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dd460cb054bffbf8843c65bdcf4908e8
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2021/03/05/charts-of-the-week-overdraft-fees-stagnant-us-child-population-growth-federal-climate-planning/
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Charts of the Week: Overdraft fees; stagnant US child population growth; federal climate planning
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Charts of the Week: Overdraft fees; stagnant US child population growth; federal climate planning In this Charts of the Week edition, a look at how some banks rely heavily on overdraft fees for profits, the demographic issues around a growing aging U.S. population with a stagnant younger population, and how a new climate planning unit in the White House can help improve federal climate action. Aaron Klein examines how for a number of small banks overdraft fees have become a significant source of their net income. “These banks are really check cashers with a charter,” he writes, asking “Why do bank regulators tolerate this?” Klein argues that regulators need to “crack down” on such institutions: “These regulators that allow banks to have a business model that depends on a single fee, charged only to consumers who run out of money, are not protecting the ‘safe, sound, and fair operation’ of the banking system.” William Frey documents the aging U.S. population and the relatively stagnant growth of younger generations whose labor will increasingly support their elders in decades to come. Frey notes that the overall share of children (under 18) in the U.S. population has dropped from 35.7% in 1960 to 22.1% in 2020, and is projected to fall to 20.6% by 2040. Also, this younger generation is becoming more diverse racially and ethnically, and its modest growth is being fed by children of color who “stand on the wrong side of rising racial and ethnic inequalities.” “In the decades to come,” Frey writes, “children will be a far rarer demographic commodity than they were in the nation’s past. This is why they need to be nurtured. Not only are they America’s future, but the youth will become an important asset to our future labor force, which will be tasked with supporting an increasingly large retiree population.” In a new paper for the Blueprints for American Renewal and Prosperity series, experts explain how American transportation, water, and housing—what they call “land use systems”—contribute to the growing climate challenge, and argue that a new White House office can help “reduce the federal fiscal impacts of climate change by developing strategic intra-agency and cross-agency mitigation and adaptation projects and programs.” In their paper, they document the increasing federal expenditures on climate action in key areas, and outline how this new Climate Planning Unit can contribute to more effective federal climate action.
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b4e3244ac5ac7b89ffbadae6ff6d90cd
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2021/03/12/charts-of-the-week-rising-federal-climate-costs-carbon-emissions-in-africa-covid-19-in-trump-vs-biden-counties/
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Charts of the Week: Rising federal climate costs; carbon emissions in Africa; COVID-19 in Trump vs. Biden counties
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Charts of the Week: Rising federal climate costs; carbon emissions in Africa; COVID-19 in Trump vs. Biden counties This week’s edition of Charts of the Week offers data on expected rising federal expenditures due to climate change; rising carbon emissions among African nations; and COVID-19’s prevalence in counties that favored Donald Trump versus those favoring Joe Biden. In their paper for the Blueprints for American Renewal and Prosperity series, Joseph Kane, Jenny Schuetz, Shalini Vajjhala, and Adie Tomer propose a Climate Planning Unit in the White House’s Office of Management and Budget to “to reduce the federal fiscal impacts of climate change by developing strategic intra-agency and cross-agency mitigation and adaptation projects and programs.” The chart above shows the estimated fiscal impacts in the federal response to climate change into the late 21st century. In their viewpoint from a chapter in the recent Foresight Africa report, expert authors describe policies, including carbon pricing, for a green transformation in the economies of Africa. “As African economies look to recover from the negative shocks of the pandemic and grow fast,” they argue, “a price on carbon is essential for that growth to not also lead to rapidly growing greenhouse gas emissions, which are on the rise anyway.” Over the past year, William Frey has tracked the spread and contraction of the coronavirus pandemic in regions, states, and counties throughout the United States. His latest analysis tracks cases from March 2020 through February 2021. In the figure above, Frey explains that “Biden counties registered higher monthly new case rates from March through July. This flipped modestly in August, when Trump counties exhibited higher new case rates. Yet, in September and especially in the months surrounding the election, Trump counties registered noticeably higher new COVID-19 rates than Biden counties.”
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60d76962a2dd09748c43009bcf052161
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2021/03/19/charts-of-the-week-infrastructure-jobs-southeast-asian-economies-post-pandemic-amazon-workers-unionization-battle/
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Charts of the Week: Infrastructure jobs; Southeast Asian economies post-pandemic; Amazon workers’ unionization battle
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Charts of the Week: Infrastructure jobs; Southeast Asian economies post-pandemic; Amazon workers’ unionization battle In this edition of Charts of the Week: how federal infrastructure investment can put America back to work; Southeast Asian nations’ fiscal response to COVID-19; and the unionization battle for Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama. In their new policy brief, Marcela Escobari, Dhruv Gandhi, and Sebastian Strauss write that “[a] large-scale federal infrastructure investment program that is deliberately designed for maximum workforce impact can help accelerate reemployment, prevent scarring, and boost long-term inclusive and sustainable growth.” The authors discuss range of workforce issues, including—as demonstrated in the chart above—how a “workforce impact analysis” can identify how many underemployed and unemployed workers new infrastructure projects can absorb in particular sectors. The Lowy Institute’s Roland Rajah, writing for the Order from Chaos blog, examines three factors that will drive whether and how Southeast Asian economies recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. One of these is macroeconomic response; noting that most nations in the region have been “been unable to match the fiscal largesse of their Western counterparts,” he adds that “fiscal policy in Southeast Asia has still been very expansionary—particularly if compared to past crises—and this has played a crucial role in limiting the economic and social fallout from the pandemic.” Researchers in the Metropolitan Policy Program—Andre Perry, Molly Kinder, Laura Stateler, and Carl Romer—illuminate the unionization drive by Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama, a majority-Black city, and also the racial disparities the movement reveals. “Amazon’s disproportionately Black workforce has risked their lives during the pandemic,” these authors observe, “but the company has shared little of its astonishing profits with them.”
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b0f9ba81451bf672d43cba23379cca0a
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2015/07/28/analyzing-trends-in-pell-grant-recipients-and-expenditures/
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Analyzing trends in Pell Grant recipients and expenditures
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Analyzing trends in Pell Grant recipients and expenditures The U.S. Department of Education recently released its annual report on the federal Pell Grant program, which provides detailed information about the program’s finances and who is receiving grants. The most recent report includes data from the 2013-14 academic year, and I summarize the data and trends over the last two decades in this post. For the second year in a row, the number of Pell recipients fell, going from a peak of 9.44 million students in 2011-12 to 8.66 million in 2013-14. This drop in recipients is almost entirely due to students who are considered independent for financial aid purposes (typically students who are at least 24 years of age, are married, or have a child). The number of independent Pell recipients fell by 13% in the last two years (to 4.87 million), while the number of dependent Pell recipients fell by just 27,000 students to 3.83 million, as shown in the chart below. Why has the number of Pell recipients declined over the past two years after such a sharp increase between 2008 and 2010? Two factors are at play. First, enrollment at vocationally-oriented colleges (primarily community colleges and for-profit colleges) increases during recessions as displaced workers choose to receive additional training instead of trying to find a job in an awful economy. When the economy gets better, more of these individuals go back to work and forgo college. Second, as the economy has improved, it is likely the case that some families that barely qualified for the Pell Grant during the recession no longer qualified after obtaining a better job. The next chart shows that the decline in the number of Pell recipients over the last two years is largely due to community colleges and for-profit colleges. The number of Pell recipients at community colleges has declined by 11 percent since 2011-12, while the number at for-profit colleges has declined by 20 percent since 2010-11 after more than doubling in the previous five years. This is consistent with enrollment at some of the largest for-profit chains cratering in the last few years due to both the colleges’ actions (such as the University of Phoenix enacting a trial period for students) and actions from regulators (as evidenced in the recent collapse of Corinthian Colleges). Expenditures for the Pell Grant program declined for a third consecutive year, going from $35.7 billion (in nominal dollars) in 2010-11 to $31.5 billion in 2013-14. However, in inflation-adjusted dollars, Pell spending has still more than doubled since 2007-08. The big spike in Pell expenditures around 2009 was due to three factors. First, the start of the Great Recession both induced more students to enroll in college and resulted in more students with financial need who met the Pell Grant eligibility criteria. Second, changes to federal laws that took effect in 2009-10 increased the maximum Pell Grant by over $600 and allowed more students to automatically qualify for the maximum Pell Grant by increasing the income threshold (from $20,000 to $30,000) for an automatic zero expected family contribution. Third, students were allowed to receive a Pell Grant on a year-round basis instead of just two semesters during the academic year, driving up short-term costs but potentially helping students complete their studies quicker. In 2011, the year-round Pell provision was repealed and the income threshold for an automatic zero EFC dropped to $23,000 as cost-saving measures. Congress has shown bipartisan interest in allowing year-round Pell again, but changing the income threshold for an automatic zero EFC appears to be off the table for now. The final chart shows the maximum Pell Grant award (in inflation-adjusted dollars) between 1993-94 and 2013-14. Contrary to what many might expect, the maximum award has increased from $3,696 in 1993-94 to $5,645 today; the average award has also increased from $2,419 to $3,634. But the increase in the Pell Grant’s real value has not kept up with the increasing price of college in all sectors of higher education. As a result, its purchasing power has fallen by two-thirds since 1979. For those who are interested in learning more about how much in Pell Grant revenue individual colleges receive, I highly recommend the Title IV program volume reports available on Federal Student Aid’s website. In addition to Pell Grant revenue, this site has information on student loan awards going back to the 1999-2000 academic year.
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7436fbd1b82453f4d00c79c34c6e1778
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2015/08/25/who-would-use-income-share-agreements-to-pay-for-college/
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Who would use income share agreements to pay for college?
