Poor academic performance, behavior linked to time spent playing video games, not the games played

Children who play video games for more than three hours a day are more likely to be hyperactive, get involved in fights and not be interested in school, says a new study. It examined the effects of different types of games and time spent playing on children's social and academic behaviour. The researchers from the University of Oxford found that the time spent playing games could be linked with problem behaviour and this was the significant factor rather than the types of games played. They could find no link between playing violent games and real-life aggression or a child's academic performance. They also found that low levels of play - under an hour a day - might actually benefit behaviour. The findings are published in the journal, Psychology of Popular Media Culture.

Lead author Dr Andy Przybylski, from Oxford University's Oxford Internet Institute, said: 'We can see links between some types of games and children's behaviour, as well as time spent playing. However, we cannot say that game play causes good or bad behaviour. We also know that the risks attached to game-playing are small. A range of other factors in a child's life will influence their behaviour more as this research suggests that playing electronic games may be a statistically significant but minor factor in how children progress academically or in their emotional wellbeing.'

Although some parents might believe that by playing strategy and puzzle games their child might boost their school grades or increase their social skills, the bad news is that the sociability and the grades of the children who played such games were found to be no higher than their non-playing peers.

The study finds that no game features typically encountered by young people could be linked with any negative patterns of behaviour; yet children who played some kinds of games were linked to some types of positive behaviour. Children who played video games with a cooperative and competitive element had significantly fewer emotional problems or problems with peers. Children who chose to play solitary games were found to do well academically and displayed fewer emotional problems or get involved in fights.

The researchers relied on teachers' assessments of behaviour of individual pupils at a school in the southeast of England - instead of relying solely on data from the young people. Teachers reported whether the 200 pupils in the study group were helpful, their academic achievements, and whether they were rowdy or likely to get into fights .The pupils involved in the study were numbered so their personal identities were not revealed to the researchers. These assessments were matched with the responses to a questionnaire that asked each of the pupils in the study, who were aged 12-13 years old, how long they played games each day and the type of games they preferred. The choice given was to play solo, offline competitive team games, online cooperative and competitive games, combat and violence, puzzles and strategy, and games to do with sport and racing.

The study suggests that these latest findings lends partial support to the recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics that parents should pay close attention to the amount of time their children are playing these games.

Co-author Allison Mishkin said: 'These results highlight that playing video games may just be another style of play that children engage with in the digital age, with the benefits felt from the act of playing rather than the medium itself being the significant factor.'

Early education narrows the achievement gap with younger starts and longer stays

Not only does more high-quality early education significantly boost the language skills of children from low-income families, children whose first language is not English benefit even more

New research from UNC's Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) reveals high-quality early education is especially advantageous for children when they start younger and continue longer. Not only does more high-quality early education significantly boost the language skills of children from low-income families, children whose first language is not English benefit even more.

"These findings show that more high-quality early education and care can narrow the achievement gap before children reach kindergarten," said Noreen M. Yazejian, principal investigator of FPG's Educare Learning Network Implementation Study. "Children from low-income families can improve their standing relative to their middle class peers."

Yazejian said previous research has shown language skills are most malleable for children before age 4, which in large part explains high-quality early education's powerful effects. Her study examined children's receptive language skills--the ability to hear and understand words--because these particular skills are an excellent predictor of later academic success.

According to Yazejian, Educare classrooms offered the chance to study children enrolled in high-quality early education and care from the earliest ages. Educare is an enhanced Early Head Start and Head Start program for low-income, high-needs children from 6 weeks old until entry into kindergarten. The model has been replicated in 20 schools nationwide over the last 15 years.

"Educare's comprehensive approach to early childhood education aims to level the playing field for children living in poverty," said Portia Kennel, executive director of the Educare Learning Network. "This new study confirms that we need to include the earliest years of life as part of our nation's education system. Quality early education prepares vulnerable children for success by preventing the achievement gap that appears long before kindergarten."

Yazejian said the Educare program provides full-day, full-year center-based education and care in classrooms that meet the highest professional standards for teacher education, group size, and child-teacher ratios.

"Teachers model the use of language," she added. "And overall instructional quality is high."

Many people traditionally have viewed early care for infants primarily as a support for mothers who want to work and not as an essential component of early schooling. However, findings from the FPG study add to a growing body of research revealing better outcomes for children from low-income families who start high-quality education earlier and stay in it longer.

"Entering Educare as an infant appears to prevent the early decline in language scores often associated with poverty," said Yazejian. "In addition, the children who enter Educare schools as infants and remain through their preschool years demonstrate the highest English language scores at age 5, performing very close to the national average."

Educare's effects on children whose first language isn't English are especially powerful. Like their peers, Spanish-speaking "dual-language learners" benefit from earlier and more high-quality education, yet the findings for dual-language learners are much stronger.

"Most dual-language learners in this study were in classrooms where English was the primary instructional language but in which one staff member could use their home language as needed to support learning," Yazejian explained. "It's not surprising our findings show they quickly acquired skills in English."

Earlier research has shown the English language skills that dual-language learners develop prior to kindergarten can predict educational achievement through eighth grade, but keeping skills in the home language also is beneficial. Home language skills are related to long-term social, emotional, cognitive, and academic outcomes.

"That's why it's reassuring that our study found that the acquisition of English language skills in Educare classrooms does not come at the expense of Spanish skills," said Yazejian.

The number of young children who speak a language other than English at home is growing, and this study contributes valuable new information to the field, Kennel said. "It's encouraging to see that dual-language learners are making strides that form the critical foundation for later learning," she explained.

Yazejian agreed that more than one year of high quality early care and education brings greater benefits for children. "The differences we found in this study, extrapolated to thousands of children--especially dual-language learners--could add up to lasting effects and lower public education costs."

Vocabulary Results from the 2013 NAEP Reading Assessment

Beginning in 2009, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) integrated a measure of students’ understanding of word meaning, or vocabulary with the measurement of reading comprehension. For the NAEP meaning vocabulary assessment, students are asked to demonstrate their understanding of words as used in literary and informational texts that they read in the reading assessment. Students' vocabulary performance is analyzed separately from the reading comprehension performance.

Vocabulary scores for 2013 NAEP assessment are available for grades 4, 8, and 12. Results are based on nationally representative samples of 190,400 fourth-graders, 171,800 eighth-graders, and 45,900 twelfth-graders. The national level results reflect the performance of students attending different school types (public, private schools, Bureau of Indian Education schools, and Department of Defense schools). The national level results are also reported for students of different gender, race/ethnicity, eligibility for subsidized school lunch and students attending schools at different locations.

To view the full report, please visit
The Nation’s Report Card: Vocabulary Results from the 2013 NAEP Reading Assessment

Microaggressions undermining the intelligence and competence of students most frequently delivered by instructors

This article shares exploratory findings from a study that captures microaggressions (MAs) in vivo to shed light on how they occur in classrooms. These brief and commonplace indignities communicate derogatory slights and insults toward individuals of underrepresented status contributing to invalidating and hostile learning experiences.

The researchers' aim is to expand the ways in which we research and think about MAs in educational settings.

The data are drawn from structured observations of 60 diverse classrooms on three community college campuses.

The findings provide evidence that classroom MAs occur frequently—in nearly 30% of the observed community college classrooms. Although cultural/racial as well as gendered MAs were observed, the most frequent types of MAs were those that undermined the intelligence and competence of students. MAs were more likely to be delivered on campuses with the highest concentration of minority students and were most frequently delivered by instructors.

