. Moreover, even when the constituent elements are considered as a way to predict the likely success of the model, no evidence is found to suggest that it will produce gains in either achievement or fiscal efficiency.

Finally, the policy writing of supporters of the portfolio model suggests that the approach is expensive to implement and may have negative effects on student achievement. In light of these considerations, it is recommended that policymakers and administrators use caution in considering the portfolio district approach. It is also highly recommended that before adopting such a strategy, decision makers ask the following questions.

 What credible evidence do we have, or can we obtain, that suggests the portfolio model offers advantages compared to other reform models?

What would those advantages be, when might they be expected to materialize, and how might they be documented?

 If constituent elements of the model (such as charter schools and test-based accountability) have not produced advantages outside of portfolio systems, what is the rationale for expecting improved outcomes as part of a portfolio system?

 What funding will be needed for startup, and where will it come from?

 What funding will be necessary for maintenance of the model?

Where will continuation funds come from if startup funds expire and are not renewed?

 How will the cost/benefit ratio of the model be determined?

 What potential political and social conflicts seem possible? How will concerns of dissenting constituents be addressed?  http://greatlakescenter.org/docs/Policy_Briefs/Saltman_PortfolioDistricts_EXEC_SUM.pdf

Answering the questions posed by the report are particularly important in the analysis.

Christina A. Samuels  has written an interesting Education Week article, Job Roles Shifting for Districts’ Central Offices:

The Center for Reinventing Public Education, based at the University of Washington Bothell, has long tracked the progress of portfolio districts. It counts 26 school systems as members of its “portfolio district network,” including New York City, Los Angeles, the District of Columbia, Baltimore, and the Recovery School District in Louisiana.

Among the many central-office positions that need to change in a portfolio district is that of the chief academic officer, said Paul T. Hill, the center’s founder. Central-office administrators generally offer “a standardized approach, coaching, and professional development. But as much as possible, that needs to be put into the schools” in a portfolio-model district, he said. “At the extreme end, the chief academic officer can become a broker or a tender of the supply of options for schools. The district is not the default provider of anything.”

From Mr. Hill’s point of view, school administrators need flexibility not just in their schools, but freedom from mandates from the top in order to design programs, hire teachers, buy materials and technology, choose vendors, and own or lease their own property. Central offices can keep longitudinal data on students, assess schools based on student performance, distribute money to schools, recruit teachers to the district, and manage an enrollment process for the schools that do not use neighborhood boundaries, he said.

But this change, though easy to describe, is not always easy to implement, he added—in part because of concerns from central-office administrators about loosening the reins of power.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/07/18/36portfolio_ep.h31.html?tkn=QWMFYXnKDrhzWkFcOfHUEQQBfslMpYJJk0aw&intc=es

Feather O’Connor Houstoun writes in the Governingarticle, A Portfolio of Schools:

Portfolio management turns conventional school-district administration inside out by drawing all publicly funded schools into similar position relative to the governing administration. In its theoretical form, a portfolio school district no longer focuses primarily on management of district-run schools, with charters as a sideline operated largely outside of district oversight. Good schools—charters or district-run—are encouraged to expand; poorly-performing schools—charters or district-run—are closed or reconstituted under new management.

The unit of performance is the individual school, whether chartered or district-run. The evaluation is transparent and equivalent in standards. District-run schools operate with increasing autonomy, similar to charters. Parents are helped to make school choices for their children using a menu that lays out facts about their choices.

There are formidable challenges to putting this approach into operation. As Paul Hill comments in his recent report on four portfolio school districts, “Rebuilding a school district on the portfolio model involves challenges of many kinds: technical, organizational and political.”

Long-simmering resentment among public-school advocates toward charters that have drawn funding and students from both public and parochial schools may make collaboration difficult, particularly if the shrinking districts have had little opportunity to shed the costs of underutilized schools.

Meanwhile, charters, which believe they are offering safe havens and choices for parents, bridle at the suggestion that their expansion should be constrained to accommodate broader school-district concerns about funding, underutilized buildings and the complexity of change in big bureaucracies. They often have political and family support that challenges the validity of evidence of poor performance.

The Gates Foundation has begun to provide financial incentives for urban districts and their charter counterparts to sign “district-charter collaboration compacts.” These agreements are aimed at providing a framework for decision-making that can overcome what Vicki Phillips, a former Pennsylvania secretary of education and now Gates Foundation director of education, describes as “contentious and persistent tensions.” Greater levels of support from the foundation appear to be on the horizon, and in some communities other philanthropic efforts are aligning around these partnerships.

Both charter operators and public officials and administrators accustomed to working within the boundaries of those things they directly control may find the portfolio approach unsettling. Charter operators, for example, are agreeing to be judged by uniform standards and to relinquish some of the control they have over the destiny of their individual schools.http://www.governing.com/columns/mgmt-insights/col-portfolio-school-charter-district-run-management-challenge.html

Houstoun agrees with Saltman that the strategy is difficult to implement.

Resources:

Portfolio Strategy

A growing number of urban districts are pursuing the portfolio strategy and profoundly changing the role of the school district and its relationship to schools.

The portfolio strategy aims to dramatically increase student achievement by continuous improvement. The strategy, built around 7 key components, creates diverse options for families in disadvantaged neighborhoods by opening new high-performing, autonomous schools; giving all schools control of budgeting and hiring; and holding schools accountable to common performance standards.

New York City, New Orleans, Chicago, Denver, Hartford, and Baltimore are among more than 25 districts pursuing a portfolio strategy of continuous improvement.

CRPE’s portfolio work includes:

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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CDC report: Contraceptive use among teens

24 Jul

In No one is perfect: People sometimes fail, moi said:

There are no perfect people, no one has a perfect life and everyone makes mistakes. Unfortunately, children do not come with instruction manuals, which give specific instructions about how to relate to that particular child. Further, for many situations there is no one and only way to resolve a problem. What people can do is learn from their mistakes and the mistakes of others. Craig Playstead has assembled a top ten list of mistakes made by parents and they should be used as a starting point in thinking about your parenting style and your family’s dynamic. https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/no-one-is-perfect-people-sometimes-fail/ Still, parents must talk to their children about life risks.  https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/06/07/talking-to-your-teen-about-risky-behaviors/

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC)has published a study about the sexual activity of children.

