Center for Education Data & Research.
TFA Studies. Study: School reform in 3 major cities brings few benefits, some harm 20130410_ExecutiveSummaryfinal. The Coming Revolution in Public Education - John Tierney. Why the current wave of reforms, with its heavy emphasis on standardized tests, may actually be harming students Defendants in Atlanta's school cheating scandal turn themselves in. (David Goldman/AP) It's always hard to tell for sure exactly when a revolution starts. Is it when a few discontented people gather in a room to discuss how the ruling regime might be opposed? Is it when first shots are fired? When a critical mass forms and the opposition acquires sufficient weight to have a chance of prevailing? Critics of the contemporary reform regime argue that these initiatives, though seemingly sensible in their original framing, are motivated by interests other than educational improvement and are causing genuine harm to American students and public schools.
Fueled in part by growing evidence of the reforms' ill effects and of the reformers' self-interested motives, the counter-movement is rapidly expanding. It's what history teaches us to expect. Rather, we have a poverty problem. What Is The School-to-Prison Pipeline? Study Links High Stakes Testing to Higher Incarceration Rates. [Watch new interview on School-to-prison-pipeline] A landmark study, The Effect of High School Exit Exams on Graduation, Employment, Wages and Incarceration, recently released by researchers Olesya Baker and Kevin Lang at the National Bureau of Economic Research links exit exams to high rates of incarceration. The study found no positive impact of these tests in terms of employment or wages, but did find a 12.5% increase in incarceration rates for the students who do not pass the test.
(For more information about the school-to-prison-pipeline and how to teach about it in the classroom, see the Rethinking Schools issue: The Real News Network interviewed Kevin Lang and myself yesterday about this new study that exposes the machinery of the school-to-prision-pipeline. Check it out: Like this: Like Loading... The Effect of High School Exit Exams on Graduation, Employment, Wages and Incarceration. NBER Working Paper No. 19182Issued in June 2013NBER Program(s): ED LS We evaluate the effects of high school exit exams on high school graduation, incarceration, employment and wages. We construct a state/graduation-cohort dataset using the Current Population Survey, Census and information on exit exams. We find relatively modest effects of high school exit exams except on incarceration. Exams assessing academic skills below the high school level have little effect. However, more challenging standards-based exams reduce graduation and increase incarceration rates.
About half the reduction in graduation rates is offset by increased GED receipt. We find no consistent effects of exit exams on employment or the distribution of wages. You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery. Acknowledgments Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX Users who downloaded this paper also downloaded these: The Shame of College Sports - Taylor Branch. A litany of scandals in recent years have made the corruption of college sports constant front-page news. We profess outrage each time we learn that yet another student-athlete has been taking money under the table. But the real scandal is the very structure of college sports, wherein student-athletes generate billions of dollars for universities and private companies while earning nothing for themselves. Here, a leading civil-rights historian makes the case for paying college athletes—and reveals how a spate of lawsuits working their way through the courts could destroy the NCAA.
Evan Kafka “I’m not hiding,” Sonny Vaccaro told a closed hearing at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., in 2001. Vaccaro’s audience, the members of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, bristled. “Why,” asked Bryce Jordan, the president emeritus of Penn State, “should a university be an advertising medium for your industry?” Vaccaro did not blink. The Right to Read: Suing a State for Better Teaching. SOURCE: AP/Orlin Wagner A fourth-grader reads in class.
By Jenny DeMonte and Akash Patel | December 5, 2013 The research is irrefutable: Children who don’t learn to read proficiently by the third grade face nearly insurmountable challenges not only in their next decade of schooling but also into their adult lives. The mounting evidence clearly linking the ability to read well in the early grades to future success has, over the past few years, prompted a number of states to consider and enact legislation to require the retention of students who cannot read at grade level in the third grade and the intervention of special instruction and support to raise their reading achievement.
