Tag Archives: research

Poor people and school choice: The Cristo Rey work/school model

Jay Mathews reports in the Washington Post article, Private schools funded through student jobs which is about the Cristo Rey work/school model:

Twelve years ago, I stumbled across a story that seemed too good to be true. A Catholic high school in Chicago ensured its financial survival by having students help pay their tuition by working one day a week in clerical jobs at downtown offices.

This was a new idea in U.S. secondary education. New ideas are not necessarily a good thing, because they often fail. But the creator of Cristo Rey Jesuit High School was an educational missionary named John P. Foley who had spent much of his life helping poor people in Latin America. I was not going to dump on an idea from a man like that without seeing how it worked out.

Now I know. The Cristo Rey network has grown to 25 schools in 17 states, including a campus in Takoma Park, where more than half the students are from Prince George’s County and more than a third are from the District. It is blossoming in a way no other school, public or private, has done in this region.

Foley started the original school in 1996 in the Pilsen/Little Village section of southwest Chicago, a heavily Hispanic area. To some, it seemed to be a foolish venture. Catholic schools were dying in the nation’s urban neighborhoods. There was no way to pay for them.

But Richard Murray, a management consultant Foley knew, had an inspiration. What if Foley divided the student body into teams of four and assigned each team to an office job in the city? Each student would work one day a week. Their combined salaries could guarantee the school’s future.

More than 90 percent of the students at the original Cristo Rey school were from low-income families. Few had been subjected to the pressures of big-city offices. But they received proper training for their clerical assignments. As the experiment proceeded, they realized the writing, reading and math skills they were learning in school were relevant to their new jobs — and their work experience would help them find jobs to pay their way through college….

One of the Chicago students answered: “Maybe I don’t see any money, but I get an education.”

A network of new schools began to grow, including Takoma Park’s Don Bosco Cristo Rey High School, which opened in 2007 as the first Archdiocese of Washington high school in more than 55 years. Today, it has 325 students who “work one full day per week at law firms, banks, hospitals, universities and other professional corporate partners and are in the classroom the other four days,” spokeswoman Alicia Bondanella said.

More than 100 companies and organizations — including Ernst & Young, Georgetown University Hospital and Miller & Long Concrete Construction — employ Don Bosco students. Each student makes $7,500 a year, which is applied to the school’s $13,500 tuition. The remainder of the cost is covered by fundraising and the student’s family.

Bondanella said that 93 percent of students received outstanding or good ratings in their mid-year evaluations at their workplaces. Their attendance rate at work was 99 percent. Every one of the school’s 2011 and 2012 graduates were accepted into two- or four-year colleges. Eighty-two percent of the 2011 graduates, the first at Don Bosco to complete the four-year program, enrolled for a second year of college, twice the rate for students of similar backgrounds….

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/class-struggle/post/private-schools-funded-through-student-jobs/2013/01/16/a9550e34-604d-11e2-b05a-605528f6b712_blog.html

The Cristo Rey network has information about the model at their site. http://www.cristoreynetwork.org/

Here is what Cristo Rey says about their schools:

The Cristo Rey Network provides a quality, Catholic, college preparatory education to young people who live in urban communities with limited educational options. Our mission is clear – college success for Cristo Rey Network students.

Member schools utilize a rigorous academic model, supported with effective instruction, to prepare students with a broad range of academic abilities for college. Cristo Rey Network schools employ an innovative Corporate Work Study Program that provides students with real world work experiences. Every student works five full days a month to fund the majority of his or her education, gain job experience, grow in self-confidence, and realize the relevance of his or her education. Students work at law firms, banks, hospitals, universities, and other professional Corporate Partners.

The Cristo Rey Network supports school success through the following programs:

Teach, Lead, Learn

Developed a standards-based, rigorous college-ready curriculum

Focuses on professional development of school principals and teachers, emphasizing teacher effectiveness training

Provides data-driven decision-making to maximize student learning

Connects students’ classroom learning to their workplace learning

Mission Effectiveness

Optimizes the effectiveness of the schools’ Corporate Work Study Programs

Supports member schools with particular finance, job or enrollment strategies

Works with community groups in targeted cities to create more Cristo Rey Network schools

College Initiatives

Monitors the progress of Cristo Rey graduates while they are in college

Works with colleges and universities that are committed to supporting Cristo Rey students to ensure postsecondary access and success for our alumni

Professional Development

Grows current and future leaders at the schools and promotes ongoing spiritual formation, the sharing of best practices, as well as finance, strategic planning, and governance issues

Advocacy on National Education Reform

Cristo Rey leaders serve as a national voice and leader in the movement of education reform through meetings with elected officials, letters to the media, and prominent speaking opportunities. http://www.cristoreynetwork.org/page.cfm?p=356

School choice is just as important for poor students as it for their more privileged peers.

Joseph P. Viteritti writes in the 1996 Brookings article, Stacking the Deck for the Poor: The New Politics of School Choice:

A new model of school choice has begun to emerge in state legislatures and in Congress. One might call it the “equal opportunity model.” Its goal is to give children who could not otherwise afford it the chance to attend a high-quality private or parochial school. The first such plans were enacted in Wisconsin and Ohio, but others have received serious consideration elsewhere. All provide public assistance to students on the basis of economic need. There is no skimming here, for the target population is students who are most underserved by public education, the lowest achievers. Nor do these initiatives portend an end to public education, for only a small portion of the population can meet the means-tested criteria for eligibility.

The Problem: Separate and Unequal

Defenders of the present government monopoly can conjure up whatever images they may of a future shaped by greater choice in education. But the system they propose in its stead offers little hope for many children who come from minority and poor families. Notwithstanding the promise enunciated by the Supreme Court in the Brown decision 42 years ago, the condition of public education in the United States still can aptly be described in two words: separate and unequal. David Armor gives an account in his recent book, Forced Justice: despite the best efforts of civil rights advocates and the federal courts over the past four decades, most black children today attend de facto racially segregated public schools, the condition improving minimally since 1968. Moreover, a substantial body of empirical research and a flood of litigation in the state courts (in nearly two-thirds of the states) shows wide disparities in per-pupil spending between poor and middle-class districts. No resolution to either situation appears in sight. Public schooling, for all its virtues, just hasn’t been very kind to some children. The same system that helped assimilate generations of European immigrants is not working very well today for the most disadvantaged members of society.

Yes, there has been some notable progress in American education. De jure segregation has been all but eliminated. Ambitious compensatory programs have been spun out of Washington and the state capitals. After a precipitous 15-year decline in national test scores that began in 1964, student achievement is beginning to show signs of gradual improvement. But these victories tell only part of the story. Our system of public education betrays a persistent gap in student performance defined by race. In 1995, black students trailed white students on SAT verbal scores by 92 points. The disparity in mathematics was 110 points. The data on Hispanic students is only slightly less discouraging. If we are serious about education reform in America, then the first order of business is to meet the needs of those students whom the existing system has failed the most. We must move aggressively to close the learning gap between the haves and the have-nots. http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/1996/06/summer-education-viteritti

Most parents want a quality education for their child.

Moi wrote in School choice: Given a choice, parents vote with their feet:

Most parents want the best for their children and will make many sacrifices to give their children a good life. In the movie Waiting for Superman, a remarkable group of parents was trying to overcome the odds stacked against their children in failing public schools. David Miller Sadker, PhD, Karen R. Zittleman, PhD in Teachers, Schools, and Society list the characteristics of a strong school. Strong schools must be found in all areas. At present, that is not true. It is particularly important where student populations face challenges. Strong principals, effective teachers and parental involvement are key to strong schools. Charmaine Loever describes What Makes A Principal Effective? It really doesn’t matter the income level or the color of the parent, most want the best for their child.

Perhaps, the best testimonial about this school comes from an editorial which describes the emotions of one parent. The NY Daily News editorial, My Baby Is Learning describes a protest against charter schools:

Those words were spoken by a mother who had brought her child for the first day of classes at Harlem Success Academy 2 Charter School – and faced loud protesters with her youngster.

The demonstrators were part of a movement that portrays charter schools as an elitist threat to public education. They are not. They are publicly funded schools that admit neighborhood kids by lottery. Their students far outperform children in traditional public schools.

Charters have proliferated in Harlem, and thousands of parents have children on waiting lists – a trend that has driven activists, including state Sen. Bill Perkins, into shamefully charging that charters are creating a separate and “unequal” system.

But parents, the vast majority of them minorities, know better. Like the woman who confronted the protesters, they’re flocking to charters as a way out of failing local schools. And the bottom line for them is crystal-clear: Their babies are learning.

The only way to overcome the great class divide is to give all children a first class education. AP reports in the article, More Students Leaving Failing Schools which was printed in the Seattle Times that given the choice, many parents choose to take their kids out of failing schools. Well, duh.

The next great civil rights struggle will be education equity for low-income and poor children. ALL options for educating children must be on the table. https://drwilda.com/2011/12/15/school-choice-given-a-choice-parents-vote-with-their-feet/

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Tags: Brookings, Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, Cristo Rey work/school model, education, More Students Leaving Failing Schools, My Baby Is Learning, politics, Private schools funded through student jobs, research, Stacking the Deck for the Poor The New Politics of School Choice, Teachers Schools and Society, What Makes A Principal Effective?