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Who would use income share agreements to pay for college? In response to concerns over the rising price of college and increasing amounts of student loan debt, the Obama Administration has worked to expand income-based repayment programs for those with federal student loans. In late 2015 or early 2016, the U.S. Department of Education will likely allow students with any federal loans to enroll in a more-generous version of income-based repayment that would cap monthly payments at 10 percent of discretionary income (i.e., earnings above 150 percent of the federal poverty line) for 20 years for undergraduate students and 25 years for graduate students, with any remaining balances forgiven by the federal government. Although this new version of income-based repayment has the potential to benefit up to six million Americans with student loan debt, concerns have been raised about this more generous program. First, the price tag is estimated at $15.3 billion over 10 years, or roughly 5 percent of forecasted Pell Grant expenditures during this period. Second, graduate students, who are more likely to have six-figure student loan debt and enroll in income-based repayment programs at higher rates, will see more benefits than undergraduate students with smaller amounts of debt but worse career options. Finally, as more students enroll in income-based repayment plans, colleges have fewer reasons to control costs due to students’ ability to access credit. An interesting alternative to federal student loans that has emerged in recent years has the potential to shift the financial risk of paying for college away from the federal government and students, instead placing the risk in the private sector. Income share agreements (ISA) function somewhat similarly to income-based repayment plans, as students pledge to pay a predetermined percentage of their annual income in exchange for funds to pay for college. However, unlike federal income-based repayment plans, the percentage of income and the length of the repayment period are negotiated between a private investor and the student instead of being the same across all students. Students who major in economically desirable fields, such as engineering and business, at top colleges are likely to get better repayment terms than students majoring in less-profitable but socially important fields, such as education and nursing, at more typical colleges. Given the current generosity of income-based repayment programs—and the likelihood that the federal government loses money on many students today—I have to wonder how many students would use ISAs once potential legal issues around their operation in the United States are resolved. Students in less-lucrative fields or those who plan to work in public service careers are unlikely to get better terms from the private sector than the federal government. These students would be likely to continue using federal student loans, although it is possible that ISAs could partially replace Parent PLUS loans as a financing source should parents not want to take out loans for their children when ISAs are available. This leaves two groups of students who are likely to be interested in ISAs. The first group is those students who are either attending colleges that do not offer their students federal loans (primarily for-profit colleges and community colleges), or those attending short-term training programs such as coding ‘boot camps’ that do not currently qualify for federal student aid. Something in the neighborhood of two million students attend these colleges and programs, which results in a fairly sizable market. However, all of these programs tend to be relatively inexpensive, meaning that the per-student profit for an ISA provider will be fairly small. The group of students who would be more lucrative for ISA providers would be those students enrolled in profitable degree programs at traditional undergraduate and graduate institutions. Because these programs tend to be expensive, the contract would need to be designed so the provider could make a profit on a large initial investment. However, students could lock in paying a lower percentage of their income than what they would expect to pay under income-based repayment if their expected earnings are high enough. But students with high expected incomes may stay away from ISAs because they may expect to pay more in an ISA than under the standard federal repayment plan (a fixed monthly payment over 10 years). It would be difficult for ISA providers to undercut the federal government’s price in today’s environment of reasonably low interest rates, but it could be possible for students who have the highest likelihood of graduating and making a large salary because of the relatively low risk these students represent to a provider. Additionally, the presence of post-graduation private loan refinancing options such as Earnest and SoFi give successful graduates a way to lower their loan payments without giving up a share of their income. Income share agreements have the potential to create another option for students looking to pay for college while seeking assurances they will not be overwhelmed by future payments. However, given the current generosity of federal income-based repayment programs and the likely hesitation of those who expect six-figure salaries to sign away a percentage of their income for years to come, the market for these programs may be somewhat limited. However, the federal government should encourage the development of private ISA providers in order to give students as many options as possible to finance their education while setting reasonable parameters for their operation that protect students from fraud and abuse.
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76127ff4e9e8110cbfb2635a1c21d9ae
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2015/10/01/no-the-sky-is-not-falling-interpreting-the-latest-sat-scores/
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No, the sky is not falling: Interpreting the latest SAT scores
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No, the sky is not falling: Interpreting the latest SAT scores Earlier this month, the College Board released SAT scores for the high school graduating class of 2015. Both math and reading scores declined from 2014, continuing a steady downward trend that has been in place for the past decade. Pundits of contrasting political stripes seized on the scores to bolster their political agendas. Michael Petrilli of the Fordham Foundation argued that falling SAT scores show that high schools need more reform, presumably those his organization supports, in particular, charter schools and accountability.* For Carol Burris of the Network for Public Education, the declining scores were evidence of the failure of polices her organization opposes, namely, Common Core, No Child Left Behind, and accountability. Petrilli and Burris are both misusing SAT scores. The SAT is not designed to measure national achievement; the score losses from 2014 were miniscule; and most of the declines are probably the result of demographic changes in the SAT population. Let’s examine each of these points in greater detail. It never was. The SAT was originally meant to measure a student’s aptitude for college independent of that student’s exposure to a particular curriculum. The test’s founders believed that gauging aptitude, rather than achievement, would serve the cause of fairness. A bright student from a high school in rural Nebraska or the mountains of West Virginia, they held, should have the same shot at attending elite universities as a student from an Eastern prep school, despite not having been exposed to the great literature and higher mathematics taught at prep schools. The SAT would measure reasoning and analytical skills, not the mastery of any particular body of knowledge. Its scores would level the playing field in terms of curricular exposure while providing a reasonable estimate of an individual’s probability of success in college. Note that even in this capacity, the scores never suffice alone; they are only used to make admissions decisions by colleges and universities, including such luminaries as Harvard and Stanford, in combination with a lot of other information—grade point averages, curricular resumes, essays, reference letters, extra-curricular activities—all of which constitute a student’s complete application. Today’s SAT has moved towards being a content-oriented test, but not entirely. Next year, the College Board will introduce a revised SAT to more closely reflect high school curricula. Even then, SAT scores should not be used to make judgements about U.S. high school performance, whether it’s a single high school, a state’s high schools, or all of the high schools in the country. The SAT sample is self-selected. In 2015, it only included about one-half of the nation’s high school graduates: 1.7 million out of approximately 3.3 million total. And that’s about one-ninth of approximately 16 million high school students. Generalizing SAT scores to these larger populations violates a basic rule of social science. The College Board issues a warning when it releases SAT scores: “Since the population of test takers is self-selected, using aggregate SAT scores to compare or evaluate teachers, schools, districts, states, or other educational units is not valid, and the College Board strongly discourages such uses.” TIME’s coverage of the SAT release included a statement by Andrew Ho of Harvard University, who succinctly makes the point: “I think SAT and ACT are tests with important purposes, but measuring overall national educational progress is not one of them.” SAT scores changed very little from 2014 to 2015. Reading scores dropped from 497 to 495. Math scores also fell two points, from 513 to 511. Both declines are equal to about 0.017 standard deviations (SD).[i] To illustrate how small these changes truly are, let’s examine a metric I have used previously in discussing test scores. The average American male is 5’10” in height with a SD of about 3 inches. A 0.017 SD change in height is equal to about 1/20 of an inch (0.051). Do you really think you’d notice a difference in the height of two men standing next to each other if they only differed by 1/20th of an inch? You wouldn’t. Similarly, the change in SAT scores from 2014 to 2015 is trivial.[ii] A more serious concern is the SAT trend over the past decade. Since 2005, reading scores are down 13 points, from 508 to 495, and math scores are down nine points, from 520 to 511. These are equivalent to declines of 0.12 SD for reading and 0.08 SD for math.[iii] Representing changes that have accumulated over a decade, these losses are still quite small. In the Washington Post, Michael Petrilli asked “why is education reform hitting a brick wall in high school?” He also stated that “you see this in all kinds of evidence.” You do not see a decline in the best evidence, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Contrary to the SAT, NAEP is designed to monitor national achievement. Its test scores are based on a random sampling design, meaning that the scores can be construed as representative of U.S. students. NAEP administers two different tests to high school age students, the long term trend (LTT NAEP), given to 17-year-olds, and the main NAEP, given to twelfth graders. Table 1 compares the past ten years’ change in test scores of the SAT with changes in NAEP.[iv] The long term trend NAEP was not administered in 2005 or 2015, so the closest years it was given are shown. The NAEP tests show high school students making small gains over the past decade. They do not confirm the losses on the SAT. Table 1. Comparison of changes in SAT, Main NAEP (12th grade), and LTT NAEP (17-year-olds) scores. Changes expressed as SD units of base year. *p<.05 Petrilli raised another concern related to NAEP scores by examining cohort trends in NAEP scores. The trend for the 17-year-old cohort of 2012, for example, can be constructed by using the scores of 13-year-olds in 2008 and 9-year-olds in 2004. By tracking NAEP changes over time in this manner, one can get a rough idea of a particular cohort’s achievement as students grow older and proceed through the school system. Examining three cohorts, Fordham’s analysis shows that the gains between ages 13 and 17 are about half as large as those registered between ages nine and 13. Kids gain more on NAEP when they are younger than when they are older. There is nothing new here. NAEP scholars have been aware of this phenomenon for a long time. Fordham points to particular elements of education reform that it favors—charter schools, vouchers, and accountability—as the probable cause. It is true that those reforms more likely target elementary and middle schools than high schools. But the research literature on age discrepancies in NAEP gains (which is not cited in the Fordham analysis) renders doubtful the thesis that education policies are responsible for the phenomenon.[v] Whether high school age students try as hard as they could on NAEP has been pointed to as one explanation. A 1996 analysis of NAEP answer sheets found that 25-to-30 percent of twelfth graders displayed off-task test behaviors—doodling, leaving items blank—compared to 13 percent of eighth graders and six percent of fourth graders. A 2004 national commission on the twelfth grade NAEP recommended incentives (scholarships, certificates, letters of recognition from the President) to boost high school students’ motivation to do well on NAEP. Why would high school seniors or juniors take NAEP seriously when this low stakes test is taken in the midst of taking SAT or ACT tests for college admission, end of course exams that affect high school GPA, AP tests that can affect placement in college courses, state accountability tests that can lead to their schools being deemed a success or failure, and high school exit exams that must be passed to graduate?[vi] Other possible explanations for the phenomenon are: 1) differences in the scales between the ages tested on LTT NAEP (in other words, a one-point gain on the scale between ages nine and 13 may not represent the same amount of learning as a one-point gain between ages 13 and 17); 2) different rates of participation in NAEP among elementary, middle, and high schools;[vii] and 3) social trends that affect all high school students, not just those in public schools. The third possibility can be explored by analyzing trends for students attending private schools. If Fordham had disaggregated the NAEP data by public and private schools (the scores of Catholic school students are available), it would have found that the pattern among private school students is similar—younger students gain more than older students on NAEP. That similarity casts doubt on the notion that policies governing public schools are responsible for the smaller gains among older students.[viii] Writing in the Washington Post, Carol Burris addresses the question of whether demographic changes have influenced the decline in SAT scores. She concludes that they have not, and in particular, she concludes that the growing proportion of students receiving exam fee waivers has probably not affected scores. She bases that conclusion on an analysis of SAT participation disaggregated by level of family income. Burris notes that the percentage of SAT takers has been stable across income groups in recent years. That criterion is not trustworthy. About 39 percent of students in 2015 declined to provide information on family income. The 61 percent that answered the family income question are probably skewed against low-income students who are on fee waivers (the assumption being that they may feel uncomfortable answering a question about family income).[ix] Don’t forget that the SAT population as a whole is a self-selected sample. A self-selected subsample from a self-selected sample tells us even less than the original sample, which told us almost nothing. The fee waiver share of SAT takers increased from 21 percent in 2011 to 25 percent in 2015. The simple fact that fee waivers serve low-income families, whose children tend to be lower-scoring SAT takers, is important, but not the whole story here. Students from disadvantaged families have always taken the SAT. But they paid for it themselves. If an additional increment of disadvantaged families take the SAT because they don’t have to pay for it, it is important to consider whether the new entrants to the pool of SAT test takers possess unmeasured characteristics that correlate with achievement—beyond the effect already attributed to socioeconomic status. Robert Kelchen, an assistant professor of higher education at Seton Hall University, calculated the effect on national SAT scores of just three jurisdictions (Washington, DC, Delaware, and Idaho) adopting policies of mandatory SAT testing paid for by the state. He estimated that these policies explain about 21 percent of the nationwide decline in test scores between 2011 and 2015. He also notes that a more thorough analysis, incorporating fee waivers of other states and districts, would surely boost that figure. Fee waivers in two dozen Texas school districts, for example, are granted to all juniors and seniors in high school. And all students in those districts (including Dallas and Fort Worth) are required to take the SAT beginning in the junior year. Such universal testing policies can increase access and serve the cause of equity, but they will also, at least for a while, lead to a decline in SAT scores. Here, I offer my own back of the envelope calculation of the relationship of demographic changes with SAT scores. The College Board reports test scores and participation rates for nine racial and ethnic groups.[x] These data are preferable to family income because a) almost all students answer the race/ethnicity question (only four percent are non-responses versus 39 percent for family income), and b) it seems a safe assumption that students are more likely to know their race or ethnicity compared to their family’s income. The question tackled in Table 2 is this: how much would the national SAT scores have changed from 2005 to 2015 if the scores of each racial/ethnic group stayed exactly the same as in 2005, but each group’s proportion of the total population were allowed to vary? In other words, the scores are fixed at the 2005 level for each group—no change. The SAT national scores are then recalculated using the 2015 proportions that each group represented in the national population. Table 2. SAT Scores and Demographic Changes in the SAT Population (2005-2015) The data suggest that two-thirds to three-quarters of the SAT score decline from 2005 to 2015 is associated with demographic changes in the test-taking population. The analysis is admittedly crude. The relationships are correlational, not causal. The race/ethnicity categories are surely serving as proxies for a bundle of other characteristics affecting SAT scores, some unobserved and others (e.g., family income, parental education, language status, class rank) that are included in the SAT questionnaire but produce data difficult to interpret. Using an annual decline in SAT scores to indict high schools is bogus. The SAT should not be used to measure national achievement. SAT changes from 2014-2015 are tiny. The downward trend over the past decade represents a larger decline in SAT scores, but one that is still small in magnitude and correlated with changes in the SAT test-taking population. In contrast to SAT scores, NAEP scores, which are designed to monitor national achievement, report slight gains for 17-year-olds over the past ten years. It is true that LTT NAEP gains are larger among students from ages nine to 13 than from ages 13 to 17, but research has uncovered several plausible explanations for why that occurs. The public should exercise great caution in accepting the findings of test score analyses. Test scores are often misinterpreted to promote political agendas, and much of the alarmist rhetoric provoked by small declines in scores is unjustified.
