Education Research Report

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A small change in how teachers and parents read aloud to preschoolers may provide a big boost to their reading skills later on, a new study found.

That small change involves making specific references to print in books while reading to children – such as pointing out letters and words on the pages, showing capital letters, and showing how you read from left to right and top to bottom on the page.

Preschool children whose teachers used print references during storybook reading showed more advanced reading skills one and even two years later when compared to children whose teachers did not use such references. This is the first study to show causal links between referencing print and later literacy achievement.

"Using print references during reading was just a slight tweak to what teachers were already doing in the classroom, but it led to a sizeable improvement in reading for kids," said Shayne Piasta, co-author of the study and assistant professor of teaching and learning at Ohio State University.

"This would be a very manageable change for most preschool teachers, who already are doing storybook reading in class."

Piasta conducted the study with lead investigator Laura Justice, professor of teaching and learning at Ohio State, as well as co-investigators Anita McGinty of the University of Virginia and Joan Kaderavek of the University of Toledo. Their results appear in the April 2012 issue of the journal Child Development.

The study is part of Project STAR (Sit Together And Read), a randomized clinical trial based at Ohio State to test the short- and long-term impacts associated with reading regularly to preschool children in the classroom.

The study involved more than 300 children in 85 classrooms who participated in a 30-week shared reading program. As a group, the children came from low-income homes, started with below-average language skills and were at substantial risk for later reading difficulties.

The children were separated into three groups: high-dose STAR (four reading sessions per week), low-dose STAR (two reading sessions per week) and a third comparison group who also had four reading sessions per week. All teachers in the three groups read the same 30 books to their students.

Teachers in the two STAR groups were trained to make specific print references while reading the books. Teachers in the comparison group were told to read as they normally would, and were not prompted to make print references.

Results showed that both one and even two years later, preschoolers in the high-dose STAR classrooms had higher word reading, spelling and comprehension skills than did children in the comparison group. The benefits were not as clear for those in the low-dose STAR classrooms, although they did seem to have slightly better skills than those children in the comparison classrooms.

Piasta said it was particularly notable that students in the high-dose STAR classrooms scored higher on tests of reading comprehension.

"If you're getting kids to pay attention to letters and words, it makes sense that they will do better at word recognition and spelling," she said.

"But the fact that they also did better at understanding the passages they read is really exciting. That suggests this intervention may help them become better readers."

How do print references help preschoolers become better readers? Piasta said research suggests it helps children learn the code of letters and how they relate to words and to meaning.

"By showing them what a letter is and what a letter means, and what a word is and what a word means, we're helping them to crack the code of language and understand how to read," she said.

While this study shows the value of using print references with preschoolers, research suggests very few teachers and parents do this systematically, according to Piasta.

An earlier study by Justice and her colleagues showed that untrained teachers reference print about 8.5 times per reading session – compared to up to 36 times for those who were trained.

Parents are even less likely to make print references while reading to their children. One study suggests that parents use such references only about once during a typical 10-minute reading session.

"One of the best things about the power of print referencing is how easy it would be to implement during shared reading in the classroom," Piasta said.

"Compared to a lot of interventions, this only requires a small adjustment to teachers' typical reading style. But it pays large dividends in reading skills."

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Youths from African American, Native American, and Latino backgrounds are underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (known as STEM subjects). Although having a mentor of the same ethnicity is widely seen as one way to engage these youths in STEM subjects, no study has asked these young people if they consider having a mentor who shares their background to be important. Now a new study of African American and Latino youths has found that having a "matched" mentor does matter, but only if having such a mentor is considered important by the adolescent.

The short-term longitudinal study was carried out by researchers at the University of Minnesota and the University of California, Santa Cruz. It appears in the journal Child Development.

Ethnic-minority teens' ability to imagine themselves in STEM careers could be hindered by the comparatively small number of ethnic-minority teachers and professors in these fields. This study sought to answer the question of whether having a matched-background mentor would help overcome that perceived barrier.

The researchers surveyed 265 high school students who were attending a four-week summer residential science camp in California called COSMOS—the California State Summer School for Mathematics and Sciences. The teens were ethnically diverse and very high achieving—most had GPAs at or above 4.0; about a quarter were from underrepresented minorities (African American and Latino).

Students filled out surveys at the start and end of camp, answering questions about their prior contact with mentors of the same background, their desire to have a mentor who shared their ethnicity, and their feelings about being a science student. Teens had contact with mentors from a variety of ethnic backgrounds throughout the course of the camp.

The study's results revealed a lot of variability in adolescents' contact with same-ethnicity mentors and how important it is to them to have such mentors. About 65 percent of underrepresented students said they had such a preference, compared with 45 percent of White students. While the study confirmed the assumption that ethnic minorities prefer to have mentors who share their background, it also suggested that there are individual differences in students' desires.

Further, taking preference into account mattered. Among those students who said having a shared-background mentor was important who had contact with such a mentor during the camp, feelings of belonging as science students increased.

"Seeing and interacting with successful figures enables adolescents to envision themselves in similar roles, thereby strengthening their identities," explains Moin Syed, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, who led the study. "Having a strong sense of identity as a science student may be particularly important for underrepresented minority students, given the immense barriers they experience to pursuing careers in STEM fields."

Mentoring programs that assign mentors on the basis of race and ethnicity should be sure to ask students about their preferences and matches should be made accordingly, suggests Syed. "Doing so may help maintain underrepresented students' interests in STEM fields."

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Far too many K-12 students have inadequate writing skills, and the current efforts to improve instruction in the United States may be more challenging than anticipated, research from Michigan State University shows.

According to an initial sample of seven states, the existing standards for teaching writing vary widely in comparison to a new set of common standards that are in the process of being implemented by most states.

Study co-director Gary Troia of MSU, along with Natalie Olinghouse at the University of Connecticut, said educators and policymakers in many parts of the country will have to make significant changes to bring existing curriculum, materials and teacher training in line with the Common Core State Standards for writing and language.

The new K-12 standards are intended to improve instruction in mathematics and English language arts, including writing, nationwide.

“Everyone needs to know how to write well, and we are not doing a good enough job to prepare students,” said Troia, associate professor of education. “What we are finding is that states are going to be faced with a misalignment between the content standards and curriculum materials they are using and what the Common Core requires them to cover.”

The research team has a $1.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to study writing standards, assessments and student performance in all states except Maryland, Texas and the District of Columbia, which elected not to participate. Their first findings, presented at the American Educational Research Association meeting April 17, reflect an analysis of states representing a range of demographics and writing test results: California, Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky, Florida, New York and Massachusetts.

The researchers also evaluated the scope and quality of the Common Core writing standards, expected to be implemented in 46 states by 2014. They found the common standards are easy to interpret, succinct and balanced in terms of covering content across grades and topic areas. However, some important aspects of writing, such as student motivation, peer and teacher feedback, and mastery of an expanded range of writing purposes, are not included in the Common Core.

“Things that do matter at an early age like spelling and handwriting are not addressed very well,” said Troia. “States have to think about whether they want to add anything to the common standards as opposed to implementing them as is.”

Policy research has shown that content standards affect what is taught and how students perform. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, up to two-thirds of U.S. students are not considered proficient in writing.

“That presents a pretty bleak picture, and yet the expectations for writing in college and the workplace are being ramped up,” Troia said. “The Common Core can provide consistency and a lot of opportunities to enhance instruction, but there are gaps as well and we don’t want those to be ignored.”

The four-year study also is exploring how states’ writing standards and assessments reflect research knowledge about best practices as well as the types of writing skills students are expected to demonstrate after graduation.

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Strengthening recess transforms the school climate, paving the way for less bullying and more focus on learning, says a new study from Mathematica Policy Research and Stanford University. The randomized control trial specifically looked at what happened when schools partnered with Playworks, a national nonprofit that is currently providing healthy recess and other playtime to schools in 23 cities nationwide.

Researchers found that investing in recess and organized play can prevent bullying, improve students’ behavior at recess and readiness for class, and provide more time for teaching and learning. The study is one of the most rigorous scientific trials to find an effect on bullying in schools, and one of the first that evaluates a recess-and play-based program as a potentially promising school-based solution.

“Our research shows that Playworks makes a difference. Teachers in Playworks schools reported less bullying and exclusionary behavior during recess relative to control school teachers,” said Susanne James-Burdumy, Ph.D., associate director of research at Mathematica. “Playworks also facilitated students’ transitions back to classroom learning.”