Small High School Reform Lifts All Types of Schools in Urban Districts

Research finds that small high schools deliver better outcomes than large high schools for urban students. An important outstanding question is whether this better performance is gained at the expense of losses elsewhere: Does small school reform lift the whole district?

This paper explores New York City’s small high school reform in which hundreds of new small high schools were built in less than a decade, using rich individual student data on four cohorts of New York City high school students and estimate effects of schools on student outcomes.

The results suggest that the introduction of small schools improved outcomes for students in all types of schools: large, small, continuously operating, and new. Small school reform lifted all boats.

College Tenure Interruption and Graduating Student Outcomes

Using data from a longitudinal survey of college students from over 400 institutions, this paper examines the impacts of occupational internship programs and voluntary academic leave on returning academic achievement, post-college ambitions, and general facets of the college experience. 

Previous literature on college internships has focused on labor market effects and the literature on academic leave has emphasized its causes. Much less has been done to analyze effects of these occurrences on collegiate outcomes.

College internships are found to have a positive effect on grades, increase desires to work full-time or attend graduate school immediately following graduation, and slightly increase ambitions to have administrative responsibilities and be financially well off. 

Voluntary academic leave is found to have only negative effects on collegiate outcomes, including study habits and academic achievement upon return. Implied policy implications are that colleges and universities should champion internship programs but discourage college tenure interruption for other reasons.

Litteracy intervention generates strong negative impacts for black students

Strong literacy skills are crucial to ensuring an individual's future educational and economic success. Existing evidence suggests the transition from elementary to middle school is a decisive period for literacy development

This paper investigates the impact of extended learning time in literacy instruction on subsequent cognitive outcomes, capitalizing on the existence of a natural experiment born out of a district's use of an exogenously- determined cutoff in Iowa Test scores in fifth grade to assign students to an additional literacy course in middle school.

The findings suggest that exposure to this intervention generates strong negative impacts for black students, and noisy positive impacts for white, Latino, and Asian students.

Stereotypes lower math performance in women, but effects go unrecognized

A new study from Indiana University suggests that gender stereotypes about women's ability in mathematics negatively impact their performance. And in a significant twist, both men and women wrongly believe those stereotypes will not undermine women's math performance -- but instead motivate them to perform better.

The research, led by IU social psychologist Kathryn L. Boucher, appears early online in the May issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

"This study's implications go beyond the classroom into the many other social environments where negative stereotypes about women play a role," said Boucher, a postdoctoral research associate in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. "They force us to ask whether people not affected by similar stereotypes can effectively recognize and find ways to reduce their impact. It also puts into perspective the enormous challenge of eliminating the effects of stereotypes despite growing awareness about their harm to women and society."

A recent example of "stereotype threats" Boucher and collaborators point to is the current lawsuit in California brought by venture capitalist Ellen Pao alleging years of discriminatory practices and attitudes based on gender that she says prevented her advancement at a Silicon Valley venture capital firm.

"This study has major implications for women in technology and business environments, where women's abilities are regularly impugned by negative stereotypes," said Mary C. Murphy, assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at IU Bloomington, who oversaw the study. "These are the places where women are most likely to experience stereotype threat -- and if their supervisors and co-workers cannot anticipate how these threats interfere with performance, that's a serious problem. It's one of the ways women end up underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math."

The study's main goal was to find out whether observers could recognize the anxiety and underperformance experienced by women when judged under negative stereotypes. In the IU study, over 150 study participants, split nearly evenly between men and women, were given 10 minutes to solve seven difficult math problems on a computer with no scrap paper.

Before completing the test, a negative stereotype about women was introduced by telling participants that the researchers were trying to find out why women are generally worse at math than men.

Half the participants were then told they would be asked to solve math problems and they responded to a survey about their expected performance; the other half were told they would simply be asked to predict how they thought women might feel in this test-taking situation and how they would perform on the test.

The work confirmed earlier studies by finding that female test-takers performed worse and reported greater anxiety and lower expectations about their performance compared to men when negative stereotypes about gender were introduced at the start of the experiment. But the study went beyond previous research by also measuring men's and women's insights into the experience of the people actually performing under these conditions.

Boucher found that expectations did not match reality: While both sexes expected female test-takers to experience greater anxiety and pressure to perform under the influence of negative gender stereotypes, both male and female observers expected women to successfully overcome these roadblocks. Observers expected stereotypes to increase women's anxiety, but they did not anticipate that the anxiety would undermine performance.

Moreover, this misperception occurred in both men and women. Being a woman did not confer any special insight into women's experiences of stereotype threat; female observers were almost equally likely to overestimate the performance of other women under stereotype threat. Study participants reported they thought the negative stereotypes would function as a "motivating challenge," even though women who actually performed the math problems didn't report this level of motivation when asked about their performance.

The results remained true controlling for how strongly participants felt negative attitudes could affect a person's performance or how concerned they were personally about how others would judge their responses.

The consequences of these misperceptions are significant, Boucher said. The disconnect between reality and perception in these scenarios could translate to reduced support for programs and policies that mitigate the impact of negative gender stereotypes since people do not think they affect real-world performance.

"While many factors can impact performance outside a controlled environment -- be it the classroom or the boardroom -- it's unlikely that performance evaluators currently consider negative stereotypes about women as a serious cause for impaired performance, and so it is unlikely that they will take steps to reduce them," Boucher said.

"Thoughtful applications of this study's findings, however, could help address women's achievement gaps, and increase their representation, in the fields where they're most negatively stereotyped. Recognizing the problem is the first step to addressing it."

Conversations with Counselors Prompt Students to Plan for College

Students who speak with a counselor about life after high school are more likely to say they will attend college and that they plan to apply for federal financial aid, according to a new study from the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC).

Conversations with counselors also increase the likelihood that students will search for college options and visit college campuses by the spring of their junior year, data show.

The study —“A National Look at the High School Counseling Office: What Is It Doing and What Role Can It Play in Facilitating Students’ Paths to College?” — draws on recently released, nationally representative data.

Its findings underscore the critical role counselors play in helping high school students plan for the transition to college, noted Jeff Fuller, NACAC president and director of student recruitment at the University of Houston (TX). Overall, 63 percent of students in the study reported speaking to a school counselor about postsecondary plans.  

“NACAC continues to invest a great deal — including research, training and advocacy — into the development and support of college-readiness counseling,” Fuller said. “Our objectives are to ensure that counselors receive the recognition they deserve, and that policymakers and administrators understand the scope of work that is needed to adequately support students for equitable access to postsecondary education.”

Other key study findings show:

•  School leaders consider counseling crucial: More than half (55 percent) of principals identified “helping students prepare for postsecondary schooling” as their top priority.

• Counselors are stretched: Fifty-four percent of counselors reported that their counseling department spent less than 20 percent of its time on college readiness, selection and applications.

• Some services are underused: While 90 percent of counselors indicated that their schools offered college application assistance, the percentage of students who benefited from this assistance was far lower.

• Schools could do more to track graduates: Despite the fact that most states possess longitudinal databases and that data from the National Student Clearinghouse are available, more schools relied on student surveys (49 percent) than a state or national database (22 percent) to track student outcomes after high school.

The study is the second in a series of reports examining factors that influence college enrollment. The first segment analyzed the effects of early college counseling. NACAC will begin work in 2016 on the third installment, which will explore data on students who have gone through the college application process.

Price of College from the 2011–12 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study

Although total price of attendance is a commonly cited measure of the price of college, most undergraduates and their families actually pay less because students receive financial aid.