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University of Connecticut study: Some children with autism may be ‘cured’ with intense early therapy

19 Jan

In Autism and children of color, moi said:

The number of children with autism appears to be growing. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides statistics on the number of children with autism in the section Data and Statistics:

Prevalence

It is estimated that between 1 in 80 and 1 in 240 with an average of 1 in 110 children in the United States have an ASD. [Read article]

ASDs are reported to occur in all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups, yet are on average 4 to 5 times more likely to occur in boys than in girls. However, we need more information on some less studied populations and regions around the world. [Read article]

Studies in Asia, Europe, and North America have identified individuals with an ASD with an approximate prevalence of 0.6% to over 1%. A recent study in South Korea reported a prevalence of 2.6%. [Data table ]

Approximately 13% of children have a developmental disability, ranging from mild disabilities such as speech and language impairments to serious developmental disabilities, such as intellectual disabilities, cerebral palsy, and autism. [Read article]

Learn more about prevalence of ASDs »

Learn more about the ADDM Project »

Learn more about the MADDSP Project »

On this Page

Prevalence

Risk Factors and Characteristics

Diagnosis

Economic Costs

References

Related Pages

http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html

In order for children with autism to reach their full potential there must be early diagnosis and treatment. https://drwilda.com/2012/03/27/autism-and-children-of-color/

Autism Speaks reports about a University of Connecticut study in the post, Study Confirms “Optimal Outcomes”:

Some children diagnosed with autism in early childhood reach “optimal outcomes” with levels of function similar to their typical peers. The findings appear today in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

“Although the diagnosis of autism is not usually lost over time, the findings suggest that there is a very wide range of possible outcomes,” says Thomas Insel, M.D., director of the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH). “For an individual child, the outcome may be knowable only with time and after some years of intervention.”

This week’s report is the first in a series of autism studies on optimal outcomes, sponsored by the NIMH. They follow up on earlier reports that a small group of children appear to “lose” their autism diagnosis over time. Some experts have questioned the accuracy of these children’s initial diagnoses. Others argued that simply being able to function in a mainstream classroom doesn’t mean that these children don’t quietly struggle with autism-related disabilities. http://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-news/study-confirms-%E2%80%9Coptimal-outcomes%E2%80%9D

Here is the University of Connecticut press release:

Researchers Find Possibility of Change in Children Previously Diagnosed with Autism

January 17, 2013

By: Sheila Foran

UConn psychology professor Deborah Fein is the lead author of an article just published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry which indicates that some children who are accurately diagnosed with autism in early childhood may lose the symptoms as they grow older.

The article, “Optimal Outcome in Individuals with a History of Autism,” appears in the February 2013 issue of the publication. Co-authors include Professor Marianne Barton, director of clinical training and director of the Psychological Services Clinic in UConn’s Department of Psychology.

Autism Spectrum Disorder and autism are both general terms for a group of complex disorders of brain development. These disorders are characterized, in varying degrees, by difficulties in social interaction and verbal and nonverbal communication, and repetitive behaviors. Statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identify around 1 in 88 American children as being on the autism spectrum.

Fein, UConn Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Psychology, has been a leader in autism research since she first worked with children with the disability in the early 1970s. She says the findings in the current study are important, but like much research, raise other questions that are as yet unanswered.

“We want to find out what percentage of children are capable of a favorable outcome, what type of behavioral intervention is necessary, what is it in a child’s brain that allows change to take place,” she says. “One thing we do know is that in virtually every case of a child who loses the symptoms of this disorder, the outcome is due to years of unwavering dedication and hard work by parents, teachers, and the children themselves.”

Study methodology

The study, supported by the National Institutes of Health, consisted of carefully documenting a prior diagnosis of autism in a small group of school-age children and young adults with no current symptoms of the disorder who were functioning on a par with their mainstream peers. These 34 children were considered the Optimal Outcome group. This group was then compared with two other cohorts consisting of 44 children with high-functioning autism and 34 children with typical development.

This report is the first in a series that will probe more deeply into the nature of the change in the status of the Optimal Outcome children. Having at one time been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, these young people now appear equal to typically developing peers. The study team is continuing to analyze data on changes in brain function in these children, and attempting to determine whether they have subtle residual social deficits.

Also under review is the type of interventions these children received, and to what extent that intervention is predictive of a successful transition.

“Although the diagnosis of autism is not usually lost over time, the findings suggest that there is a very wide range of possible outcomes,” says Dr. Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health. “For an individual child, the outcome may be knowable only with time and after some years of intervention. Subsequent reports from this study should tell us more about the nature of autism, and the role of therapy and other factors in the long-term outcomes for these children.”

Prior studies have examined the possibility of a loss of diagnosis, but questions remained regarding the accuracy of the initial diagnosis and whether children who ultimately appeared similar to their mainstream peers initially had a relatively mild form of autism.

In Fein’s study, early diagnostic reports by clinicians with expertise in autism diagnosis were reviewed by the investigators. As a second step to ensure accuracy, a diagnostic expert without knowledge of the child’s current status reviewed reports in which the earlier diagnosis had been deleted.

The results suggested that children in the Optimal Outcome group had milder social deficits than the high functioning autism group in early childhood, but had other symptoms, related to communication and repetitive behavior, that were as severe as the latter group.

In addition, to be included in the Optimal Outcome group, children had to be in regular education classrooms with no special education services aimed at autism, and not show any signs of problems with language, face recognition, communication, and social interaction.

Ongoing research

While the current study cannot provide information on what percentage of children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder might eventually lose the symptoms, investigators have collected a variety of information on the children, including structural and functional brain imaging data, psychiatric outcomes, and information on the therapies the children received.

Analysis of that data, which will be reported in subsequent papers, may shed light on questions such as whether the changes in diagnosis resulted from a normalizing of brain function, or if these children’s brains were able to compensate for autism-related difficulties.

According to Fein, “All children with Autism Spectrum Disorder are capable of making progress with intensive therapy, but with our current state of knowledge, most do not achieve the kind of optimal outcome that we are studying. Our hope is that further research will help us better understand the mechanisms of change so that each child can have the best possible life.”

Citation:

Optimal outcome in individuals with a history of autism

Deborah Fein^1,6,

Marianne Barton¹,

Inge-Marie Eigsti¹,

Elizabeth Kelley²,

Letitia Naigles¹,

Robert T. Schultz³,

Michael Stevens⁴,

Molly Helt¹,

Alyssa Orinstein¹,

Michael Rosenthal⁵,

Eva Troyb¹,

Katherine Tyson¹

Article first published online: 16 JAN 2013

DOI: 10.1111/jcpp.12037

© 2013 The Authors. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry © 2013 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry

Volume 54, Issue 2, pages 195–205, February 2013

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcpp.12037/full

Get PDF (169K)

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The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has an autism fact sheet

A diagnosis of autism can be heartbreaking for families and many cling to any shred of hope that there might be a treatment or a cure. Families have to be careful about the treatments and therapies they seek for their children.

Autism and children of color https://drwilda.com/tag/autism-not-diagnosed-as-early-in-minority-children/

Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine study: Kids with autism more likely to be bullied https://drwilda.com/2012/09/06/archives-of-pediatrics-and-adolescent-medicine-study-kids-with-autism-more-likely-to-be-bullied/

Chelation treatment for autism might be harmful https://drwilda.com/2012/12/02/chelation-treatment-for-autism-might-be-harmful/

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Tags: Autism, Autism Speaks, autism spectrum disorder, connecticut study, diagnosis of autism, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry., Optimal Outcome in Individuals with a History of Autism, research, science, speech and language impairments, Study Confirms “Optimal Outcomes”, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

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University of Iowa study: Variation in words may help early learners read better

16 Jan

Moi discussed the importance of reading in Reading is a key component of learning:

The goal of parents, teachers, students, and society should be that all children succeed in obtaining a good basic education. In order to achieve this goal, children must come to school ready to learn. See, Illiteracy in America https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/illiteracy-in-america/

The University of Michigan Health Center explains why reading is important in the article, Reading, Literacy and Your Child:

What is literacy?

Literacymeans being able to read and write.

Why is reading important?

A child’s reading skills are important to their success in school and work. In addition, reading can be a fun and imaginative activity for children, which opens doors to all kinds of new worlds for them. Reading and writing are important ways we use language to communicate.

How do reading and language skills develop?

For an answer to this question, check out the following link:

Language and Literacy Development from birth to three years—this helpful brochure tells you what to expect and how to help.

Research has identified five early reading skills that are all essential. They are [1]:

Phonemic awareness—Being able to hear, identify, and play with individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words.
Phonics—Being able to connect the letters of written language with the sounds of spoken language.
Vocabulary—The words kids need to know to communicate effectively.
Reading comprehension—Being able to understand and get meaning from what has been read.
Fluency (oral reading)—Being able to read text accurately and quickly.

How can we make reading part of our family’s lifestyle?
Parents play a critical role in helping their children develop not only the ability to read, but also an enjoyment of reading.

Turn off the tube. Start by limiting your family’s television viewing time.
Teach by example. If you have books, newspapers and magazines around your house, and your child sees you reading, then your child will learn that you value reading. You can’t over-estimate the value of modeling.
Read together. Reading with your child is a great activity. It not only teaches your child that reading is important to you, but it also offers a chance to talk about the book, and often other issues will come up. Books can really open the lines of communication between parent and child.
Hit the library. Try finding library books about current issues or interests in your family’s or child’s life, and then reading them together. For example, read a book about going to the dentist prior to your child’s next dental exam, or get some books about seashore life after a trip to the coast. If your child is obsessed with dragons, ask your librarian to recommend a good dragon novel for your child.

There are many ways to include reading in your child’s life, starting in babyhood, and continuing through the teen years. Focus on literacy activities that your child enjoys, so that reading is a treat, not a chore. http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/reading.htm

Reading skills are particularly important in academic success because of “Common Core Standards Initiative.” The “Common Core State Standards Initiative” is a state-led effort coordinated by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards/english-language-arts-standards

https://drwilda.com/2012/01/18/reading-is-a-key-component-of-learning/

Dian Schaffhauser reports in The Journal article, Word Variety Helps Early Learners:

Exposure to word variation for early readers may boost their abilities, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Iowa to be published in the January issue of Developmental Psychology. To test out the hypothesis, the researchers used Access Code, an online application from Foundations in Learning that applies the “Varied Practice Model” in helping students with word recognition. With varied practice, tasks are changed so that the student is continually exposed to new things to learn. Access Code attempts to help “struggling” readers improve fluency and comprehension of the material.