The laws, though they vary in the specific grade level targeted, tests required, and remediation procedures, share a common philosophy: Learning to read in the early grades is essential if a child is to succeed in the upper grades and beyond. Suing to be taught to read The complaint in S.S. v. Conclusion. Children Now—Facts, K-12. College Students Who Cant Do Math Or Read Well | EducationNews.org. By Sandra Stotsky and Ze'ev Wurman Every year seems to produce a burst of attention to a particular crisis in education. In 2009, the most publicized crisis is likely the staggering number of post-secondary students with severe debilities in reading and math. Estimates of those needing remedial classes before taking credit courses range from 30% of entering students to 40% of traditional undergraduates.
According to a 2008 report by the CUNY Council of Math Chairs, 90% of 200 City University of New York students tested couldn't solve a simple algebra problem in their first class at a four-year college. A 2004 U.S. More than half of all college students will not earn a degree or credential, according to a 2009 Gates Foundation report drawing on national education statistics. We have, however, a surprising divergence of opinion on how to confront this problem. This would be done by altering institutional requirements and existing courses. High School Diploma = Remedial. Clovis West High Principal Ben Drati knew something was wrong: Too many of his students perform well on state English tests but wind up having to take remedial English in college. So last year, Drati and his staff began working with Willow International Community College and Fresno State professors to learn why students aren't better prepared for college.
The results of their research aims to realign high school English classes more closely with college work, he said. "It's a very serious issue," said Jeff Burdick, an English professor at Willow International and its lead researcher in the curriculum project. "We are dealing with a high school that is excellent and has wonderful test scores. " Clovis West has some of the Valley's top English-language arts scores on state tests, but about two-thirds of Clovis West graduates attending Willow International and about half attending Fresno State are in remedial English courses.
The changes come too late for some. Mutual benefit. High School Exit Exam Discrepant w/real measures. How The American University was Killed, in Five Easy Steps | The Homeless Adjunct. A few years back, Paul E. Lingenfelter began his report on the defunding of public education by saying, “In 1920 H.G. Wells wrote, ‘History is becoming more and more a race between education and catastrophe.’ I think he got it right. Nothing is more important to the future of the United States and the world than the breadth and effectiveness of education, especially of higher education. I say especially higher education, but not because pre- school, elementary, and secondary education are less important.
Success at every level of education obviously depends on what has gone before. But for better or worse, the quality of postsecondary education and research affects the quality and effectiveness of education at every level.” In the last few years, conversations have been growing like gathering storm clouds about the ways in which our universities are failing. To explain my perspective here, I need to go back in time. First, you defund public higher education. V.P. So, there you have it. The closing of American academia. It is 2011 and I'm sitting in the Palais des Congres in Montreal, watching anthropologists talk about structural inequality.
The American Anthropological Association meeting is held annually to showcase research from around the world, and like thousands of other anthropologists, I am paying to play: $650 for airfare, $400 for three nights in a "student" hotel, $70 for membership, and $94 for admission. The latter two fees are student rates. If I were an unemployed or underemployed scholar, the rates would double.
The theme of this year's meeting is "Traces, Tidemarks and Legacies. " According to the explanation on the American Anthropological Association website, we live in a time when "the meaning and location of differences, both intellectually and morally, have been rearranged". As the conference progresses, I begin to see what they mean. My friend is an adjunct. Why is my friend, a smart woman with no money, spending nearly $2000 to attend a conference she cannot afford?
Now That I Have Your Attention… | Sarah Kendzior. Sequestration Cuts To Research 'Like A Slowly Growing Cancer' WASHINGTON -- Research leaders at some of the top American universities have held an annual gathering in Washington the last four years to discuss science, technology, and how federal policies have hampered or fostered both. As they sat down Wednesday for this year's gathering, the consensus was that times have never been darker. Federal budget sequestration is threatening the science and technology community in existential ways, officials at the "All Things Research 2013" event said.
And the longer Congress takes to find a fix, the more damaging the setback will be. "It is like a slowly growing cancer," said Steven Warren, vice chancellor for research at University of Kansas. "It is going to do a lot of destruction over time. Sponsored by the Science Coalition and the Association of American Universities, the annual gathering is, in good times, designed to allow attendees to bounce ideas off each other and revel in their accomplishments. "Why is this important? CA SCCCD Workforce Development Report. Quotes. A Teacher’s Own Academic Ability. As Dale Ballou of Vanderbilt University and Michael Podgursky of the University of Missouri have noted, the weight of the available education research heavily supports the contention that academically able teachers tend to have higher-performing students.[16] Citing ample research evidence, Richard Murnane and Jennifer Steele of the Harvard University Graduate School of Education write, "One teacher characteristic that is somewhat helpful in predicting student outcomes is academic ability, as measured by verbal aptitude scores, ACT scores, or undergraduate college selectivity.