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bf4237cc9a32e79f2aab730675ea40eb
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2015/12/08/esea-reauthorization-continues-a-long-federal-retreat-from-american-classrooms/
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ESEA reauthorization continues a long federal retreat from American classrooms
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ESEA reauthorization continues a long federal retreat from American classrooms Although many groups have lauded the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) because it abolishes the “hated No Child Left Behind” (NCLB), ESSA is less a “repeal” than another step in the federal retreat from the classroom and a testament to the continuing education exceptionalism in American politics. Not only does ESSA grant states and districts the power to measure, identify, and remedy academic inequality — the very governments that the original authors of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) distrusted in 1965 — but the bill has brought supporters from both parties, just as NCLB did in 2001. The original ESEA of 1965 shared its deep suspicion of state and district governments with other civil rights legislation and litigation of that decade. And so, by 1972, ESEA required states and districts spend specific money on specific students through a host of categorical grants. For most federal purposes, districts were in hock to federal compliance officers. But, by 1994, politicians in both parties worried that federal money had done little to close gaps in educational opportunity, one of the act’s stated purposes. So, the Improving America’s Schools Act, took the feds a step back. Maybe requiring states to define what students should learn and encouraging them to participate in the National Assessment of Education Progress would spur them to do “what works” in the absence of federal ideas. By 2001, achievement gaps remained, and NCLB’s theory of action stepped even further away from the classroom. Now, states would have to report on academic performance and states would have to certify that teachers were highly qualified. With the exception of the lowest performing schools (where specific remedies were codified), NCLB assumed that public pressure and the threat of lost funding would compel schools to shape up — somehow. Enter ESSA. In a gesture of federal humility, the act surrenders the ESEA’s central measurement components to the states and gives up federal pressure on teacher quality. Further, it allows state to use non-academic measures as part of school scores (which are still required). Sen. Lamar Alexander put this spin on it: ESSA restores “to states, school districts, classroom teachers and parents the responsibility for deciding what to do about improving student achievement.” In other words, the federal government spent 50 years trying to move the needle on educational opportunity with little to show for it. ESSA’s cross-party appeal stems from broad-based anger at No Child Left Behind. That Act was heralded for its support of disadvantaged students using deliberate ties to policy research, but things did not work out that way. Teachers’ unions were angered that testing was increasingly used (or threatened) to evaluate teachers; state departments of education were eager to inflate performance; and conservatives threatened to rebel against federal mandates. Alexander and others called the bill a “conservative victory.” It did not abolish the Department of Education (a long-time Republican goal that went into hiding in the 1990s), but it did severely curtail its leverage with states and districts. It did not create vouchers (a pet Alexander project), but it allowed states to experiment with alternate funding systems that might look like public-school choice. It did not reduce federal spending on K-12 education, but it did consolidate dozens of funding streams into block grants. Ronald Reagan would be pleased. Yet, ESSA illustrates the strange politics of American education. Despite these unquestionably conservative elements, staunch liberal and progressive groups support the effort. The bipartisan NGA and CCSSO, who have spent three years trying to convince legislators that the Common Core was not a federal project, were “thrilled.” The NEA was “encouraged,” and the AFT called passage “extraordinary.” Teachers could influence local policy more effectively than national. Civil rights groups, though wary because “state and local control has too often been an obstruction to narrowing disparities,” lauded the law as an “improvement.” Even the trenchant NCLB foe FairTest praised elements as “modest win[s]” because states could experiment with alternate ways to test. Yet, despite its failures, NCLB made reducing educational inequity safe for conservatives and measuring inequality safe for liberals. Federal education law has “borrowed strength” from states and districts to implement ESEA’s goals since its inception. ESSA’s goals have bipartisan support. States and districts have been practicing federal policy for years; perhaps they are ready for their solo performances.
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221c4b09cb762c56a215255ffb0f0c6b
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2015/12/16/this-holiday-season-nudge-like-the-private-sector-taught-you/
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This holiday season, nudge like the private sector taught you
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This holiday season, nudge like the private sector taught you This time of year, one can’t help but be amazed by the sheer psychological muscle the private sector flexes to shape our holiday purchasing. Take the new Walmart ad, which starts with kids holding up their favorite items from the store aisles, talking with boundless glee about the joy the gift will afford. The ad then shifts to asking children whether they’d rather have the toy for themselves or give it to someone whose family can’t afford gifts during the holidays. The kids’ smiles fall, their faces wrinkle up with deep thought, and then, in the adorable, heartfelt articulation unique to children, every child says they’d rather give the toy to someone in need. We are given a concrete, touching experience—and Walmart is cast in the role of a broker of goodness and generosity. Of course, commercials are only the beginning. From Amazon emails recommending electronics based on our past decade’s worth of digital purchases, to offers of live chat support on every website, companies pull one behavioral lever after another to nudge us toward more holiday purchasing. It’s also worth reflecting on what the private sector doesn’t do to get us to buy stuff. Apple, for instance, doesn’t try to persuade us that their processors are the best on the market by drowning us in the technical specifications of their products. Rather, they visually tell stories of people taking pictures both of their loved ones and of magical, potentially life-changing places. Jeep doesn’t try to convince us that we’ll save money each month by buying their more fuel-efficient SUV; they just associate their product with Star Wars, both a source of deep nostalgia and the hottest movie of the current decade. Contrast this with how we tend to promote opportunities in education. When we want economically-disadvantaged families to attend elementary or secondary schools where their children are more likely to be successful, we send out packets emphasizing these schools’ superior test scores. When we encourage students from low-income backgrounds to apply to college, we highlight the lifetime earnings benefits associated with a postsecondary degree. In short, we message about the numbers, as if we were trying to influence the decisions of a large population of statisticians. Sometimes these strategies work; recent evidence suggests, for instance, that school choice information with simple star ratings of school performance can lead parents of elementary school students to send their children to higher-quality middle schools. But other times emphasizing quantitative outcomes has little impact, or can lead to perplexing results. Giving low-income families semi-customized information about financial aid eligibility doesn’t lead to higher completion rates for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). And in the same school choice study referenced above, sending the same information to rising high school students actually led to students attending substantially lower-quality schools. One reason for this result may be that students were anxious about attending the highest-performing schools. This outcomes-focused approach to influencing decision-making in education overlooks at least a half century of research in marketing and consumer psychology about what’s most compelling to people. A few points you may glean from the above examples: These insights have important implications for how we think about nudging students and families to make more active and informed decisions about the educational opportunities they pursue: None of this is to say that educational interventions should adopt all the tools in a marketer’s toolbox—creating Black Friday-style stampedes for financial aid or raising college prices just for the sake of giving “discounts” would likely lead to many undesirable outcomes. Still, if we can make educational programs and opportunities as exciting as the prospect of a Christmas morning stocking, we may unwrap a gift with impacts far beyond a single season—both for students and for society as a whole.
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221214067c382ab09a2944dab942e18b
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2016/03/14/creativity-and-learning-for-the-conceptual-age/?shared=email&msg=fail
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Creativity and learning for the Conceptual Age
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Creativity and learning for the Conceptual Age What is the role of education in in the age of disruptive innovation? According to a new report by researchers at the University of Oxford, 57 percent of jobs in OECD countries are now susceptible to significant automation (with this number rising to 69 percent in India and 77 percent in China). Together artificial intelligence, robotics, synthetic biology, and digital manufacturing are poised to transform the economic landscape. Indeed, artificial intelligence alone is forecast to match and even exceed human capabilities across a range of skilled and unskilled labor. At the same time, these disruptive technologies are part of a creative transformation that holds the potential to regenerate a waning industrial society. It is obvious, for example, that new opportunities in 3D printing, machine learning, and augmented manufacturing will mean extensive opportunities for creative entrepreneurs in the United States and elsewhere. As the cost of robotics and artificial intelligence recede, economic barriers to the expansion of automation across sectors will fall. Thinkers like Peter Drucker and Alvin Toffler have described our current era as an “information age” or “knowledge economy,” but as Daniel Bell suggests, these descriptions often miss its deeper spiritual and artistic features. A more accurate characterization of this postindustrial era would be to describe it as the Conceptual Age. In this Conceptual Age, work is shifting to design, meaning making, and the development of novel ideas and artifacts. Indeed, technology-driven innovation represents a shift not merely from mass manufacturing to something else, but a qualitative transformation in the very nature of work. Given the inherent capacity of technology to automate labor, it stands to reason that developing the right set of educational policies is now fundamental to the future prosperity of the United States. To be sure, intrinsic passion is becoming pivotal to skilled professions so that economic needs (in the traditional sense) are becoming increasingly dependent on creativity and problem solving. Following this line of reasoning, Richard Florida argues that creativity is the defining principle of our age. Indeed, waves of “creative destruction” now threaten to unravel basic assumptions about the management of our society and its institutions. As Ernst and Young observes, the combination of high rates of youth unemployment across G20 countries and a broad shift in lifestyle choice are together driving the development of a rising class of young entrepreneurs. In fact, there are 27 million entrepreneurs in the United States today, making up 14 percent of the working-age population– the highest rate recorded since 1999. Women now own 30 percent of all businesses (some 9.4 million firms), while African American women represent 14 percent of all businesses. Moreover, the number of women-owned businesses in the United States has grown 74 percent since 1997. U.S. education policy now finds itself at a crossroad. A key challenge going forward is the need to ensure that students have the entrepreneurial skills required for the Conceptual Age. Proponents of this approach argue that a creativity-driven economy requires greater investment in liberal arts education. Fareed Zakaria, for example, suggests that a liberal education affords the skills now needed for the 21st century: aesthetic design, communication, critical thinking, interdisciplinary analysis, and storytelling. As he observes, the advantage of liberal education in conjunction with technology is a basic capacity to critically understand systems of human meaning in order to improve those systems over time. To be sure, Steve Jobs was fond of saying that the key to Apple’s success was the marriage of technology with the humanities and the liberal arts. What he meant by this is that disruptive innovation emerges at the intersection of art and technology– rather than either alone. This makes a lot of sense. Creativity and innovation require consilience or creative collaboration across disciplines. In the United States, however, liberal education is under pressure. In the wake of the Great Recession and a decline in U.S. manufacturing, policymakers have called for greater vocational training in conjunction with science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). While STEM education is obviously critical to economic growth, it may not be sufficient. Indeed, the U.S. manufacturing sector has seen sales increasing by 8 percent between 2007 and 2012, but the industry as a whole has shed 2.1 million jobs and $20 billion in payroll. Despite increasing numbers of educated students, many skilled professionals now find themselves forced into lower-skilled jobs because of the mismatch between education and market demand. As Harvard’s Tony Wagner observes, the real challenge for U.S. education is to view STEM as a means to augmenting human creativity rather than as an end in itself. To be sure, what you know today matters far less than what you can do with what you know. Assuming Steve Jobs is right then the really important factor in the work of the future will not be technical proficiency alone, but a capacity to bridge skilled expertise and machine intelligence through entrepreneurial invention and design. What is needed, in other words, is a greater investment in problem solving and consilience. Beyond assembly line schools designed for the Industrial Age, what we now need are interdisciplinary programs that foster creativity for the Conceptual Age. While disruptive technologies will eliminate a wide range of occupations, I believe that education can adapt to the needs of the Conceptual Age by emphasizing innovation through creative design and interdisciplinary collaboration. This is a concern that I am especially focused on as a Research Fellow at the Hult Global Center for Disruptive Innovation in San Francisco. Rather than imparting a specific set of technical or vocational skills in isolation, it would be wise for U.S. education policy to focus on bridging skilled specialists around entrepreneurial problem solving. Rather than a narrow focus on skilled experts, what is needed is systems and policies to support interdisciplinary creativity across specializations.