Although Access Code is intended for students in grade two and above, in this study, U Iowa doctoral student Keith Apfelbaum and Associate Professors Bob McMurray and Eliot Hazeltine of the Department of Psychology worked with 224 first-grade students in the West Des Moines Community Schools system. Some students learned words organized by traditional phonics instruction, which uses similar word sets to help illustrate the rules, the idea being to simplify the school work for learners. A second group of students used curriculum in Access Code, which pulls together sets of words with variation, appearing to make the lesson more difficult.

After a few days of phonics instruction through Access Code, including spelling and matching letters, all of the students were tested to see if they could read words they’d never seen before, read made-up words, and apply their new skills to work they hadn’t done before. http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/01/15/word-variety-helps-early-learners.aspx?admgarea=News1

Here is the press release from the University of Iowa Magazine:

Rethinking reading

UI study breaks new ground in reading development research

By:

Kelli Andresen | 2012.11.01 | 10:29 AM

A recent University of Iowa study indicates that variation in words may help early readers learn better.

Many educators have long believed that when words differ on only one sound, early readers can learn the rules of phonics by focusing on what is different between the words. This is thought to be a critical gateway to reading words and sentences.

But scientists at the University of Iowa are turning that thinking on its head. A recent study published in Developmental Psychology shows certain kinds of variation in words may help early readers learn better. When children see the same phonics regularities, embedded in words with more variation, they may learn these crucial early reading skills better. What might appear to make learning a more difficult task—learning about letter-sound relationships from words with more variation—actually leads to better learning.

Doctoral student Keith Apfelbaum and associate professors Bob McMurray and Eliot Hazeltine of the Department of Psychology in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) studied 224 first-grade students in the West Des Moines, Iowa school system over a period of three months. The group used a version of an online supplementary curriculum called Access Code.

Access Code was developed by Foundations in Learning, a company founded by Carolyn Brown and Jerry Zimmermann. Brown and Zimmermann earned their doctorates from and are now adjunct faculty in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, also in CLAS. Based on the Varied Practice Model, which helps children master early reading skills like phonics, the research team used Access Code to conduct the study directly in the classroom.

During the study, one group of students learned using lists of words with a small, less variable set of consonants, such as maid, mad, paid, and pad. This is close to traditional phonics instruction, which uses similar words to help illustrate the rules and, presumably, simplify the problem for learners. A second group of students learned using a list of words that was more variable, such as bait, sad, hair, and gap, but which embodied the same rules.

After three or four days of training on phonics skills, partaking in activities such as spelling and matching letters, the students from both groups were tested to see if they could read words that they had never seen before, read novel non-words, and apply their newly-learned skills to tasks they hadn’t done before.

“We were interested in not just whether they could do exactly what we were teaching, but whether they could learn something more robust that would enable them to apply what they had learned to new tasks and new words,” McMurray says. “Critically, we wanted to know if variability or similarity would impact this ability to learn and generalize.”

Results surprised even the research team.

“We were expecting a very subtle effect, maybe similar words would help students learn the words they were trained on but maybe not generalize as well, or maybe similar words would help them learn the more difficult rules but variability might work for the easier ones, but in no case was similarity helpful,” McMurray says. “This suggests a powerful principle of learning. While we’ve known about this in a variety of laboratory tasks for a while, this study shows for the first time that this principle also applies to early reading skills.”

Overall, variation led to much better learning. Students experiencing more variation in words showed better learning when tested on the words and tasks they encountered in training. More importantly, it helped them generalize these new skills to new words, and to new tasks.

“Variability was good for the low-performing students, it was good for the high-performing students. It was good for the boys, it was good for the girls. It was good for the words, it was good for the non-words,” Apfelbaum says. “Among the students who struggled the most, the kids who weren’t exposed to variation didn’t show any learning at all, while the kids who were exposed to variation did.”

Robert Davis, an educator for 36 years and principal of Hillside Elementary, which was one of the schools that participated in the study, says he is eager to work with his teachers on ways to apply varied practice to the classroom.

“If we really look at what happened with the research, there is a multitude of applications that could go forward with this,” Davis says. “We could certainly look at varied practice as a method for learning new vocabulary, as a new method for learning basic math facts, maybe even something involved with music. As educators, we need to figure out how to take that model and apply it to the umbrella of learning for a variety of things that kids struggle with.”

Brown, whose research has focused on child development, language acquisition, and reading for more than three decades, says she looks forward to continued collaboration with the UI research team.

“We hope this collaboration is only the beginning to bringing the science of learning to the art of teaching children to read,” Brown says. “We have missed many children because reading pedagogy has been driven by systems of belief in how reading should be taught rather than by how children learn. The importance of variation in this process will be a surprise to many educators and a help to many children.”

Contacts

Kelli Andresen, University Communication and Marketing, 319-384-0070

Bob McMurray, Psychology, 319-335-2408

John Sims, Foundations in Learning, 214-497-3231

The program used by the researchers comes from Foundations in Learning.

Foundations for Learning describes the Access Code program:

Access Code: Varied Practice Model

Access Code, driven by the Varied Practice Model, is a web-based, supplementary curriculum for struggling readers in Grades 2 and above to acquire/strengthen, apply, and generalize phonics rules for improved fluency and comprehension.

Who can it help?

As many as 15-20% of elementary and middle school students struggle with reading because of poor word recognition skills. These students:

Have difficulty breaking words into syllables

Cannot apply/generalize phonics rules to connected text

Struggle with comprehension

Have a particular challenge with vowels

Have not responded to other intervention programs and need remediation year after year

What are the benefits?

Varied Practice has been shown to increase a learner’s ability to apply/generalize skills and Access Code is the only program that uses this approach.
Access Code helps ensure that students understand how vowels and syllables work in words.
Truly individualized instruction for each student.
Does not require that a teacher discard other approaches and programs. Rather, Access Code can help ensure that students get maximum benefit from those other programs. http://www.foundations-learning.com/accesscode.html

This study shows that there are many things to be learned about how to effectively teach reading skills to those who are struggling.

The slow reading movement https://drwilda.com/2012/01/31/the-slow-reading-movement/

Why libraries in K-12 schools are important https://drwilda.com/2012/12/26/why-libraries-in-k-12-schools-are-important/

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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Tags: Access Code, education, Foundation for Learning, Literacy, Literacy and Your Child, Reading, research, science, Variation in Reading, Varied Practice Model, Word Variety Helps Early Learners

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Research paper: Interpreting international test scores in light of social class differences

15 Jan

Moi wrote about international student rankings in Important Harvard report about U.S. student achievement ranking:

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/

Joy Resmovits reports at Huffington Post that the meaning of international test comparisons do not provide an accurate picture.

In International Test Scores Often Misinterpreted To Detriment Of U.S. Students, Argues New EPI Study, Resmovits reports:

Lawmakers should be more careful when using international test scores to drive education policy, argues a pair of researchers in a new paper for the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute — because the results aren’t always what they appear to be.

According to a new paper released Wednesday, the average scores on international tests — the numbers over which advocates and politicians do much public hand-wringing — don’t tell the whole story of America’s academic performance, and inferences based on those averages can be misleading, Stanford education professor Martin Carnoy and researcher Richard Rothstein argue. They found that contrary to popular belief, international testing information shows that America’s low-income students have been improving over time…

Rothstein found that the U.S. is more unequal in social background, so he wondered whether differences between the average U.S. scores and those of its competitors were driven by that inequality. Rothstein said he was not surprised by his findings, given that the achievement gap between rich and poor U.S. students has always been large. “Higher social class students have higher average scores than lower social class students,” he said. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/15/international-test-scores_n_2479994.html?utm_hp_ref=education

Here is a portion of the executive summary:

What do international tests really show about U.S. student performance?

By Martin Carnoy, Stanford Graduate School of Education and EPI
and Richard Rothstein, EPI

View PDF

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This report, however, shows that such inferences are too glib. Comparative student performance on international tests should be interpreted with much greater care than policymakers typically give it. This care is essential for three reasons:

First, because academic performance differences are produced by home and community as well as school influences, there is an achievement gap between the relative average performance of students from higher and lower social classes in every industrialized nation. Thus, for a valid assessment of how well American schools perform, policymakers should compare the performance of U.S. students with that of students in other countries who have been and are being shaped by approximately similar home and community environments….

We have shown that U.S. student performance, in real terms and relative to other countries, improves considerably when we estimate average U.S. scores after adjusting for U.S. social class composition and for a lack of care in sampling disadvantaged students in particular. With these adjustments, U.S. scores would rank higher among OECD countries than commonly reported in reading—fourth best instead of 14th—and in mathematics—10th best instead of 25th.

Second, to be useful for policy purposes, information about student performance should include how this performance is changing over time. It is not evident what lessons policymakers should draw from a country whose student performance is higher than that in the United States, if that country’s student performance has been declining while U.S student performance has been improving…. performance of all students in such countries obscures the performance of disadvantaged students.

This caution especially pertains to conventional attention to comparisons of the United States and higher-scoring Finland. Although Finland’s average scores, and scores for the most-disadvantaged children, remain substantially higher than comparable scores in the United States, scores in the United States for disadvantaged children have been rising over time, while Finland’s scores for comparable children have been declining. American policymakers should seek to understand these trends before assuming that U.S. education practice should imitate practice in Finland.

As well, U.S. trends for disadvantaged children’s PISA achievement are much more favorable than U.S. trends for advantaged children. In both reading and math, disadvantaged children’s scores have been improving while advantaged student’s scores have been stagnant. U.S. policy discussion assumes that most of problems of the U.S. education system are concentrated in schools serving disadvantaged children. Trends in PISA scores suggest that the opposite may be the case.

Third, different international and domestic tests sometimes seem to show similar trends, but sometimes seem quite inconsistent. These inconsistencies call into question conclusions drawn from any single assessment, and policymakers should attempt to understand the complex causes of these inconsistencies….

