Categories for Education Outcomes
April 17, 2019
What Works Clearinghouse Intervention Report: National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Certification. NBPTS was established in 1987 to foster “high and rigorous standards for what accomplished teachers should know and be able to do” (NBPTS mission statement). As a voluntary national system, NBPTS certifies that a teacher has taught in the field and meets certification requirements for best practices for instruction and pedagogy. The standards reflect five core propositions: (1) effective teachers are committed to students and their learning, (2) effective teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students, (3) effective teachers manage and monitor student learning, (4) effective teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience, and (5) effective teachers are members of learning communities.
The process requires teachers to pay a fee and can take from 3 months to several years to complete. School districts have come to view the process as a way to improve student achievement, allocating scarce resources in the form of performance compensation to encourage teachers who acquire certification. The What Works Clearinghouse review found NBPTS-certified teachers had mixed effects on mathematics achievement and no discernible effects on English language arts achievement for students in grades 3 through 8.
Citation: Mathematica Policy Research (2018). What Works Clearinghouse Intervention Report: National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Certification. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Retrieved from https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Docs/InterventionReports/wwc_nbpts_021318.pdf.
Link: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Docs/InterventionReports/wwc_nbpts_021318.pdf
April 17, 2019
Do Charter Middle Schools Improve Students’ College Outcomes? This study examines the impact of Charter schools on college enrollment. The National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE) used college enrollment and completion data for students who (more than a decade ago) entered lotteries to be admitted to 31 charter middle schools across the United States. College outcomes were compared for 1,723 randomly selected “lottery winners” and 1,150 randomly selected “lottery losers”. The results show that admission to a charter middle school did not affect college outcomes. Additionally, the study finds no consistent relationship between the impact a charter middle school achievement and the school’s impact on college outcomes
Citation: Place, K., & Gleason, P. Do Charter Middle Schools Improve Students’ College Outcomes? (Study Highlights) (No. 61bd53574633412b9136328cb4e143ef). Mathematica Policy Research.
Link: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20194005/index.asp
April 16, 2019
Performance feedback is a practice used to improve performance. Principals give feedback to teachers to clarify expectations and to provide information for increasing administrative, instructional, behavior management, and personal competency skills. More than seven meta-analyses conducted since 1980 support feedback as one of the most powerful tools for improving performance. To deliver useful feedback, principals need current and accurate information on student performance and a teacher’s instructional skills. Research finds that principals depend on unreliable sources of data such as “walk-throughs,” brief informal observations that provide snapshots of classroom activities but are not designed for performance improvement. Principals should replace traditional walk-throughs with more effective feedback practices, such as coaching, that are better suited to improving specific teaching skills. For the best results, feedback must meet these four conditions: (1) It is objective, reliable, measurable, and specific; (2) it provides information about what was done well, what needs improvement, and how to improve; (3) it is delivered frequently and immediately following performance; and (4) it is about performance rather than personal characteristics.
Citation: Cleaver, S., Detrich, R. & States, J. (2019). Overview of Performance Feedback. Oakland, CA: The Wing Institute. https://www.winginstitute.org/teacher-evaluation-feedback.
Link: https://www.winginstitute.org/teacher-evaluation-feedback
April 15, 2019
Proceed With Caution: Using Web-Based Resources for Instructing Students With and at Risk for EBD. This article examines issues relating to the use of websites popular with educators. Today educators often rely on social media platforms such as Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers for information for solving problems encountered in the classroom. These sites can offer teachers helpful information, but also come with potential risks that educators need to consider when utilizing such resources. This article offers guidelines for maximizing the usefulness of such sites and for avoiding many of the pitfall educators may face. The authors suggest educators first identify and learn the critical elements of effective practices from trustworthy sources and then use sites such as Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers to facilitate implementation.
Citation: Beahm, L. A., Cook, B. G., & Cook, L. (2019). Proceed With Caution: Using Web-Based Resources for Instructing Students With and at Risk for EBD. Beyond Behavior, 28(1), 13-20.
Link: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1074295619836076
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332296285_Proceed_With_Caution_Using_Web-Based_Resources_for_Instructing_Students_With_and_at_Risk_for_EBD
April 12, 2019
Decades of research document the significant negative impacts of student absenteeism on academic achievement, emotional development, graduation, health, and long-term success (Gottfried, 2015). Yet, until just a few years ago, the U.S. K–12 education system was virtually unaware that it had a chronic student absenteeism problem. Prior to that time, chronic absenteeism was never tracked by school systems, let alone addressed. A recent analysis of the data revealed that a significant number of students (one in seven) were chronically absent, defined as missing 10% of school days (Balfanz & Brynes, 2012). And that was the threshold number. Many students identified as chronically absent missed more than 10%. The corresponding negative impacts worsen with every additional day of school missed.