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4d9d7d07149c6997bfccce06e2d18f7d
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2016/03/18/idea-to-retire-technology-alone-can-improve-student-learning-2/
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Idea to retire: Technology alone can improve student learning
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Idea to retire: Technology alone can improve student learning Nearly every aspect of the world is being transformed by digital tools. Over Thanksgiving weekend in 2015, more people shopped online than braved the aisles of brick and mortar stores fighting for highly discounted items. Globally, there are 2.6 billion active smartphone subscriptions. And self-driving cars have already clocked over 1 million miles on public roads. There is no doubt that technology is impacting how we educate our children and ourselves as well. Over 21 million post-secondary students are enrolled in online courses. Computers are in virtually every school in the country and more of those computers are connected to the Internet than ever before. In fact, the number of students with broadband at school increased by 20 million over just the last two years. Because technology is widely perceived to improve our day-to-day experiences, it is logical to conclude that technology will improve learning outcomes in our nation’s schools by itself. This is an idea that must die. For generations, the belief that new technology will either transform or make schools obsolete has persisted. Thomas Edison believed the motion picture would revolutionize education. Those that followed him thought that radio would do so, and others thought that television would be the end of schooling as we know it. In more recent years, the intelligent tutoring system, e which provides customized learning to students who essentially work alone with a screen, has been seen as a replacement for teachers. Yet each successive wave of technology has failed to live up to its hype, and millions have been spent trying to make technology do what it, alone, cannot do. Ultimately, it is not the technology that does the teaching. Technology is a tool that is wielded by people to accomplish specific ends. While it can serve as an accelerator, it can just as easily accelerate poor strategies as effective ones. It is the teaching approach—the pedagogy—that ultimately determines learning outcomes. Once this is understood, a series of other misconceptions also fade. For example, there is a belief that students today are “digital natives” and as technology-savvy, multi-tasking, always-on individuals, they don’t need to be taught how to use technology effectively in order to learn. This is simply not the case, and extensive reviews of the research have proven otherwise. 1,2 Acumen with social media or even extensive experience mining the Internet for information does not transfer directly to the acquisition of the knowledge, skill, and mindsets associated with mastering a particular domain of expertise. Familiarity with technology, while helpful, is insufficient for understanding the structure, practice, and perspectives of a discipline that is required for learning. What does make a difference is how students use technology. When students use technology in passive ways to consume media, even educational media, the positive impact is limited. But when students use technology actively, as a tool to create, to design, to explore, and to collaborate, they enable new kinds of deep, often transformational, learning experiences. Examples include “creation and sharing of animated films that use computer game engines and footage (machinima); posting and critiquing of creative writing related to popular culture (fan fiction); … and creation and posting of short dramatic or humorous films on YouTube (video production)&rdquo3 Similarly, access to technology doesn’t transform teaching. One of the most pernicious tendencies of schools is to simply copy and paste marginally effective practices from the analog world to the digital world. Worksheets are scanned, spelling lists are reproduced in static digital pixels, and empty text boxes with blinking cursors await the same short answers that were printed on the page. School leaders who believe that the presence of technology, by itself, is transformational, fail to provide teachers the professional learning opportunities they need to be successful in using it to transform their practice. Research indicates that teachers have the most significant impact on student learning out of all other school-level factors. But more than two thirds of teachers say they would like more technology in their classrooms, and roughly half say that lack of training is one of the biggest barriers to incorporating technology into their teaching4 As discussed in the 2016 National Educational Technology Plan (NETP), entitled Future Ready Learning: Reimagining the Role of Technology in Education we cannot expect individual educators to assume full responsibility for bringing technology-based learning experiences into schools. According to research cited in the NETP, teachers need continuous, just-in-time, job-embedded support that includes professional development, mentors, and informal collaborations to use technology successfully in their classrooms. This training should focus “explicitly on ensuring all educators are capable of selecting, evaluating, and using appropriate technologies and resources to create experiences that advance student engagement and learning.” The transition to technology-enabled preparation and professional development will entail many teacher preparation institutions, state offices of education, and school districts rethinking their instructional approaches. They must rethink the techniques, tools, and the skills and expertise of the educators who teach in these programs. Some may find it ironic that, in turning to technology for answers, we find ourselves turning right back to teachers. To be clear, we are not suggesting that technology can’t be transformational. Instead, teachers should take on new roles and approaches to using technology that transform the learning experiences they offer to students. We need to help educators become fluent users of technology, creative and collaborative problem solvers, and adaptive, socially aware experts throughout their careers. We need to equip them with a pedagogy that is rich in project-based, authentic learning experiences that require students to use technology as tools for discovery, collaboration, and the creation. Only then will we see the full impact of what is possible with technology. The notion that technology itself can improve student outcomes must die. However, the notion of a well-trained teacher, effectively wielding technology while finding new ways to discover and create, promises to transform the learning experience. Read more essays in the Ideas to Retire series here. 1Wang, S.-K., Hsu, H.-Y., Campbell, T., Coster, D. C., & Longhurst, M. (2014). An investigation of middle school science teachers and students use of technology inside and outside of classrooms: Considering whether digital natives are more technology savvy than their teachers. Education Technology Research and Development, 62(6), 637–662. 2Bennett, S. J. & Maton, K. (2010). Beyond the ‘digital natives’ debate: towards a more nuanced understanding of students’ technology experiences. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26 (5), 321-331. 3Warschauer, M., & Matuchniak, T. (2010). New technology and digital worlds: Analyzing evidence of equity in access, use, and outcomes. Review of Research in Education, 34(1), 179–225 (quote from p. 193). 4Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (2012). Innovation in education: Technology & effective teaching in the U.S. Seattle, WA: Author.
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6dee388fe2d9286573df8e0b7afb8ecc
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2016/03/23/understanding-financial-responsibility-scores-for-private-colleges/
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Understanding financial responsibility scores for private colleges
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Understanding financial responsibility scores for private colleges The stories of financially struggling private colleges, both nonprofit and for-profit, have been told in many news articles. Small private nonprofit colleges are increasing tuition discount rates in an effort to attract a shrinking pool of traditional-age students in many parts of the country, while credit rating agency Moody’s expects the number of private nonprofit college closings to triple to about 15 per year by next year. Meanwhile, the for-profit sector has seen large enrollment decreases in the last few years amid the collapse of Corinthian Colleges and the University of Phoenix’s 50 percent drop in enrollment since 2010. In an effort to identify financially struggling colleges and protect federal investments in student financial aid, Congress requires the U.S. Department of Education to calculate financial responsibility composite scores that are designed to measure a college’s overall financial strength based on metrics of liquidity, ability to borrow additional funds if needed, and net income. Private nonprofit and for-profit colleges are required to submit financial data each year, while public colleges are excluded under the assumption that state funding makes them unlikely to become insolvent. Though not commonly known, these financial responsibility scores have important consequences for private colleges. Scores can range between -1.0 and 3.0, with colleges scoring at or above 1.5 being considered financially responsible and are allowed to access federal funds. Colleges scoring between 1.0 and 1.4 can access financial aid dollars, but are subject to additional Department of Education oversight of their financial aid programs. Finally, colleges scoring 0.9 or below are not considered financially responsible and must submit a letter of credit of at least 10 percent of federal student aid from the previous year and be subject to additional oversight to get access to funds. The Department of Education can also determine that a college does not meet “initial eligibility requirements due to a failing composite score” and assign it a failing grade without releasing a score to the public. In this case, a college will be immediately subject to heightened cash monitoring rules that delay the federal government’s disbursement of financial aid dollars to colleges. However, private nonprofit colleges dispute the validity of the formula, claiming it is inaccurate and does not meet current accounting standards. I first examined the distribution of financial responsibility scores among the 3,435 institutions (1,683 private nonprofit and 1,752 for-profit) with scores in the 2013-14 academic year, using data released to the public earlier this month. As illustrated in the figure below, only a small percentage of colleges that were assigned a score did not pass the test. In 2013-14, 203 colleges (73 nonprofit and 130 for-profit) received a failing score and an additional 136 (51 nonprofit and 85 for-profit) were in the oversight zone. Most of the colleges with failing scores are obscure institutions, such as the Champion Institute of Cosmetology in California and The Chicago School for Piano Technology. However, a few of these institutions, such as for-profit colleges Charleston School of Law, ITT Technical Institute, and Vatterott Colleges as well as nonprofit colleges Erskine College in South Carolina, Everglades University in Florida (a former for-profit) and Finlandia University in Michigan are at least somewhat better-known. I then examined trends in financial responsibility scores since when scores were first released to the public in the 2006-07 academic year. The first finding to note in the below table is that the number of nonprofit colleges that did not pass the financial responsibility test nearly doubled between 2007-08 and 2008-09, including more than one in six institutions. Much of this increase appears to be due to the collapse in endowment values, as even a decline in a rather small endowment would affect a college’s score through reducing net income. During the same period, there was only a slight increase in the number of for-profit colleges facing additional oversight. The second interesting trend is that in spite of concerns about the viability of small colleges with high tuition prices since the Great Recession, the number of colleges that either received a failing score or faced additional oversight has slowly declined since 2010-11. Only 12 percent of for-profits and seven percent of nonprofits failed in 2013-14, reflecting a general stabilizing trend for struggling private institutions. Although there are certainly valid concerns about how these scores are calculated, most colleges with failing scores and some others facing additional oversight are likely on shaky financial footing. Many of these colleges with failing scores—particularly for several years in a row—will be forced to consider merging with another institution or closing their doors entirely in the near future. Other colleges closer to the passing threshold may be facing tight budgets for years to come, but their short-term viability is generally secure. It is unlikely that a substantial number of students and families know that financial responsibility scores even exist, let alone use them in their college choice decisions. However, these scores do provide some potential insights into the financial stability of a college and could potentially be included in the new College Scorecard tool. Students who are considering attending a college that repeatedly receives a failing score should ask tough questions of college officials about whether they will be financially solvent several years from now. Policymakers should use these scores as a way to identify financially struggling institutions and provide support for ones with solid academic outcomes, while also asking tough questions about the viability of cash-strapped colleges that academically underperform similar colleges.