Here is the press release for the CDC report, Sexual Experience and Contraceptive Use Among Female Teens — United States, 1995, 2002, and 2006–2010:

Sexual Experience and Contraceptive Use Among Female Teens — United States, 1995, 2002, and 2006–2010

Weekly

May 4, 2012 / 61(17);297-301

The 2010 U.S. teen birth rate of 34.3 births per 1,000 females reflected a 44% decline from 1990 (1). Despite this trend, U.S. teen birth rates remain higher than rates in other developed countries; approximately 368,000 births occurred among teens aged 15–19 years in 2010, and marked racial/ethnic disparities persist (1,2). To describe trends in sexual experience and use of contraceptive methods among females aged 15–19 years, CDC analyzed data from the National Survey of Family Growth collected for 1995, 2002, and 2006–2010 (3). During 2006–2010, 57% of females aged 15–19 years had never had sex (defined as vaginal intercourse), an increase from 49% in 1995. Younger teens (aged 15–17 years) were more likely not to have had sex (73%) than older teens (36%); the proportion of teens who had never had sex did not differ by race/ethnicity. Approximately 60% of sexually experienced teens reported current use of highly effective contraceptive methods (e.g., intrauterine device [IUD] or hormonal methods), an increase from 47% in 1995. However, use of highly effective methods varied by race/ethnicity, with higher rates observed for non-Hispanic whites (66%) than non-Hispanic black (46%) and Hispanic teens (54%). Addressing the complex issue of teen childbearing requires a comprehensive approach to sexual and reproductive health that includes continued promotion of delayed sexual debut and increased use of highly effective contraception among sexually experienced teens.

Nationally representative data on females aged 15–19 years were obtained from three survey cycles of the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG): 1995, 2002, and 2006–2010. NSFG is an in-person, household survey conducted by CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics using a stratified, multistage probability sample of females and males aged 15–44 years. The response rate for females was 76%. Survey topics included self-reported sexual activity and contraceptive use (4). Respondents who answered “yes” to ever having vaginal intercourse were considered sexually experienced.

Respondents who were pregnant, postpartum, seeking pregnancy, or who had not had sex during the interview month were excluded from analyses on contraceptives used during the interview month. The remaining respondents were classified as currently using contraception (specifying up to four methods) or not currently using contraception. Current contraceptive users were classified further by their most effective method used (according to typical use effectiveness estimates for pregnancy prevention) (3), based on the following hierarchy: 1) users of highly effective methods, including respondents who used long-acting reversible contraception (i.e., intrauterine device [IUD] or implant), pill, patch, ring, or injectable contraception (with or without dual use of condoms), or who were sterilized or had a partner who was sterilized (both were rare for teens); 2) users of moderately effective methods, including respondents who used condoms alone; and 3) users of less effective methods, including respondents who used withdrawal, periodic abstinence, rhythm method, emergency contraception, diaphragm, female condom, foam, jelly, cervical cap, sponge, suppository, or insert.

Weighted least squares regression was used to assess the significance of trends in abstinence and contraceptive use over time. Differences in bivariate proportions between racial/ethnic and age subgroups were assessed using a standard two-tailed t-test without adjustment for multiple comparisons. Comparisons are statistically significant at p<0.05. All analyses were conducted using data management and statistical software to account for the complex sample design of the NSFG.

During 2006–2010, more than half (56.7%) of female teens had never had sex (Table), reflecting a 16% increase relative to the 1995 estimate of 48.9%. The proportion of teens who had never had sex did not differ significantly across racial/ethnic groups* (whites = 57.6%, blacks = 53.6%, Hispanics = 56.2%) (Table). Although the proportion of teens who had never had sex increased for all racial/ethnic groups from 1995 to 2006–2010, this increase was greatest for blacks (34% increase) and Hispanics (29% increase) compared with whites (15% increase). During 2006–2010, 72.9% of females aged 15–17 years had never had sex, compared with 36.5% of females aged 18–19 years.

During 2006–2010, among female teens who had sex during the interview month, but who were not pregnant, postpartum, or seeking pregnancy, 59.8% used a highly effective contraceptive method during the interview month (12.0% used a highly effective method with a condom and 47.8% used a highly effective method without a condom), 16.3% used a moderately effective method (i.e., condoms alone), 6.1% used a less effective method, and 17.9% did not use any contraception (Figure). A trend toward increasing use of highly effective methods was noted from 1995 to 2006–2010. Estimates for 2006–2010 reflect a relative 26% increase in use of highly effective methods, 43% decrease for moderately effective methods, 27% increase for less effective methods, and 7% decrease for no method use compared with 1995.

During 2006–2010, white teens (65.7%) reported a higher prevalence of highly effective method use than black teens (46.5%) and Hispanic teens (53.7%) (Figure). Nonuse of any contraceptive method was significantly higher among blacks (25.6%) and Hispanics (23.7%) compared with whites (14.6%). Among whites, the use of highly effective methods increased from 48.9% in 1995 to 65.7% in 2006–2010 (34% relative increase). Smaller increases were observed for Hispanics (19% relative increase) and blacks (4% relative increase). Method nonuse among whites decreased from 18.1% in 1995 to 14.6% in 2006–2010 (19% decline); however, rates increased among blacks from 21.4% in 1995 to 25.6% in 2006–2010 (20% increase). For females aged 15–17 years, the use of highly effective methods increased from 46.0% during 1995 to 56.5% during 2006–2010 (23% increase). For females aged 18–19 years, the use of highly effective methods increased from 48.4% during 1995 to 61.8% during 2006–2010 (28% increase). Rates of nonuse among younger teens declined from 23.9% to 19.5% (19% decline) but remained relatively stable for older teens at 16.3% in 1995 and 16.9% during 2006–2010.

Reported by

Crystal Pirtle Tyler, PhD, Lee Warner, PhD, Joan Marie Kraft, PhD, Alison Spitz, MPH, Lorrie Gavin, PhD, Violanda Grigorescu, MD, Carla White, MPH, Wanda Barfield, MD, Div of Reproductive Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, CDC. Corresponding contributor:Crystal Pirtle Tyler, ctyler@cdc.gov, 770-488-5200.

Editorial Note

In 2010, the U.S. teen birth rate declined to the lowest level in seven decades of reporting and reached record lows for teens of all racial/ethnic and age groups (1). Declines since 1995 likely reflect significant increases in the proportion of female teens who were abstinent, and among sexually experienced female teens, increases in the proportion using highly effective contraception (5).

The proportion of female teens who never have had sex is now comparable across racial/ethnic groups, largely because of proportionately larger increases in delayed sexual debut observed since 1995 among black teens and Hispanic teens compared with white teens. Disparities persist, however, in the use of highly effective methods of contraception. Use of these methods remains highest among white teens, and increases over time have occurred at a greater rate among whites compared with blacks and Hispanics.

Achieving the HealthyPeople 2020 objective† of reducing teen pregnancy by 10% will require a comprehensive approach to sexual and reproductive health that includes continued promotion of delayed sexual debut and increased use of highly effective contraception among sexually experienced teens. Condoms, the method used by many teens, can provide effective protection against unintended pregnancy when used consistently and correctly; however, during 2006–2010, only about half (49%) of female teens who used a condom for contraception reported consistent use in the past month (6). Dual use of condoms with a highly effective method of contraception can provide pregnancy protection with the added benefit of preventing sexually transmitted infections, including infection with human immunodeficiency virus, which affects teens disproportionately. Given that hormonal contraception and IUDs can be obtained only from a health-care provider, yearly reproductive health visits for teens who are sexually experienced or contemplating sexual activity can facilitate discussions about the advantages of delaying sexual debut, access to contraception, and the subsequent reduction of teen pregnancy (7,8).