This overview looks at the best available evidence on chronic student absenteeism in the context of (1) the scale of the problem at all levels of the education system: national, state, school, and grade; (2) the impact on student academic performance, graduation, health, and financial impact on school districts; (3) impact multipliers that exacerbate chronic absenteeism, such as poverty, student mobility, homelessness, and disciplinary suspensions; and (4) interventions utilizing a public health tiered model for different levels of action depending on need, a performance feedback system to track and modify the results of each intervention, and coordination of resources across a wide range of education stakeholders.
Citation: Keyworth, R., Detrich, R. & States, J. (2019). Overview of Chronic Student Absenteeism: A Significant and Overlooked Obstacle to Student Achievement. Oakland, CA: The Wing Institute. https://www.winginstitute.org/perform-levels-student.
Link: https://www.winginstitute.org/student-chronic-absenteeism
April 11, 2019
Principal Pipeline: A Feasible, Affordable, and Effective Way for Districts to Improve Schools. The Rand Corporation just released its report evaluating the impact of the Principal Pipeline Initiative (PPI),a project supported by the Wallace Foundation to create and implement a strategic process for school leadership talent management. PPI was operated from 2011 to 2016 in six large school districts. It was composed of leadership standards, pre-service preparation opportunities for assistant principals and principals, selective hiring and placement, and on-the-job induction, evaluation and support. The Rand Study evaluated PPI’s feasibility, effectiveness, and affordability. It concluded that the model was feasible as each participating district was able to implement all components of the model at scale in different ways depending on the unique aspects of the district. From an effectiveness standpoint, newly placed principals in PPI districts had a greater statistically significant impact on student reading and math scores than non-PPI principals, they were more likely to stay ion their schools for at least two years, and the novice principals rated the program’s hiring, evaluation, and support process higher than non-participating principals rated the baseline model. And finally, the study found the model affordable at $ 42 per student per year, which represented a significant return on investment. Note: It is hoped that future studies will include outcome measure such as teacher retention, effectiveness, and satisfaction in the context of principal development.
Citation: Gates, Susan M., Matthew D. Baird, Benjamin K. Master, and Emilio R. Chavez-Herrerias, Principal Pipelines: A Feasible, Affordable, and Effective Way for Districts to Improve Schools, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, RR-2666-WF, 2019.
Link: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2666.html
March 22, 2019
The Effect of Teaching “Learning Strategies” on Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis Study: Two recent studies have been published in Turkey on the topic of teaching learning strategies. Both studies are meta-analyses that examine the effect of learning strategies on student academic achievement. Learning strategies are methods for teaching students how to learn, how to remember, and how to think. Learning strategies involve some simple study skills such as underlying the main idea in a text or complex thinking processes such employing analogies or using analysis to relate prior knowledge to new information. Learning strategies have been classified as rehearsal strategies, elaboration strategies, organizational strategies, comprehension monitoring strategies, and affective strategies.
Both meta-analyses find teaching learning strategies has a significant positive effect size on student achievement. These studies support research on this topic conducted by Hattie, Biggs, and Purdie (1996) and Donker et al. (2014) that revealed an overall medium effect size on student achievement for teaching learning strategies. Both studies find that teaching learning strategies is effective at all levels of education and is most effective in the early grades. The Bas study reveals there was no significant difference between effect sizes in terms of SES or with regard to setting (rural or urban). The Yildirim study concludes that teaching learning strategies can be incorporated into the normal curricula or taught independently. Learning strategies that were found to be effective include; repetition, sense-making, integrated strategies, organizing, and monitoring comprehension.
Citation:
Study 1: Bas, G., & Beyhan, Ö. (2019). Revisiting the Effect of Teaching of Learning Strategies on Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of the Findings. International Journal of Research in Education and Science, 5(1), 70-87.
Study 2: YILDIRIM, I., CIRAK-KURT, S., & SEN, S. (2019). The Effect of Teaching” Learning Strategies” on Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis Study. Eurasian Journal of Educational Research (EJER), (79).