In our comparisons of U.S. student performance on the PISA test with student performance in six other countries—three similar post-industrial economies (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) and three countries whose students are “top scoring” (Canada, Finland, and Korea)—we conclude that, in reading:

Higher social class (Group 5) U.S. students now perform as well as comparable social class students in all six comparison countries.

Disadvantaged students perform better (in some cases, substantially better) than disadvantaged students in the three similar post-industrial countries, but substantially less well than disadvantaged students in the three top-scoring countries.

The reading achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students in the United States is smaller than the gap in the three similar post-industrial countries, but larger than the gap in the top-scoring countries….

These comparisons suggest that much of the discussion in the United States that points to international test comparisons to contend that U.S. schools are “failing” should be more nuanced. Although claims about relative U.S. school failure often focus on disadvantaged students’ performance, international data show that U.S. disadvantaged student performance has improved over the past decade in both mathematics and reading compared to similar social class students in all our comparison countries except Germany. TIMSS and NAEP data also show improvement for all social class groups in mathematics during the last decade. Should we consider these improvements a failure, particularly when the scores of disadvantaged students in all comparison countries but Germany have declined in this same period? http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testing/

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.

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

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Tags: american education system, Argues New EPI Study, education, Education Access, Education Disparity, International student comparison, international test scores, International Test Scores Often Misinterpreted To Detriment Of U.S. Students, Low-income students, PISA, politics, research, science, Testing, What do international tests really show about U.S. student performance?

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Dropout prevention: More schools offering daycare for students

14 Jan

Moi wrote about pregnancy and education in Title IX also mandates access to education for pregnant students: In Talking to your teen about risky behaviors, 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. Sharon Jayson writes in the USA Today article, More children born to unmarried parents:

A growing number of firstborns in the USA have unmarried parents, reflecting dramatic increases since 2002 in births to cohabiting women, according to government figures out today.

The percentage of first births to women living with a male partner jumped from 12% in 2002 to 22% in 2006-10 — an 83% increase. The percentage of cohabiting new fathers rose from 18% to 25%. The analysis, by the National Center for Health Statistics, is based on data collected from 2006 to 2010….

The percentage of first births to cohabiting women tripled from 9% in 1985 to 27% for births from 2003 to 2010….http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/wellness/story/2012-04-10/CDC-marriage-cohabitation-children/54186600/1#.T4Z8NWHELEQ.email

This is a demographic disaster for children as devastating as the hurricane “Katrina.”

One way to promote healthier lifestyles for children is to keep their parents in school so that they can complete their education. One overlooked aspect of Title IX is the mandate that pregnant teens have access to education. https://drwilda.com/2012/06/19/title-ix-also-mandates-access-to-education-for-pregnant-students/

Ovetta Wiggins reports in the Washington Post article, High schools offer day-care services for teen parents to prevent dropouts:

For the kids who have kids, such day-care centers offer a chance to stay in school and earn a diploma while getting help with the daily responsibilities of parenthood.

Although the number of teen pregnancies has dropped across the country, proponents of the day-care programs say they hope to prevent teens from leaving school to care for babies, with the added bonus of offering their young kids early childhood development. Critics say the centers promote unprotected sex by teens.

“A lot of people think we are enabling pregnancy,” said Maxine Thompson-Burroughs, who operates the Early Head Start program at Northwestern. “We are not a babysitting service. The mission of the program is to help them graduate from high school.”

The Northwestern program, which is paired with a required teen parenting class, is one of two in Prince George’s and similar to others in about a half-dozen high schools across the Washington region and in high schools in cities such as Detroit; Worcester, Mass.; and Portland, Ore. The District has child-care centers at Ballou and Dunbar high schools, Columbia Heights Educational Campus and Luke Charles Moore Academy….

The teen birthrate reached a historic low at 34.3 births per 1,000 females aged 15 to 19 in 2010, a 9 percent decline from 2009, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Still, school systems across the country continue to try to figure out ways to address the issue.

Nearly one-third of teen girls who have dropped out of high school cite pregnancy or parenthood as a reason, and only 40 percent of teen mothers graduate from high school, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/high-schools-offer-day-care-services-for-teen-parents-to-prevent-dropouts/2013/01/10/091d28de-408b-11e2-ae43-cf491b837f7b_story.html

Moi wrote about the importance of childcare on college campuses in A baby changes everything: Helping parents finish school:

For a good discussion of why child care is important to students, see the journal article, Contemporary Childcare Issues Facing Colleges and Universities by Marybeth Kyle, William J. Campion, William R. Ogden; College Student Journal, Vol. 33, 1999.

In order for low-income people, particularly single mothers to have a shot at escaping poverty, they must get an education, trade, or vocation. For many, affordable child care is the key determinant of whether they can advance. Alexandra Cawthorne in the 2008 report for the Center for American Progress, The Straight Facts on Women in Poverty describes the issues facing women in poverty. The National Coalition for Campus Children’s Centers has statistics about Children on Campus

College must not only be affordable for many student populations, it must be accessible as well. https://drwilda.com/2011/12/26/a-baby-changes-everything-helping-parents-finish-school/

Students, no matter what grade level, often need help with childcare to finish school. See, Studies: Lack of support and early parenthood cause kids to dropout https://drwilda.com/2012/11/19/studies-lack-of-support-and-early-parenthood-cause-kids-to-dropout/

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Tags: Children on Campus, Contemporary Childcare Issues Facing Colleges and Universities, Daycare in Schools, Dropout, Dropout Prevention, education, High schools offer day-care services for teen parents to prevent dropouts, More children born to unmarried parents:, politics, research, Teen Pregnancy, The Straight Facts on Women in Poverty, Title IX and pregnancy

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Big increase expected in the number of homeschoolers

13 Jan

Moi wrote about homeschoolers in Homeschooling is becoming more mainstream:

Parents and others often think of school choice in terms of public school or private school. There is another option and that is homeschooling.Homeschooling is one option in the school choice menu. There are fewer children being homeschooled than there are in private schools. There are fewer children in private education, which includes homeschools than in public education. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the vast majority of students attend public schools. Complete statistics can be found at Fast Education Facts

The question, which will be discussed at the end of this comment, is: What is so scary about school choice? After all, the vast majority of children are enrolled in public school and school choice is not going to change that. https://drwilda.com/2012/05/22/homeschooling-is-becoming-more-mainstream/

Julia Lawrence reported in the Education News article, Number of Homeschoolers Growing Nationwide:

As the dissatisfaction with the U.S. education system among parents grows, so does the appeal of homeschooling. Since 1999, the number of children who are being homeschooled has increased by 75%. Although currently only 4% of all school children nationwide are educated at home, the number of primary school kids whose parents choose to forgo traditional education is growing seven times faster than the number of kids enrolling in K-12 every year.

Any concerns expressed about the quality of education offered to the kids by their parents can surely be put to rest by the consistently high placement of homeschooled kids on standardized assessment exams. Data shows that those who are independently educated typically score between 65th and 89th percentile on such exams, while those attending traditional schools average on the 50th percentile. Furthermore, the achievement gaps, long plaguing school systems around the country, aren’t present in homeschooling environment. There’s no difference in achievement between sexes, income levels or race/ethnicity….

College recruiters from the best schools in the United States aren’t slow to recognize homeschoolers’ achievements. Those from non-traditional education environments matriculate in colleges and attain a four-year degree at much higher rates than their counterparts from public and even private schools. Homeschoolers are actively recruited by schools like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Stanford University and Duke.

Nor do homeschoolers miss out on the so-called socialization opportunities, something considered a vital part of a traditional school environment and lacking in those who don’t attend regular schools. On the contrary, those educated at home by their parents tend to be more socially engaged than their peers, and according to the National Home Education Research Institute survey, demonstrate “healthy social, psychological, and emotional development, and success into adulthood.” http://www.educationnews.org/parenting/number-of-homeschoolers-growing-nationwide/ [Emphasis Added]

Note: “there’s no difference in achievement between sexes, income levels or race/ethnicity….”

Moi theorizes that the parental involvement may account for the difference.

School Choice is Good for the Education Process

Homeschooling is not a conspiracy, it is simply a choice. There is a difference between “education” and “schooling.” “Schooling” is defined as:

· the act of teaching at school

· school: the process of being formally educated at a school; “what will you do when you finish school?”

· the training of an animal (especially the training of a horse for dressage)
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

“Education” is a much broader concept. It is the process of continually being curious. Eric Hoffer aptly distinguishes the difference between “schooling” and “education.”

The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.

Many of our children are “unschooled” and a far greater number are “uneducated.” One can be “unschooled” or “uneducated” no matter the setting. As a society, we should be focused on making sure that each child receives a good basic education. There are many ways to reach that goal. There is nothing scary about the fact that some parents make the choice to homeschool. The focus should not be on the particular setting or institution type. The focus should be on proper assessment of each child to ensure that child is receiving a good basic education and the foundation for later success in life.

New book: Homeschooling, the little option that could https://drwilda.com/2012/10/12/new-book-homeschooling-the-little-option-that-could/

Homeschooled kids make the grade for college https://drwilda.com/2012/07/02/homeschooled-kids-make-the-grade-for-college/

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Tags: education, Education News, Homeschoolers, Hommeschooling, julia lawrence, National Center for Education Statistics, Number of Homeschoolers Growing Nationwide, politics, research, School Choice, science

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GAO report: Children’s mental health services are lacking

12 Jan

Moi wrote about troubled children in Schools have to deal with depressed and troubled children:

Both the culture and the economy are experiencing turmoil. For some communities, the unsettled environment is a new phenomenon, for other communities, children have been stressed for generations. According to the article, Understanding Depression which was posted at the Kids Health site:

Depression is the most common mental health problem in the United States. Each year it affects 17 million people of all age groups, races, and economic backgrounds.