An analysis of data from CDC’s Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System on female teens who had delivered a live infant within 2–6 months and reported that their pregnancy was unintended found that half were not using contraception when they got pregnant (9). Ways to reduce barriers to decrease teen pregnancy include encouraging teens to delay sexual debut, offering teens convenient practice hours, culturally competent and confidential counseling and services, and low-cost or free services and methods.

The findings in this report are subject to at least three limitations. First, estimates of contraceptive use are self-reported; however, NSFG was designed specifically to minimize potential sources of response error (4). Second, current use of a contraceptive method during the interview month does not necessarily reflect sustained use over time. Finally, data were not available to examine current sexual activity or contraceptive use among female teens aged <15 years, who accounted for 4,500 births in 2010 (1).

Several actions can be taken to reduce teen pregnancy further. Schools and community- based organizations can 1) provide evidence-based sexual and reproductive health education,§ 2) support parents’ efforts to speak with their children about advantages of delaying sexual debut and of delaying pregnancy, and 3) connect teens to health-care providers for reproductive health services. Health-care providers should be informed that no contraceptive method is contraindicated for teens solely on the basis of age (10) and encouraged to promote highly effective contraception, preferably with the dual use of condoms. Teen pregnancy might be reduced further if health-care professionals provide culturally competent, evidence-based sexual and reproductive health counseling on the importance of correct and consistent use of contraception, and offer an array of contraceptive methods to teens who have had sex or are about to initiate sexual activity.

Acknowledgments

Gladys M. Martinez, PhD, Stephanie J. Ventura, MA, Joyce C. Abma, PhD, Div of Vital Statistics, National Center for Health Statistics; John M. Douglas, Jr, MD, National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, CDC.

References

  1. Hamilton BE, Martin JA, Ventura SJ. Births: preliminary data for 2010. Natl Vital Stat Rep 2011;60(2).
  2. United Nations. Demographic yearbook 2009. New York, NY: United Nations; 2010. Available at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/dyb/dyb2.htmExternal Web Site Icon. Accessed February 28, 2012.
  3. Trussell J. Contraceptive failure in the United States. Contraception 2011;83:397–404.
  4. Groves RM, Mosher WD, Lepkowski J, Kirgis NG. Planning and development of he continuous National Survey of Family Growth. Vital Health Stat 2009;1(48).
  5. Santelli JS, Lindberg LD, Finer LB, Singh S. Explaining recent declines in adolescent pregnancy in the United States: the contribution of abstinence and improved contraceptive use. Am J Public Health 2007;97:150–6.
  6. Martinez G, Copen CE, Abma JC. Teenagers in the United States: sexual activity, contraceptive use, and childbearing, 2006–2010 National Survey of Family Growth. Vital Health Stat 2011;23(31).
  7. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Committee on Adolescent Health. The initial reproductive health visit. Committee opinion no. 460. Obstet Gynecol 2010;116:240–3.
  8. Hagan JF, Shaw JS, Duncan PM. Bright futures: guidelines for health supervision of infants, children and adolescents. 3rd ed. Elk Grove Village, IL: American Academy of Pediatrics; 2008.
  9. CDC. Prepregnancy contraceptive use among teens with unintended pregnancies resulting in live births—Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), 2004–2008. MMWR 2012;61:25–9.
  10. CDC. U.S. medical eligibility criteria for contraceptive use, 2010. MMWR 2010;59(No. RR-4).

* Persons identified as Hispanic might be of any race; persons in all other racial/ethnic categories are non-Hispanic.

† Objective FP-8, available at http://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topicsobjectives2020/pdfs/familyplanning.pdf Adobe PDF fileExternal Web Site Icon.

§ The Community Preventive Services Task Force recommends comprehensive risk reduction interventions. Additional information is available at http://www.thecommunityguide.org/news/2012/crrandaeinterventions.htmlExternal Web Site Icon

For a good summary of the report, More teens using condoms over past two decades http://www.wtop.com/267/2955744/US-targets-AIDS-stigma

In Talking to kids about sex, early and often, moi said: 

The blog discussed the impact of careless, uninformed, and/or reckless sex in the post, A baby changes everything: Helping parents finish school http://us.mg5.mail.yahoo.com/2011/12/26/a-baby-changes-everything-helping-parents-finish-school/ Let’s continue the discussion. Some folks may be great friends, homies, girlfriends, and dudes, but they make lousy parents. Could be they are at a point in their life where they are too selfish to think of anyone other than themselves, they could be busy with school, work, or whatever. No matter the reason, they are not ready and should not be parents. Birth control methods are not 100% effective, but the available options are 100% ineffective in people who are sexually active and not using birth control. So, if you are sexually active and you have not paid a visit to Planned Parenthood or some other agency, then you are not only irresponsible, you are Eeeevil. Why do I say that? You are playing “Russian Roulette” with the life of another human being, the child. You should not ever put yourself in the position of bringing a child into the world that you are unprepared to parent, emotionally, financially, and with a commitment of time. So, if you find yourself in a what do I do moment and are pregnant, you should consider adoption. Before reaching that fork in the road of what to do about an unplanned pregnancy, parents must talk to their children about sex and they must explain their values to their children. They must explain why they have those values as well.  https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/talking-to-kids-about-sex-early-and-often/

Related:

Study: Girls as young as six think of themselves as sex objects        https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/study-girls-as-young-as-six-think-of-themselves-as-sex-objects/

Study: Low-income populations and marriage https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/07/14/study-low-income-populations-and-marriage/

Title IX also mandates access to education for pregnant students https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/title-ix-also-mandates-access-to-education-for-pregnant-students/

Teaching kids that babies are not delivered by UPS                       https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/teaching-kids-that-babies-are-not-delivered-by-ups/

Talking to your teen about risky behaviors                https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/06/07/talking-to-your-teen-about-risky-behaviors/

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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Important Harvard report about U.S. student achievement ranking

23 Jul

More and more, individuals with gravitas are opining about the American education system for reasons ranging from national security to economic competitiveness. In Condoleezza Rice and Joel Klein report about American Education, moi wrote:

The Council on Foreign Relations has issued the report, U.S. Education Reform and National Security. The chairs for the report are Joel I. Klein, News Corporation and Condoleezza Rice, Stanford University. Moi opined about the state of education in U.S. education failure: Running out of excuses https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/u-s-education-failure-running-out-of-excuses/ Education tends to be populated by idealists and dreamers who are true believers and who think of what is possible. Otherwise, why would one look at children in second grade and think one of those children could win the Nobel Prize or be president? Maybe, that is why education as a discipline is so prone to fads and the constant quest for the “Holy Grail” or the next, next magic bullet. There is no one answer, there is what works for a particular population of kids. https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/condoleezza-rice-and-joel-klein-report-about-american-education/

Citation:

U.S. Education Reform and National Security

Publisher Council on Foreign Relations Press

Release Date March 2012

Price $15.00

108 pages
ISBN 978-0-87609-520-1
Task Force Report No. 68

Related:

Joy Resmovits of Huffington Post,Schools Report: Failing To Prepare Students Hurts National Security, Prosperity http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/19/schools-report-condoleezza-rice-joel-klein_n_1365144.html Now, there is another report, “Is the United States Catching Up? International and state trends in student achievement,” will be released by Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG).  Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann conducted the study, which is available at www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/.  An article based on the report will appear in the Fall issue of Education Next and is available online at www.educationnext.org.