This report presents the average total price of attendance (tuition and living expenses), the average net price after grants (total price of attendance minus all grants), and the average out-of-pocket net price (total price of attendance minus all financial aid) by type of institution in the 2011-12 academic year.

Findings include:

• Among undergraduates enrolled full-time in 2011–12, students at public 2-year institutions had the lowest average total price of attendance, $15,000. The average total price of attendance was $23,200 at public 4-year institutions and $29,300 at for-profit institutions. Undergraduates at private nonprofit 4-year institutions had the highest average total price of attendance ($43,500).
• Most undergraduates enrolled full-time in 2011–12 received grant aid from federal, state, institutional, or private sources. After grants were taken into account, undergraduates' net price averaged $11,700 at public 2-year institutions, $18,000 at public 4-year institutions, $25,200 at for-profit institutions, and $27,900 at private nonprofit 4-year institutions.
• Many undergraduates also took out loans, participated in work-study, or received Veterans' benefits or other forms of aid to help pay the immediate expenses of postsecondary education. After accounting for all financial aid, the average out-of-pocket net price for full-time undergraduates was $9,900 at public 2-year institutions, $11,800 at public 4-year institutions, $15,000 at for-profit institutions, and $18,100 at private nonprofit 4-year institutions.

Pre-K children outpace normal expectations through kindergarten

Students who were enrolled in the NC Pre-K Program are making significant gains across all areas of learning through the end of kindergarten, according to a new report from scientists at UNC's Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG).

"Students made progress on most skills through kindergarten at an even greater rate than would be expected for normal developmental growth," said Ellen Peisner-Feinberg, director of FPG's National Pre-K and Early Learning Evaluation Center. Peisner-Feinberg pointed to significant gains throughout this period in students' language and literacy skills, math skills, general knowledge, and behavior.

"Although children made gains over the entire period from the beginning of pre-k through the end of kindergarten, there were differences in the amount of gains each year," she said. "In pre-k, for instance, there was a relatively greater rate of growth on some measures of language and literacy skills, as well as on basic self-knowledge and social skills."

Peisner-Feinberg leads the FPG team that has studied the NC Pre-K Program and provided it with recommendations for more than a dozen years. Since the statewide program's inception as "More at Four" in 2001, it has served over 292,000 at-risk 4-year-olds, helping to prepare them for kindergarten.

Throughout this time, FPG researchers have provided annual evaluation studies of NC Pre-K's outcomes. Peisner-Feinberg's new end-of-kindergarten findings dovetail with her prior research in North Carolina, which also suggests that children enrolled in the state's pre-k program continue to make gains even after leaving it.

"Earlier studies have shown that at the end of third grade, children from low-income families who had attended pre-k had higher reading and math scores on the North Carolina end-of-grade tests than similar children who had not attended the state's program," she said. The vast majority of the program's students are from low-income families.

Prior evaluations of NC Pre-K also revealed that children with lower levels of English proficiency made greater gains than their peers while in the program. Peisner-Feinberg's new findings show that this continues to hold true through their first year of elementary school.

"In most areas of language and literacy skills, math skills, and general knowledge, children with lower levels of English proficiency make the greatest gains through kindergarten," she said.

In 2013-2014, the NC Pre-K Program served almost 30,000 children in nearly 2,000 classrooms, yet still maintained an average class size of only 16 children. According to Peisner-Feinberg, the majority of the NC Pre-K sites achieved the highest five-star licensing level.

She also explained that an important and continuing trend in the NC Pre-K Program has been a steady improvement in the levels of teacher education and credentials. More teachers in the program than ever before hold B-K (birth-kindergarten) licenses, bachelors degrees, or higher degrees.

"Classroom practices were of higher quality when teachers had B-K licenses," she added.

Peisner-Feinberg said FPG's history of bringing researched-based recommendations to NC Pre-K has helped the program maintain its quality as it has grown.

"The state has examined the evaluation findings to ensure that all children are benefitting from NC Pre-K and to consider areas where they might improve practices," she said. "It's been very positive from our perspective to see the program make such good use of our research."

The NC Department of Health and Human Services houses the Division of Child Development and Early Education (DCDEE) and reports the results of FPG's evaluations to the state legislature each year.

"It is certainly affirming that this research validates that our investments in NC Pre-K continue to result in significant positive educational outcomes and are making a difference for North Carolina's young children," said DCDEE director Rob Kindsvatter.

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Read the full report:

More schools, more challenging assignments add up to higher IQ scores

More schooling -- and the more mentally challenging problems tackled in those schools -- may be the best explanation for the dramatic rise in IQ scores during the past century, often referred to as the Flynn Effect, according to a team of researchers. These findings also suggest that environment may have a stronger influence on intelligence than many genetic determinists once thought.

Researchers have struggled to explain why IQ scores for developed nations -- and, now, developing nations -- have increased so rapidly during the 20th century, said David Baker, professor of sociology and education, Penn State. Mean IQ test scores of American adults, for instance, have increased by about 25 points over the last 90 years.

"There've been a lot of hypotheses put forward for the cause of the Flynn Effect, such as genetics and nutrition, but they generally fall flat," said Baker. "It really begged the question of whether an environmental factor, or factors, could cause these gains in IQ scores."

School enrollment in the United States reached almost 90 percent by 1960. However, the researchers, who report their findings in the current issue of Intelligence, suggest that it is not just increasing attendance, but also the more challenging learning environment that are reasons behind the IQ score rise.

"If you look at a chart of the Flynn Effect over the 20th century in the United States, for example, you notice that the proportion of children and youth attending school and how long they attend lines up nicely with the gains in IQ scores," said Baker. "As people went to school, what they did there likely had a profound influence on brain development and thinking skills, beyond just learning the three R's. This is what our neurological and cognitive research shows."

He added that over the century, as as a higher percentage of children from each new generation went to school and attended for more years, this produced rising IQ scores.

"Even after full enrollments were achieved in the U.S. by about the 1960s, school continued to intensify its influence on thinking," said Baker.

While even basic schooling activities can shape brain development, over the past century, schools have moved from learning focused on memorization to lessons that require problem solving and abstract thinking skills, which are often considered functions of fluid intelligence, Baker said.

"Many like to think that schooling has become 'dumbed down,' but this is not true," said Baker. "This misperception has tended to lead cognitive scientists away from considering the impact of schooling and its spread over time as a main social environment in neurological development."

Just as more physical exercise can improve sports performance for athletes, these more challenging mental workouts in schools may be building up students' mental muscles, he added, allowing them to perform better on certain types of problems that require flexible thinking and abstract problem solving, such as IQ tests.

"Certain kinds of activities -- like solving problems, or reading -- stimulate the parts of the brain that we know are responsible for fluid intelligence," said Baker. "And these types of activities are done over and over in today's schools, so that you would expect these students to have higher development than populations of people who had no access to schooling."

Students must not only solve more challenging problems, they must use multiple strategies to find solutions, which adds to the mental workout in today's schools, according to Baker.

The researchers conducted three studies, from neurological, cognitive and demographic perspectives, according to Baker.

He said that genetics alone could not explain the Flynn Effect. Natural selection happens too slowly to be the sole reason for rising IQ scores. This suggests that intelligence is a combination of both genetics and environment.

"The best neuroscience is now arguing that brains of mammals, including, of course, humans, develop in this heavy genetic-environmental dependent way, so it's not an either-or situation," said Baker. "There's a high genetic component, just like there is for athletic ability, but the environment can enhance people's abilities up to unknown genetic limits."