The study compared schools using Playworks to a control group of similar schools without the program during the 2010-2011 school year in five cities across the country. Researchers found the following ways in which Playworks improves the school climate:

* Less Bullying. Teachers in Playworks schools reported less bullying and exclusionary behavior during recess than teachers in control schools.
* Better Recess Behavior and Readiness for Class. Teachers at Playworks schools tended to report better student behavior at recess and readiness for class than teachers at control schools, and they were more likely to report that their students enjoyed adult-organized recess activities.
* More Time for Teaching. Teachers in Playworks schools reported having fewer difficulties and spending significantly less time transitioning to learning activities after recess than teachers in control schools. Playworks students were also more likely than control students to report better behavior and attention in class after sports, games and play.
* Safer Schools. Teachers in Playworks schools perceived that students felt safer and more included at recess, compared to teachers in control schools.
* Satisfied Teachers. Nearly 100 percent of teachers in Playworks schools reported that they wanted the program in their school again the following year.

RECESS AS A VITAL OPPORTUNITY TO IMPROVE SCHOOLS

Recess and other school-based play time are some of the least studied elements of the school day. Principals and teachers often say, however, that a bad recess period has a negative effect on the entire school day.

“This research confirms what we have seen as schools across the nation partner with Playworks to provide kids with healthy play every day. These new findings, taken together with existing data, tell us that kids better relate with one another, resolve conflicts constructively, get plenty of physical activity on the playground and return to class focused and ready to learn,” said Nancy Barrand, special advisor for program development at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). “Increasingly, health and education leaders are recognizing that recess and play are effective ways to strengthen schools and foster children’s social, emotional and physical development.”

This new research, sponsored by RWJF, contributes to a growing body of evidence that a safe, healthy recess environment is a key driver of better behavior and learning.

A recent University of California, San Francisco study compared physical and emotional health outcomes between students who receive Playworks and control students and found that students exposed to Playworks fared better. In another evaluation, the Harvard Family Research Project credited Playworks with improving cooperation among students and strengthening bonds among students and between kids and adults in school. In Baltimore, the Open Society Institute saw suspensions plummet at schools that partnered with Playworks.

“For our education system to succeed, our schools need to be able to create the conditions for learning,” said Jill Vialet, CEO and founder of Playworks. “The good news is that we’ve developed a model that can be replicated almost anywhere and produces positive and measurable results.”

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Experts Believe Prevention in Middle School Matters

A new study of 1,430 7th-grade students released today reveals that many 7th-graders are dating and experiencing physical, psychological and electronic dating violence. More than one in three (37%) students surveyed report being a victim of psychological dating violence and nearly one in six (15%) report being a victim of physical dating violence. The study also found that while some attitudes and behaviors associated with increased risk for teen dating violence are pervasive, nearly three-quarters of students surveyed report talking to their parents about dating and teen dating violence. Parent-child communication is considered a protective factor that reduces the risk for teen dating violence.

The study was conducted by RTI International (RTI) on behalf of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Blue Shield of California Foundation as part of an independent evaluation of their Start Strong: Building Healthy Teen Relationships (Start Strong) initiative. The data released today is the baseline for this larger evaluation to assess the overall impact of the program. Start Strong is one of the largest initiatives ever funded that targets 11- to 14-year-olds to promote healthy relationships in order to prevent teen dating violence and abuse.

The Start Strong evaluation is one of the few studies, and one of the largest, to look in-depth at the dating relationships of middle school students. Although it is not nationally representative, the study sample included 1,430 7th-grade students from diverse geographical locations. The study collected data on teen dating violence behaviors, as well as risk and protective factors linked to dating violence, such as gender stereotypes, sexual harassment, the acceptance of teen dating violence and parent-child communication.

“There is limited information on 7th-graders and these data provide important insights into teen dating violence behaviors and risk factors among middle school students,” said Shari Miller, Ph.D., lead researcher from RTI. “From this study, we are learning that many 7th-graders are already dating and teen dating violence is not happening behind closed doors with so many students in this study witnessing dating violence among their peers. While we need to do much more to understand this young age group, our data point to the need for teen dating violence prevention programs in middle school.”

Among the key findings:

- 75% of students surveyed report ever having a boyfriend or girlfriend.
- More than 1 in 3 (37%) students surveyed report being a victim of psychological dating violence in the last 6 months.
- Nearly 1 in 6 (15%) students surveyed report being a victim of physical dating violence in the last 6 months.
- Nearly 1 in 3 (31%) students surveyed report being a victim of electronic dating aggression in the last 6 months.
- More than 1 in 3 (37%) of students surveyed report having witnessed boys or girls being physically violent to persons they were dating in the last 6 months.
- Nearly 2 out of 3 students surveyed (63%) strongly agree with a harmful gender stereotype, such as “girls are always trying to get boys to do what they want them to do,” or “with boyfriends and girlfriends, the boy should be smarter than the girl.”
- Nearly half of students surveyed (49%) report having been a victim of sexual harassment in the past 6 months, such as being “touched, grabbed, or pinched in a sexual way,” or that someone ”made sexual jokes” about them.
- Nearly three-quarters of 7th-grade students surveyed report that, in the last 6 months, they “sometimes or often” talk with their parents about dating topics such as, “how to tell if someone might like you as a boyfriend or girlfriend.”

Prevention in Middle School Matters

“Dating violence is a pressing public health challenge and these new data are important and powerful. We know that middle school provides this critical window of opportunity to teach young adolescents about healthy relationships and prevent teen dating violence,” said James Marks, M.D., M.P.H., senior vice president and director, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Group. “Through Start Strong, we are identifying and spreading effective ways for parents, teachers and communities to help young people develop healthy relationships throughout their life.”

The Start Strong program utilizes a multi-faceted approach to rally entire communities to promote healthy relationship behaviors among middle school students. The Start Strong model utilizes innovative program components to: i) educate and engage youth in schools and out of school settings; ii) educate and engage teen influencers, such as parents, older teens, teachers and other mentors; iii) change policy and environmental factors in schools and communities; and iv) implement effective communications/ social marketing strategies to change social norms. “By combining the findings of this new study with the lessons learned in Start Strong communities, we are developing the essential tools needed to promote healthier relationships for young people,” said Peter Long, Ph.D., president and CEO of Blue Shield of California Foundation.

Parent engagement is a key component of Start Strong. As the study shows, many 7th-graders are talking to their parents about dating topics, including teen dating violence. This highlights the important role parents can play in prevention efforts. Start Strong educates parents of middle school students about these issues so they can help their children navigate new relationships (both online and offline), including teaching parents the warning signs of abuse and how to start conversations about healthy relationships at an early age.

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Countries that best prepare math teachers meet several key conditions generally lacking in the United States, according to the first international study of what teacher preparation programs are able to accomplish.

The study, led by Michigan State University, suggests that in countries such as Taiwan and Singapore, future math teachers are better prepared because the students get rigorous math instruction in high school; university teacher-preparation programs are highly selective and demanding; and the teaching profession is attractive, with excellent pay, benefits and job security.

The Teacher Education and Development Study, or TEDS-M, provides strong evidence of the benefits of teacher-preparation programs at colleges and universities. The six-year study was funded by the National Science Foundation, which provided $4.2 million, as well as the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, or IEA, and the participating countries.

"Some critics of teacher education believe you can bypass colleges of education and prepare teachers in an easier, faster way, but our study doesn't support that," said Maria Teresa Tatto, international study director and MSU associate professor of education.

"In Taiwan, for example, nobody graduates without the demonstrated ability to teach mathematics," she said. "Here in the United States, far too many of our graduates lack the knowledge of mathematics and how to teach it, which they will need as they begin to teach.

The researchers collected data from representative national samples that included about 500 higher education institutions in 17 countries that prepare primary and secondary school teachers. Some 22,000 future teachers were surveyed and tested, and 5,000 instructors were also surveyed. The full data from the report will be published soon on the IEA's website.

The researchers looked at how well the teaching students knew math and how much they knew about how to teach it.

The differences between top and bottom scoring countries were very large, Tatto said. Taiwan and Singapore did far and away the best in preparing math teachers. Russia also scored highly. Poland, Switzerland and Germany did well partly because they rely more on specialist teachers in lower grades.

The United States generally finished below this group but above other countries that scored way below the international average, Tatto said.

John Schwille, a researcher on the project and MSU education professor, said the results offer grounds for optimism about what can be done to improve teacher preparation and overcome a climate of skepticism.