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80b0fcd24a54e9d9a0c44fc8e217049f
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2016/04/13/personalized-learning-is-a-useful-tool-not-a-panacea/
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Personalized learning is a useful tool, not a panacea
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Personalized learning is a useful tool, not a panacea The buzz about personalized learning as a strategy for improving education systems seems to grow by the day. Recently, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg announced they were donating their shares in Facebook (worth an estimated $45 billion) to support personalized learning. Research from RAND makes a useful contribution to the literature on this issue. Personalized learning describes Internet based learning platforms that respond to the user’s learning style, interests, and pre-existing knowledge. The RAND study describes five personalized practices from the schools in their study: learner profiles, personal learning pathways, competency-based progression, flexible learning environments, and emphasis on college and career readiness. There is no consensus definition of personalized learning, but a central component is education technology. The study includes student achievement data from 62 schools that had implemented personalized learning. To evaluate whether personalized learning improved outcomes compared with traditional schools the authors constructed virtual comparison groups. Each student in the study was compared with 51 other students that were the same gender, were enrolled in the same grade, and had similar pre-test scores on the Northwest Evaluation Association Measures of Academic Progress (NWEA MAP) assessment. The comparison students attended schools that had the same urbanicity and similar numbers of students enrolled in free and reduced-price lunch. This approach allowed the authors to compare the pre- and post-test MAP assessment scores for students in treatment schools and the students in the virtual control group. Students in treatment schools had significant gains on the NWEA MAP assessment The average effect size for students was substantively large (0.27 standard deviations in math and 0.19 standard deviations in reading). The authors found significant and positive effects of personalized learning on a majority of schools. Growth continued for each year of program implementation in both math and reading. The authors also find that personalized learning helped to close academic achievement gaps. Students who started in the bottom quintile were more likely to exceed their virtual comparison group than students in the top quintile. This is noteworthy because prior research focusing on students’ access to computers and high-speed internet has shown that Internet based education technologies could contribute to widening achievement gaps. There are two noteworthy methodological issues. The first has to do with the treatment itself. Nearly every school employs some aspect of personalized learning as they define in the RAND study. For example, a component of personalized learning is an emphasis on college and career readiness and incorporating data from formative assessments. For many schools around the country these are common practices. Only certain aspects of personalized learning, for certain schools, represents a departure from business as usual. To some extent personalized learning is nothing new. A more concerning issue is the generalizability of the findings. Each school in the treatment group received funds from the Next Generation Learning Challenges, the Charter School Growth Fund, or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Schools gained financial support for personalized learning through a competitive grant process. 57 out of the 62 (91 percent) schools in the treatment sample were charter schools compared with four percent of schools in the United States. This study allows for an inference about the influence of personalized learning on student achievement in charter schools, but on the assumption that students across these school types are qualitatively different in some way, these findings cannot support a claim about traditional public school implementations. Randomized assignment could have addressed these concerns. However, such a design was not possible because personalized learning was implemented prior to the start of the RAND analysis. The authors were also not able to find data from neighboring schools. Given these constraints they chose a rigorous matching design. The results of this study are promising and merit further research. But, we should read this article as speaking to the efficacy of blended learning in charter schools that have received major financial support for personalized learning. There are two major challenges to scaling personalized learning up to the national level. First, it would require huge investments to achieve ubiquitous high-speed Internet access. Second, teachers would need training on using personalized learning tools in their classrooms. These barriers to implementation at scale have and will continue to insulate schools from the disruptive forces of education technology. Facebook and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are donors to the Brookings Institution. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions posted in this piece are solely those of the author and not influenced by any donation.
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2dc7a4c404886f068cc99dadfbc2be93
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2016/05/02/a-alfred-taubman-forum-on-public-policy-examines-25-years-of-charter-schools-in-america/
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A. Alfred Taubman Forum on Public Policy examines 25 years of charter schools in America
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A. Alfred Taubman Forum on Public Policy examines 25 years of charter schools in America On April 26, the Brown Center on Education Policy hosted the seventh annual A. Alfred Taubman Forum on Public Policy. During the forum, education experts and practitioners from various perspectives explored the role, effectiveness, and future of charter schools in the U.S. education system. They discussed how these schools were created as a way to bring innovation to the classroom and as a new way to create new type of public schools. Have charter schools lived up to this mission and if not, why not? The first charter school law was enacted 25 years ago in Minnesota in 1991, and since then charters have become integrated into public school offerings across the country. Currently, they serve roughly 6.5 percent of American students (over 2.5 million students) in 43 states plus the District of Columbia. However, their distribution is not spread uniformly across states and communities. Some states, including Louisiana and Arizona, have the highest percentage of students enrolled in charters (10 percent), while several rural states do not have charter laws. Likewise, these schools serve more students in urban areas rather than in nonurban areas. While in large cities 15 percent of public school students are enrolled in a charter school, only two percent are enrolled in rural areas. Further charters show higher effects on test scores in urban areas. The growth of charter schools has been gradual and linear with an increase between one and two percentage points year after year. Panelist Jon Valant, a postdoctoral fellow in the Education Research Alliance of New Orleans and Tulane University’s Department of Economics, speculated that charters have not reached an equilibrium point and that there is room for their continued growth due to elimination of charter enrollment caps by programs like Race to the Top and their positive popular opinion (2/3 support charters while about 2/3 opposed vouchers in recent polls). Panelists discussed what makes the charter school movement unique unto itself. Charter schools have raised expectations for low income students, according to Howard L. Fuller, Distinguished Professor of Education and Director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University. Fuller says charters have “put to bed the lie that you can’t educate kids who are poor.” Charters have demonstrated that it is possible for disadvantaged populations to reach academic excellence, though there is still the need to empower minorities and people of color to run these schools and to define the role of these schools in the communities they serve. “The charter school movement is the only movement I’m aware of where the people being impacted by it aren’t leading it,” Fuller also added. Another important issue discussed was research about the effectiveness of charters schools. Panelist Doug Harris, Professor of Economics and Schleider Foundation Chair in Public Education at Tulane University said many people commonly ask whether charter schools are “working,” but responds that it’s not a simple answer. Rather, the research shows a nuanced relationship between charter schools, the communities they serve, and governance. Harris highlighted five scenarios in which charter schools tend to perform better: While charter schools have shown higher returns in New Orleans, it is important to be cautious because these results were driven by particular characteristics that the city faced after Hurricane Katrina and may not see in other states. For instance, just an hour north in Baton Rouge, charter schools have been trying to operate under the Recovery School District (the same entity that has overseen charter schools in New Orleans) but have struggled getting teachers and educators to get there and have had a very different record. Thus far, the research has primarily been focused on the “horse race” and education politics, on how students in the charter sector compare with those in traditional public schools; however, panelists generally agreed the research needs to evolve into what can be learned from charter schools to apply to traditional schools. The forum concluded with a session in which former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan discussed the importance of educators and policymakers having the common goal of academic success. He agrees that charter movement has made great strides but that we should be agnostic about the charter schools brand because it is not the only model of quality education. According to Duncan, charters have improved student outcomes by spending more time with students through longer days and a longer academic year, by their focus on retaining great teachers and principals, by providing personalized instruction, and with their optimistic approach to what children can do; these practices can and should be adopted in charters and traditional district-run schools alike. Reflecting on his experience as Secretary of Education, Duncan stated that education should be the “ultimate nonpartisan, nonpolitical issue.” He mentioned the need for leaders to unite around some common goals: access to high quality pre-K, get high school graduation rates to 100 percent as fast as possible, and increase college completion rates. Finally, he emphasized the importance of courage and the sense of urgency necessary to close the opportunity gap. Missed our charter schools forum on April 26, 2016 or want to learn more? See the A. Alfred Taubman Forum on Public Policy event page for a full video recap.
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33551e7de33297ef4a40235f32d1e6ee
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2016/06/15/are-school-internet-connections-fast-enough-to-support-personalized-learning/
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Are school internet connections fast enough to support personalized learning?
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Are school internet connections fast enough to support personalized learning? Education technologies like personalized learning have tremendous potential to help students learn. To maximize the value of personalized learning, the public and private sectors must increase their investments in training, infrastructure, hardware, and curriculum. Unfortunately progress in each of these areas is uneven. In a recent Chalkboard post, I discussed the potential benefits from broad adoption of personalized learning. A key reason that I remain skeptical about the long-term impact of personalized learning is the lack of bandwidth in the nation’s schools. The available data suggests that school internet speeds continue to rise at a rapid rate, but remain below the levels needed to support broad adoption of personalized learning. The most recent and comprehensive data on school internet speeds is collected by the nonprofit Education SuperHighway (ESH). They analyze school district applications to the Federal Communication Commission’s E-Rate program. E-rate provides funding to schools and libraries to subsidize the cost of internet access. ESH then contacted schools to verify the connection types and bandwidth for the 2015 funding year. In their 2015 report, ESH finds that schools have made considerable progress. In 2013 the FCC established a minimum bandwidth target of 100 Kbps per student [1]. ESH found that 30 percent of school districts meet that low standard. Over the next two years that figure rose to 77 percent of school districts. Only Wyoming and the single district-state of Hawaii have reached the 2013 goal. Since then the FCC has set the ambitious goal of 1 Mbps per student by 2018. Some schools have already met this lofty standard, but the vast majority have not. Providing high-speed broadband to the communities that currently lack access will require an ambitious effort. Broad swathes of the country remain unconnected to terrestrial broadband options. There are a variety of technologies that could provide access to these school districts, but companies are reticent to offer services in communities with few customers. Governments can fill in the gap but it would require larger subsidies to Internet Service Providers (ISP). The average median bandwidth for states was 220 Kbps per student. States with few impoverished students (lowest quintile) had a high median bandwidth speed (281 Kbps per student). But, states in the top quintile for the number of students in poverty also had an above average school district median bandwidth of 231 Kbps per student. A similar pattern follows for the number of students living in rural areas. States in the lowest and highest quintile for the number of rural students had higher median bandwidth connections than states in the third and fourth quintile. Source for both charts: Author’s Calculation from ESH Compare and Connect K-12 The state-level data on broadband speeds mask considerable variation at the district level. For example, in Florida, the median school district broadband speed is 82 Kbps per student and 40 percent of school districts have an average speed of at least 100 Kbps. Escambia County in the panhandle has an average speed of 20 Kbps per student while Glades County in south-central Florida averages 812 Kbps per student. Source: Author’s Calculation from ESH Compare and Connect K-12 One possible explanation is that states with greater numbers of impoverished and rural students have slower internet connections. Impoverished and rural communities do not have the customer bases to attract infrastructure investments from ISPs. However, the number of rural students and the number of students in poverty have weak relationships with the median state bandwidth. The Florida data suggest that bandwidth speeds vary more within rather than across states. 100 Kbps per student is not fast enough to support personalized learning. State Education Technology Directors Association’s (SETDA) recommends downlink bandwidth speeds of 100 Kbps per student as a minimum. For example, SETDA recommends 250 Kbps per student for online learning. For a bandwidth-intensive platform like Khan Academy they recommend 1.5 Mbps per device. Many districts are far from these targets. Without a clearer view of school bandwidth and peak internet usage it’s not possible to understand the nature of the problem. This presents an additional difficulty to policymakers who seek to address this issue. Is the current 2018 FCC standard of 1 Mbps per student fast enough for every student in the country to take an online standardized exam? There is no research yet that allows for a precise answer to this important question. The last national study of school internet speeds occurred in 2005. The federal government could address this problem by administering a survey about school internet access. This would provide a more detailed picture about peak usage rates and current speeds. If personalized learning and other internet-enabled educational tools are to realize their potential then substantial infrastructure investments in wireless broadband, fiber, and other technologies are needed. Ensuring that every school has the necessary bandwidth is a difficult task because it would require a massive investment from public and private sources. Policy analysts and advocates should take into account this challenge when predicting the adoption and impact of personalized learning. Note: [1] ESH defines Internet Access bandwidth per student as “For Internet access, total bandwidth per district is calculated as the sum of the capacity of all Internet Access connections divided by the total number of enrolled students in the district as reported in NCES data.” The FCC’s 100 Kbps per student standard is based on SETDA’s recommendation.