In the first study, the researchers used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to measure brain activity in children solving certain math problems. They found that problems typical of today's schooling activated areas of the brain known as centers of fluid intelligence, for instance, mathematical problem solving.

A field study was also conducted in farming communities in Peru where education has only recently become fully accessible. The survey showed that schooling was a significant influence on improved cognitive functioning.

To measure the challenge level of lessons, the researchers analyzed more than 28,000 pages of content in textbooks published from 1930 to 2000. They measured, for example, whether students were required to learn multiple strategies to find solutions or needed other mental skills to solve problems.

Nature AND Nurture: IQ of children in better-educated households is higher, study of twins indicates

Young adults who were raised in educated households develop higher cognitive ability than those who were brought up in less ideal environments, according to a new study conducted by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Virginia and Lund University in Sweden.

While the study does not refute previous findings that DNA impacts intelligence, it does prove that environmental influences play a significant role in cognitive ability as measured in early adulthood.

The study compared the cognitive ability - as measured by IQ - of 436 Swedish male siblings in which one member was reared by biological parents and the other by adoptive parents. The IQ of the adopted males, which was measured at ages 18-20, was 4.4 points higher than their nonadopted siblings.

The findings were published online in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on March 23.

"In Sweden, as in most Western countries, there is a substantial excess of individuals who wish to adopt compared to adoptive children available," said joint first author Kenneth S. Kendler, M.D., professor of psychiatry and human and molecular genetics in the Department of Psychiatry, VCU School of Medicine. "Therefore, adoption agencies see it as their goal of selecting relatively ideal environments within which to place adoptive children."

The adoptive parents in the study tended to be more educated and in better socioeconomic circumstances than the biological parents. In the study, parental education level was rated on a five-point scale; each additional unit of education by the rearing parents was associated with 1.71 more units of IQ. In the rare circumstances when the biological parents were more educated than the adoptive parents, the cognitive ability of the adopted-away offspring was lower than the one who was reared by the genetic parents.

"Many studies of environmental effects on cognitive ability are based on special programs like Head Start that children are placed in for a limited amount of time," said joint-first author Eric Turkheimer, a U.Va. professor of psychology. "These programs often have positive results while the program is in place, but they fade quickly when it is over. Adoption into a more educated household is the most permanent kind of environmental change, and it has the most lasting effects."

Previous studies have found that educated parents are more likely to talk at the dinner table, take their children to museums and read stories to their children at night.

"We're not denying that cognitive ability has important genetic components, but it is a naïve idea to say that it is only genes," Kendler said. "This is strong evidence that educated parents do something with their kid that makes them smarter and this is not a result of genetic factors."

Turkheimer is the author of a landmark study in 2003 demonstrating that the effect of genes on IQ depends on socioeconomic status. The most recent study further affirms that finding.

"Differences among people in their cognitive ability are influenced by both their genes and environments, but genetic effects have often been easier to demonstrate because identical twins are essentially clones and have highly similar IQs," Turkheimer said. "Environmental effects have to be inferred, as in the rare event when pairs of siblings are raised by different parents in different socioeconomic circumstances. The Swedish population data allowed us to find that homes led by better-educated parents produce real gains in the cognitive abilities of the children they raise."

Chefs, offering choice may increase vegetable, fruit selection in schools

Fruit and vegetable selections in school meals increased after students had extended exposure to school food made more tasty with the help of a professional chef and after modifications were made to school cafeterias, including signage and more prominent placement of fruits and vegetables, but it was only chef-enhanced meals that also increased consumption, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics.

More than 30 million students get school meals daily and many of them rely on school foods for up to half of their daily calories. Therefore, school-based interventions that encourage the selection and consumption of healthier foods, such as fruits and vegetables, can have important health implications, according to the study background.

Juliana F.W. Cohen, Sc.M., Sc.D., of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, and coauthors conducted a randomized clinical trial to examine the effects of short-term and long-term exposure to meals made more palatable with the help of a professional chef who taught school staff culinary skills and extended daily exposure to "choice architecture" in a smart café intervention where fruits were placed in attractive containers, vegetables were offered at the front of the lunch line and white milk was placed in front of sugar-sweetened chocolate milk.

The study involved 14 elementary and middle schools in two urban, low-income school districts, including 2,638 students in grades 3 through 8. Intervention schools received a professional chef who collaborated with them and then students were repeatedly exposed to new recipes on a weekly basis during a seven-month period. The modifications made to school cafeterias as part of the smart café intervention were applied daily for four months.

Baseline food selection and consumption were measured at all 14 schools and afterward four schools were assigned to receive chef-enhanced meals, while the remaining 10 received standard school meals. After three months of exposure to chef-enhanced meals, food selection and consumption were measured, again, after which two chef-enhanced schools and four control schools were assigned to receive the smart café intervention. The remaining six schools continued as a control group. After four more months of exposure to chef-enhanced meals, the smart café intervention or both, food selection and consumption were measured again.

The authors found that after three months of chef-enhanced meals, entree and fruit selection were unchanged but the odds of vegetable selection increased compared with control schools. After seven months, entree selection remained unchanged in the intervention schools compared with control schools. However, the odds of students selecting fruit increased in the chef, smart café and chef plus smart café schools compared with controls. Among the students who selected fruit, the servings consumed were greater in chef schools compared with control schools but there was no effect of the smart café intervention.

The odds of students selecting vegetables also increased in the chef, smart café and chef plus smart café schools compared with control schools. The percentage of vegetables consumed increased by 30.8 percent in chef schools and by 24.5 percent in chef plus smart café schools compared with control schools, according to the study. Selecting a meal component and consuming a meal component were measured separately.

There were no changes in the selection or consumption of white or sugar-sweetened chocolate milk in the smart café schools where students had access to both, the results indicate.

"Efforts to improve the taste of school foods through chef-enhanced meals should remain a priority because this was the only method that increased consumption. This was observed only after students were repeatedly exposed to the new foods for seven months. Therefore, schools should not abandon healthier options if they are initially met with resistance," the study concludes.

Editorial: Nudging Students Toward Healthier Food Choices

In a related editorial, Mitesh S. Patel, M.D., M.B.A., M.S., and Kevin G. Volpp, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, write: "Childhood obesity is a national concern. Despite numerous efforts to improve the food consumption of America's youth, rates of obesity among school-aged children have not changed over the past decade. Strategies that are most likely to encourage healthier food choices are those that reflect individuals' rational preferences (e.g. making food taste better) and apply insights from behavioral economics to better design choice architecture."

2015 Brown Center Report on American Education: Reading Gap, Reading Achievement and the Common Core, Student Engagement

The 2015 Brown Center Report (BCR) represents the 14th edition of the series since the first issue was published in 2000.  It includes three studies.  Like all previous BCRs, the studies explore independent topics but share two characteristics: they are empirical and based on the best evidence available.  The studies in this edition are on the gender gap in reading, the impact of the Common Core State Standards -- English Language Arts on reading achievement, and student engagement.

Part I: Girls, Boys, and Reading examines the gender gap in reading.  Girls outscore boys on practically every reading test given to a large population.  And they have for a long time.  A 1942 Iowa study found girls performing better than boys on tests of reading comprehension, vocabulary, and basic language skills.  Girls have outscored boys on every reading test ever given by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—the first long term trend test was administered in 1971—at ages nine, 13, and 17.  The gap is not confined to the U.S.  Reading tests administered as part of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) reveal that the gender gap is a worldwide phenomenon.  In more than sixty countries participating in the two assessments, girls are better readers than boys.