Link:
Study 1: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1198049.pdf
Study 2: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1204464.pdf
March 22, 2019
The Effect of Team-Based Learning on Content Knowledge: A Meta-Analysis: As educators struggle with finding interventions that make a difference, focus increasingly shifts to pedagogy and how teachers deliver instruction. This meta-analysis examines the impact of team-based learning strategies on achievement and student engagement. The study finds that team-based strategies were found to have a positive impact on grades, test performance, and engagement. This research specifically looked at Team-Based Learning (TBL), a collaborative learning teaching strategy designed around small-group learning. Students are organized into teams of 5-7 students that work together throughout the class. The program is designed around preparation (reading prior to class), in-class readiness assurance testing, and application exercises. The overall mean effect size of 0.55 indicates a moderate positive effect of TBL on content knowledge when compared to non-TBL comparison groups.
Citation: Swanson, E., McCulley, L. V., Osman, D. J., Scammacca Lewis, N., & Solis, M. (2017). The effect of team-based learning on content knowledge: A meta-analysis. Active Learning in Higher Education, 1469787417731201.
Link: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Elizabeth_Swanson/publication/319974105_The_effect_of_team-based_learning_on_content_knowledge_A_meta-analysis/links/5a831446aca272d6501c3452/The-effect-of-team-based-learning-on-content-knowledge-A-meta-analysis.pdf
March 21, 2019
The Value of Smarter Teachers: International Evidence on Teacher Cognitive Skills and Student Performance: This new research addresses a number of critical questions: Are a teacher’s cognitive skills a good predictor of teacher quality? Using this measure, does teacher quality account for the wide variation of student achievement across ours and other nations? This study examines the student achievement of 36 developed countries in the context of teacher cognitive skills. It uses data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which generates the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which tests the literacy and numeracy skills of 15 year old students and the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) which tests literacy and numeracy skills of adults 16-65 (which includes teachers).
Existing research demonstrates that teachers have the greatest impact of any other school-based factor. It also tells us that teachers’ experience, advanced degrees, and professional development are not very good predictors of teacher effectiveness. There is increasing evidence that a teacher’s own scholastic performance (literacy and numeracy cognitive skills) is consistently related to student outcomes.
The study used multiple approaches to examine the data, and found that: (1) there was great variability in both student achievement and teachers’ cognitive skills across countries, (2) the higher the teachers’ cognitive skills, the more academically successful the students, (3) the effects were more pronounced within a subject area (teachers with higher numeracy skills in math produced higher student achievement in math than reading and vice versa), and (4) students performed better where teachers had higher salaries. One of the implications of the study is the value of targeting potential teachers with higher cognitive skills. High scoring Singapore, Finland, and Korea recruit their teachers exclusively from the top third of their college graduating class. Less than a quarter of U.S. teachers came from this same group.
Citation: Hanushek, E. A., Piopiunik, M., & Wiederhold, S. (2014). The value of smarter teachers: International evidence on teacher cognitive skills and student performance (No. w20727). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Link: http://hanushek.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Hanushek%2BPiopiunik%2BWiederhold_JHR.pdf
March 19, 2019
Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups 2018: This report examines key indicators on the educational progress and challenges students face in the United States by race/ethnicity. There is extensive data on thirty indicators across home, K-12 education, and postsecondary environments, including: demographics, education participation, achievement, student behavior, completion rates, and post school results. The report also has special sections on public school teachers by race/ethnicity and characteristics of postsecondary institutions serving specific minority racial/ethnic groups.
A sample of the many analyses include: (1) the percentage of children under the age of 18 living in poverty was 31% for Black children, 26% for Hispanic, 10% for White, and 10% for Asian; (2) over half of Hispanic (60%) and Black (58%) students attended schools where the enrollment of minority students was at least 75% of total enrollment versus 38% of Asian students and 5% of White students; (3) there has been no significant change in the reading and math White-Black and White-Hispanic achievement gaps; (4) over 5% of public school students received one or more out-of-school suspensions: 13.7% of Black students, 4.5% of Hispanic, 3.4% of White, and 1.1% of Asian; (5) from 2000 to 2016 the high school status completion rate for Hispanic increased from 64 to 89 percent, for Black students 84 – 92%, and White students 92 – 94%,
Citation: de Brey, C., Musu, L., McFarland, J., Wilkinson-Flicker, S., Diliberti, M., Zhang, A., Branstetter, C., and Wang, X. (2019). Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups 2018 (NCES 2019-038). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved [date] from https://nces.ed.gov/ pubsearch/.
Link: https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019038.pdf