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22e5b8479251e1832dfc1e288b082797
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2016/07/13/why-busing-was-a-fake-issue/
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Why ‘busing’ was a fake issue
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Why ‘busing’ was a fake issue In his first major speech as U.S. Secretary of Education, John King encouraged school districts to take steps towards class-based integration. “Research shows that one of the best things we can do for all children—black or white, rich or poor—is give them a chance to attend strong, socioeconomically diverse schools,” King said in January. “We should support innovative, voluntary locally-driven efforts to promote socioeconomic diversity in schools.” King has discussed school integration repeatedly this year and the issue is being debated in policy circles and publicly in a way not seen in nearly 40 years. These socioeconomic integration plans are compelling because they are pragmatic and offer an end-run around the Supreme Court’s ruling against racial integration plans in Parents Involved in Community Schools (2007). While class-based school integration efforts are promising, much of the optimism for these plans is based on a sketchy understanding of the resistance to racial and socioeconomic integration since the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision. In order to think about how school integration can work in 2016 and beyond, it is important to understand the history of resistance to school desegregation. In the final pre-publication stages for my recent book Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation, the copyeditor e-mailed to ask me, “Do you really want to refer to ‘busing’ in quotation marks throughout the book?” I opted to keep “busing” in scare quotes to emphasize that this term developed in the years after Brown as a selective way to label and oppose school desegregation. The “busing” of students to racially integrate schools following Brown was about the constitutional rights of black students, but the story of “busing” has been told and retold as a story about the feelings and opinions of white people. Framing the history of school desegregation in this way has made it possible for parents, school officials, and politicians to describe “busing” for school desegregation as unrealistic, unnecessary, and unfair. As civil rights advocates continually pointed out, “busing” was a fake issue. Students in the United States had long ridden buses to school, and the number of students transported to school at public expense in the United States expanded from 600,000 in 1920 to 20,000,000 in 1970. In concert with rural to urban migration, school buses made it possible for multi-grade elementary schools to replace one-room schoolhouses and for comprehensive high schools to become commonplace. School buses, in this era, were among the educational privileges enjoyed by white students. “The white rode buses, the Negro walked long weary miles in all kind of weather, cold, wind and rain, as well as the scortching [sic] heat of summer,” Rosa Parks remembered of her childhood in Montgomery, Alabama. In other parts of the South, as well as New York, Boston, and many other northern cities, students rode buses past closer neighborhood schools to more distant schools to maintain segregation. Linda Brown, the plaintiff in Brown v. Board, rode a bus over twenty blocks to attend a black school, when the white school was only four blocks from her family’s home. In Boston, more than 50 percent of middle-school students and 85 percent of high school students were bused before the court order for “busing” with no objection, until and unless it was linked to desegregation. Put more starkly, then, school buses were fine for the majority of white families; “busing” was not. White parents and politicians framed their resistance to school desegregation in terms of “busing” and “neighborhood schools.” This rhetorical shift allowed them to support white schools and neighborhoods without using explicitly racist language. As early as 1957, white parents in New York rallied against “busing.” In Detroit in 1960, thousands of white parents organized a school boycott to protest the “busing” of three hundred black students from an overcrowded school to a school in a white neighborhood. In Boston, Louise Day Hicks made opposition to “busing” a centerpiece of her political campaigns. “It was Mrs. Hicks who kept talking against busing children when the NAACP hadn’t even proposed busing,” the Boston Globe noted in 1965. “I have probably talked before 500 or 600 groups over the last years about busing,” Los Angeles assemblyman Floyd Wakefield said in 1970. “Almost every time someone has gotten up and called me a ‘racist’ or a ‘bigot.’ But now, all of the sudden, I am no longer a bigot. Now I am called ‘the leader of the antibusing’ effort.” With “busing,” northerners found a palatable way to oppose desegregation without appealing to the explicitly racist sentiments they preferred to associate with southerners. Describing opposition to “busing” as something other than resistance to school desegregation was a choice that obscured the histories of racial discrimination and legal contexts for desegregation orders. In covering school desegregation in Boston and other northern cities, contemporary news media took up the “busing” frame, and most histories of the era have followed suit. Our understanding of school desegregation in the North is skewed as a result, emphasizing innocent “de facto” segregation while downplaying the housing covenants, federal mortgage redlining, public housing segregation, white homeowners’ associations, and discriminatory real estate practices that produced and maintained segregated neighborhoods. As policy analysts and scholars like Richard Rothstein, Beryl Satter, and David Freund have shown, “de facto” segregation is a myth. Furthermore, this history neglects the policies regarding school siting, districting, and student transfers that produced and maintained segregated schools. My goal in writing Why Busing Failed is to change how we talk about and teach the history of “busing” for school desegregation. Rather than starting the story in the 1970s, we need to understand that the battles over “busing” started two decades earlier in the wake of the Brown decision and in the context of civil rights activism in the North. Rather than focusing exclusively on Boston or seeing South Boston’s Irish residents as uniquely prejudiced, we need to understand how white parents and politicians in cities across the country rallied to defend racially segregated schools. And rather than using “busing” as a politically neutral word, we need to understand that this term developed as a selective way to label and oppose school desegregation. The long history of “busing” for school desegregation is more nuanced, complicated, and important than any one city’s “busing crisis.” My hope is that by seeing the history of “busing” clearly and speaking honestly about the history of civil rights, people who care about educational equality can chart a more just future.
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da6af596503960cac73548434fde8206
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2016/08/03/familiar-fissures-evident-in-essa-implementation-debate/
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Familiar fissures evident in ESSA implementation debate
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Familiar fissures evident in ESSA implementation debate When President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in December 2015, the law was hailed as a bipartisan achievement and a dramatic improvement over the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). In particular, Republicans and Democrats alike lauded the increase in state autonomy and the simultaneous rollback in the Department of Education’s authority.[1] Does this mean that the longstanding debate over the Department of Education’s role in public education is settled? Not necessarily. Both the existing fault lines within education and current political conditions suggest that the question of how much authority ESSA grants the Department over states remains open—both to interpretation and further legislation. Let me explain. Partisan disagreements over the law’s implementation surfaced during committee hearings on the Department’s proposed regulations, released May 26. Republicans criticized the Department’s proposed regulations as overreach, arguing that under ESSA, the Department enjoys limited authority over state policy making. Indeed, in his opening remarks to a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee hearing on ESSA implementation, committee chairman Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) admonished Secretary of Education John King that “already we’re seeing disturbing evidence that the Department of Education is ignoring the law that the 22 members of this committee worked so hard to craft.” From the other side of the aisle, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) provided a counterweight to Sen. Alexander’s reprimand, emphasizing the importance of the Department’s role in holding states accountable for student achievement: “while we were writing this law, we were deliberate on granting the Department the authority to regulate on the law and hold schools and states accountable for education.” In her remarks, she cites a letter from the Leadership Council on Civil and Human Rights which unequivocally argues that ESSA preserves a robust role for the Department of Education: “ESSA is clear: The department has the authority and responsibility to issue regulations and guidance, and to provide guidance and technical assistance for the implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).” The contrast between Sen. Alexander and Murray’s viewpoints exposes a central debate over the Department’s proposed regulations and over ESSA implementation more broadly. This right-left split over the proper role of the federal government in education policy is nothing new; Republicans and Democrats have been at odds over the Department of Education’s authority since Carter created the cabinet-level department in 1979. Consider, for example, heated debates along partisan lines over the Clinton administration’s proposal to include “opportunity to learn” standards in the 1994 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. As the excerpts above indicate, this debate over how the Department should hold states accountable for student achievement remains unresolved. Paralleling these disagreements among elected officials, since its inception, public support for the Department of Education (and by rough proxy, federal involvement in public education) has been divided. Roughly the same proportion of national survey respondents agreed with the Reagan administration’s position that the Department was “not needed” (39 percent) as those who disagreed (37 percent), while almost a quarter of respondents (24 percent) responded “don’t know.”[2] Almost thirty years later, public perception of the Department remains split. In a September 2015 national survey, 44 percent of respondents viewed the Department favorably, while 50 percent viewed it unfavorably.[3] Political conditions may also mean that despite bipartisan passage of ESSA, the debate over implementation is far from over. Research suggests that congressional oversight of the executive branch increases under divided government. Thus, there may be reason to expect more scrutiny of the Department’s proposed regulations to implement ESSA than if one or both houses of Congress was controlled by the Democrats. On the other hand, in a new article Bolton, Potter and Thrower find that the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) may accelerate approval of rules that are “presidential priorities,” although the president’s ability to capitalize on this advantage is hampered when OIRA is understaffed and over-worked. While the Republican-controlled Congress can set the agenda in terms of committee hearings, drawing attention to its concerns with the Department’s proposed regulations, OIRA may face pressure to approve rules promulgated by the Department, currently run by Secretary John King, an Obama appointee. Finally, evidence suggests that laws passed under divided government are more likely to be amended in subsequent years than those passed under unified government. The logic is that laws passed under divided government are products of political compromise and as such are less coherent and more vulnerable to revision down the line. Passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Democratic president, ESSA certainly falls into this category. Ultimately it is hard to say what impact these political conditions will have on the Department’s proposed regulations and on implementation of ESSA more broadly. But at the very least, these conditions are not conducive to swift or decisive policy making. But that may not be a bad thing. Vigorous debate—both across parties, and across branches of government—may help ensure that implementation of ESSA reflects neither a knee-jerk reaction against NCLB and federal authority nor a defense of the NCLB-era status quo pertaining to the Department’s role in public education. [1] On February 10, 2016, Representative Todd Rokita (R-IN) opened a House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education hearing by declaring victory for state and local education leaders: “After years of flawed policies and federal intrusions into the nation’s classrooms, Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act based on the principle that responsibility of K-12 education must be returned to state and local leaders.”[1] In a similar tone, the American Federation of Teachers describes ESSA as “a sea change in education policy,” citing the “bold new opportunity for states and districts to move beyond top-down, test-and-sanction-based reforms that have failed to help all kids.” [2] Phi Delta Kappa. Gallup/PDK Poll of Public Attitudes Toward the Public Schools 1987, Apr, 1987 [survey question]. USGALLUP.87PDK.R22. Gallup Organization [producer]. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY: Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, iPOLL [distributor], accessed Jul-25-2016. [3] Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Pew Research Center for the People & the Press Political Survey, Sep, 2015 [survey question]. USPSRA.112315.R13IF1. Princeton Survey Research Associates International [producer]. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY: Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, iPOLL [distributor], accessed Jul-25-2016. The survey results reported here were obtained from searches of the iPOLL Databank and other resources provided by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.