The study, he added, is in part a response to the belief among many in the United States that teachers are "born and not made, so why are we wasting our time on university programs?" Critics argue that university-based teaching programs are costly and take longer than the alternative of just hiring talented liberal arts graduates and putting them more directly in classrooms.

But this argument doesn't hold up, Schwille said.

"There are some 'born' teachers, sure, but not enough to fill the classrooms," he said. "So you're going to have to prepare them. And the countries that do it best rely on university-based teacher education programs."

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A University of British Columbia researcher has developed a simple two-question test to screen kindergarten-aged children for future anxiety disorders - the most commonly reported mental health concern among children.

The screening questions, which ask parents about shyness, anxiety and worrying in their children, were found to be 85 per cent effective in identifying children who went on to be clinically diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.

"When children enter kindergarten, they are screened for hearing and vision problems and difficulty reading so that these issues can be identified and treated early," says Lynn Miller, an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at UBC who is presenting this research at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual meeting in Vancouver. "It only makes sense to screen for anxiety at this age too."

Miller evaluated three questions in a study of 200 kindergarten children from the Lower Mainland. The two questions that Miller found to be most effective in identifying anxiety disorders in children are:

Is your child more shy or anxious than other children his or her age?
Is your child more worried than other children his or her age?

One in ten children is affected by a mental health disorder and the majority are anxiety disorders. Anxiety is associated with a number of psychological and educational difficulties such as impaired peer and family relationships, school avoidance, greater rates of depression, increased rates of alcohol and tobacco use, and development of related anxiety disorders.

"The good news is that anxiety disorders are among the easiest to treat and the best way to treat these disorders is when kids start school," says Miller, of the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education.

Miller explains that parents, teachers and community members can teach children how to cope with anxiety in four steps.

Children are first taught to identify when they're feeling anxious. They are taught a variety of techniques to cope with anxiety and learn which techniques work best when they feel scared or frightened. Children are taught to evaluate what makes them anxious and then begin taking steps to face their fears.

"We don't talk about mental health disorders in children of this age but it is the best time to intervene and prevent future problems," says Miller. "Anxiety has tendency to masquerade as other things - children who are anxious don't have to suffer."

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Catastrophic brain injuries associated with full-contact football appear to be rising, especially among high school students, according to a new report.

The increase is alarming and indicates more coaches and athletic trainers should change how they teach the fundamental skills of the game, according to researchers based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Until recently, the number of football-related brain injuries with permanent disability in high school had remained in the single digits since 1984. However, the tally rose to 10 injuries in 2008 and 2009, and there were 13 in 2011, according to the latest catastrophic football injury research annual report from the UNC-based National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research.

"These 2011 numbers are the highest since we began collecting catastrophic brain injury data," said Fred Mueller, Ph.D., the report's lead author, director of the center and professor emeritus of exercise and sports science in the College of Arts and Sciences. "This is a major problem."

About 4.2 million football players compete nationwide, including 1.1 million high schoolers.

The center has collected data and published annual reports on catastrophic football injuries, including fatalities, disabilities and serious injuries, for 48 years. The National Collegiate Athletic Association, National Federation of State High School Associations and the American Football Coaches Association fund the research.

The center's work is believed to be directly responsible for nearly eliminating football fatalities, as well as drastically reducing the number of cervical cord injuries to single digits, between the late 1960s and the early 1990s.

Since 1977, about 67 percent of football-related catastrophic injuries have been suffered by players as they made tackles. Mueller said part of the problem is that despite being prohibited in 1976, head-to-head contact – such as butt-blocking, face tackling or spearing tackles – is still occurring. These strategies make the head the initial and primary contact point with an opposing player, and often lead to cervical spine fractures or permanent brain injuries.

Some players recover fully after surgery and rehabilitation following injuries. However, many only recover partially, living with paralysis or mental deficiency, relying on intensive lifetime medical care. Since 1984, there have been 488 cervical cord and cerebral injuries with incomplete recovery, including 164 brain injuries, of which 148 were among high schoolers. Additionally, the years between 2001 to 2010 saw a 25 percent jump in football-related disability brain injuries over the previous decade, increasing to 66 from 52 incidents among all types of players.

Other potential reasons for the apparent increase in brain injuries may be because of heightened awareness of the issue. Also, this year's report updated the number of football participants. However, Mueller noted that neither of these factors likely influenced the overall figures, since the report's definition of catastrophic injuries (defined as injuries that resulted in brain or spinal cord injury or skull or spine fracture, which involved some disability at the time of the accident) and data collection methods have remained unchanged.

Mueller said reversing the trend required several changes, which some in the football community are already implementing. Coaches must be well versed in the signs and symptoms of concussions, such as headaches, dizziness, nausea and light sensitivity, and pull players from games if they exhibit those indicators. Players should not return to play until cleared by a physician. Teams also should hold pre-season meetings to discuss concussions, conduct medical evaluations of all players and emphasize that the head should not be used in tackling or blocking.

The report's recommendations also note that schools should hire coaches who teach proper fundamental skills, and retain athletic trainers certified by the National Athletic Trainers' Association. Referees must be vigilant about throwing flags when they see illegal tackles and parents also must be involved in meetings and discussions about concussions.

"All of these measures are important if we want to continue to make a positive impact on the game," he said. "We have to continue research in this area. Accurate data not only indicate problem spots, but they also help us offer appropriate precautions and reveal the adequacy of our preventive measures."

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While theories about race, gender, and math ability among high school students have long been debated, a recent study found that math teachers are in fact, unjustifiably biased toward their white male students. This study was published in a new article released in the April 2012 issue of Gender & Society (GENDSOC), the official journal of the Sociologists for Women in Society, published by SAGE.

"This speaks to the presence of a perhaps subtle yet omnipresent stereotype in high school classrooms: Math, comparatively speaking, is just easier for white males than it is for white females," wrote the authors.

Researchers Catherine Riegle-Crumb and Melissa Humphries analyzed data collected by the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES) that consisted of a nationally representative group of about 15,000 students. Their data also included teacher surveys in which math teachers were asked to offer their personal assessment of individual students, indicating whether they felt that the course was too easy for the student, the appropriate level, or too difficult. The researchers compared these assessments with other data about the students such as their math GPA and their score on a standardized math test in order to determine if the teachers' perceptions of their students' abilities matched up with the students' actual scores.

After analyzing this data, the researchers found disparities between teachers' favorable perceptions of the abilities of their white male students and these students' scores. Conversely, white female students were perceived by teachers to be doing more poorly in their math classes than they actually were.

The researchers did not, however, find the same disparities between white students and minority students. In fact, they found that math teachers actually favored black female students, claiming that these students were more successful in their math classes than they actually were.

The authors wrote, "Once we take into account that, on average, Black and Hispanic male and female students have lower grades and test scores than white males, teachers do not rate the math ability of minority students less favorably than students belonging to the traditionally advantaged category of white males."

Riegle-Crumb and Humphries offered some explanations for their findings. For example, since few black females were enrolled in high-level math courses, teachers may have viewed the black female students in their advanced courses as overcoming more to be successful in mathematics, thus illustrating more perseverance and academic potential. Additionally, they explained that teachers may be more sensitive to their own tendencies towards racial bias than gender bias as gender bias may be so socially ingrained that it is harder to notice and therefore harder to resist.

The authors wrote, "The occurrence of bias in high school classrooms indicates that cultural expectations likely function to shape interactions and re-create inequality throughout the math pipeline that leads to high-status occupations in related fields of science and technology."

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Evidence shows that instructional materials have large effects on student learning. However, little research exists on the effectiveness of most instructional materials, and very little systematic information has been collected on which materials are being used in which schools.

In this new Brooking Institution report, Russ Whitehurst and Fellow Matthew Chingos argue that this problem can be efficiently and easily fixed by states, with support from the federal government, non-profit organizations, and private philanthropy. Here are highlights from their recommendations:

State education agencies should collect data from districts on the instructional materials in use in their schools. The collection of comprehensive and accurate data will require states to survey districts, and in some cases districts may need to survey their schools. In the near term, many states can quickly glean useful information by requesting purchasing reports from their districts’ finance offices. Building on these initial efforts, states should look to initiate future efforts to survey teachers, albeit on a more limited basis.

The federal government’s National Center for Education Statistics should aid states in this effort by developing data collection templates for them to use through its Common Education Data Standards (CEDS), and providing guidance on how states can use and share data on instructional materials.