Here is the press release for Achievement Growth: International and U.S. State Trends in Student Performance:

CONTACT:

Paul E. Peterson (617) 495-8312 pepeters@fas.harvard.edu Harvard University
Eric A. Hanushek  hanushek@stanford.edu Stanford University
Ludger Woessmann  woessmann@ifo.de University of Munich
Janice B. Riddell  (203) 912-8675  janice_riddell@hks.harvard.edu External Relations, Education Next

Student Achievement Gains in U.S. Fail to Close International Achievement Gap

U.S. ranks 25th out of 49 countries in student test-score gains over 14-year period, report 3 scholars at Harvard, Stanford and the University of Munich

CAMBRIDGE, MA – A new study of international and U.S. state trends in student achievement growth shows that the United States is squarely in the middle of a group of 49 nations in 4th and 8th grade test score gains in math, reading, and science over the period 1995-2009.

Students in three countries – Latvia, Chile, and Brazil – are improving at a rate of 4 percent of a standard deviation annually, roughly two years’ worth of learning or nearly three times that of the United States.  Students in another eight countries – Portugal, Hong Kong, Germany, Poland, Liechtenstein, Slovenia, Colombia, and Lithuania – are making gains at twice the rate of U.S. students.

The report, “Is the United States Catching Up? International and state trends in student achievement,” will be released by Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG).  Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann conducted the study, which is available at www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/.  An article based on the report will appear in the Fall issue of Education Next and is available online at www.educationnext.org.

Compared to gains made by students in other countries, “progress within the United States is middling, not stellar,” notes Peterson, Harvard professor and PEPG director, with 24 countries trailing the U.S. rate of improvement and another 24 that appear to be improving at a faster rate.  While U.S. students’ performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests improved in absolute terms between 1995 and 2011, U.S. progress was not sufficiently rapid to allow it to catch up with the leaders of the industrialized world.

Rates of improvement varied among states.  Maryland had the steepest achievement growth trend, followed by Florida, Delaware, and Massachusetts.  Between 1992 and 2011, these states posted growth rates of 3.1 to 3.3 percent of a standard deviation annually, well over a full year’s worth of learning during the time period. The U.S. average of 1.6 standard deviations was about half that of the top states.

The other six states among the top ten improvers were Louisiana, South Carolina, New Jersey, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Virginia.  States with the largest gains are improving at two to three times the rate of states with the smallest gains – such as Iowa, Maine, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin.

The study raises questions about education goal setting in the United States, which “has often been utopian rather than realistic,” according to Eric Hanushek, who cites the 1990 Governors’ goal calling for the U.S. to be “first in the world in math and science by 2000” as an example.  More realistic expectations would call for states to move closer to annual growth rates of the most-improving states.  These gains would, over a 15-20 year period, “bring the United States within the range of the world’s leaders.”

Other findings include:

  • States in which students improved the most overall were also the states that had the largest percent reduction in students with very low achievement.
  • Southern states, which began to adopt education reform measures in the 1990s, outpaced Midwestern states, where school reform made little headway until very recently.  Five of the top 10 states were in the South and no southern states were in the bottom 18.
  • No significant correlation was found between increased spending on education and test score gains.  For example, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey posted large gains in student performance after boosting spending, but New York, Wyoming, and West Virginia had only marginal test-score gains to show from increased expenditures.

International results are based on 28 administrations of comparable math, science, and reading tests over the period 1995-2009.  The authors adjusted both the mean and the standard deviation of each international test, allowing them to estimate trends on the international tests on a common scale normed to the 2000 NAEP tests.  Student performance on 36 administrations of math, reading, and science tests in 41 U.S. states was examined over a 19-year period (1992-2011), allowing for a comparison of these states with each other.  For more information on the study and its methodology, please see an unabridged version of the report, which are available at www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/ and at www.educationnext.org.

About the Authors

Eric A. Hanushek is senior fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. Paul E. Peterson is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government at Harvard and director of Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance.  Ludger Woessmann is head of the Department of Human Capital and Innovation at the Ifo Institute at the University of Munich.  The authors are available for interviews.

About Education Next

Education Next is a scholarly journal published by the Hoover Institution that is committed to looking at hard facts about school reform.  Other sponsoring institutions are the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance, part of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.

For more information on the Program on Education Policy and Governance contact Antonio Wendland at 617-495-7976, pepg_administrator@hks.harvard.edu, or visit www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg.

Citation:

Achievement Growth:

International and U.S. State Trends in Student Performance

by Eric A. HanushekPaul E. Peterson Ludger Woessmann

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG12-03_CatchingUp.pdf

See, U.S. Students Still Lag Behind Foreign Peers, Schools Make Little Progress In Improving Achievement http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/23/us-students-still-lag-beh_n_1695516.html?utm_hp_ref=education

Here is a portion of the concluding remarks from page 21:

The failure of the United States to close the international test-score gap, despite assiduous public assertions that every effort would be undertaken to produce that objective, raises questions about the nation’s overall reform strategy. Education goal setting in the United States has often been utopian rather than realistic. In 1990, the president and the nation’s governors announced the goal that all American students should graduate from high school, but two decades later only 75 percent of 9th-graders received their diploma within four years after entering high school. In 2002, Congress passed a law that declared that all students in all grades shall be proficient in math, reading, and science by 2014, but in 2012 most observers found that goal utterly beyond reach. Currently, the U.S. Department of Education has committed itself to ensuring that all students shall be college or career ready as they cross the stage on their high-school graduation day, another overly ambitious goal.

Perhaps the most unrealistic goal was that of the governors in 1990 when they called for the United States to achieve number-one ranking in the world in math and science by 2000. As this study shows, the United States is neither first nor is it catching up.

Consider a more realistic set of objectives for education policymakers, one that comes from our experience. If all U.S. states could increase their performance at the same rate as the highest-growth states—Maryland, Florida, Delaware, and Massachusetts—the U.S. improvement rate would be lifted by 1.5 percentage points of a std. dev. annually above the current trend line. Since student performance can improve at that rate in some countries and in some states, then, in principle, such gains can be made more generally. Those gains might seem small, but when viewed over two decades they accumulate to 30 percent of a std. dev., enough to bring the United States within the range of the world’s leaders—unless, of course, they, too, continue to improve.