Perhaps the most surprising finding is that Finland, celebrated for its extraordinary performance on PISA for over a decade, can take pride in its high standing on the PISA reading test solely because of the performance of that nation’s young women.  With its 62 point gap, Finland has the largest gender gap of any PISA participant, with girls scoring 556 and boys scoring 494 points (the OECD average is 496, with a standard deviation of 94).   If Finland were only a nation of young men, its PISA ranking would be mediocre.

Part II: Measuring Effects of the Common Core is about reading achievement, too. More specifically, it’s about reading and the English Language Arts standards of the Common Core (CCSS-ELA).

The analysis investigates whether CCSS-ELA implementation is related to 2009-2013 gains on the fourth grade NAEP reading test.  The analysis cannot verify causal relationships between the two variables, only correlations.  States that have aggressively implemented CCSS-ELA (referred to as “strong” implementers in the study) evidence a one to one and one-half point larger gain on the NAEP scale compared to non-adopters of the standards.  This association is similar in magnitude to an advantage found in a study of eighth grade math achievement in last year’s BCR.  Although positive, these effects are quite small.  When the 2015 NAEP results are released this winter, it will be important for the fate of the Common Core project to see if strong implementers of the CCSS-ELA can maintain their momentum.

Part three is on student engagement.  PISA tests fifteen-year-olds on three subjects—reading, math, and science—every three years.  It also collects a wealth of background information from students, including their attitudes toward school and learning.  When the 2012 PISA results were released, PISA analysts published an accompanying volume, Ready to Learn: Students’ Engagement, Drive, and Self-Beliefs, exploring topics related to student engagement.

Part three provides secondary analysis of several dimensions of engagement found in the PISA report.  Intrinsic motivation, the internal rewards that encourage students to learn, is an important component of student engagement.  National scores on PISA’s index of intrinsic motivation to learn mathematics are compared to national PISA math scores.  Surprisingly, the relationship is negative.  Countries with highly motivated kids tend to score lower on the math test; conversely, higher-scoring nations tend to have less-motivated kids.

How much math, science homework is too much?

When it comes to adolescents with math and science homework, more isn't necessarily better -- an hour a day is optimal -- but doing it alone and regularly produces the biggest knowledge gain, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

Researchers from the University of Oviedo in Spain looked at the performance of 7,725 public, state-subsidized and private school students in the principality of Asturias in northern Spain. The students had a mean age of 13.78. Girls made up 47.2 percent of the sample. The article was published in APA's Journal of Educational Psychology.

The students were given questionnaires asking how often they did homework and how much time they spent on various subjects. They were also asked whether they did their homework alone or whether they had help and, if so, how often. Their academic performance in math and science was measured using a standardized test. Adjustments were made to account for gender and socioeconomic background. Prior knowledge was measured using previous grades in math and science.

The researchers found that the students spent on average between one and two hours a day doing homework in all subjects. Students whose teacher systematically assigned homework scored nearly 50 points higher on the standardized test. Students who did their math homework on their own scored 54 points higher than those who asked for frequent or constant help. The curves were similar in science.

"Our data indicate that it is not necessary to assign huge quantities of homework, but it is important that assignment is systematic and regular, with the aim of instilling work habits and promoting autonomous, self-regulated learning," said Javier Suarez-Alvarez, PhD, co-lead author with Ruben Fernandez-Alonso, PhD. "The data suggest that spending 60 minutes a day doing homework is a reasonable and effective time."

The total amount of homework assigned by teachers was a little more than 70 minutes per day on average, the researchers found. While some teachers assigned 90-100 minutes of homework per day, the researchers found that the students' math and science results began to decline at that point. And while they found a small gain in results between 70 and 90 minutes, "that small gain requires two hours more homework per week, which is a large time investment for such small gains," said Suarez-Alvarez. "For that reason, assigning more than 70 minutes of homework per day does not seem very efficient."

As for working autonomously or with help, the researchers found that students who needed help and did 70 minutes of homework per day could expect to score in the 50th percentile on their test while autonomous students spending the same amount of homework time could expect to score in the 70th percentile. One possible explanation of this result is that self-regulated learning is strongly connected to academic performance and success, according to Suarez-Alvarez.

"The conclusion is that when it comes to homework, how is more important than how much," said Suarez-Alvarez. "Once individual effort and autonomous working is considered, the time spent becomes irrelevant."

Suspending kids from school for using marijuana is likely to lead to more pot use

Research finds counseling more effective than suspensions in combating marijuana use

Suspending kids from school for using marijuana is likely to lead to more -- not less -- pot use among their classmates, a new study finds.

Counseling was found to be a much more effective means of combating marijuana use. And while enforcement of anti-drug policies is a key factor in whether teens use marijuana, the way schools respond to policy violators matters greatly.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Washington and in Australia, compared drug policies at schools in Washington state and Victoria, Australia, to determine how they impacted student marijuana use.

The results startled researchers: Students attending schools with suspension policies for illicit drug use were 1.6 times more likely than their peers at schools without such policies to use marijuana in the next year -- and that was the case with the student body as a whole, not just those who were suspended.

"That was surprising to us," said co-author Richard Catalano, professor of social work and co-founder of the Social Development Research Group at the University of Washington's School of Social Work. "It means that suspensions are certainly not having a deterrent effect. It's just the opposite."

By contrast, the study found that students attending schools with policies of referring pot-using students to a school counselor were almost 50 percent less likely to use marijuana. Other ways of responding to policy violators -- sending them to educational programs, referring them to a school counselor or nurse, expelling them or calling the police -- were found to have no significant impact on marijuana use.

The results were published online March 19 in the American Journal of Public Health.

Data for the research come from the International Youth Development Study, a long-term initiative started in 2002 to examine behaviors among young people in Washington and Victoria. The two states were chosen since they are similar in size and demographics, but differ considerably in their approaches to drug use among students. Washington schools are more likely to suspend students, call police or require offenders to attend education or cessation programs, the researchers note, while Victoria schools emphasize a harm-reduction approach that favors counseling.

Researchers surveyed more than 3,200 seventh- and ninth-graders and nearly 200 school administrators in both 2002 and 2003. Students were asked about their use of marijuana, alcohol and cigarettes and also about their schools' drug policies and enforcement. In both survey years, pot use was higher among Washington students than those in Victoria -- almost 12 percent of Washington ninth-graders had used marijuana in the past month, compared with just over 9 percent of Victoria ninth-graders.

The researchers were initially most interested in teens' use of alcohol and cigarettes, Catalano said. But after Washington legalized recreational marijuana use for adults in 2012, researchers decided to take a closer look at the data to determine how legalization might influence students in Washington versus their counterparts in Australia, where pot remains illegal.

Tracy Evans-Whipp, the study's lead author, said though the policies and marijuana use studied predate marijuana legalization in Washington, the findings provide useful insights about what types of school policies are most effective in steering teens away from the drug.

"Cross-national similarities in our findings suggest that school policy impacts on student marijuana use are unlikely to change, despite Washington legalizing marijuana," said Evans-Whipp, research fellow at the Centre for Adolescent Health and Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Victoria.

Research has shown a consistent link between increased access to marijuana and higher rates of self-reported use by adolescents, the study notes. In Washington and Colorado, where recreational marijuana use by adults was also legalized in 2012, school systems have new responsibilities to adequately educate students about marijuana and respond effectively when teens are caught using it, Catalano said.