Organizations with an interest in education reform should support this effort. For example, the National Governors Association (NGA) and Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) have put their reputations on the line by sponsoring the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Research based on current and past state standards indicates that this initiative is unlikely to have much of an effect on student achievement in and of itself.

The Data Quality Campaign (DQC) should use its influence in this area to encourage states to collect information on the use of instructional materials and support them in their efforts to gather these data. The DQC should also help states use the data once they have been collected.

Philanthropic organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Lumina Foundation for Education could have a major impact by providing the start-up funding needed to collect data on instructional materials and support the research that would put those data to use.

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By offering $20,000 per teacher, seven school districts piloting a transfer-incentive strategy, known as the Talent Transfer Initiative (TTI), filled 90 percent of their targeted vacancies in hard-to-staff schools with some of the districts’ highest-performing teachers. A new study from Mathematica Policy Research highlights the implementation experience and intermediate impacts of TTI, which is intended to expand disadvantaged students’ access to the most effective teachers. Previous research conducted by Mathematica shows that, on average, low-income middle school students are significantly less likely to have access to the highest-performing teachers.

Funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, the new study focused on early impacts of TTI on teacher hiring and support as well as on student-assignment practices in the participating schools. The schools came from seven large and diverse districts in Alabama (Mobile County Schools), Arizona (Tucson Unified School District), North Carolina (Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Guilford County Schools and Winston-Salem Forsyth County Schools), Tennessee (Knox County Schools) and Texas (Houston Independent School District). The study revealed that:

- A large pool of candidates (16 per slot in this study) is needed to yield an adequate number of successful transfers.
- In addition to their high value-added scores, TTI teachers had an average of five years’ more teaching experience and were significantly more likely to have a post-graduate degree than were teachers who would normally have been selected to fill vacancies at the low-achieving schools.
- On average, TTI teachers moved to classrooms with a lower percentage of white students (12 versus 30 percent in their original schools), a higher percentage of Hispanic students (42 versus 31 percent) and a higher percentage of low-income students (89 versus 64 percent).
- There was no evidence that TTI changed the way students were assigned to teachers within schools.
- Principals in receiving schools did not report significant impacts, positive or negative, on teacher collaboration, trust and sharing of ideas.
- TTI teachers used less mentoring and spent more time mentoring their colleagues (25 minutes per week, on average, compared to less than one minute per week for non-TTI teachers), even though there were no specific requirements for TTI transfers to serve as mentors.

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This report provides a descriptive profile of the school shopping behavior of 1,073 Detroit households with 1,699 school-age children. Based on doorstep interviews and focus group discussions with these families, the report represents one of the most comprehensive and aggressive attempts nationally to answer important questions about how parents, especially low-wealth families, think about and pursue school options within a major urban setting. The report also provides rich descriptions of how four different school shopper types approach the school search and selection process.

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University of British Columbia research comparing traditional bullying with cyberbullying finds that the dynamics of online bullying are different, suggesting that anti-bullying programs need specific interventions to target online aggression.

"There are currently many programs aimed at reducing bullying in schools and I think there is an assumption that these programs deal with cyberbullying as well," says Jennifer Shapka, an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at UBC who is presenting this research at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual meeting in Vancouver.

"What we're seeing is that kids don't equate cyberbullying with traditional forms of schoolyard bullying. As such, we shouldn't assume that existing interventions will be relevant to aggression that is happening online."

Shapka is presenting a study that involved 17,000 Vancouver, B.C. students in Grades 8 to 12 and a follow-up study involving 733 Vancouver, B.C. youth aged 10-18.

Results of the studies show that about 25-30 per cent of youth report that they have experienced or taken part in cyberbullying, compared to 12 per cent of youth who say they've experienced or taken part in schoolyard bullying. However, "Youth say that 95 per cent of what happens online was intended as a joke and only 5 per cent was intended to harm," says Shapka. "It is clear that youth are underestimating the level of harm associated with cyberbullying."

According to Shapka, the findings suggest that in cyberbullying adolescents play multiple roles - as bullies, victims, and witnesses - and "downplay the impact of it, which means that existing education and prevention programs are not going to get through to them."

"Students need to be educated that this 'just joking' behaviour has serious implications."

Being victimized online can have consequences for a person's mental health, developmental wellbeing, and academic achievement, according to Shapka. In extreme cases, there have been reports of suicide.

Traditional bullying, or schoolyard bullying, is often associated with three main characteristics: a power differential between bully and victim, a proactive targeting of a victim, and ongoing aggression.

Shapka says, research is beginning to show that cyberbullying does not necessarily involve these three characteristics. Traditional power differentials - size and popularity - do not necessarily apply online. There also seems to be more fluid delineation between the roles youth play; it is not unusual for an individual to act in all capacities - bullies, victims, and witnesses - online.

Previous work by Shapka and her colleagues has shown that in contrast to traditional bullying, cyberbullying is rarely associated with planned targeting of a victim.
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An Indiana University study presented on Friday at the American Educational Research Association meeting in Vancouver shows that race continues to be an important factor in determining who receives out-of-school suspension and expulsion, and that racial disparities in school discipline are most likely due more to school characteristics than to the characteristics of behaviors or students.

Russ Skiba, professor in counseling and educational psychology at the Indiana University School of Education, led the study, exploring factors affecting disproportionate rates of suspension and expulsion for African-American students. Skiba is director of The Equity Project, offering evidence-based information on equity in special education and school discipline, based in the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at IU Bloomington.

"For overall rates of suspension and expulsion, the study found that discipline is not just a function of difficult students receiving punishment but is more complex," Skiba said.

Type of misbehavior, student characteristics including race and socioeconomic status, and school characteristics, such as the principal's views on school discipline, all predict which students will be suspended or expelled. In particular, the study found race to be a key factor.

"It continues to be a powerful predictor of the severity of school punishment, independent of poverty status or the type of behavior students engage in," Skiba said. "In particular, schools with more African-American students are more likely to use more exclusionary forms of discipline such as suspension or expulsion."

He said the researchers found that poverty rates and more disruptive behavior didn't account for the racial disparities. Instead, the characteristics of schools themselves, including principal attitudes regarding discipline, are most important in accounting for racial differences.

Here are some of the findings:

- After controlling for both poverty and the seriousness of behavior, African American students remain 1.5 times more likely than white students to receive an out-of-school suspension.
- Students in schools with higher proportions of black students are almost 6 times more likely to receive an out-of-school suspension.
- Students in schools where a principal supports preventive alternatives to suspension are 30 percent less likely to receive an out-of-school suspension, and more than 50 percent less likely to receive an expulsion.

Skiba said the results are consistent with other recent reports, including a report released last month by the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights that found national data indicate African-American students are far more likely than peers to be suspended.

"It is especially troubling that these results support previous research in showing that schools with higher proportions of African-American students use more punitive procedures, regardless of the socioeconomic level of the schools," Skiba said.

"It's no surprise that schools face tough and complex decisions in trying to keep schools safe and orderly," Skiba said, but he added that the results also have important implications for addressing racial differences in discipline. "If we really wish to make a difference in reducing racial and ethnic disparities in suspension and expulsion, these findings suggest that we would do better reflecting upon school policies and practices than focusing on characteristics of students or their behavior."

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American students need a dramatically new approach to improve how they learn science, says a noted group of scientists and educators led by Michigan State University professor William Schmidt.

After six years of work, the group has proposed a solution. The 8+1 Science concept calls for a radical overhaul in K-12 schools that moves away from memorizing scientific facts and focuses on helping students understand eight fundamental science concepts. The "plus one" is the importance of inquiry, the practice of asking why things happen around us -- and a fundamental part of science.

"Now is the time to rethink how we teach science," said Schmidt, University Distinguished Professor of statistics and education. "What we are proposing through 8+1 Science is a new way of thinking about and teaching science, not a new set of science standards. It supports basic concepts included in most sets of state standards currently in use and complements standards-based education reform efforts."

The group of scientists has met with Schmidt in an effort to rethink how science should be taught since 2006, when it was originally part of the PROM/SE research project (Promoting Rigorous Outcomes in Mathematics and Science Education) funded by the National Science Foundation.

The 8+1 concepts were derived from two basic questions: What are things made of and how do systems interact and change? The eight concepts are: atoms, cells, radiation, systems change, forces, energy, conservation of mass and energy, and variation.

Traditionally, science in the United States has been taught in isolated disciplines such as chemistry, biology and physics without clear connections being made between the subjects. The 8+1 effort encourages K-12 teachers to use the eight science concepts to build understanding within and between their courses as students advance through the grades.