Such progress need not come at the expense of either the lowest-performing or the highest-performing students. In most states, a rising tide lifted all boats. Only in a few instances did the tide rise while leaving a disproportionate number stuck at the bottom, and most, if not all of the time, the high flyers moved ahead as well.

The increased rate of poverty has profound implications if this society believes that ALL children have the right to a good basic education. Moi blogs about education issues so the reader could be perplexed sometimes because moi often writes about other things like nutrition, families, and personal responsibility issues. Why? The reader might ask? Because children will have the most success in school if they are ready to learn. Ready to learn includes proper nutrition for a healthy body and the optimum situation for children is a healthy family. Many of societies’ problems would be lessened if the goal was a healthy child in a healthy family. There is a lot of economic stress in the country now because of unemployment and underemployment. Children feel the stress of their parents and they worry about how stable their family and living situation is.

Teachers and schools have been made TOTALLY responsible for the education outcome of the children, many of whom come to school not ready to learn and who reside in families that for a variety of reasons cannot support their education. All children are capable of learning, but a one-size-fits-all approach does not serve all children well. Different populations of children will require different strategies and some children will require remedial help, early intervention, and family support to achieve their education goals.

Related:

Report from Center for American Progress report: Kids say school is too easy                                              https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/07/10/report-from-center-for-american-progress-report-kids-say-school-is-too-easy/

Complete College America report: The failure of remediation https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/complete-college-america-report-the-failure-of-remediation/

Book: Inequality in America affects education outcome https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/book-inequality-in-america-affects-education-outcome/

What exactly are the education practices of top-performing nations?                                       http://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/what-exactly-are-the-education-practices-of-top-performing-nations/

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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The teacher master’s degree and student achievement

23 Jul

In Education Trust report: Retaining teachers in high-poverty areas, moi said:

Every population of kids is different and they arrive at school at various points on the ready to learn continuum. Schools and teachers must be accountable, but there should be various measures of judging teacher effectiveness for a particular population of children. Perhaps, more time and effort should be spent in developing a strong principal corps and giving principals the training and assistance in evaluation and mentoring techniques.

The Ed Trust report, entitled “Building and Sustaining Talent: Creating Conditions in High-Poverty Schools That Support Effective Teaching and Learning,” examines how several districts have handled the issue of teacher retention:

Specifically, districts should take the following steps:

• Recruit talented school leaders to their highest need schools, an get them to stay. In addition to the districts spotlighted earlier, the District of Columbia Public Schools has taken a rigorous approach to principal recruitment. The district scours student achievement data from school districts around the country (especially those close to D.C.) and then actively recruits principals of top-performing schools.

• Put in place teacher and school-leader evaluation systems that differentiate educator effectiveness in order to identify top performing teachers and leaders. Using these systems in conjunction with data on working conditions and attrition, districts can study which teachers are more and less satisfied, as well as which ones are staying and leaving — and why.

• Provide teachers in the highest need schools with meaningful professional growth and career ladders as well as opportunities to collaborate with other teachers, as Ascension Parish and Boston Public Schools have done.

• Avoid isolating their most effective teachers and, instead, build teams of highly effective teachers in the district’s most challenging schools, as both Boston Public Schools and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools have done.

• Concentrate not just on recruiting new school leaders and teachers to high-need schools, but on developing the skills and instructional abilities of existing employees, as have Fresno and Ascension Parish.

• Implement a tool to measure teacher perceptions of their teaching environment, such as Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ working conditions survey, and then use data from the tool to identify target schools and determine primary issues that need to be addressed. For example, Pittsburgh Public Schools works with the New Teacher Center to implement a district-wide survey on working conditions. The district requires all schools to use the data to identify a plan of action and pays special attention to the plans of schools with the poorest survey results to ensure that the planned interventions align with the identified areas of need.

• Once better evaluations are in place, districts should make working conditions data part of school and district-leader evaluations. North Carolina requires that survey data on working conditions are factored into school-leader evaluations, which encourages leaders to take the survey results seriously and to act on areas identified as needing improvement.

CONCLUSION

To date, the conditions that shape teachers’ daily professional lives have not been given the attention they deserve. Too often, a lack of attention to these factors in our highest poverty and lowest performing schools results in environments in which few educators would choose to stay. For too long, the high levels of staff dissatisfaction and turnover that characterize these schools have been erroneously attributed to their students. But research continues to demonstrate that students are not the problem. What matters most are the conditions for teaching and learning. Districts and states have an obligation to examine and act on these conditions. Otherwise, we will never make the progress that we must make to ensure all low-income students and students of color have access to great teachers.                                                                                                                                http://www.edtrust.org/sites/edtrust.org/files/Building_and_Sustaining_Talent.pdf

Melanie Smollin has an excellent post at Take Part, Five Reasons Why Teacher Turnover Is On The Rise See, Report: Make Improving Teacher Working Conditions a Priority http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2012/06/report_make_improving_teacher_working_conditions_a_priority.html

https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/education-trust-report-retaining-teachers-in-high-poverty-areas/

The Center for American Progress has released the report, The Sheepskin Effect and Student Achievement: De-emphasizing the Role of Master’s Degrees in Teacher Compensation written by Raegen Miller and Marguerite Roza.

Miller and Roza write in the issue brief:

All teachers in Finland have a master’s degree, and they get extraordinary results from their students. If we want be(er results in U.S. schools, then, we should require teachers to have a master’s degree, so the argument goes.

But this argument has two fatal flaws. First, teachers in Finland hail from the top 10 percent of their graduating class.25 “is selectivity is woven into a set of policies that Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor at Stanford University, has astutely described as a “teaching and learning system.”26 “e Finnish system could scarcely be more diferent than our domestic grab bag of policies arising from approximately 15,000 separate school districts carrying out their responsibility to provide public education, variously conceived by the diverse states of a country with an unmatched tolerance, at least among wealthy industrialized nations, for inequity in school funding and facilities.

Secondly, Finnish teachers hold master’s degrees that augment their knowledge and skills in a way that’s deliberately connected to their instructional challenges. Secondary teachers earn a master’s in the subject of instruction, and the master’s degree required of elementary teachers equips them with specialized knowledge and skills often found only among special education teachers and school psychologists in U.S. schools. “us, holding master’s degrees means Finnish teachers either have a serious grasp on academic content or are well equipped to problem solve around the individual learning needs of their students.

“The typical master’s degree held by a U.S. teacher and the associated skills a(ached pale in comparison. Moreover, it’s unlikely to move in this direction barring a tectonic shift in the higher-education landscape. Institutions of higher education, of course, won’t be at the vanguard of efforts to repeal legislation that inflates demand for one of their most lucrative products, master’s degrees in education. In addition, it bears mentioning, for example, that Connecticut’s requirement that teachers seeking a professional license hold a master’s degree was unscathed by recent reform-conscious legislation in that state. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/07/pdf/miller_masters.pdf

In Is it true that the dumbest become teachers? Moi said:

There is a quote attributed to H.L. Mencken:

Those who can — do. Those who can’t — teach.