As many as 1 in every 33 children may have depression; in teens, that number may be as high as 1 in 8. http://kidshealth.org/parent/emotions/feelings/understanding_depression.html

Schools are developing strategies to deal with troubled kids….

One strategy in helping children to succeed is to recognize and treat depression.

How Common Is Depression In Children?

According to Mary H. Sarafolean, PhD in the article, Depression In School Age Children and Adolescents

In general, depression affects a person’s physical, cognitive, emotional/affective, and motivational well-being, no matter their age. For example, a child with depression between the ages of 6 and 12 may exhibit fatigue, difficulty with schoolwork, apathy and/or a lack of motivation. An adolescent or teen may be oversleeping, socially isolated, acting out in self-destructive ways and/or have a sense of hopelessness.

Prevalence and Risk Factors

While only 2 percent of pre-teen school-age children and 3-5 percent of teenagers have clinical depression, it is the most common diagnosis of children in a clinical setting (40-50 percent of diagnoses). The lifetime risk of depression in females is 10-25 percent and in males, 5-12 percent. Children and teens who are considered at high risk for depression disorders include:

* children referred to a mental health provider for school problems
* children with medical problems
* gay and lesbian adolescents
* rural vs. urban adolescents
* incarcerated adolescents
* pregnant adolescents
* children with a family history of depression

If you or your child has one or more of the risk factors and your child is exhibiting symptoms of prolonged sadness, it might be wise to have your child evaluated for depression.

How to Recognize Depression In Your Child?

MedNet has an excellent article about Depression In Children and how to recognize signs of depression in your child.

Signs and symptoms of depression in children include:

* Irritability or anger
* Continuous feelings of sadness, hopelessness
* Social withdrawal
* Increased sensitivity to rejection
* Changes in appetite — either increased or decreased
* Changes in sleep — sleeplessness or excessive sleep
* Vocal outbursts or crying
* Difficulty concentrating
* Fatigue and low energy
* Physical complaints (such as stomachaches, headaches) that do not respond to
treatment
* Reduced ability to function during events and activities at home or with friends, in school, extracurricular activities, and in other hobbies or interests

* Feelings of worthlessness or guilt
* Impaired thinking or concentration
* Thoughts of death or suicide

Not all children have all of these symptoms. In fact, most will display different symptoms at different times and in different settings. Although some children may continue to function reasonably well in structured environments, most kids with significant depression will suffer a noticeable change in social activities, loss of interest in school and poor academic performance, or a change in appearance. Children may also begin using drugs or alcohol,
especially if they are over the age of 12.

The best defense for parents is a good awareness of what is going on with their child. As a parent you need to know what is going on in your child’s world. https://drwilda.com/2011/11/15/schools-have-to-deal-with-depressed-and-troubled-children/

Joy Resmovits reported in the article, Mental Health Care For Kids Severely Lacking, Says GAO which was posted at Huffington Post:

“Most children whose emotions or behavior, as reported by their parent or guardian, indicated a potential need for a mental health service did not receive any services within the same year,” the GAO wrote.

The report comes after Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), and Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (Calif.) requested that the GAO look into how psychotropic drugs affect the long-term development of kids who grow up in foster care. While the report is very specific in its scope, it’s sure to be a relevant piece of evidence as the Obama administration formulates policy to deal with the ramifications of the Newtown, Conn. elementary school shooting. The shooting has sparked a nationwide debate on gun control, but it has also directed America’s attention to the state of its mental health care system.

Here are some findings:

On average, 6.2 percent of noninstitutionalized children in Medicaid and 4.8 percent of privately insured kids received psychotropic medications.
30 percent of foster children who might have required mental health care didn’t receive them over the last year.
Most kids outside the foster care system whose behavior displayed red flags didn’t receive mental care services.
Many kids who got psychotropic medication didn’t get counseling or therapy to complete the care.
While the National Institutes of Health spent1.2 billion on children’s mental health care research between 2008 and 2011, most of the funding focused on research studying therapy, rather than the effects of such medication. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joy-resmovits/mental-health-care-for-ki_b_2449205.html?utm_hp_ref=education

Here is the GAO press release:

What GAO Found

An annual average of 6.2 percent of noninstitutionalized children in Medicaid nationwide and 4.8 percent of privately insured children took one or more psychotropic medications, according to GAO’s analysis of 2007-2009 data from the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS). MEPS data also showed that children in Medicaid took antipsychotic medications (a type of psychotropic medication that can help some children but has a risk of serious side effects) at a relatively low rate–1.3 percent of children–but that the rate for children in Medicaid was over twice the rate for privately insured children, which was 0.5 percent. In addition, MEPS data showed that most children whose emotions or behavior, as reported by their parent or guardian, indicated a potential need for a mental health service did not receive any services within the same year. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and many states have initiatives under way to help ensure that children receive appropriate mental health treatments. However, CMS’s ability to monitor children’s receipt of mental health services is limited because CMS does not collect information from states on whether children in Medicaid have received services for which they were referred. GAO recommended in 2011 that CMS identify options for collecting such data from state Medicaid programs. Findings in this report underscore the continued importance of CMS’s monitoring of children’s receipt of mental health services.

HHS’s Administration for Children and Families (ACF) reported that 18 percent of foster children were taking psychotropic medications at the time they were surveyed, although utilization varied widely by the child’s living arrangement. ACF also reported that 30 percent of foster children who may have needed mental health services did not receive them in the previous 12 months. HHS agencies are taking steps to promote appropriate mental health treatments for foster children, such as by sending information to states on psychotropic medication oversight practices.

HHS’s National Institutes of Health spent an estimated $1.2 billion on over 1,200 children’s mental health research projects during fiscal years 2008 through 2011. Most of the funding–$956 million–was awarded by the National Institute of Mental Health, with more research projects studying psychosocial therapies than psychotropic medications. Other HHS agencies spent about $16 million combined on children’s mental health research during this period.

HHS reviewed a draft of this report and provided technical comments, which GAO incorporated as appropriate.

Why GAO Did This Study

Experts have concerns that children with mental health conditions do not always receive appropriate treatment, including concerns about appropriate use of psychotropic medications (which affect mood, thought, or behavior) and about access to psychosocial therapies (sessions with a mental health provider). These concerns may be compounded for low-income children in Medicaid and children in foster care (most of whom are covered by Medicaid)–populations who may be at higher risk of mental health conditions. Within HHS, CMS oversees Medicaid, and ACF supports state child welfare agencies that coordinate health care for foster children.

GAO was asked to provide information on children’s mental health. This report examines (1) the use of psychotropic medications and other mental health services for children in Medicaid nationwide, and related CMS initiatives; (2) HHS information on the use of psychotropic medications and other mental health services for children in foster care nationwide, and related HHS initiatives; and (3) the amount HHS has invested in research on children’s mental health.

GAO analyzed data from HHS’s MEPS –a national household survey on use of medical services–from 2007 through 2009 for children covered by Medicaid and private insurance. GAO reviewed two recent ACF foster care reports with data from a national survey conducted during 2008 through 2011. GAO analyzed data from HHS agencies that conduct or fund research and interviewed HHS officials and children’s mental health providers, researchers, and advocates.

For more information, contact Katherine Iritani at (202) 512-7114 or iritanik@gao.gov.

Concerns Remain about Appropriate Services for Children in Medicaid and Foster Care GAO-13-15, Dec 10, 2012

Highlights

View Report (PDF, 60 pages)

If you or your child needs help for depression or another illness, then go to a reputable medical provider. There is nothing wrong with taking the steps necessary to get well.

Resources:

Counselors, School Support Staff Toil Amid Scant Resources http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/01/10/16staffing.h32.html?tkn=VPLFw6EYbOz23lTzoeSKlVNGV4SNwasebCry&cmp=clp-edweek&intc=EW-QC13-EWH

About.Com’s Depression In Young Children

Psych Central’s Depression In Young Children
Psychiatric News’ Study Helps Pinpoint Children With Depression
Family Doctor’s What Is Depression?
WebMD’s Depression In Children
Healthline’s Is Your Child Depressed?
Medicine.Net’s Depression In Children

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Tags: Children's Mental Health, current-events, Depression, Depression in Children, Depression In School Age Children and Adolescents, GAO, General Accounting Office, health, Kids Health, medicine, MedNet, Mental Health, Mental Health Care For Kids Severely Lacking Says GAO, research, science, Understanding Depression

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Verifying online education identity: By your keystroke, we will know you

10 Jan

Moi wrote about verifying identity for online courses in Verifying identity for online courses:

Cheating is increasingly a concern in education. Some colleges in an attempt to curb academic dishonesty on campus are beginning to employ methods one has usually associated with Las Vegas casinos. Minnesota State University Mankato has an excellent newsletter article about academic dishonesty. Richard C. Schimming writes in Academic Dishonesty

A recent survey found that 1/3 of all students admitted to cheating on an examination, 1/2 admitted to cheating on a class assignment, 2/3 admitted to cheating at least once during their college career, and 2/3 have seen classmates cheat on exams or assignments. Paradoxically, 3/4 of those in that survey believe that cheating is not justified under any circumstances. Finally, 1/2 of the students surveyed believe that the faculty of their university do not try to catch cheaters…

There are strategies online education institutions can use to reduce cheating.

Distance Education.Org has a great article by Jennifer Williamson, Does Your Instructor Know It’s You? Issues in Verifying Online Student Identities:

While a recent study by Friends University shows that online students don’t cheat more than traditional students on the whole—and actually might cheat less—that doesn’t mean that online education isn’t vulnerable to cheating. And one major issue in preventing academic fraud in an online environment is demonstrated in the Florida case: the problem of student identity verification. How does your professor know it’s you taking that exam?

Here are a few ways online schools and instructors have been working to make sure they know the identity of students taking exams.