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8565acca382449c57759af033c2ea9a5
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2016/08/11/turning-around-struggling-schools-is-not-easy-but-can-be-taught/
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Turning around struggling schools is not easy but can be taught
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Turning around struggling schools is not easy but can be taught When Alison Harris Welcher became principal of Ranson I.B. Middle School in Charlotte, NC, it was one of the lowest-performing schools in the district. “We had teenagers who couldn’t read,” Welcher recently explained in testimony before the U.S. Senate. “There were classrooms full of kids where no learning was happening.” Four years later, Ranson had exceeded all of its growth targets and was one of the top 25 schools in the state on the growth composite index measure. Welcher’s success defies the all-too-common pessimism regarding the possibility of improving struggling schools. “There is a real difference between maintaining excellence and building it,” said Welcher. “School transformation is hard, it takes time, and it is possible.” The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), our new federal education law, grants states and districts more freedom to develop locally-tailored strategies for improving the lowest-performing schools while also requiring them to use approaches supported by evidence. As they grapple with implementation of ESSA, our school systems have much to learn from Welcher’s experience and other great principals like her. Research (including by the U.S Department of Education, the Wallace Foundation, and the UChicago Consortium on School Research) has found that effective leadership is a critical driver of school turnaround. While multiple factors contribute to school transformation, ensuring struggling schools are led by a well-prepared, well-supported principal can and should be a central strategy for improving them. But what exactly does effective school leadership look like? What skills and knowledge do outstanding principals possess? And what actions lead to success? We set out to answer these questions by studying more than 100 school leaders who, like Welcher, have overseen significant achievement gains in district and charter schools serving our country’s most vulnerable and at-risk students. Although such principals often seem like one-of-a-kind superheroes, we found that their success derives from a surprisingly uniform set of practices that, when carried out with fidelity, consistently result in significant school improvement. These practices, which we describe in our new book, Breakthrough Principals, include: Turning around struggling schools is not easy. But, as these top-performing principals demonstrate, it is methodical and, therefore, can be taught. Unfortunately, too few programs currently equip school leaders with concrete skills that will help them succeed. In fact, Public Agenda found that 41 percent of superintendents report principals are not well-prepared for the job. To scale the results of successful principals, leadership preparation programs and district professional development must provide better training and support. Specifically, states can: ESSA includes a number of opportunities to support these efforts. States can use a new opportunity in Title II to dedicate a portion of funds from the state grant specifically for school leadership; they can use this to make necessary investments and create a statewide infrastructure focused on ensuring every school is led by a well-prepared, well-supported principal. Moreover, they can use those funds to build local capacity to foster strong leadership policies and practices—particularly in struggling districts or those that are supporting large numbers of schools identified for improvement, where school leadership is especially crucial. States can also leverage Title I dollars to invest in evidence-based leadership programs for the lowest-performing schools identified for comprehensive support and improvement. To make good on the promise of local control, we must learn from the successes of principals like Welcher and ensure all school leaders—especially those committed to working in the highest-need schools—are prepared and supported to deliver strong results for the teachers, students, and communities they serve.
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b6bead9910515c041fd5f73f2bd749b3
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2016/08/31/making-better-use-of-data-on-free-school-lunches/
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Making better use of data on free school lunches
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Making better use of data on free school lunches Feeding hungry children is the primary purpose of America’s free (or reduced price) lunch program. Just over half of public school students are eligible for the program, ranging from nearly three-quarters of Mississippi students to just over one-quarter of students in New Hampshire. However, there is also a secondary use of the free lunch program: eligibility for free lunch is often the only way for states, school districts, and education researchers to identify low-income students. Schools don’t generally have records of exact family income—it being mostly none of their business—so eligibility for free lunch status is usually the best proxy measurement anyone has to identify low-income students. But the real educational issue is less whether a family is having a bad financial year right at the moment and more what the family’s finances look like over the long run. So it makes sense to look at more than current-year free lunch eligibility. Katherine Michelmore and Susan Dynarski, in a paper titled “The Gap within the Gap,” demonstrate that using multiple year measures of free lunch status better identifies long-term, low-income students. Bottom line: students who are on free lunch status for several years come from lower income families than students who just happen to be eligible for free lunch this year. I’ll explain here the intuition of what’s going on (having benefitted from hearing Sue talk about the paper) in a rather wonky way. Below, I’ll explain why this should be a real action item for those who distribute money and resources among schools. In the figure below I show (in blue) a pattern of fluctuating income that might be representative of a particular student’s family over the course of primary school. The shape is the same in the left and right panels. The red line shows the cutoff for free lunch. So in the years in which the blue line dips below the red, the student gets subsidized lunch. You will see that the student depicted on the left is eligible for free lunch only once. In contrast, the student on the right is eligible in most years. (In the real world, the cutoffs are 130 percent of the federal poverty line for free lunch and 185 percent of the poverty line to be eligible for a reduced price. The exact numbers depend on family size and are slightly different for Alaska and Hawaii, but for a mother with one child free lunch kicks in at a yearly income of about $21,000 and the reduced-price line is about $30,000.) As a guess, the fact that the student at the right has more years eligible for free lunch was probably the second thing you saw in the figure. You likely noticed first that the wiggly blue line on the right is lower than the wiggly blue line on the left. And these two observations exactly explain the intuition of why students who are more frequently eligible for free lunch generally come from families with lower long-term income. If a high income family has a one-year dip in income, the odds are their income is still too high to qualify for free lunch. In contrast a family of more modest means is often near the eligibility border, so a dip down makes their child eligible. And a very low income family’s child is probably always eligible. Michelmore and Dynarski look at a massive administrative data set from Michigan and show that the pattern described above is what we see in the real world. (Michelmore and Dynarski then go on to show that the number of years eligible for free lunch is a better predictor of educational outcomes than you can get using a single year.) In the next figure, I’ll show you what the relation between income and years eligible for free lunch looks like in nationally representative data taken from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. Students and their families were surveyed five times from kindergarten through eighth grade, and one of the items surveyed was whether their children were eligible for free (or reduced-price) lunches. About half of students were never eligible. Other students were eligible between once and every year of the survey. The big income drop-off is, unsurprisingly, between the “never eligible” and everyone else (where income is measured as average income for a family over all surveyed years). But—just as in the first picture above—there is a large difference in average incomes between those eligible one year and those eligible every year. The gap is close to a factor of two. So if you want to identify students who come from very low-income backgrounds, look for those who are regularly on the free lunch program. I promised an action-item suggestion above. There are, in fact, two. Very frequently the only income data available to education researchers is whether a student is eligible for subsidized lunch. Researchers who are looking for a proxy for low socio-economic status should use all years, not just the current year. (Wonk side note: Matt Chingos points out that Congress has changed the technical requirements for establishing free lunch eligibility in ways that are good for kids but which may make FRPL eligibility much less useful for researchers in the future.) The more important action item is for state and school district administrators who direct money in part toward low-income districts or low-income schools. You should strongly consider adjusting your formulas to put heavier weight on those districts and schools in which many students have a long history of being on free lunch. That’s a more effective way of getting money to the lowest of the low income. Garrison Schlauch provided research assistance for this post.
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91462df4d6639ccb85b02afc0d15fd12
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2016/11/22/an-education-thanksgiving/?utm_campaign=Brookings+Brief&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=38099427
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An education thanksgiving
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An education thanksgiving This time of year we ought to reflect on the things that are so right in American education. News stories—and, yes, blog posts—tend to focus on the negative: what’s gone wrong and what needs to be fixed. While working for the better is the American way, it’s also important to recognize that which is going well. It is the month for Thanksgiving. So today’s post offers solely data on good news: not perfect news, not the-job-is-all-done news—but good news. Over the last fifteen years, high school graduation rates have risen. The vast majority of adults have a high school diploma. White, Black, and Hispanic graduation rates have all moved up (and notably, the increases have been larger among minorities, which has slightly narrowed gaps). Over the last fifteen years, a noticeably increased portion of the adult population has earned a college degree. This is true among adults of all races, though it’s not clear gaps have made any progress during this time. There’s a tendency to focus on degree completion at the high school and college level. Community colleges and associate degrees matter too, and they are also up. Here are the numbers by sex. If you’re wondering, the numbers have also risen for all racial and ethnic groups. Violence against students is way, way down from the 1990s and seems to be continuing to slowly decline. Keeping our kids safe at school is surely something to be thankful for. School is also a less scary place than it once was—reductions of more than 50 percent for both males and females. Alcohol use among high school students is declining. I think this is a good thing, although I do wonder what the French would think of the notion that most high school students had not had a glass of wine in the last month. Perhaps the most telling good news comes from the upward trend in the EdNext/PEPG poll in which the public is asked to grade schools. For their own local schools, presumably the ones the public knows best, a majority now assign a grade of A or B. We can’t pin down what exactly is making the public more satisfied, but things appear to be moving in the right direction. In this month for Thanksgiving we do have much to be thankful for in our kids’ schools. But you will see that I have left out something, something I don’t have a picture for, something which is the most important thing to be thankful for. Our schools are filled with a great many very good teachers and very many great teachers (and principals and staff and so many parent volunteers too). Thanks gals and guys.