People often assume that if a person could do anything else, they probably wouldn’t teach. Matthew Di Carlo, senior fellow at the non-profit Albert Shanker Institute, located in Washington, D.C. has an interesting article in the Washington Post.

In Do teachers really come from the ‘bottom third’ of college graduates? Di Carlo writes:

The conventional wisdom among many education commentators is that U.S. public school teachers “come from the bottom third” of their classes. Most recently, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg took this talking point a step further, and asserted at a press conference last week that teachers are drawn from the bottom 20 percent of graduates…

Overall, then, the blanket assertion that teachers are coming from the “bottom third” of graduates is, at best, an incomplete picture. It’s certainly true that, when the terciles are defined in terms of SAT/ACT scores, there is consistent evidence that new teachers are disproportionately represented in this group (see here and here for examples from the academic literature).

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/do-teachers-really-come-from-the-bottom-third-of-college-graduates/2011/12/07/gIQAg8HPdO_blog.html

https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/is-it-true-that-the-dumbest-become-teachers/

There isn’t really a definitive answer. Miller and Roza’s analysis of the importance of the masters degree in Finland means that more training might be useful in student education achievement.

Related:

Urban teacher residencies                                        https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/urban-teacher-residencies/

Study: When teachers overcompensate for prejudice https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/study-when-teachers-overcompensate-for-prejudice/

The teaching profession needs more males and teachers of color https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/the-teaching-profession-needs-more-males-and-teachers-of-color/

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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Single-sex classrooms should be allowed in public schools

22 Jul

Moi says repeatedly at this blog that there is no magic bullet or “Holy Grail” in education, there is what works to produce academic achievement in a given population of children. The American Civil Liberties Union and their minions are gunning for single-sex classes in public schools. They should cease and desist.

Denise Williams had a hit with a catchy little tune, “let’s hear it for the boy.” The question for many parents and schools is how are boys doing? Time summarized the issue of the “boy crisis.” Boy Crisis

There was, for example, Harvard psychologist William Pollack’s Real Boys (1998), which asserted that contemporary boys are “scared and disconnected,” “severely lagging” behind girls in both achievement and self-confidence. The following year, journalist Susan Faludi argued in Stiffed that the cold calculus of global economics was emasculating American men. In 2000 philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers blamed off-the-rails feminism for sparking The War Against Boys, and two years later writer Elizabeth Gilbert found The Last American Man living in a teepee in the Appalachian Mountains.

The Seattle Times reported on the study by the respected women’s group AmericanAssociation of University Women (AAUW) AAUW Report

Both boys and girls are doing better in school, so there’s no reason to fear that school systems favor girls at boys’ expense, a women’s advocacy group says in a study to be released today.

It’s the freshest argument in the boys vs. girls debate in education, one in which the group, the American Association of University Women (AAUW), has been a major player. Having said in an influential 1992 study that the education system worked against girls, it now argues that the real crisis is racial and economic disparities, not gender. “The mythology of the boy crisis continues to be influential,” said Catherine Hill, the association’s director of research. One reason, she added, is that “people feel uncomfortable with the success of girls and women.”

Some readers might be thinking, a women’s group declaring there is no crisis. Right. Is there a crisis or a problem with boys? For every book, report, or study citing the difficulties that some boys are having, there is another book or study that questions the findings. Vanderbilt University researchers conducted a study of how boys and girls differ in some activities. Vanderbilt Study According to the Vanderbilt study, girls have an advantage over boys in timed tests and tasks. That finding is significant because many classroom activities are timed. A good summary of gender issues is provided by the Kansas Education Association.Gender and Achievement Issues

Boys Barriers to Learning and Achievement

Gary Wilson has a thoughtful article about some of the learning challenges faced by boys. Boys Barriers to Learning He lists several barriers to learning in his article.

1. Early years

a. Language development problems

b. Listening skills development

2. Writing skills and learning outcomes

A significant barrier to many boys’ learning, that begins at quite an early age and often never leaves them, is the perception that most writing that they are expected to do is largely irrelevant and unimportant….

3. Gender bias

Gender bias in everything from resources to teacher expectations has the potential to present further barriers to boys’ learning. None more so than the gender bias evident in the ways in which we talk to boys and talk to girls. We need to be ever mindful of the frequency, the nature and the quality of our interactions with boys and our interactions with girls in the classroom….A potential mismatch of teaching and learning styles to boys’ preferred ways of working continues to be a barrier for many boys….

4.Reflection and evaluation

The process of reflection is a weakness in many boys, presenting them with perhaps one of the biggest barriers of all. The inability of many boys to, for example, write evaluations, effectively stems from this weakness….

5. Self-esteem issues

Low self-esteem is clearly a very significant barrier to many boys’ achievement in school. If we were to think of the perfect time to de-motivate boys, when would that be? Some might say in the early years of education when many get their first unwelcome and never forgotten taste of failure might believe in the system… and themselves, for a while, but not for long….

6. Peer pressure

Peer pressure, or the anti-swot culture, is clearly a major barrier to many boys’ achievement. Those lucky enough to avoid it tend to be good academically, but also good at sport. This gives them a licence to work hard as they can also be ‘one of the lads’. …To me one of the most significant elements of peer pressure for boys is the impact it has on the more affective domains of the curriculum, namely expressive, creative and performing arts. It takes a lot of courage for a boy to turn up for the first day at high school carrying a violin case….

7. Talk to them!

There are many barriers to boys’ learning (I’m currently saying 31, but I’m still working on it!) and an ever-increasing multitude of strategies that we can use to address them. I firmly believe that a close examination of a school’s own circumstances is the only way to progress through this maze and that the main starting point has to be with the boys themselves. They do know all the issues around their poor levels of achievement. Talk to them first. I also believe that one of the most important strategies is to let them know you’re ‘on their case’, talking to them provides this added bonus….

If your boy has achievement problems, Wilson emphasizes that there is no one answer to address the problems. There are issues that will be specific to each child.

Single Sex Classrooms

Wesley Sharpe offers the pros and cons of single sex classrooms. Single Sex Classrooms  in Seattle Child describes the atmosphere at O’Dea and reports that for some boys, this is an environment where they thrive. Seattle Child Some children have achievement problems and social adjustment problems. When other solutions have not yielded results, single sex classrooms are seen as a possible solution. The New York Times reports on single sex classrooms in the Bronx. Single Sex Classrooms

The single-sex classes at Public School 140, which started as an experiment last year to address sagging test scores and behavioral problems, are among at least 445 such classrooms nationwide, according to the National Association for Single-Sex Public Education. Most have sprouted since a 2004 federal regulatory change that gave public schools freedom to separate girls and boys.