Proctoring

One of the most straightforward ways is insisting all important exams be proctored. This means you have to physically go to the school and take your exam in a room monitored by a proctor. Some schools may be able to arrange for you to take an exam in a remote location near your home, but even if this is possible for your school, this method does defeat the purpose of distance education to an extent—you have to leave the house or your workplace and travel to a test location, which could be problematic. It’s not ideal, but it is an easy way for professors to be sure it’s you taking the test.

Blackboard Acxiom

Many online degree programs use Blackboard to administer classes. Blackboard recently adopted an identity verification process powered by Acxiom, a risk mitigation company. With this software, you’ll have to enter the answers to verification questions, presumably set by you when you sign up for class, that only you can answer. The school using the software controls when students have to authenticate their identity. Of course, this isn’t a perfect solution as students could always simply tell their stand-ins the answers to their proprietary questions.

Certified IP locations

Under this system, also administered by Blackboard, teachers can specify the IP address where the student will take the test. This may allow you to take your test at your home computer, but teachers may also choose a computer for you to test on and then require you to come to campus to take the test in a proctored environment.

Remote proctor systems

There are a few remote proctoring systems, some of which are still being tested. One is the Securexam Remote Proctor System. It’s a small unit that plugs into the student’s USB port, with a fingerprint pad for identification—professors can choose how often during the test students are required to use it to identify themselves. It also includes a 365-degree camera that will alert the professor to anything strange happening in the room—like someone else walking in or speaking during the test. Professors don’t have to watch live; they can watch a recorded version of the test after it’s been taken. The device is purchased by students, and costs somewhere between $100 and $200 in most cases.

Remote proctoring systems may be the best way to assure student identity while keeping the benefits of online education intact; but still, the system isn’t perfect and some students find the costs hard to bear. Online student identification will need to evolve as online education has, to become easy, cost-effective for students and schools, and flexible. With time, hopefully online schools will have a more effective and cost-efficient way to verify online student identity and prevent academic fraud. http://www.distance-education.org/Articles/Does-Your-Instructor-Know-It-s-You–Issues-in-Verifying-Online-Student-Identities–234.html#.T4pas5U6vq0.email

ABC News has a good report, A Cheating Crisis In America’s Schools

https://drwilda.com/2012/04/15/verifying-identity-for-online-courses/

Jeffrey R. Young writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education article, Coursera Announces Details for Selling Certificates and Verifying Identities:

How is a major provider of free online courses going to tell whether you are who you say you are? By how you type.

The company, Coursera, plans to announce on Wednesday the start of a pilot project to check the identities of its students and offer “verified certificates” of completion, for a fee. A key part of that validation process will involve what Coursera officials call “keystroke biometrics”—analyzing each user’s pattern and rhythm of typing to serve as a kind of fingerprint.

The company has long said that it planned to bring in revenue by charging a fee to students who complete courses and want to prove that achievement. And Coursera has long recognized that its biggest challenge would be setting up a system to check identity. Other providers of free online courses, which are often called massive open online courses, or MOOCs, have decided to work with testing centers and to require students who want certificates to travel to a physical location, show an ID, and take tests while a proctor watches to prevent cheating.

What You Need to Know About MOOCs: A guide to The Chronicle’s coverage of massive open online courses.Coursera has decided to try to check IDs remotely, so that students can take tests from anywhere. During the pilot stage, the service will be offered in only five courses, but if it goes well, it will eventually be rolled out to nearly every course in Coursera’s catalog.

The company’s verification system involves several steps:

Early in the course, Coursera will ask participating students to hold up a picture ID in front of a Webcam, and then pose for a second picture of themselves, for an initial identity check. A human being will compare the two Webcam images to see if they match, essentially serving as a virtual bouncer.

Each student will then be asked to type a short phrase to register his or her keyboarding pattern with Coursera.

Each time students submit assignments, they must type the same short phrase for the system to check whether it matches their initial sample.

Can typing style serve as a reliable way to check identity?

Hany Farid, a computer-science professor at Dartmouth College who is an expert on digital forensics, said that the idea had been around for a while but that it is generally less secure than a fingerprint scan or other biometric methods.

“In general, identifying people online is incredibly hard to do,” he said. “It could be that for what Coursera wants, it’s good enough. It could be that it’s just a barrier to entry and that it sort of freaks out some people” who might have otherwise tried to game the system, he added.

One potential problem with relying on typing patterns is that some people might type in different ways in different situations. “You don’t want this thing locking you out because you’re in a bad mood,” he said.

Coursera said it was testing two different software programs to do its identity verification—one from an outside company and one that it had developed itself. Coursera officials would not disclose which outside company they were working with. http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/coursera-announces-details-for-selling-certificates-and-verifying-identities/41519?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Coursera is proposing to use “keystroke dynamics.”

Biometrics Solutions.com has a concise description of “keystroke dynamics” at their site:

How it works

With keystroke dynamics the biometric template used to identify an individual is based on the typing pattern, the rhythm and the speed of typing on a keyboard. The raw measurements used for keystroke dynamics are dwell time and flight time.

Dwell time is the time duration that a key is pressed

Flight time is the time duration in between releasing a key and pressing the next key

When typing a series of characters, the time the subject needs to find the right key (flight time) and the time he holds down a key (dwell time) is specific to that subject, and can be calculated in such a way that it is independent of overall typing speed. The rhythm with which some sequences of characters are typed can be very person dependent. For example someone used to typing in english will be quicker at typing certain character sequences such as ‘the’ than a person with french roots.

There exists software which combines keystroke dynamics with other interactions the user has with the computer, such as mouse movements (acceleration time, click frequency).

Application of keystroke dynamics

Keystroke dynamics can be used for authentication, then it is used mostly together with user ID / password credentials as a form of multifactor authentication.

Another use is as a very specific form of surveillance. There exist software solutions which, often without end-users being aware of it, track keystroke dynamics for each user account. This tracking, historization of keystroke dynamics is then used to analyse whether accounts are being shared or in general are used by people different from the genuine account owner. Reasons for such an implementation could be verification of users following security procedures (password sharing) or to verify that no software licenses are being shared (especially for SAAS applications).

Companies which develop software products applying keystroke dynamics are:

ID Control is a dutch company developing strong but affordable authentication solutions, some of which use keystroke dynamics. Their software integrates with MS Windows logon, Citrix, VPN and many others.

Psylock is a german company developping IT security solutions based on keystroke dynamics, providing software products for implementations on different scales from MS Windows login, to web login, to Citrix and VPN integration. The Psylock website offers an online demo.

BehavioSec is a swedish company specialized in continuous authentication systems, this is software which monitors activity on a computer to make sure that it is the genuine account owner who is using the computer. BehavioSec uses not only keystroke dynamics but also mouse dynamics and the general way in which the user interacts with the computer.

http://biometric-solutions.com/solutions/index.php?story=keystroke_dynamics

See, Enhanced User Authentication Through Keystroke Biometrics – MIT http://people.csail.mit.edu/edmond/projects/keystroke/keystroke-biometrics.pdf

With any education opportunity the prospective student and their family must do their homework and weigh the pros and cons of the institution with with the student’s goals and objectives. In answer to the question of whether online college is a threat to traditional bricks and mortar universities, it depends. The market will answer that question because many students do not attend college to receive a liberal arts education, but to increase employment opportunities. If the market accepts badges and certificates, then colleges may be forced to look at the costs associated with a traditional college degree.

Will ‘massive open online courses’ (MOOCS) begin to offer credit? https://drwilda.com/2012/11/14/will-massive-open-online-courses-moocs-begin-to-offer-credit/

Is online higher ed a threat to bricks and mortar colleges? https://drwilda.com/2012/09/17/is-online-higher-ed-a-threat-to-bricks-and-mortar-colleges/

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

Tags: A Cheating Crisis In America's Schools, Academic Dishonesty, biometric template, Biometrics Solutions.com, Cheating, Chronicle of Higher Education, Coursera, Coursera Announces Details for Selling Certificates and Verifying Identities:, Distance-Education.org, Does Your Instructor Know It's You Issues in Verifying Online Student Identities, Enhanced User Authentication Through Keystroke Biometrics - MIT, internet, keystroke dynamics, MOOCS, research, science, Technology, Verifying identity for online courses

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Study: Gender behavior differences lead to higher grades for girls

7 Jan

Moi wrote about gender differences in Boys are different from girls despite what the culture is trying to say

Joan Gausted of the University of Oregon has an excellent article in Eric Digest 78, School Discipline

School discipline has two main goals: (1) ensure the safety of staff and students, and (2) create an environment conducive to learning. Serious student misconduct involving violent or criminal behavior defeats these goals and often makes headlines in the process. However, the commonest discipline problems involve noncriminal student behavior (Moles 1989).

Quite often, children who are disciplined tend to be boys and more often than not, boys of color. The issue for schools is how to maintain order, yet deal with noncriminal student behavior and keep children in school.

Alan Schwartz has a provocative article in the New York Times about a longitudinal study of discipline conducted in Texas. In School Discipline Study Raises Fresh Questions Schwartz reports about the Texas study conducted under the auspices of the Council of State Governments. Martha Plotkin reports at the Council of State Governments site in the article, Out of Class Into Court Discretion in School Discipline has Big Impacts, Groundbreaking CSG Study Finds:

The numbers are startling.

Nearly 60 percent of students in Texas received at least one disciplinary action—including in-school suspensions ranging from a single class period to several days, with no cap on how many suspensions they can receive in a school year;

More than 30 percent had out-of-school suspensions of up to three days, with no cap on the number in a year;

About 15 percent were sent to Disciplinary Alternative Education Programs for an average of 27 days;

Approximately 8 percent were placed in Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Programs, averaging 73 days.

Those are some of the findings from a recent report, Breaking Schools’ Rules: A Statewide Study of How School Discipline Relates to Students’ Success and Juvenile Justice Involvement. The study, released July 19, was a partnership between The Council of State Governments Justice Center and the Public Policy Research Institute at Texas A&M….