"To reduce marijuana use among all students, we need to ensure that schools are using drug policies that respond to policy violations by educating or counseling students, not just penalizing them," he said.

Students who started kindergarten later more likely to drop out, commit crimes

Children who are older when they start kindergarten do well in the short term, academically and socially. But as teenagers, these old-for-grade students are more likely to drop out and commit serious crimes, says new research from Duke University.

The negative outcomes are significantly more likely for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

"This research provides the first compelling evidence of a causal link between dropout and crime. It supports the view that crime outcomes should be considered in evaluating school reforms," said lead author Philip J. Cook, a professor in Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy.

"Dropouts are greatly over-represented in prison, so we know there is a strong association between dropping out and crime," Cook said. "But to establish causation requires an experiment. My analysis takes advantage of nature's experiment associated with birth date."

The research report, by Cook and Songman Kang of Hanyang University in Seoul, South Korea, is forthcoming in the American Economic Journal-Applied Economics.

The study compared North Carolina public school students born 60 days before and 60 days after the school cutoff date. At the time of the study, North Carolina children had to turn 5 by Oct. 16 to be eligible to enter kindergarten that year.

Previous studies have established that children born just after the school-entry cutoff date, who enter school "old for grade," perform better academically than their younger classmates. As a result, a growing number of parents have delayed enrolling their children whose birthdays fall shortly before the cutoff date, seeking to gain academic and social advantages. "Academic redshirting" is more common for boys than girls and for whites than African Americans.

In addition to performing better academically, Cook's study found old-for-grade students were one-third less likely to engage in delinquent behavior while still in school.

"Up until the 16th birthday, it is all positive," Cook said. "They are doing better, relative to their classmates, by every measure. It makes sense, because they are more mature."

But after age 16, the picture shifts, Cook's research shows. The old-for-grade students are more likely to drop out and be convicted of a felony before age 20. The explanation for the seeming contradiction lies in the age at which students may legally withdraw from school, which is 16 in North Carolina.

"If they were born before the cutoff date, they have just 19 months between their 16th birthday and graduation to be tempted to drop out," Cook said. "If they were born just after and enter school later, they have 31 months, and for some of them, it is an irresistible temptation."

"It's human nature," Cook said. "For a lot of adolescents, high school is a drag."

Among the old-for-grade students, the likelihood of dropping out and being convicted of a serious crime is 3.4 times greater for those born to an unwed mother and 2.7 times greater for those whose mothers were high school dropouts.

"Should you redshirt your kid? Well, on the one hand, he'll do better while he's in school and is less likely to become delinquent. On the other hand, he'll be more likely to drop out before graduation, and bad things may follow that," Cook said.

Policymakers should take notice, Cook added.

"Even something as crude as a regulation that requires a kid stay in school to a fixed age, whether he wants to or not, has a considerable effect on criminal activity," Cook said.

Rather than tie legal withdrawal to age, states might consider requiring completion of a certain grade or a specified number of years in school, he said.

"People say there is no point keeping a kid in school who doesn't want to be there because he won't learn anything and he'll be disruptive," Cook said. "My findings suggest that intuitive argument is not entirely correct."

"Even students who would rather drop out can benefit from staying in school when they are required to do so. Otherwise they are prime candidates for recruitment into a life of crime," Cook said.

College-Going Benefits of High School Sports Participation

The long touted athlete advantage in college enrollment has been tempered by assertions that this advantage is actually due to characteristics that precede participation. Moreover, it remains unclear whether the benefits of sports extend into contemporary times and apply equally to female and racial minority athletes.

This study uses three nationally representative longitudinal data sets of students who were 10th graders in 1980, 1990, and 2002. We find that high school sports participation was positively associated with college enrollment, even with the utilization of propensity score modeling, for White boys and girls, Black boys, and Latino boys and girls during the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. The most important gender and race differences include Black female athletes’ college-going disadvantage in the 1980s and 1990s, and girls’ persistently lower rates of high school sports participation than boys’

Achievement Gap Narrows as High School Graduation Rates for Minority Students Improve Faster than Rest of Nation

Graduation rates for black and Hispanic students increased by nearly 4 percentage points from 2011 to 2013, outpacing the growth for all students in the nation, according to new data from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.

What’s more, the gap between white students and black and Hispanic students receiving high school diplomas narrowed over that time, the data show.

“The hard work of America’s educators, families, communities and students is paying off. This is a vital step toward readiness for success in college and careers for every student in this country,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said. “While these gains are promising, we know that we have a long way to go in improving educational opportunities for every student – no matter their zip code - for the sake of our young people and our nation’s economic strength.”

Data released earlier this year show that U.S. students are graduating from high school at a higher rate than ever before. The nation’s high school graduation rate hit 81 percent in 2012-13, the highest level in the nation’s history. Since 2010, states, districts and schools have been using a new, common metric—the adjusted cohort graduation rate—to promote greater accountability and develop strategies that will help reduce dropout rates and increase graduation rates in schools nationwide. The new data reflect that more accurate measure.

Today’s economy calls for critical skills that go beyond the basics. To ensure the economic strength of our country, students must graduate high school ready for college, careers and life. The Department has invested more than $1 billion in early education; implemented strategies that improve achievement and close opportunity gaps, and awarded billions of dollars through such grant programs as Race to the Top, Investing in Innovation, and School Improvement Grants; and expanded college access and affordability for families.

To maintain and accelerate the progress students are making, the Obama Administration is calling for an overhaul of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) —also known as No Child Left Behind—with a law that not only ensures students are prepared for college, careers and life, but also delivers on the promise of equity and real opportunity for every child.

Secretary Duncan has called on Congress to create a bipartisan law that supports state and local efforts to reduce unnecessary testing; gives teachers and principals the resources they need, while also supporting schools and districts in creating innovative new solutions to problems; makes real investments in high-poverty schools and districts and in expanding high-quality preschool, and addresses funding inequities for schools that serve high proportions of low-income students; ensures high expectations for all students; and asks that where schools or groups of students are not making progress, steps will be taken to improve outcomes for those students, including more significant action in and resources for the lowest achieving 5 percent of schools.

Canadian IQ Scoring Norms Sseriously Flawed

Queen's University professor Allyson Harrison has uncovered anomalies and issues with the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Fourth Edition (WAIS-IV), one of the most widely used intelligence tests in the world. IQ scores are used to predict educational success, to help identify intellectual disabilities or intellectual giftedness and to establish whether a person has a specific learning disability.

For her research, Dr. Harrison and her colleagues examined the differences between Canadian and American WAIS-IV scores from 861 postsecondary students from across Ontario. The research identified a trend where the individual's scores were consistently lower using the Canadian test scoring system. The WAIS-IV scores are used to make diagnostic decisions on the person's ability relative to their peer group.

"Looking at the normal distribution of scores, you'd expect that only about five per cent of the population should get an IQ score of 75 or less," says Dr. Harrison. "However, while this was true when we scored their tests using the American norms, our findings showed that 21 per cent of college and university students in our sample had an IQ score this low when Canadian norms were used for scoring."

The trend was the same across all IQ scores, with Canadian young adults in college or university consistently receiving a lower IQ score if the Canadian norms were used. There were fewer gifted students identified when Canadian norms were used, as well as more students who were said to be intellectually impaired.

When scoring the WAIS-IV, Canadian psychologists have the option to compare the obtained raw score with the normative data gathered in either Canada or the USA.