"The natural world seems to operate through these laws and concepts, but when it comes to schooling we don't teach children these laws and then show how these apply in different situations," Schmidt said.

Simon Billinge, an 8+1 committee member and professor of applied physics and mathematics at Columbia University, said the aim is for students to see, for example, the physics within biology and the chemistry within physics, so they can gain an understanding of science that transcends disciplinary lines.

Today's frontiers in science often occur at these disciplinary edges. Aided by the explosion in technology and scientific discoveries, new fields are arising that were hardly imagined a generation ago such as synthetic biology, digital organisms and genomics.

Most states are participating in a process to develop new K-12 science standards that are more relevant, coherent and based on international benchmarks.

Stephen Pruitt, vice president of Achieve, a nonprofit organization managing the state-led effort, said 8+1 Science can work hand-in-hand with his organization's effort -- called Next Generation Science Standards -- "to change the way we think about science education."

"The emphasis is about helping students learn key concepts in science, rather than just facts," Pruitt said.

Results from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress show only 34 percent of fourth-graders and 21 percent of 12th-graders were proficient in their science knowledge. Internationally, U.S. students ranked a mediocre 23rd in their science knowledge among countries studied by the Program for International Student Assessment.

Further information on 8+1. http://8plus1science.org/

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Tests exist for evaluating personality, intelligence and memory. However, up to now, it was not easily possible to find out how good someone is at making decisions in risky situations. "Yet this is an important skill that has an enormous influence on many of our decisions," says psychologist Edward Cokely, who came up with the idea of developing a quick test for this skill at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in 2007. In the intervening five years, he has carried out 21 sub-studies in 15 countries with colleagues from Max Planck Director Gerd Gigerenzer's group at the Institute in Berlin and the Michigan Technological University.

One of the results of the studies is the first quick test for establishing an individual's risk intelligence.

The "Berlin Numeracy Test" is available at the www.riskliteracy.org website.

The test works twice as well as previous methods and only takes three minutes. Traditional tests, which tend to determine general cognitive capacities, like intelligence or attention control, provide little information about a person's risk competency. A high level of intelligence does not necessarily mean that the person is equally skilled in all areas. "My doctor may be very intelligent, but that does not mean that she can repair my car particularly well or can fill out my tax return," explains Cokely.

To develop their tests, the psychologist and his colleagues carried out experiments with several thousand subjects in North America, Europe and Asia. The test participants had to complete tasks from different areas. For example, 300 participants in a sub-study in Berlin were faced with psychological tasks that were intended to establish, among other things, their personal emotional stability, general life-satisfaction and exam anxiety. They also had to interpret information about risks. "We wanted to find out how well they understand weather forecasts, for example," says Cokely.

It emerged from these tests that highly-educated individuals often also have difficulty interpreting information on risk probabilities. "However, if we want to have educated citizens who make decisions based on information, we need people who understand information about risks," explains the scientist. Seen in this way, risk intelligence is just as important a skill as reading and writing. "Fortunately," he adds, "it can also be learned." In fact, as the researchers discovered over the five years of testing various tasks, risk intelligence is closely linked with mathematical skills. They designed their test accordingly: all three tasks are based on the field of percentage calculation.

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A cluster randomized trial estimated the effects of a supplemental vocabulary program, Elements of Reading®: vocabulary on student vocabulary and passage comprehension in moderate- to high-poverty elementary schools. Forty-four schools participated over a period spanning 2 consecutive school years. At baseline, 1,057 teachers and 16,471 students from kindergarten, first, third, and fourth grade participated. The schools were randomly assigned to either the primary or intermediate grade treatment group.

In each group, the nontreatment classrooms provided the control condition. Treatment classrooms used the intervention to supplement their core reading program, whereas control classrooms taught vocabulary business-as-usual. The intervention includes structured, weekly lesson plans for 6 to 8 literary words and aural/oral and written language activities providing multiple exposures and opportunity for use.

Hierarchical linear modeling was used to estimate both proximal (Year 1) and distal (Year 2) effects on vocabulary and passage comprehension. The intervention had positive and statistically significant proximal effects but no statistically significant distal effects. The results indicate that the intervention can improve targeted vocabulary and local passage comprehension, but expecting global effects may be overly optimistic.

Complete report

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Early college high schools are a new and rapidly spreading model that merges the high school and college experiences and that is designed to increase the number of students who graduate from high school and enroll and succeed in postsecondary education.

This article presents results from a federally funded experimental study of the impact of the early college model on Grade 9 outcomes. Results show that, as compared to control group students, a statistically significant and substantively higher proportion of treatment group students are taking core college preparatory courses and succeeding in them. Students in the treatment group also have statistically significantly higher attendance and lower suspension rates than students in the control group.

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Who Is Recruited, Where Do They Teach, How Effective Are They, and How Long Do They Stay?


Is a popular innovation for increasing human capital in the teaching profession—competitive college scholarships for teachers—effective? The authors of this study show that one large and long-standing merit-based scholarship program (a) attracts teacher candidates who have high academic qualifications; (b) yields graduates who teach lower performing students, although not as challenging as the students of other beginning teachers; (c) produces teachers who raise high school and third- through eighth-grade mathematics test scores more than other traditionally prepared teachers do; and (d) produces teachers who stay in public school classrooms for 5 years or more at higher rates than alternative entry or other traditionally prepared teachers.

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This paper examines the policy context of charter school adoption and implementation in Indianapolis -- the only city in the U.S. with independent mayoral authorizing authority. The study identifies specific implications of this hybrid of mayoral control, including expanded civic capacity and innovation diffusion across Indianapolis area public school systems. This qualitative study utilizes over 30 in-depth interviews conducted with key stakeholders. Legislative, state, and school district documents and reports were analyzed for descriptive evidence of expanded civic capacity, school innovation, and charter/noncharter school competitive pressures. The case of Indianapolis reframes the mayoral role in education reform, and expands the institutional framework for charter school authorizing.

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This study analyzes the Florida voucher program that embedded vouchers in an accountability regime. Specifically, it investigates whether threat of vouchers and stigma associated with the Florida voucher program induced schools to strategically manipulate their test-taking population. Under Florida rules, scores of students in several special education and limited English proficient categories were not included in the computation of school grades. Did this induce the threatened schools to reclassify some of their weaker students into these “excluded” categories so as to remove them from the effective test taking pool?

The author finds evidence in favor of strategic reclassification into the excluded LEP category in high stakes grade 4 and entry grade 3; but no evidence that the program led to such reclassification into excluded ESE categories. This is consistent with substantial costs associated with classification into ESE categories during this period.

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Low Quality of Many State Preschool Programs Threatens Nation’s Progress

Funding for state pre-K programs has plummeted by more than $700 per child nationwide over the past decade — keeping the quality of many states’ preschools low even as enrollment has grown, a new report from the National Institute of Early Education Research (NIEER) shows.

“Parents would be outraged if we had such low expectations for the first grade or kindergarten,” said Steve Barnett, the longtime director of NIEER, a nonpartisan center at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. “As economic conditions improve, states need to provide more adequate funding, step up quality, and make pre-K available to all children.”

The State of Preschool 2011 Yearbook ranks states on funding of pre-K programs and their availability to children. The report finds that most states fail to adequately fund their programs, and only five meet NIEER’s 10 benchmarks for preschool quality standards. Only seven states require pre-K teachers to have the same level of preparation and pay as kindergarten teachers, the report explains.

The Yearbook findings, which include NIEER’s data over the past 10 years and recommendations for policymakers, were released at 10 a.m. today at Bancroft Elementary School in Washington, D.C.

Though enrollment in state pre-K programs has soared over the past 10 years, just 28 percent of all 4-year-olds and only 4 percent of all 3-year-olds are enrolled. Many states expanded enrollment without maintaining quality, Barnett said.
Pre-K funding has dropped by $715 per student, when adjusted for inflation, between the 2001-2002 and 2010-2011 school years. Per-student funding dropped by $145 in 2010-2011 alone compared with the previous year.

Overall funding for state pre-K programs, when adjusted for inflation, dipped for the second straight year, by $60 million nationally in 2010-2011.

The falling levels of funding for preschool are having a major impact on program quality. Only five states met all 10 NIEER benchmarks for state quality standards in 2010-2011, the new report shows. Fifteen states met eight or more quality standards. These standards include important basics such as having well-trained teachers and monitoring quality.