Students who were repeatedly disciplined often experienced poor outcomes at particularly high rates. The Texas study found that 15 percent of Texas students had 11 or more disciplinary violations between seventh and 12th grades; about half of those frequent violators had subsequent contact with the juvenile justice system. Repeated suspensions and expulsions also predicted poor academic outcomes. Only 40 percent of students disciplined 11 times or more graduated from high school during the study period, and 31 percent of students disciplined one or more times repeated their grade at least once, compared with 5 percent of students who had not been disciplined.

Even students who were disciplined less frequently were still more likely to repeat a grade or drop out. A student who had experienced a discretionary disciplinary action was twice as likely to repeat a grade as a student who had the same characteristics and attended a similar school but was not suspended or expelled. The results were also troubling in regard to keeping students with disciplinary histories in school. Nearly 10 percent of students with at least one disciplinary contact dropped out of school, compared to just 2 percent of students with no disciplinary actions.

http://www.csg.org/pubs/capitolideas/sep_oct_2011/schooldiscipline.aspx

Some in the current culture do not want to recognize that boys have different styles, because to say otherwise is just not politically correct (P.C.). Being P.C., however, is throwing a lot of kids under the bus. https://drwilda.com/2011/11/02/boys-are-different-from-girls-despite-what-the-culture-is-trying-to-say/

Huffington Post is reporting in the article, Elementary School Bias Against Boys Sets Them Up For Failure: Study:

Academics from the University of Georgia and Columbia University think they have more insight into why girls earn higher grades on report cards than boys do, despite the fact that girls do not necessarily outperform boys on achievement or IQ tests.

Christopher Cornwell, head of economics at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business, UGA’s David Mustard and Columbia’s Jessica Van Parys have published a study that they say shows “gender disparities in teacher grades start early and uniformly favor girls.”

The researchers analyzed data from 5,800 elementary school students and found that boys performed better on standardized exams in math, reading and science than their course grades reflected. The authors suggest that girls are truly only outperforming boys in “non-cognitive approaches to learning” — defined as attentiveness, task persistence, eagerness to learn, learning independence, flexibility and organization — leading to better grades from teachers. The study is published in the latest issue of The Journal of Human Resources. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/03/elementary-school-bias-boys_n_2404898.html

The University of Georgia highlights Professor Cornwell’s research in the following press release, Why girls are better students, even when they’re not:

Why do girls get better grades in elementary school than boys—even when they perform worse on standardized tests?

New research from the University of Georgia and Columbia University and published in the current issue of Journal of Human Resources, suggests that it’s because of their classroom behavior, which may lead teachers to assign girls higher grades than their male counterparts.

“The skill that matters the most in regards to how teachers graded their students is what we refer to as ‘approaches toward learning,’” said Christopher Cornwell, head of economics at UGA’s Terry College of Business and one of the study’s authors. “You can think of ‘approaches to learning’ as a rough measure of what a child’s attitude toward school is: It includes six items that rate the child’s attentiveness, task persistence, eagerness to learn, learning independence, flexibility, and organization. I think that anybody who’s a parent of boys and girls can tell you that girls are more of all of that.”

The study, co-authored by Cornwell and David Mustard at UGA and Jessica Van Parys at Columbia, analyzed data on more than 5,800 students from kindergarten through fifth grade. It examined students’ performance on standardized tests in three categories—reading, math and science—linking test scores to teachers’ assessments of their students’ progress, both academically and more broadly.

The data show, for the first time, that gender disparities in teacher grades start early and uniformly favor girls. In every subject area, boys are represented in grade distributions below where their test scores would predict.

The authors attribute this misalignment to what they called non-cognitive skills, or “how well each child was engaged in the classroom, how often the child externalized or internalized problems, how often the child lost control, and how well the child developed interpersonal skills.” They even report evidence of a grade bonus for boys with test scores and behavior like their girl counterparts.

This difference can have long-reaching effects, Cornwell said.

“The trajectory at which a kid moves through school is often influenced by a teacher’s assessment of their performance, their grades. This affects their ability to enter into advanced classes and other kinds of academic opportunities, even post-secondary opportunities,” he said. “It’s also typically the grades you earn in school that are weighted the most heavily in college admissions. So if grade disparities emerge this early on, it’s not surprising that by the time these children are ready to go to college, girls will be better positioned.”

Research about gender differences in the classroom and beyond has grabbed headlines recently. Titles like Hannah Rosin’s “The End of Men and the Rise of Women” and Kay Hymowitz’s “Manning Up” have spent months on best-seller lists and inspired countless discussions in the media.

“We seem to have gotten to a point in the popular consciousness where people are recognizing the story in these data: Men are falling behind relative to women. Economists have looked at this from a number of different angles, but it’s in educational assessments that you make your mark for the labor market,” Cornwell said. “Men’s rate of college going has slowed in recent years whereas women’s has not, but if you roll the story back far enough, to the 60s and 70s, women were going to college in much fewer numbers. It’s at a point now, where you’ve got women earning upward of 60 percent of the bachelors’ degrees awarded every year.”

But despite changing college demographics, the new data may not be reflecting anything fundamentally new.

“My argument is that this has always been true about boys and girls. Girls didn’t all of the sudden become more engaged and boys didn’t suddenly become more rambunctious,” Cornwell said. “Their attitudes toward learning were always this way. But it didn’t show up in educational attainment like it does today because of all the factors that previously discouraged women’s participation in the labor force, such as a lack of access to reliable birth control.”

What remains unclear, however, is how to combat this discrepancy.

“The most common question we’ve gotten is whether or not the gender of the teacher matters in regards to grading students,” Cornwell said. “But that’s a question we can’t answer because there’s just not enough data available. As you can probably guess, the great majority of elementary school teachers are women.”

See, Girls Outpace Boys Mostly Due to Classroom Behavior http://www.educationnews.org/international-uk/girls-outpace-boys-mostly-due-to-classroom-behavior/

Sarah D. Sparks posted Report Points to Widening Gap In Boys’ Education Attainment at Education Week.

As the needs of global labor change and college readiness standards increase, American boys have been slower to adapt than girls, according to a report set to be released this morning.

Thomas Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, in Washington, has been arguing since the mid-1990s that American men are treading water economically as women gain ground. His latest report, Economic Change Effects on Men, presented at the Washington-based Boys Initiative meeting this morning, expands his workforce and higher education data to K-12 education.

Mortenson argues that teaching styles and discipline policies cause boys to disengage sooner than girls and drop out at higher rates. Among his findings:

• In 2010, 72.8 percent of children lived with a father, down from 88.8 percent in 1960, when these data were first reported.

• In 2010, 62.8 percent of young men who graduated from high school enrolled in college, up 7.6 percentage points from 1970, but far below the continuation rate for young women—74 percent in 2010, up 25.5 percentage points from 1970. “Each spring, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts out its spring study on recent high school graduates, and I’ve been compiling that data since 1959,” Mortenson told me. “The gap between males and females is now greater than 10 percentage points, and it’s never been that wide before” favoring girls during his years of analysis.

• Boys ages 6 to 14 are more than twice as likely as girls to have a developmental disability and three times as likely to be diagnosed with mental retardation.

Mortenson told me he thinks school format is partly to blame, with greater focus on writing and test preparation and fewer opportunities for active projects. As he puts it: “Boys have to be doing something: Things have to be blowing up or being built or going really fast. If you ask them to sit down and write and read, more physically passive activities will turn off boys before they turn off girls.”

There are some good information sources about helping boys to learn. PBS Parents in Understanding and Raising Boys advises the following strategies:

Let them play. Give boys lots of opportunities for physical activity and don’t expect them to sit still for long periods of time. “Play is the work of childhood, it’s how kids learn social skills and develop verbal skills, and it’s vanishing from the classroom. Kids are not being allowed to play enough in school, both indoors and outdoors,” says Jane Katch.

Create learning activities where boys use their bodies. “Boys learn best when learning is ‘hands-on.’ They learn by touching, moving, climbing on, and building things. They solve problems physically — so if kids are handling real things, they will learn more effectively. This applies to kindergarten and throughout their school experience,” says Joseph Tobin.

Let boys read (and listen to) books that appeal to their interests. “Know your boys, know their passions, and know what books can speak to those passions. Boys are open to reading — if they can make their own choices. We read to connect to interests we have — and literacy piggybacks on those interests,” says Thomas Newkirk. “I tell my prospective teachers that they should have at least a thousand books in their heads — possibilities for students to read. Unless we can build a base in reading thousands and thousands of words our students will never be able to read the classics. And by reading, I think we need to look at all kinds of reading — magazines, graphic novels, humor, etc. — and not just classical literature.”

Read aloud to boys and have them read aloud to you. “One practice that is critical is reading aloud to boys. This stops way too early in homes and in schools. Reading aloud is a bridge to reading the child might do later on, independently,” advises Newkirk.

Allow boys to write about what interests them instead of what interests you. “When children are learning to write, give them opportunities to write about subjects that are most meaningful to them — what they love, what they hate, what scares them and what excites them,” recommends Katch. “This way they will learn the power and significance of using the written word to communicate. If they write in a way that causes others to be disturbed, then talk about ways they can write what is important to them without disturbing others rather than prohibiting their expression. I personally think Pokemon is boring but I know a boy who wrote 27 books about it and went from being a non-writer to a terrific writer. Another”” practice is connecting writing to digital storytelling. I think we need to conceptualize reading and writing as multi-modal involving not only print but music, visuals, and more,” adds Newkirk.

Allow discussion of topics boys may want to talk about (but teachers and girls may not). “In a classroom that allows boys’ thoughts and fantasies to be expressed in their stories and their play, controversial issues will come up. In my class, some children did not want to hear any story that contained killing,” notes Katch. “But several boys complained that their stories of good guys and bad guys sometimes need to contain killing off the bad guy. When we discussed the problem, the children realized that everyone thought it was all right to kill the bad guys; there were objections only when a character was killed who was not clearly bad. So the boys agreed that they would only kill off evil characters. The children realized that by talking about what was important to them, they could communicate with each other and come to an agreement that felt right to everyone.”