Dr. Harrison notes these findings have serious implications for educational and neuropsychological testing. "Research shows that you can go from being classified as average to intellectually impaired based only on whether American or Canadian norms are used to rank the obtained raw IQ score."

Better breakfast, better grades

A new study from the University of Iowa reinforces the connection between good nutrition and good grades, finding that free school breakfasts help students from low-income families perform better academically.

The study finds students who attend schools that participate in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's School Breakfast Program (SBP) have higher achievement scores in math, science, and reading than students in schools that don't participate.

"These results suggest that the persistent exposure to the relatively more nutritious breakfast offered through the subsidized breakfast program throughout elementary school can yield important gains in achievement," says researcher David Frisvold, assistant professor of economics in the Tippie College of Business.

The federal government started the SBP for children from low-income families in 1966. The program is administered in coordination with state governments, many of which require local school districts to offer subsidized breakfasts if a certain percentage of their overall enrollment comes from families that meet income eligibility guidelines.

Frisvold conducted his study by examining academic performance from students in schools that are just below the threshold--and thus not required to offer free breakfasts--and those that are just over it--and thus do offer them.

He found the schools that offered free breakfasts showed significantly better academic performance than schools that did not, and that the impact was cumulative so that the longer the school participated in the SBP, the higher their achievement. Math scores were about 25 percent higher at participating schools during a students' elementary school tenure than would be expected otherwise.

Reading and science scores showed similar gains, Frisvold says.

Frisvold says the study suggests subsidized breakfast programs are an effective tool to help elementary school students from low income families achieve more in school and be better prepared for later life.

CT: Low-Income, Minority Students More Likely to Attend Schools with Larger Kindergarten Classes and Inexperienced Teachers

New Report Shows Educational Consequences of Connecticut’s Racial and Socioeconomic Segregation

Low-income students and students of color are more likely to attend public schools with the largest kindergarten classes and least experienced teachers, according to a new report “Unequal Schools: Connecticut’s Racial, Socioeconomic, and Geographic Disparities in Class Size and Teaching Experience,” from Connecticut Voices for Children. The report points to Connecticut’s residential segregation as a key factor in these disparities, and warns that this inequality in resources is widening the state’s educational opportunity gap.

“A quality education offers children the opportunity to develop to their full potential, laying the foundation for social and economic success for individuals and for our state as a whole,” said Ellen Shemitz, Executive Director of Connecticut Voices for Children. “Every child in our state should have equal access to a well-resourced school offering a quality education, but our research shows that Hispanic, Black, and low-income students are disproportionately clustered in schools lacking important school resources.”

Among the report’s key findings:

·         Schools with the largest kindergarten classes are comprised primarily of students of color and low-income students.  In the fifth of Connecticut public schools with the largest kindergarten classes, nearly four out of every five students (78%) is a student of color, and more than three out of every four students (76%) is eligible for free or reduced price meals (a common measure of student poverty).  By contrast, in the rest of Connecticut’s public schools, a majority of students are white and not eligible for free or reduced price meals.
·         Similarly, schools with the least experienced teachers are made up primarily of minority and low-income students.  In the fifth of public schools with the lowest average levels of teaching experience, two-thirds of students (67%) are students of color, and three out of every five (61%) are eligible for free or reduced price meals. By contrast, in the rest of Connecticut’s public schools, a majority of students are white and not eligible for free or reduced price meals.

The report’s findings suggest that the roots of these inequalities in resources lie in Connecticut’s residential segregation:
·         A majority of schools with largest kindergarten classes (67%) and least experienced teachers (53%) are concentrated in the 10 towns with the lowest percentage of white residents.
·         These under-resourced schools are also disproportionately located in high-poverty towns.  Sixty-one percent of schools with the largest kindergarten classes and 47% of schools with the lowest average levels of teaching experience are located in the ten towns with the highest child poverty rates.

“Research shows that children who attend smaller classes and who have more experienced teachers aren’t just more successful in school, they’re more likely to be healthy and economically successful adults too,” said Kenneth Feder, co-author of the report and Policy Analyst at Connecticut Voices for Children. “When our state’s low-income and minority students must attend schools with inadequate resources, this puts them at a disadvantage for the rest of their lives.”

The report also finds that towns with more property wealth tend to have smaller class sizes. Given that the majority of education funding in the state comes from property taxes, Connecticut Voices for Children argues that many students are missing out on school resources because their towns simply don’t have property tax base to afford them.

“This distribution of school resources isn’t just unethical, it’s unsustainable,” said Sarah Iverson, Policy Fellow at Connecticut Voices and co-author of the report. “Each year, Connecticut’s students are becoming less wealthy and more racially diverse. If we don’t act to make sure every child gets an equal education, we will be depriving more students of learning opportunity each year.”

To broaden access to well-resourced schools, Connecticut Voices for Children recommends:
·         Reforming the state’s system of education funding to ensure that towns can afford to offer every student a high quality education, regardless of their property tax base.
·         Increasing transparency in public education spending to ensure that dollars are invested in evidence-based resources.
·         Investigating and remediating barriers that prevent families from being able to live in integrated communities with well-resourced schools.

Virtual Schools Remain Unproven

The third edition of the National Education Policy Center’s annual report on virtual schools finds that while online schools continue to proliferate, there continues to be  little evidence of their effectiveness. The limited evidence in hand indicates that virtual schools lag behind traditional public schools.

Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2015: Politics, Performance, Policy, and Research Evidence, edited by University of Colorado Boulder professor Alex Molnar and published today,  consists of three major sections on policy issues, research findings and descriptive information on the nation’s virtual schools.

“The NEPC reports contribute to the existing evidence and discourse on virtual education by providing an objective analysis of the evolution and performance of full-time, publicly funded K-12 virtual schools,” Molnar points out.

As previous editions of the report have found, the 2015 analysis concludes that “Claims made in support of expanding virtual education are largely unsupported by high quality research evidence.” While lawmakers in some states have made attempts to provide greater oversight on the virtual school industry those efforts have not been especially successful. Moreover, the report observes, such actions as policymakers have attempted do not appear to be well informed by research evidence.

The first section of the report, by Luis Huerta of Columbia University’s Teachers College and Sheryl Shafer, includes a comprehensive survey of virtual school legislation introduced in the states in 2014. Additionally, Huerta and Shafer consider a range of policy issues that remain unresolved. These include how to ensure that teachers who provide online instruction have appropriate training and development for the distinctive characteristics of the online classroom setting, and how to more closely guard against profiteering by private for-profit companies.

The second section, by Michael Barbour of Sacred Heart University, surveys the research literature on virtual education and ponders the fact that “more than twenty years after the first virtual schools began, there continues to be a dearth of empirical, longitudinal research to guide the practice and policy of virtual schooling.”

The third section, by Gary Miron of Western Michigan University and Charisse Gulosino of the University of Memphis, takes stock of the country’s virtual schooling operations, with analyses that examine the demographics of virtual school students as well as the virtual schools’ outcomes where measures such as Adequate Yearly Progress and graduations rates are concerned – metrics increasingly used to judge  conventional public schools in the name of accountability. On measures of student achievement and general educational outcomes, they write, “full-time virtual schools continued to lag significantly behind traditional brick-and-mortar schools.”

New Research Finds Academic Ability of New York Teachers Has Significantly Increased

A new study of New York State teachers shows that since 1999, the academic ability of both those certified to teach and those hired to teach has increased substantially after the implementation of new teacher accountability policies – suggesting that the status of teaching nationwide is improving.