The nation’s 95 single-sex public schools — including a dozen in New York City — while deemed legal, still have many critics. But separation by a hallway is generally more socially and politically palatable. And unlike other programs aimed at improving student performance, there is no extra cost.

“We will do whatever works, however we can get there,” said Paul Cannon, principal of P.S. 140, which is also known as the Eagle School. “We thought this would be another tool to try.”

Adam Cohen puts the focus on gender stereotypes in his Time article.

Cohen writes in the Time article, Ew, Boys: The Brewing Legal Battle Over Same-Sex Education:

The American Civil Liberties Union is on a vigorous campaign to integrate Mississippi’s public schools, making requests across the state to find out which have segregated classrooms and weighing whether or not to sue.

But the investigation isn’t about racial segregation — it’s about sex-segregation. Single-sex classrooms are a growing phenomenon across the country. In 2002, just about a dozen schools had them, but now as many as 500 do, according to the Associated Press. The movement shows no sign of slowing down and has set off a pair of debates: a pedagogical dispute over whether sex-segregation makes for better education, and a legal one — which the ACLU is at the center of — about whether this sort of separation violates civil rights laws. http://ideas.time.com/2012/07/16/ew-boys-the-brewing-legal-battle-over-same-sex-education/#ixzz21Pk94S00

Wilson and Cannon are correct in stating that there is no one solution to solving a child’s achievement problems and a variety of tools may prove useful. Whether there is a “boy crisis” can be debated. The research is literally all over the map and a variety of positions can find some study to validate that position. If your child has achievement and social adjustment problems, whether there is an overall crisis is irrelevant, you feel you are in a crisis situation. There is no one solution, be open to using a variety of tools and strategies.

So, how is your boy doing?

The ACLU is wrong on this one.

Resources:

NEA Debate: Do Students Learn Better In Same-Sex Classes?     http://www.nea.org/home/17276.htm

Single-sex education: the pros and cons     ttp://www.greatschools.org/find-a-school/defining-your-ideal/1139-single-sex-education-the-pros-and-cons.gs?page=all

Are Single-Sex Classrooms Better For Kids?                    http://www.npr.org/2011/10/25/141692830/are-single-sex-classrooms-better-for-kids

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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Do intense high school programs help students?

22 Jul

Catherine Gewertz reports in the Education Week article, High School Rigor Narrows College-Success Gap

Students from some racial- and ethnic-minority groups and those from low-income families enroll in college and succeed there at lower rates than their white, wealthier peers. But a new study suggests that if teenagers are adequately prepared for college during high school, those gaps close substantially.

The “Mind the Gaps” study, by ACT, draws on the Iowa City, Iowa-based testmaker’s earlier research showing that taking a strong core curriculum in high school and meeting benchmark scores in all four subjects of the ACT college-entrance exam enhance students’ chances of enrolling in college, persisting there for a second year, earning good grades, and obtaining a two- or four-year degree.

The ACT defines a college-ready curriculum as four years of English, and at least three each of mathematics, science, and social studies. The study found that “college-ready” scores on the ACT exam correlate with earning good grades in entry-level, credit-bearing college courses. Fewer than one-quarter of students currently meet those benchmarks in all four subject areas of the exam, however. (“Rate of Minorities Taking ACT Continues to Rise,” Aug. 25, 2010.)

A lot of the foundation for success in high school is built by a solid grounding in the basics during elementary school and that is where we are failing a lot of children.

Joel Vargas has an excellent article in Education Week, Early-College High Schools: ‘Why Not Do It for All the Kids?’

Hidalgo, Texas, has one of the most successful school systems in the United States. The dropout rate is nearly zero, and the high school regularly lands on a top-school list published by U.S. News & World Report. Last June, when members of the high school graduating class crossed the stage to receive their diplomas, 95 percent of them could proudly point to their college credits as well. Two-thirds of the graduating seniors had earned at least a full semester of credits toward a college degree.

It’s time for the nation to pay attention when any community boasts results like these. These are especially remarkable in one of the most economically depressed areas of the United States, just across the Rio Grande River from Mexico, with one of the lowest number of college-educated adults. Nine out of 10 students in the high school are considered economically disadvantaged, 99.5 percent are Hispanic, and 53 percent entered with limited proficiency in English.

The story of Hidalgo is not only one of success, but of turning around an entire school district. In the late 1980s, student achievement in Hidalgo ranked in the bottom 10 percent in Texas. But local leaders took giant steps to improve student performance, and they gained support from every segment of the surrounding community. Over the next two decades, everyone—from bus drivers to principals, from teachers to school board members—began to focus on doing what it takes to raise the achievement levels of all 3,500 young people in the Hidalgo schools.

“You can’t be afraid of change,” says school board President Martin Cepeda. “It starts from the superintendent all the way to the custodians. … Everybody counts. Everybody.”

One key to the turnaround came when Daniel King, the superintendent of the school district at the time, enlisted four partners: the University of Texas-Pan American, the University of Texas System, the Communities Foundation of Texas/Texas High School Project, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Together, the partnership formulated an innovative plan to create an “early-college high school.”

“Over the next two decades, everyone—from bus drivers to principals, from teachers to school board members—began to focus on doing what it takes to raise the achievement levels of all 3,500 young people in the Hidalgo schools.”

The early-college design is a vehicle for providing traditionally underserved students with an opportunity to earn a substantial number of college credits along with a high school diploma. Students spend fewer years and less money achieving a college credential. Hidalgo took this cutting-edge idea and extended it: By embedding a college and career culture in everyday activities, from elementary school through middle school and into high school, the school system motivates all of its students to believe that they can and will go on to postsecondary education.

The Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University has an interesting report by Katherine L. Hughes, Olga Rodriguez, Linsey Edwards, and Clive Belfield

Here are the policy recommendations of Broadening the Benefits of Dual Enrollment:

Policy Recommendations

Policymakers and community leaders can build on the lessons learned from the Concurrent Courses initiative and further reduce the barriers to program development and student participation. Based on the experience and outcomes attained in high schools and colleges across California, here are three high-value recommendations for state policymakers.

• Remove funding penalties: To encourage dual enrollment, California should adopt a “hold harmless” funding model for dual enrollment, in which neither participating institution loses any ofits per-pupil funding for dually-enrolled students. State policy should also require, rather than allow, colleges to waive student fees.

• Make dual credit earning consistent and portable: State policy should mandate that dualenrollment students automatically earn dual credit — both high school and college credit — forcollege courses they complete. In addition, a statewide system that facilitates the portability of college credits would ease student transfer and help ensure that students do not repeat courses theyhave already taken. This would benefit all California college students.

• Standardize broad student eligibility: At present, California policy sets no statewide academic

eligibility criteria for dual enrollment participation but stipulates that participating colleges may do so. Following the standard of student eligibility for community colleges, the state should encourage broad access and prevent students from being disqualified by grades or test scores alone. The experience of dual enrollment implementation partners leads to five recommendations for institutions.