"[17] The teaching profession also tends to lose those with greater academic ability. Loeb and Reininger pointed out, "[T]eachers with higher test scores are more likely to transfer or quit teaching, leaving behind their lower scoring colleagues. " One trend affecting the teaching work force is that fewer of the most academically able women are entering the field than in prior generations. Teacher Quality in a Changing Policy Landscape:Improvements in the Teacher Pool. Why aren't our teachers the best and the brightest? Why don't more of our smartest, most accomplished college graduates want to become teachers?
People trying to improve education in this country have been talking a lot lately about boosting "teacher effectiveness. " But nearly all such efforts focus on the teachers who are already in the classroom, instead of seeking to change the caliber of the people who enter teaching in the first place. Three of the top-performing school systems in the world -- those in Finland, Singapore and South Korea -- take a different approach, recruiting 100 percent of their teachers from the top third of their high school and college students. Simply put, they don't take middling students and make them teachers. Of course, academic achievement isn't the whole story in these countries. This shouldn't come as news. So why do top U.S. college students have so little interest in teaching careers compared with their counterparts in the world's best-performing nations? But it's not just pay that's a problem. Why Great Teachers Are Fleeing the Profession.
The world’s most famous teacher blasts school reform. The most famous teacher in the world is not a fan of high-stakes standardized tests, Teach For America or the Common Core State Standards. But he loves teaching and teachers, and he has written a new book giving advice to colleagues at all stages of their careers. He is fifth-grade teacher Rafe Esquith of Room 56 at Hobart Elementary School in Los Angeles. I feel comfortable calling him the world’s most famous teacher given the following about the father of four and grandfather of two, who has taught at Hobart for nearly 30 years and written several best-selling books: *When he goes to China he is so popular he needs security guards to protect him from the crush of the crowds. *He is the only K-12 teacher to be awarded the president’s National Medal of the Arts. *Queen Elizabeth made him a member of the British Empire. *The Dalai Lama gave him the Compassion in Action Award. Here are excerpts of a conversation I had with him about the new book, teaching, school reform and more.
Q) Hi. Meet the Teach for America Resistance Movement That's Growing From Within - Zach Schonfeld. A network of Teach for America alumni and corps members is organizing in Chicago this weekend as part of the national Free Minds, Free People conference organized by the Education for Liberation Network, but this summit is more than a wistful reunion gathering. The group's aim, as encapsulated in the roundtable's title, "Organizing Resistance to Teach for America and its Role in Privatization," is no less than overthrowing—or at least overhauling—the non-profit organization's dominant role in educational reform. And who better to challenge TFA than its graduates?
The summit is the subject of extensive coverage in The American Prospect, starting with a tremendously helpful cheat sheet of popular criticisms of the non-profit educational organization in education reform circles: Meet Beth Sondel, a former TFA member listed among the organizers of the anti-TFA gathering: Tara Kini, a civil rights attorney who fought successfully to challenge a U.S. As for the summit? Why American Education Fails. In his landmark 1973 book, The Coming of Post-industrial Society, the sociologist Daniel Bell heralded the United States' transition from a labor-intensive economy that produced goods to a knowledge-based one geared toward providing services.
No longer could success be achieved through manual, assembly-line work; it would require advanced skills and creativity. At least since then, American politicians and pundits have regularly stressed that education holds the key to the country's future. Everyone seems to agree that good schools are prerequisites for broad economic prosperity, individual social mobility, and a healthy civil society in which informed voters engage in the public issues of the day. Although no one disputes the value of education, how the country should improve it is fiercely contested. To continue reading, please log in. Don't have an account?
Register today for free. Register Register now to get three articles each month. Register for free to continue reading. Teachers - Will We Ever Learn? The Condition of Education 2002 nces.ed.gov. Partial Summary.