Allow boys to express humor in appropriate ways and at appropriate times. “Include satire, parody, and humor in the curriculum, and don’t be too hard on boys who are class clowns. Instead, acknowledge the boy’s skill at being humorous. If the boy gets credit for this quality, he may not repeat the behavior. If you treat a clown as your biggest problem you are creating a conflict. Treat that boy with respect and respectfully ask him to make jokes at another time, if they get out of control,” advises Joseph Tobin. “Sometimes, you just have to have a sense of humor about the boy’s sense of humor. Most teachers I know admit that as annoying as boy humor can be, it can also brighten up the day,” adds Michael Thompson.

Remember, there are different approaches to educating boys than educating girls.

Resources:

Classroom Strategies to Get Boys Reading

Me Read? A Practical Guide to Improving Boys Literacy Skills

Understanding Gender Differences: Strategies To Support Girls and Boys

Helping Underachieving Boys Read Well and Often

Boys and Reading Strategies for Success

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

Tags: Boys, Council of State Governments, education, Elementary School Bias Against Boys Sets Them Up For Failure Study, Gender, Gender Differences, Girls Outpace Boys Mostly Due to Classroom Behavior, politics, Report Points to Widening Gap In Boys' Education Attainment, research, School Discipline, School Discipline Study Raises Fresh Questions, Understanding and Raising Boys, Why girls are better students even when they’re not

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Annual freshman college survey: I’m so vain I thought the world revolved around me

6 Jan

Here’s today’s COMMENT FROM AN OLD FART: For the past several years, the Higher Education Research Institute has published the Annual Freshman Survey:

Each year, hundreds of two-year colleges, four-year colleges and universities administer the CIRP Freshman Survey (TFS) to hundreds of thousands of entering students during orientation or registration.

The survey covers a wide range of student characteristics: parental income and education, ethnicity, and other demographic items; financial aid; secondary school achievement and activities; educational and career plans; and values, attitudes, beliefs, and self-concept.

Published annually in “The American Freshman,” the results from these surveys continue to provide a comprehensive portrait of the changing character of entering students and American society at large. http://www.heri.ucla.edu/cirpoverview.php

The Daily Mail has a fascinating article about the results of this survey.

In How college students think they are more special than EVER: Study reveals rocketing sense of entitlement on U.S. campuses, the Daily Mail reports:

Books aside, if you asked a college freshman today who the Greatest Generation is, they might respond by pointing in a mirror.

Young people’s unprecedented level of self-infatuation was revealed in a new analysis of the American Freshman Survey, which has been asking students to rate themselves compared to their peers since 1966.

Roughly 9 million young people have taken the survey over the last 47 years.

Psychologist Jean Twenge and her colleagues compiled the data and found that over the last four decades there’s been a dramatic rise in the number of students who describe themselves as being ‘above average’ in the areas of academic ability, drive to achieve, mathematical ability, and self-confidence.

But in appraising the traits that are considered less individualistic – co-operativeness, understanding others, and spirituality – the numbers either stayed at slightly decreased over the same period.

Researchers also found a disconnect between the student’s opinions of themselves and actual ability.

While students are much more likely to call themselves gifted in writing abilities, objective test scores actually show that their writing abilities are far less than those of their 1960s counterparts.

Also on the decline is the amount of time spent studying, with little more than a third of students saying they study for six or more hours a week compared to almost half of all students claiming the same in the late 1980s.

Though they may work less, the number that said they had a drive to succeed rose sharply.

These young egotists can grow up to be depressed adults.

A 2006 study found that students suffer from ‘ambition inflation’ as their increased ambitions accompany increasingly unrealistic expectations.

‘Since the 1960s and 1970s, when those expectations started to grow, there’s been an increase in anxiety and depression,’ Twenge said. ‘There’s going to be a lot more people who don’t reach their goals.’

Twenge is the author of a separate study showing a 30 per cent increase towards narcissism in students since 1979.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2257715/Study-shows-college-students-think-theyre-special–read-write-barely-study.html#ixzz2HDwJlJIe

Karyl McBride, Ph.D. describes narcissism in a Psychology Today article.

In The Legacy of Distorted Love: Recognizing, understanding and overcoming the debilitating impact of maternal narcissism, McBride describes the traits of narcissists.

The following is adapted from the nine narcissistic traits listed in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.)

Am I Narcissistically Impaired?

Do I exaggerate my accomplishments and say I have done things I have not done? Do I act more important than others?

Am I unrealistic about my thoughts and desires regarding love, beauty, success, and intelligence? Do I seek power in these things?

Do I believe that I am so special and unique that only the best institutions and the highest academic professionals could possibly understand me?

Do I need to be admired all the time to the point of excess?

Do I have a sense of entitlement and expect to be treated differently and with more status than others?

Do I exploit others to get what I want or need?

Do I lack empathy and therefore never see what others are feeling or needing? Can I put myself in other people’s shoes? Can I show empathy?

Am I jealous and competitive with others or unreasonably, without logic, think that others are jealous of me?

Am I a haughty person who acts arrogant and “better than” with my friends, colleagues, and family?

And I add one more to this list:

Am I capable of authentic love, meaning I can give unconditional love to my children?

One interesting factor is this: If you are taking this test, worrying about your own parenting and asking accountability questions…you are not likely a narcissist! Breathe deeply again! Go to Yoga, pass Go, Collect a bunch of hugs!

See, Narcissistic Personality Quiz http://psychcentral.com/quizzes/narcissistic.htm

Moi wrote about narcissistic children in You call your kid prince or princess, society calls them ‘brat’:

Here is today’s COMMENT FROM AN OLD FART: Urban Dictionary defines brat:

1.A really annoying person.
2.A person that is spoiled rotten.
3.An annoying child that wants something that no one will get for him/her. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brat

Most folks have had the experience of shopping in a store like Target and observing a child acting out or screaming at the top of his or her lungs. Another chance for observation of family interaction is dining out at a restaurant when children may act out. Without knowing the history, it is difficult to assess the root cause. Still, an observation of how the parent(s) deal with the tantrum is instructive about who is in control and where the power resides in a family. It appears that in many families the parents are reluctant to be parents and to teach their children appropriate behavior, boundaries, and manners….

The basis of manners and boundaries is simply the “Golden Rule.”

The Tanenbaum Center which honors the work of the late Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum has a really good definition of the “Golden Rule” which is stated in an interview with Joyce Dubensky entitled, The Golden Rule Around the World

At its simplest, it’s really just “being kind.” Caring about other people. That means putting that kindness into action and treating people with compassion. It means trying to understand people’s beliefs and needs. It means not harming others and actively working to eliminate harm….
What concrete steps can people take to start to put the Rule into practice?

Practically, there are steps that institutions and individuals can take to make a difference.

Institutionally, there are anti-discrimination and accommodation policies you can put into place to ensure that employees aren’t unduly thwarted in their ability to practice their religions. Educational institutions can make sure that teachers are properly trained to create inclusive, multi-cultural and multi-religious classrooms. And hospitals can work proactively with patients who may not want treatment that conflicts with their religion.

There are also things we can all do on the individual level. We can notice people who are not from our own group – people who have different practices or beliefs – and be interested in them. We can be curious about who they are and what their lives are like, without applying stereotypes. We can ask questions with curiosity and respect and truly listen to and digest the answers. And we can be willing to share about ourselves, our own beliefs and our own experiences.

Finally, we can work together, whether in workplaces, schools, community groups or governments to ensure that people from diverse backgrounds and viewpoints are
involved in decision-making. By making all voices heard – and really listening to each of those voices – we can solve many of the problems we face together.

And when we do that, we’ll get to the gold.

Some form of the “Golden Rule” is found in most religious traditions.

Children are not mature and adults can not expect the same level of maturity that most adults are presumed to have.Parents are not their child’s friend and have to provide guidance, direction, and boundaries. http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/2012/10/19/you-call-your-kid-prince-or-princess-society-calls-them-brat/

In the final analysis, for many children raised by narcissistic parents , it is not about you or US, but it is about ME. You will harvest what you plant.

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

Tags: Annual Freshman Survey, brat, CIRP Freshman Survey, Daily Mail, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders., education, Golden Rule, Higher Education Research Institute, How college students think they are more special than EVER Study reveals rocketing sense of entitlement on U.S. campuses, narcissism, Narcissistic Personality Quiz, Psychology Today, research, science, TFS, The Golden Rule Around the World, The Legacy of Distorted Love Recognizing understanding and overcoming the debilitating impact of maternal narcissism, The Tanenbaum Center

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Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry

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Autism and children of color https://drwilda.com/tag/autism-not-diagnosed-as-early-in-minority-children/

Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine study: Kids with autism more likely to be bullied https://drwilda.com/2012/09/06/archives-of-pediatrics-and-adolescent-medicine-study-kids-with-autism-more-likely-to-be-bullied/

Chelation treatment for autism might be harmful https://drwilda.com/2012/12/02/chelation-treatment-for-autism-might-be-harmful/

Rethinking reading

Contacts

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The slow reading movement https://drwilda.com/2012/01/31/the-slow-reading-movement/

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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/

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What GAO Found

Why GAO Did This Study

Concerns Remain about Appropriate Services for Children in Medicaid and Foster Care GAO-13-15, Dec 10, 2012

Counselors, School Support Staff Toil Amid Scant Resources http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/01/10/16staffing.h32.html?tkn=VPLFw6EYbOz23lTzoeSKlVNGV4SNwasebCry&cmp=clp-edweek&intc=EW-QC13-EWH

Application of keystroke dynamics

Will ‘massive open online courses’ (MOOCS) begin to offer credit? https://drwilda.com/2012/11/14/will-massive-open-online-courses-moocs-begin-to-offer-credit/

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