• Continue to make dual enrollment available on both the high school and college campuses.Courses on the college campus provide a fuller and more authentic college experience; college opportunities must also be available at high school for students who lack transportation.

• Explore ways to ensure authenticity of the high school-based program format. Courses delivered at high school must have the same rigor and quality as college campus-based courses, andstudents must be held to the same standards of achievement as those in campus-based programs.

• Provide professional development to dual enrollment instructors. High school teachers mayneed greater assistance in creating a college-like atmosphere, and college instructors may need insights into scaffolding and other pedagogical strategies to support high school students.

• Identify dedicated college staff to smooth logistical challenges. In particular, colleges should identify a student services staff member knowledgeable about and responsible for registration of dual enrollment students.

• Obtain student consent to share college records. High school administrators and counselors need to be aware of how students are doing in their college coursework; monitoring progress is essential to providing needed interventions.          http://www.concurrentcourses.org/files/CCI_policy_brief_2012jul16.pdf

Citation:

Broadening the Benefits of Dual Enrollment

By: Katherine L. Hughes, Olga Rodriguez, Linsey Edwards & Clive Belfield — July 2012. New York: Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University

This study suggests that career-focused dual enrollment programs—in which high school students take college courses for credit—can benefit underachieving students and those underrepresented in higher education. The study found that California students who participated in dual enrollment as part of their high school career pathway were more likely than similar students in their districts to graduate from high school, enroll in four-year colleges, and persist in college. They also accumulated more college credits and were less likely to take remedial classes. The three-year study, funded by The James Irvine Foundation, examined the outcomes of almost 3,000 students participating in eight dual enrollment programs across California. Sixty percent of participants were students of color, forty percent came from non-English speaking homes, and one third had parents with no prior college experience.
–A practitioner brief and a policy brief are available at: http://www.concurrentcourses.org/publications.html.

–Read the technical report at: http://www.postsecondaryresearch.org/index.html?Id=News&Info=New+NCPR+Working+Paper+on+Outcomes+for+Dual+Enrollment+Students.

As with anything there are pros and cons for each student regarding whether a dual enrollment program should be part of their school experience.

Studypoint has a great article, Dual Enrollment Programs: The Pros and Cons:

There are a number of benefits to dual-enrollment programs. Earning college credit while still in high school sounds like a dream for many students. In addition, these programs introduce students to the rigors of college coursework early, and recent studies have shown that students who participate in dual-enrollment programs are more likely go on to get a college degree. But is dual enrollment right for your child?

Why Should My Child Consider a Dual-Enrollment Program?

  • Dual enrollment gives students an idea of what full-time college coursework will be like, says ecampustours.com. By trying out a few classes while still in high school, your child can get used to the academic environment before he or she leaves the comfort and support of home.
  • Your child may be able to take classes that aren’t offered at his or her high school.
  • College courses can give your student a closer look at his or her area of academic interest. If your child is currently loving AP history, a college course next year on the Civil War or the Great Depression will help him or her explore that period in greater depth and precision.
  • According to collegeboard.com, most students change their majors at least once. Taking a college class as a high school senior can help your child find his or her area of interest before the pressure is on to declare a major.
  • If your student didn’t qualify to take AP courses, or if those courses weren’t available at your child’s high school, taking a college-level class will help him or her demonstrate the ability to handle more difficult coursework, according to ecampustours.com. This ability is something every college admissions officer wants to see.
  • Due to the large number of online and virtual classes offered by many schools, dual-enrollment courses may be conducted right at your child’s high school, says ecampustours.com. Ask your student’s guidance counselor about dual-enrollment options in your area.
  • Perhaps the biggest benefit of dual enrollment is that your student may start accumulating college credits, helping him or her graduate on time or even early.

Dual Enrollment Sounds Great! Is There Any Reason My Child Shouldn’t Participate?

  • If a course is already available at your child’s school, it might be best to take it there. Colleges may wonder why a student has chosen to take an intro class at a community college if there’s an AP class in the same subject available at the high school level. (High school AP classes may well prove more challenging than an intro-level college course.) If the college course won’t give your student something above and beyond what’s available at his or her high school, take a pass.
  • If a college class will interfere with your child’s regular coursework or extracurriculars, it may not be a good idea. A college course should enhance a student’s resume, but not at the expense of other resume-enhancing activities. When considering scheduling, be sure to take into account not just the normal class schedule but breaks as well, cautions Nevada’s Great Basin College; your local high school and community college may not operate on the same academic calendar. A different holiday schedule could cause conflicts with class trips, family vacations, or out-of-town athletic commitments.
  • A college course in music appreciation is a great resume booster—as long as your child plans to go into music. If he or she is planning a career in chemistry, the music class won’t help, and could raise questions about the academic rigor of your child’s senior year courses. Carefully consider the academic value of any class your child is considering.
  • Dual-enrollment courses are real college courses for real college credit; the grades will go on your student’s permanent record. Before enrolling, make sure your student is ready for the demanding work a college class will require, or it could hurt his or her chances at college acceptance down the line, recommends Florida’s Valencia Community College. Furthermore, if a student fails a dual-enrollment course, it could mean he or she won’t graduate high school on time.
  • If your child is considering a dual-enrollment program for the purpose of earning college credits, be sure of the value of the credits. For each college where your child may apply next year, check to see how many credits (if any) a dual-enrollment class would earn your child. The credit policy will depend on the school.

Where Should We Start?

  • Rules for dual-enrollment eligibility vary from state to state, so students should check with their high school guidance counselors to find out if they qualify, says ecampustours.com. Usually, students must be at least 16 years old and have a GPA of at least 2.5; they may also have to take placement tests. Students will also need permission from parents/guardians and a guidance counselor or principal.
  • Your child’s guidance counselor will also be able to provide information about financial obligations. Many states pay for dual enrollment; in other states, students must pay. http://www.studypoint.com/ed/dual-enrollment/

In The GED as a door to the future, moi said:

This world is in a period of dislocation and upheaval as great as the period of dislocation which ushered in the “industrial revolution.” The phrase “new, new thing” comes from a book by Michael Lewis about innovation in Silicon Valley. This historical period is between “new, new things” as the economy hopes that some new innovator will harness “green technology” and make it commercially viable as the economy needs the jump that only a “new, new thing” will give it. Peter S. Goodman has a fascinating article in the New York Times, Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs

Unless, children are given a meaningful education which provides them with basic skills to adapt to a changing environment, the education system is producing a permanent underclass which will not be able to participate in the next “new, new thing. https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/the-ged-as-a-door-to-the-future/

Resources:

Dual enrollment may not benefit every student http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/30867913/ns/today-parenting_and_family/t/dual-enrollment-may-not-benefit-every-student/#.UAw88JFDS1R

Do high school dual-enrollment/AP classes push kids too far ahead in college? http://blogs.ajc.com/momania/2012/05/17/do-high-school-dual-enrollmentap-classes-push-kids-too-far-ahead-in-college/

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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