In the study, published Thursday in the journal Educational Researcher, researchers from the University of Virginia and Albany, Stanford and North Carolina State universities found that since 1999, the number of newly hired teachers with SAT scores in the top third of test-takers have increased by 13 percentage points. In 2010, 42 percent of newly hired teachers came from the top third of SAT scores, higher than the share from either the middle or bottom thirds.

Luke C. MillerThese results indicate that individuals with very high SAT scores are choosing to teach in public schools despite very likely having the opportunity to enter other high-status jobs such as those in medicine, law, or engineering,” said study co-author Luke C. Miller, a research professor at U.Va.’s Curry School of Education.

The increase is believed to result from the implementation of a statewide package of new teacher accountability policies beginning in the late 1990s that included more stringent training and licensure requirements for teachers, which are a central component of various proposals to improve the status of teaching nationwide. These policies were intended to help New York public schools recruit, train and retain the high-quality teachers needed to help students meet the higher standards of achievement adopted several years earlier.

The academic credentials of both individuals certified to teach and those hired to teach have increased steadily since the implementation of these efforts in 1999, signaling that the status of teaching has increased at least among individuals choosing careers.

The findings also suggest that these reforms are broad-based, with improvements made across the state; in urban, suburban and rural schools; and as across subjects and grade levels. Perhaps even more encouraging is that the researchers found a substantial narrowing of the gap in teachers’ academic abilities between high- and low-poverty schools (one goal of these policies) and between white and minority teachers.

“While the SAT does not capture an individual’s academic ability perfectly, it provides useful insight into ability given its wide-spread use and sound psychometric properties,” Miller said.

The gap in the academic abilities of the teachers hired by high- and low-poverty schools shrank by almost 55 percent between 1999 and 2010. This was accomplished at the same time that newly hired black and Hispanic teachers grew by 8 percentage points, and the difference in the average academic ability between white and minority teachers shrank by almost a quarter. These results suggest that not only are minority teachers making up a larger share of newly hired teachers each year, but their SAT scores are also increasing.

The results also demonstrate a key role for the state’s traditional teacher preparation programs.

“These preparation programs trained and graduated more academically abled teachers as well as provided the classroom-based training for the state’s alternative preparation programs,” said Andrew McEachin, a co-author of the study and an assistant professor at North Carolina State University.

The average SAT score of newly hired teachers who completed a traditional preparation program increased by 17 percent of a standard deviation between 1999 and 2010.

The researchers suggest that while proposals to increase the status of the teaching profession call for reform in several important areas in addition to more rigorous standards for teacher training and licensure, like those implemented in New York State, the increase in the academic ability of new teachers is a strong signal that the status of the teaching profession is increasing.

“These findings signal a resurgence of interest in teaching in public schools as a respected and worthy career and the rising status of the teaching profession,” Miller said.

Many of the policies in New York have been implemented by all other states, such as eliminating emergency certification, requiring a major or certification exam in the area of teaching and creating alternative preparation programs. The researchers speculate that other states have also experienced these gains in teachers’ academic abilities. As a result, these findings have important implications for the future of teacher licensure policies not only in New York, but across the U.S.

Altering admission criteria for NYC's specialized high schools would have benefits

New York City's eighth graders are anxiously waiting to find out which high school they'll be attending in the fall. Six percent of students will end up at one of the city's eight specialized high schools, known for their elite academics--and controversy around their lack of diversity. Female and, most starkly, Black and Latino students are all underrepresented at the schools.

A new report from the Research Alliance for New York City Schools examines students' pathways from middle school to matriculation at a specialized high school, and simulates the effects of various admissions criteria that have been proposed as alternatives to the current policy - which uses students' performance on the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) as the sole determinant of admission.

The study found that admissions rules based on criteria other than the SHSAT - including state test scores, grades, and attendance - would moderately alter the demographic mix of the specialized schools without significantly lowering the academic achievement levels of incoming students. But the rules would not substantially improve the schools' diversity, particularly for Black students, whose numbers would actually decrease under several of the proposed rules.

"While there is a clear pattern of unequal access at the specialized schools, our findings suggest that a narrow focus on the SHSAT is unlikely to solve the problem," said Sean Corcoran, associate professor of educational economics at NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and the report's author. "Unfortunately, the disparities at these schools are symptomatic of larger, system-wide achievement gaps."

In a typical year, about 25,000 of New York City's 80,000 eighth graders take the SHSAT, and 5,000 are offered admission to a specialized high school. In their study, Corcoran and coauthor Christine Baker-Smith sought to understand what role the SHSAT plays in racial and gender disparities at specialized high schools. Analyzing data from 2005 to 2013, they found that while the SHSAT is (by design) the single most important factor determining who attends the specialized high schools, it is not the only factor. Many students--including many high-achieving students--do not take the SHSAT at all, and some of those offered admission decide to go to high school elsewhere.

Even when comparing students with the same level of prior academic achievement (based on seventh grade New York State English language arts and math tests), the researchers documented disparities at each stage of the pathway into a specialized school:

• Application: Girls, students eligible for free lunch, and Latino students were less likely to take the SHSAT; Asian students were substantially more likely to take the test.
• Admission: Girls, students eligible for free lunch, and Latino and Black students were all less likely to receive an offer of admission, while Asian students were more likely to receive an offer.
• Accepting an offer: Girls who received an offer to attend a specialized school were less likely to accept it, while students eligible for free lunch and Asians students were more likely to accept an offer when given one.

"Our analysis suggests there is room to increase the number of well-qualified students who successfully navigate the pathway into a specialized school," said Corcoran. "Strategies that encourage top students to take the test, for example, or provide high-quality SHSAT preparation hold promise for improving access."

The researchers also noted that more than half of students admitted to a specialized high school came from just 5 percent of the city's middle schools. However, when controlling for students' prior achievement, the middle schools that students attended had little effect on their likelihood of admission to a specialized school. This suggests that the concentration of offers in a small number of middle schools is less about the schools themselves and more about the uneven distribution of students across the system--that is, the sorting of higher- and lower-achieving students that takes place before they get to middle school.

Critics of SHSAT-only admissions have offered ideas for different admissions criteria, and selective high schools in other cities use a variety of rules to admit students. But little information exists about how proposed changes would affect New York's specialized high schools. To address this, Corcoran and Baker-Smith simulated what would happen if new admissions criteria were in place, in lieu of the SHSAT. Key findings include:

• Admissions based on state test scores, grades, and attendance would increase the share of Latino and White students and reduce the share of Asian students, but generally would not increase the share of Black students admitted. The same admissions criteria would tip the gender balance in favor of female students.
• 
  More than half of the students who would receive offers based on state test scores, grades, and attendance would also be admitted based on SHSAT scores, suggesting that there is considerable overlap among students who would be admitted under existing and proposed criteria.
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  The only simulated admissions rule that substantially changed the demographic mix of specialized high schools was guaranteed admission to all New York City students in the top 10 percent of their middle school. While this would have a large impact on diversity, it would also reduce the average academic achievement of incoming students, particularly in math.

"The real take-away here is that the lack of diversity in the specialized schools is a much bigger problem than 'to test or not to test?'" said James Kemple, the Research Alliance's executive director. "We need to think more broadly about how to reduce inequality in New York City's schools - identifying strategies that create opportunities for traditionally disadvantaged students will be a primary focus of the Research Alliance's work in coming years."

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Click here to access Pathways to an Elite Education: Exploring Strategies to Diversify NYC's Specialized High Schools: http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/research_alliance/publications/pathways_to_an_elite_education