Some states are making progress, while others have taken steps back. Maine, Kentucky, and Nebraska all raised per-child and total pre-K funding by more than 5 percent over the previous year. In addition, five states — Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, West Virginia, and Wisconsin — increased total funding by more than 5 percent from the previous year.

Twenty-two states increased pre-K enrollment, ranging from small gains in California, Connecticut, Georgia, and Minnesota to 24 percent in Vermont.

But Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Pennsylvania cut total state pre-K spending by 10 percent or more from the previous year.

Nine states cut pre-K enrollment, from 1 percent in Kentucky, Nebraska, and North Carolina, to 12 percent in New Mexico. Arizona entirely eliminated its program.

Counting Arizona, 11 states do not offer pre-K: Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming.

In 2010-11, two states gained benchmarks on NIEER’s quality standards, New York and Georgia. Four states — California, Kansas, New York, and South Carolina — lost benchmarks, all for reducing program monitoring.

In addition, several battleground states face additional threats to pre-K programs in 2012:
• California cut spending per child by 10 percent for 2010-2011. The state’s program, which achieves only three of NIEER’s 10 benchmarks for quality, is under threat of further budget reductions.
• Florida ranks first in the nation in pre-K access, with 76 percent of all 4-year-olds attending. But it ranks near the bottom in program quality and spending per child. It has repeatedly cut funding and has not raised per-child spending to adequate levels. Class sizes have been raised, and more funding cuts may be ahead.
• Georgia, the first state to adopt a goal of state pre-K for all children, and which met all 10 NIEER quality standards in 2010-2011, subsequently cut its pre-K school calendar from 10 months to nine, reduced teacher salaries, and increased maximum class sizes to 22 children. Experienced teachers fled the program. Bringing quality back will require a new revenue source because lottery proceeds are no longer sufficient.
• Illinois launched its Preschool for All program in 2006 with the goal of achieving universal access by 2012. Instead, it has cut total enrollment and has seen no appreciable funding increase.
• Massachusetts has cut per-child funding by about 45 percent from 2001-2002 levels and operates two new programs using federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds that will go away. Without new funding, these programs are threatened.
• North Carolina moved its well-regarded More at Four program from the Department of Public Instruction to Health and Human Services to align it with child care, renamed it, and reduced staff and enrollment. The program faces additional possible cuts.
• Texas, which ranks in the bottom half of states for spending per child, reduced spending per child in 2010-2011 and faces the prospect of further cuts.

Barnett praised the federal $500 million Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge that is providing grants to nine states for improving quality, but said more needs to be done. President Obama has called on Congress to increase the federal commitment to states for early childhood education.

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Resource Allocation in Charter and Traditional Public Schools


There is widespread concern that administration consumes too much of the educational dollar in traditional public schools, diverting needed resources from classroom instruction and hampering efforts to improve student outcomes. By contrast, charter schools are predicted to have leaner administration and allocate resources more intensively to instruction.

This study analyzes resource allocation in charter and district schools in Michigan, where charter and tradition public schools receive approximately the same operational funding.

Holding constant other determinants of school resource allocation, the authors find that compared to traditional public schools, charter schools on average spend nearly $800 more per pupil per year on administration and $1100 less on instruction.

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Is math relevant to middle school students? Findings from the February 2012 “Math Relevance to U.S. Middle School Students” survey reveal mixed attitudes toward this foundational subject. While students say they like math (70 percent) and know it would be important to their future (58 percent), 44 percent of them would rather take out the trash than do their math homework.

The Raytheon-commissioned survey also found that while 94 percent recognize that math is required to build a bridge, only 47 percent thought math was an important part of skateboard design, and only a third of students realize math’s role in photography.

Other key findings include:

In the Classroom

- Math and science are subjects that students said they favor over social studies, English and foreign language.

- 85 percent of middle school students prefer hands-on, interactive activities or computer-based lessons to more traditional approaches such as textbooks when it comes to learning.

At Home

- Almost half of students (48 percent) reported that they enjoy learning about math outside of school. Yet, many students would rather perform unpleasant tasks than do their math homework.

- Students report spending almost eight hours per day in front of a screen interacting with technology such as computers, tablets, smartphones and televisions, although less than two hours of this “screen time” is related to school and homework.

In their Futures

- The vast majority of students recognize the role math plays in certain careers involving technology (e.g., building robots, bridges, smartphones) and money (e.g., running a restaurant.)

Related article

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Complete article with tables and notes

In the United States, 46% of high school students have had sexual intercourse and potentially are at risk for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and pregnancy (1). The National HIV/AIDS Strategy for the United States recommends educating young persons about HIV before they begin engaging in behaviors that place them at risk for HIV infection (2). The Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF) also recommends risk reduction interventions to prevent HIV, other STDs, and pregnancy among adolescents (3). To estimate changes in the percentage of secondary schools that teach specific HIV, other STD, and pregnancy risk reduction topics, a key intervention consistent with those supported by the National HIV/AIDS Strategy and CPSTF (2,3), CDC analyzed 2008 and 2010 School Health Profiles data for public secondary schools in 45 states. This report summarizes the results of those analyses, which indicated that in 2010, compared with 2008, the percentage of secondary schools teaching 11 topics on HIV, other STD, and pregnancy prevention in a required course in grades 6, 7, or 8 was significantly lower in 11 states and significantly higher in none; the percentage of secondary schools teaching eight topics in a required course in grades 9, 10, 11, or 12 was significantly lower in one state and significantly higher in two states; and the percentage of secondary schools teaching three condom-related topics in a required course in grades 9, 10, 11, or 12 was significantly lower in eight states and significantly higher in three states. Secondary schools can increase efforts to teach all age-appropriate HIV, other STD, and pregnancy prevention topics to help reduce risk behaviors among students.

School Health Profiles surveys have been conducted biennially since 1996 to assess school health practices in the United States.* States, territories, large urban school districts, and tribal governments participate in the surveys, either selecting systematic, equal-probability samples of their secondary schools (middle schools, junior high schools, and high schools with one or more of grades 6–12),† or selecting all public secondary schools within their jurisdiction.§ Self-administered questionnaires are sent to the principal and lead health education teacher at each selected school and returned to the agency conducting the survey. Lead health education teachers are asked questions regarding the content of required instruction related to HIV, other STD, and pregnancy prevention.¶ Data are included in this report only if the state provided appropriate documentation of methods and had a school response rate ≥70% for both the 2008 and 2010 surveys. Across states included in this report, school response rates ranged from 70% to 93% (median: 73%) in 2008 and from 70% to 86% (median: 73%) in 2010. The number of lead health education teachers who participated, by state, ranged from 71 to 472 (median: 245) in 2008 and from 65 to 677 (median: 249) in 2010. Participation in School Health Profiles is confidential and voluntary. Follow-up telephone calls, e-mails, and written reminders are used to encourage participation. For states that use a sample-based method, results are weighted to reflect the likelihood of schools being selected and to adjust for differing patterns of nonresponse. For states that conduct a census, results are weighted to adjust for differing patterns of nonresponse.

This report includes data from 45 states that provided weighted School Health Profiles data in 2008 and 2010.** For each of these states, three composite measures were created to determine the percentage of schools that taught 1) all 11 topics listed in the questionnaire in a required course in grades 6, 7, or 8; 2) all eight topics listed in the questionnaire in a required course in grades 9, 10, 11, or 12; and 3) all three condom-related topics listed in the questionnaire in a required course in grades 9, 10, 11, or 12. These topics reflect the knowledge and skills that are the focus of interventions shown to be effective in reducing risk that CPSTF and others use as a basis for their recommendations about interventions for adolescents (3–6). For each state, the percentages of schools that taught individual topics and the composite measurements are reported. Significant (p<0.05) differences between results from 2008 and 2010 were determined by t-test. Statistical software was used to account for the sample design and unequal weights.

Compared with 2008, the percentage of schools in 2010 in which all 11 topics were taught in a required course in grades 6–8 was significantly lower in 11 states and significantly higher in no state (Table 1). The percentage of schools in which all eight topics were taught in a required course in grades 9–12 was significantly lower in one state and significantly higher in two states (Table 2). Additionally, the percentage of schools in which all three condom-related topics were taught in a required course in grades 9–12 was significantly lower in eight states and significantly higher in three states (Table 3). Among the 45 states in 2010, the percentage of schools that taught all 11 topics in grades 6, 7, or 8 ranged from 12.6% (Arizona) to 66.3% (New York) (median: 43.3%), the percentage of schools that taught all eight topics in grades 9–12 ranged from 45.3% (Alaska) to 96.4% (New Jersey) (median: 80.3%), and the percentage of schools that taught all three condom-related topics in grades 9–12 ranged from 11.3% (Utah) to 93.1% (Delaware) (median: 58.1%).

For five of the 11 topics (Table 1), the percentage of schools teaching the topic in a required course in grades 6–8 increased significantly in no state, and for the remaining six topics, the percentage increased significantly in one state. Conversely, the percentage of schools teaching any one topic decreased significantly in one to 10 states. The percentage of schools teaching how HIV and other STDs are diagnosed and treated decreased significantly in 10 states, as did the percentage teaching health consequences of HIV, other STDs, and pregnancy. The percentage of schools teaching how to prevent HIV, other STDs, and pregnancy decreased significantly in nine states.

For five of the eight topics (Table 2), the percentage of schools teaching the topic in a required course in grades 9–12 increased significantly in no state; for two topics, the percentage increased significantly in one state; and for the remaining two topics, the percentage increased significantly in two states. Conversely, the percentage of schools teaching any one topic decreased significantly in one to four states. The relationship among HIV, other STDs, and pregnancy was the one topic that showed significant decreases in the percentage of schools teaching it in four states. No state showed a significant increase, and one to seven states showed a significant decrease in the percentage of schools teaching any of the three condom-related topics in any of grades 9–12 (Table 3). The percentage of schools teaching how to obtain condoms decreased significantly in seven states.

Although a median of 90% of all public secondary schools across the 45 states in this report taught HIV prevention in a required course during 2010 (7), the findings indicate that little progress was made in increasing the number of specific topics covered as part of HIV, other STD, and pregnancy prevention education during 2008–2010. The percentage of secondary schools that taught all HIV, other STD, and pregnancy prevention topics in a required course also varied widely across states. Further research is needed to understand determinants of the number of specific HIV, other STD, and pregnancy prevention topics taught in secondary schools.

HIV, other STD, and pregnancy prevention education in grades 6–8 is particularly important because most students in those grades are not yet sexually active (1,2). HIV, other STD, and pregnancy prevention education that is taught before most young persons engage in risk behaviors, and that includes information on the benefits of abstinence and delaying or limiting sexual activity, can prevent behaviors that might lead to HIV infection, other STDs, and pregnancy (2).

Because many students become sexually active during high school (1), HIV, other STD, and pregnancy prevention education in these grades also is critically important (2). HIV, other STD, and pregnancy prevention education that includes information on condom efficacy, the importance of using condoms consistently and correctly, and how to obtain condoms taught to those who might decide to be or are sexually active also can prevent behaviors that might lead to HIV infection, other STDs, and pregnancy (4–6).

HIV prevention education also can address misconceptions about how HIV is transmitted (2). A 2011 public opinion poll indicated that 20% of persons aged 18–29 years believe incorrectly that a person can become infected with HIV by sharing a drinking glass, or are unsure whether the statement is true or false (8).

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A new regional study by a senior learning researcher and Mississippi State faculty member is the first to link homework distraction to a wide range of variables.
The multi-level analysis by Jianzhong Xu, a professor in the university’s College of Education, examined a range of variables affecting homework distraction, at both the student level and the class level. He hypothesized that homework distraction is affected by such variables as gender, academic achievement and student attitudes toward the work.

A member of the college’s leadership and foundations department, Xu also included numerous types of distractions in his analysis.

“The distractions I considered ranged from the conventional, such as watching television or daydreaming, to the high-tech, such as text messaging and playing video games,” he said.

Xu surveyed 1,800 eighth- and 11th-grade students from nearly 100 classes across the Southeastern United States. Students were asked about the frequency of family help with homework, extracurricular activities and parents’ education levels, among other variables.

Xu, a Columbia University doctoral graduate, said the study found those less likely to be distracted while doing homework scored higher in affective attitude, academic achievement, learning-oriented reasons, homework interest, and adult-oriented reasons.

Most of the variance in homework distraction occurred at the student level, not at the class level, he added.

While it may be a common assumption that many students tend to think of homework as boring, Xu’s investigation indicated affective attitude toward homework, like the favorability of homework as compared with other after-school activities, affect homework distraction the most.

The study also yielded two surprising results:
—Girls were more likely to be distracted than boys; and
—11th graders were more likely to be distracted than younger students while doing homework.

Xu said the study’s results have both research and practical implications.

“This line of research needs to be continued,” Xu said. “Other school levels, how different genders handle distractions and how certain attitudes toward homework play a role in coping with distraction need to be examined.”

Even though the findings show family homework help is not directly related to homework distraction, parents may still play an important role in helping children cope with distraction through influencing their attitudes toward homework. And students can take responsibility toward decreasing distraction while doing their homework by arranging a conducive homework environment and prioritizing and structuring other activities.

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For the student athlete with asthma, spring and summer pose particular dangers. The most significant danger is the all-too-frequent lack of access to a life-saving asthma inhaler, explains Maureen George, PhD, RN, of the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. Federal law permits students to carry their asthma inhalers with them, yet many schools do not because of safety concerns.

“Managing asthma is especially challenging for student athletes because many coaches do not feel comfortable assuming responsibility for administering asthma medications, nor are they trained to do so,” explains Dr. George. “School rules keep epinephrine pens and inhalers off the playing field and in the building or locked in an office when they should be immediately available to student athletes.”

In the worst case scenarios, she says, coaches will tell student athletes with asthma symptoms to sit out or, even worse, push them beyond their limits. “That lack of understanding and empathy is not only embarrassing for the student athlete,” she says, “it is dangerous and potentially life-threatening.”

Dr. George urges parents to know the right of their children to carry their inhalers, to encourage their children to pre-medicate before exercise, and to have gym teachers and coaches receive training to become skilled in the management of acute asthma.

Dr. George also makes these recommendations:
• Student athletes with asthma should use inhalers prophylactically before exercise or athletics, even if they feel well.
• Student athletes with asthma should have access to their medications in school, at the gym, on the field, on the court -- wherever they are playing.
• Parents should learn the law and work with their children’s schools, coaches, and teams to ensure asthma management is being handled appropriately during the school day and during sports.
• Student athletes and their coaches should know the early signs of an asthma attack: shortness of breath, audible wheezing, increased respiratory rate, cough, and complaints of chest tightness. Late signs include a bluish color to the lips and face; decreased alertness, such as severe drowsiness or confusion; extreme difficulty breathing; rapid pulse; sweating; or an abnormal breathing pattern. If a student is having an asthma attack, do not lie the student down; allow the student to sit or recline and rest.
• Students and coaches should have on hand a fully charged cell phone pre-programmed with emergency numbers.
• Coaches should never leave a student in distress; send other children to get adult help and reassure the child to prevent the child from panicking.
• Parents, students, and coaches should follow mold, pollen, and air quality counts and coaches should provide student athletes with alternative activities on days when triggers may cause an unsafe outdoor environment for sustained physical activity.

“Anyone with asthma can fully participate in physical education or competitive sports if their asthma is well-managed. In fact, many Olympic athletes have asthma,” says Dr. George. “All you need to do is see a healthcare provider, take your medication as prescribed, have your rescue medication immediately available to you, and know and avoid your triggers.”

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Improving or maintaining physical fitness appears to help obese and overweight children reach a healthy weight, reports a new study from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. Researchers analyzed four years of data from in-school fitness tests and body mass index (BMI) measurements of students in grades 1–7 in the city of Cambridge, Mass.

In the study published online March 15 by the journal Obesity, Sacheck and colleagues examined the association between weight status and fitness levels by assessing student performance on five fitness tests. Regardless of their weight, students were classified as “fit” if they passed all five tests and “underfit” if they failed one or more tests.

The assessments taken between 2004 and 2007 coincided with a city-wide weight and fitness intervention that prompted improvements to gymnasiums, promotion of physical activities outside of school, professional development for physical education teachers and issuing “Health and Fitness report cards” to parents. The 2,793 students in the study participated in bi-weekly school gym classes plus a daily recess, and annual assessments of their BMI and physical fitness.

“Of the 1,069 students who were initially obese or overweight, 17% achieved a healthy weight within the one to four year study period compared with 6.3% of students who began the study at a healthy weight and became obese or overweight,” said Jennifer M. Sacheck, Ph.D., senior author and an assistant professor at the Friedman School. “It is encouraging to see any kind of reversal in unhealthy weight patterns, considering Centers for Disease Control statistics indicate child and adolescent obesity rates rose approximately 13% between 1980 and 2008.”

Within the four-year study period, 27% of the 1,882 students who were underfit at baseline became fit.

“Obese and overweight girls who achieved fitness were almost five times as likely, and obese and overweight boys were two and a half times as likely, to reach a healthy weight than those who stayed underfit,” said first author Adela Hruby, a Ph.D. candidate at the Friedman School. “It turns out that maintaining fitness is beneficial, too. We observed that obese and overweight girls and boys who both started and ended the study being fit were more likely to have a healthy weight by the end of the study.”

Staying fit also benefitted healthy weight boys and girls; they were more likely to maintain their weight than those students who declined from fit to underfit over the course of the study.

Maintaining or achieving a healthy weight appeared to be most closely associated with cardiorespiratory fitness, which was assessed by the students’ performance in a 20-yard shuttle run (a 6-minute, back-and-forth run between two markers). Incremental improvement in cardiorespiratory fitness was associated with achieving a healthy weight in children who were obese or overweight at baseline and with weight maintenance in healthy weight students who were fit at baseline.

Sacheck noted additional research is needed to explain the current results. “Because ours is an observational study using just annual measures, it is unclear whether students who became fit did so before they lost weight or whether they lost weight before they became fit,” she said. “Long-term intervention trials that assess both fitness and nutrition could provide more data to determine the role of improved fitness in weight loss.”

A range of options exist for increasing child fitness. “Federal guidelines call for at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise per day and most of that should fall into the category of cardiorespiratory fitness that builds the capacity of the heart and lungs, such as soccer or dancing,” Sacheck said. “In addition to organized sports, school recesses or walking to school counts toward that one-hour goal. Parents can help by being active with their kids and limiting time spent watching TV or playing video games.”

The authors propose schools as leading advocates for physical activity programming and policies, such as in-school fitness testing. “Although data on childhood fitness and health outcomes is still evolving, there is a body of research showing relationships between the two in adults, such as reduced risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. If studies continue to show the same for children, there is an even stronger case for fitness testing in schools where large groups of children can have access to such an evaluation.”

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For children with dyslexia, the trouble begins even before they start reading and for reasons that don't necessarily reflect other language skills. That's according to a report published online on April 5 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, that for the first time reveals a causal connection between early problems with visual attention and a later diagnosis of dyslexia.

"Visual attention deficits are surprisingly way more predictive of future reading disorders than are language abilities at the prereading stage," said Andrea Facoetti of the University of Padua in Italy.

The researchers argue that the discovery not only closes a long-lasting debate on the causes of dyslexia but also opens the way to a new approach for early identification and interventions for the 10 percent of children for whom reading is extremely difficult.

The researchers studied Italian-speaking children for a period of three years, from the time they were prereading kindergarteners until they entered second grade. Facoetti's team, including Sandro Franceschini, Simone Gori, Milena Ruffino, and Katia Pedrolli, assessed prereaders for visual spatial attention—the ability to filter relevant versus irrelevant information—through tests that asked them to pick out specific symbols amid distractions. The children also took tests on syllable identification, verbal short-term memory, and rapid color naming, followed over the next two years by measures of reading.

Those test results showed that kids who initially had trouble with visual attention were also the ones to later struggle in reading.

"This is a radical change to the theoretical framework explaining dyslexia," Facoetti said. "It forces us to rewrite what is known about the disorder and to change rehabilitation treatments in order to reduce its impact."

He says that simple visual-attention tasks should improve the early identification of children at risk for dyslexia. "Because recent studies show that specific prereading programs can improve reading abilities, children at risk for dyslexia could be treated with preventive remediation programs of visual spatial attention before they learn to read."

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Just over two years ago, the federal government committed over $3 billion nationwide to help states and districts turn around their worst-performing schools. The U.S. Department of Education intended for the School Improvement Grants (SIGs) to spur dramatic change.

In the report “Tinkering Toward Transformation: A Look at Federal School Improvement Grant Implementation,” researchers from the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) show that, for the most part, the districts they studied—including urban, suburban, and rural—failed to make aggressive reforms in the SIG program’s first year. CRPE researchers conducted a field study of the first-year implementation of those grants in Washington State, which will receive $50 million in SIG funding over three years.

Sarah Yatsko, lead author of the study, said, “Teachers are working very hard in these schools, but their efforts are largely being wasted because districts didn’t have a good plan.”

When it came to choosing from among four prescribed turnaround options for schools, officials nearly always defaulted to the path of least resistance: in most cases, district administrators did not take advantage of the opportunity to overhaul staffing and put the best possible leaders and teachers in turnaround schools.

The schools themselves tended to adopt a hodgepodge of intervention strategies, rather than the type of whole-school, laser-focused approaches to instruction, data analysis, and climate that are behind most successful turnaround efforts. Only two of the nine schools studied—those led by principals with solid track records of school turnaround—took that comprehensive, no-excuses approach.

The research team—Sarah Yatsko, Robin Lake, Elizabeth Cooley Nelson, and Melissa Bowen—conducted interviews with state and district officials, union leaders, principals, and teachers, and visited all of the schools that received SIG funds in the districts studied. Among the reasons they found for the lack of aggressive action:

A rushed timeline limited district leaders’ ability to create comprehensive, research-based turnaround plans; get unions to sign off on aggressive approaches; and hire sought-after principals and teachers.
District leaders failed to communicate a coherent plan: why SIG schools were chosen, what their educational goals were, and what would constitute successful turnaround. “The district doesn’t have the vision of what school improvement is supposed to be about,” one principal said.
Most principals and district officials overseeing the SIG funds lacked turnaround expertise.
Even when principals were given flexibility to remove teachers, some chose not to.
Where states and districts could have been active partners in reform, coaching and prodding, they instead mainly served to make sure rules were being followed.
Officials at all levels failed to tap available outside resources and partners that could have helped them shape turnaround efforts.
“SIG funds are likely to make more of a difference in states such as Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Delaware, Louisiana, and Indiana that are helping districts take the bolder, comprehensive actions required for school turnarounds, including negotiated carve-outs in collective bargaining agreements," reported William Guenther, president of Mass Insight Education and co-author of the 2007 Turnaround Challenge report. "It's time more states embraced that kind of support for students who need it the most.”

“Tinkering Toward Transformation” contains several recommendations that, if adopted, would go a long way toward ensuring that billions of dollars in SIG funds fuel true turnaround for the nation’s worst-performing schools. The authors suggest that the U.S. Department of Education tighten the rules so that only proposals for rigorous reform can win funding, and give states and districts more time for planning and hiring. States should become active partners in turnaround, marshalling leadership, expertise, and communications rather than mainly monitoring compliance. And districts need to research exemplars of school turnaround, give principals true autonomy, and create an office that closely manages turnaround work and is empowered to provide schools with the flexibility and resources they need.

CRPE director and co-author of the report, Robin Lake, observed: “There is a lot of evidence out there about what it takes to transform a school from a culture of excuses and failure to a culture of determination and success. Unfortunately, Washington State seems to have ignored much of that evidence.”

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The study Impact on Student English Language Proficiency of Classroom Materials in Combination with Teacher Professional Development examines the impact on student English language proficiency of the On Our Way to English (OWE) curriculum, offered in combination with the Responsive Instruction for Success in English (RISE) teacher professional development.

On Our Way to English was developed to provide ELL students access to English oral language development, comprehensive literacy instruction, and standards-based content area information in science and social studies. Responsive Instruction for Success in English (RISE) complements the OWE classroom program with professional development to understand the content of OWE, the rationale for its structure, and practical strategies for its use.

The study found that the combination of OWE and RISE did not have a statistically significant effect on students’ acquisition of English, teacher-reported student engagement, instructional practices, or assessment practices.

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“Moving Teachers: Implementation of Transfer Incentives in Seven Districts” describes the implementation and intermediate impacts of an intervention designed to provide incentives to induce a school district’s highest-performing teachers to work in its lowest-achieving schools. The intervention, called the Talent Transfer Initiative or TTI, was carried out in 7 districts and includes an incentive of $20,000 over 2 years to a district’s highest-performing teachers who agreed to move to teach in the district’s targeted lower performing schools.

The report uses random assignment within each district to form two equivalent groups of classrooms at the same grade level ("teacher teams"), a treatment group that had the chance to participate in the intervention and a control group that did not. Analyses include 90 vacancy pairs and 86 schools in the 7 study districts.

Data for this report were collected on program implementation and teacher- and principal-reported behaviors and perceptions.

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