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6ba985238aa9cf6062accc8c56f03681
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/01/19/sparring-over-growth-and-proficiency-measures-in-devoss-confirmation-hearing/
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Sparring over growth and proficiency measures in DeVos’s confirmation hearing
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Sparring over growth and proficiency measures in DeVos’s confirmation hearing One of the more contentious exchanges during Tuesday night’s confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s pick for education secretary, began with what seemed like an innocuous, if clumsily worded, request from Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.). He said to DeVos, “I would like your views on the relative advantage of, measuring, the assessments and using them to measure proficiency or measure growth.” Franken was referencing debates in education policy about whether test-based accountability for schools should measure students’ proficiency levels or growth in learning over time. DeVos stumbled through a definition of proficiency that sounded more like growth and then asked for clarification, leading Franken to express surprise and exasperation that a nominee for secretary would be so uninformed about a basic, long-debated subject in education. Proficiency versus growth is, in fact, a long-debated academic question. The question predates 2001’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, although it was NCLB’s test-based accountability mandates for states that raised its prominence. NCLB initially required all state accountability systems to focus almost exclusively on proficiency rates, setting an aspirational goal that all students would meet proficiency standards by the 2013-14 school year. It provided flexibility for states to create their own standards, assessments, and proficiency thresholds, but required states to hold schools accountable for progressing toward 100 percent proficiency. The proficiency-versus-growth question was also central to then-Secretary Margaret Spellings’s offer to provide waivers to states from NCLB’s accountability mandates back in 2005. Since that brief time in the limelight, however, this question seems to have faded back into relative obscurity, and now seems to excite only education researchers and accountability hawks. We delve into the issue here, describing what proficiency and growth measures are, why they matter, and what are their relative advantages. The basic proficiency-versus-growth debate revolves around whether schools’ performance on state tests should be evaluated by how their students score relative to an established standard (proficiency) or how much their students’ scores improve over the course of the school year (growth). Measuring proficiency is straightforward: A student scoring above the proficiency threshold on a particular test is proficient, while a student scoring below the threshold is not. As an approach to evaluating schools, it prioritizes how much students know at the end of a year rather than how much they learned that year. Growth measures, on the other hand, prioritize how much students learn during a school year rather than how much they know at the end of a year. Based on the same principles as value-added models for teachers, these measures attempt to give credit—or blame—based only on how students’ performance changes as a result of school behaviors. A school that makes substantial progress with an initially low-scoring student population might perform well on growth measures even if many students fall short of proficiency targets. There is growing consensus in the education research community that growth measures are generally more appropriate than proficiency measures for evaluating school performance. (Although this sidesteps fierce debate over the role for test-based accountability more broadly.) The principle guiding that view is that schools should only be held accountable for what is realistically in their control. For example, a school that enrolls students who tend to arrive well below grade level seemingly should not be punished for problems caused by prior schools, poverty, or other circumstances. Franken, in his remarks, touched on another concern emphasizing proficiency: the potential for “bubble effects.” A school that sharply focuses on proficiency may find incentive to direct a disproportionate share of its resources to students it believes are near the proficiency threshold. This form of educational triage might lead schools to regard high-achieving students as “safe” and low-achieving students as “hopeless” with respect to the coming state test, and to allocate its resources accordingly. Researchers have found evidence of disproportionate gains for students on the proficiency bubble—though it’s not entirely clear whether those far below the threshold are left behind. In spite of this growing consensus about the pitfalls of proficiency, it remains the dominant performance measure in most state accountability systems. Consequently, the proficiency-versus-growth question is still a live issue today. The enactment of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in late 2015 threw out many of the more onerous provisions of NCLB, including the 100 percent proficiency target. It did not, however, change the mandate that states employ accountability systems to monitor school performance. And where the text of the law itself was not prescriptive about whether states prioritize proficiency or growth, the new accountability rules put in place under Secretary John King keep the foot on the proficiency pedal (to many education wonks’ chagrin). Even if growth should—though in practice does not—play a more prominent role than proficiency in test-based school accountability, there may be a role for proficiency as well. This results partly from the complicated relationship between growth and proficiency. Consider, for example, a school with already-soaring proficiency rates, whether due to the types of students who enroll or the school’s own success. Is it desirable for this school to devote itself to improving marginally on those state tests—where gains are even possible—or would that be a wasted opportunity to extend and experiment with student learning? It may be that growth on state tests becomes an undesirable pursuit for schools whose students already demonstrate proficiency on state tests. The growth-versus-proficiency debate also raises intriguing questions about the types of information that states and districts should provide to families choosing schools for their children. In general, a parent might find growth measures helpful in assessing how much her child is likely to learn in a particular school. At the same time, proficiency rates convey information that growth rates cannot. For example, a school’s proficiency rate might reveal information about the overall level of instruction in that school or the knowledge level of a child’s would-be peers. For the reasons discussed above, it might also give a parent context for the school’s growth score. In other words, parents might reasonably incorporate both growth and proficiency measures into their decisionmaking. Franken was right that the question of proficiency or growth in test-based accountability is a fundamental question for test-based accountability. It is certainly one that should be of interest to a prospective education secretary—and the education community more broadly—as we continue forward with ESSA implementation and what appears to be a new era of school choice. While we agree with Franken that there are compelling reasons to prioritize growth measures in school accountability, we question the implication that proficiency versus growth is an either-or proposition.
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9511fa64dcd67e3ce782d8919d8b5c75
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/05/03/how-the-quality-of-school-lunch-affects-students-academic-performance/?utm_campaign=Brookings%20Brief&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=51504487
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How the quality of school lunch affects students’ academic performance
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How the quality of school lunch affects students’ academic performance In 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. The main goal of the law was to raise the minimum nutritional standards for public school lunches served as part of the National School Lunch Program. The policy discussion surrounding the new law centered on the underlying health reasons for offering more nutritious school lunches, in particular, concern over the number of children who are overweight. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that one in five children in the United States is obese. Surprisingly, the debate over the new law involved very little discussion as to whether providing a more nutritious school lunch could improve student learning. A lengthy medical literature examines the link between diet and cognitive development, and diet and cognitive function. The medical literature focuses on the biological and chemical mechanisms regarding how specific nutrients and compounds are thought to affect physical development (e.g., sight), cognition (e.g., concentration, memory), and behavior (e.g., hyperactivity). Nevertheless, what is lacking in the medical literature is direct evidence on how nutrition impacts educational achievement. We attempt to fill this gap in a new study that measures the effect of offering healthier public school lunches on end of year academic test scores for public school students in California. The study period covers five academic years (2008-2009 to 2012-2013) and includes all public schools in the state that report test scores (about 9,700 schools, mostly elementary and middle schools). Rather than focus on changes in national nutrition standards, we instead focus on school-specific differences in lunch quality over time. Specifically, we take advantage of the fact that schools can choose to contract with private companies of varying nutritional quality to prepare the school lunches. About 12 percent of California public schools contract with a private lunch company during our study period. School employees completely prepare the meals in-house for 88 percent of the schools. To determine the quality of different private companies, nutritionists at the Nutrition Policy Institute analyzed the school lunch menus offered by each company. The nutritional quality of the menus was scored using the Healthy Eating Index (HEI). The HEI is a continuous score ranging from zero to 100 that uses a well-established food component analysis to determine how well food offerings (or diets) match the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The HEI is the Department of Agriculture’s preferred measure of diet quality, and the agency uses it to “examine relationships between diet and health-related outcomes, and to assess the quality of food assistance packages, menus, and the US food supply.” The average HEI score for the U.S. population is 63.8, while the median HEI score in our study is 59.9. In other words, the typical private company providing public school lunch in CA is a bit less healthy than the average American diet. We measure the relationship between having a lunch prepared by a standard (below median HEI) or healthy (above median HEI) company relative to in-house preparation by school staff. Our model estimates the effect of lunch quality on student achievement using year-to-year changes between in-house preparation of school meals and outside vendors of varying menu quality, within a given school. We control for grade, school, and year factors, as well as specific student and school characteristics including race, English learner, low family income, school budget, and student-to-teacher ratios. We find that in years when a school contracts with a healthy lunch company, students at the school score better on end-of-year academic tests. On average, student test scores are 0.03 to 0.04 standard deviations higher (about 4 percentile points). Not only that, the test score increases are about 40 percent larger for students who qualify for reduced-price or free school lunches. These students are also the ones who are most likely to eat the school lunches. Moreover, we find no evidence that contracting with a private company to provide healthier meals changes the number of school lunches sold. This is important for two reasons. First, it reinforces our conclusion that the test score improvements we measure are being driven by differences in food quality, and not food quantity. A number of recent studies have shown that providing (potentially) hungry kids with greater access to food through the National School Lunch Program can lead to improved test scores. We are among the very few studies to focus on quality, rather than food quantity (i.e., calories). Second, some critics of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act worried that by raising the nutritional standards of school lunches that fewer children would eat the food, thereby unintentionally harming the students that the law was designed to help. Our results provide some reassurance that this is not likely to be the case. Finally, we also examine whether healthier school lunches lead to a reduction in the number of overweight students. We follow previous literature and use whether a student’s body composition (i.e. body fat) is measured to be outside the healthy zone on the Presidential Fitness Test. We find no evidence that having a healthier school lunch reduces the number of overweight students. There are a few possible interpretations of this finding, including that a longer time period may be necessary to observe improvements in health, the measure of overweight is too imprecise, or that students are eating the same amount of calories due to National School Lunch Program calorie meal targets. Education researchers have emphasized the need and opportunity for cost-effective education policies. While the test score improvements are modest in size, providing healthier school lunches is potentially a very cost-effective way for a school to improve student learning. Using actual meal contract bid information we estimate that it costs approximately an additional $80 per student per year to contract with one of the healthy school lunch providers relative to preparing the meals completely in-house. While this may seem expensive at first, compare the cost-effectiveness of our estimated test score changes with other policies. A common benchmark is the Tennessee Star experiment, which found a large reduction in the class size of grades K-3 by one-third correlated with a 0.22 standard deviation test score increase. This reduction cost over $2,000 when the study was published in 1999, and would be even more today. It is (rightfully) expensive to hire more teachers, but scaling this benefit-cost ratio to achieve a bump in student learning gains equal to our estimates, we find class-size increases would be at least five times more expensive than healthier lunches. Thus, increasing the nutritional quality of school meals appears to be a promising, cost-effective way to improve student learning. The value of providing healthier public school lunches is true even without accounting for the potential short- and long-term health benefits, such as a reduction in childhood obesity and the development of healthier lifelong eating habits. Our results cast doubt on the wisdom of the recently announced proposal by Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to roll back some of the school lunch health requirements implemented as part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.
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a96aafc180f616ff1f63dd979a69a7b6
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/06/28/apprenticeship-programs-in-a-changing-economic-world/
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Apprenticeship programs in a changing economic world
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Apprenticeship programs in a changing economic world The nagging problem of significant numbers of youth leaving school unprepared for career employment has revitalized interest in vocational education, particularly apprenticeships. Support for vocational education comes from people across the political spectrum, from both labor and business groups, and from the popular media. The clearest manifestation in policy is President Trump’s executive order that calls for immediate expansion of existing apprenticeship programs while simultaneously disparaging the effectiveness of current education and training programs. Recent evidence, however, suggests caution. In a knowledge-based economy, early employment gains with vocational training may lead to later problems when specific skills become obsolete and workers lack the ability to adjust to a changed economic environment. Adapting to changed conditions is exactly the theme of much recent discussion about formerly middle-class jobs disappearing to technological advance. This situation will only be alleviated by building a strong educational foundation that provides workers with the ability to adapt as demands change. We should not think that expanded apprenticeships will provide this foundation. More likely they will reproduce the current skill mismatch for future generations. While some countries, particularly in Europe, stress vocational education that develops specific job-related skills, others, like the U.S., emphasize general education that provides students with broad knowledge and basic skills. In assessing these alternatives, virtually all discussion of vocational education emphasizes its potential advantages in easing entry into the labor market by youth (with surprisingly mixed evidence). But there is also the other end of the market. If people receive skills that are finely tuned to current employment opportunities, they might not be particularly prepared to adjust to new technologies. Thus, with higher growth rates and faster technological and structural change, people with vocational training may be more likely to be out of the labor market later in the life cycle. In recent research with Guido Schwerdt and Lei Zhang, we turn to international comparisons to test the proposition that the life-cycle impact of vocational education might be quite different from that observed at entry into the labor market. We rely first on data on labor-market experiences of people at different ages and in different countries collected in the mid-1990s as part of an OECD-sponsored venture. The International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) provides survey data for 18 countries, with information on some 15,000 workers between the ages of 16 and 65. This permits us to compare the life-cycle employment patterns of people with different educational backgrounds. Our general strategy is to compare, within each country, the relative employment rates of old and young people with general education to those for people with vocational education. A key element of this “difference-in-differences” approach is confirming that today’s old people provide a good proxy for what today’s youth will look like in a few decades. For this, the IALS data are particularly useful because we have individual assessments of mathematics and reading skills that are valued in the labor markets, along with a variety of family background factors that might influence educational paths of students. We also know how the overall reliance on general and vocational education in a country has changed over time. Among other things, the data allow us to match each individual with vocational education to an individual with general education who is observationally comparable in terms of tested skills, family background, age, and years of education. We find clear evidence that the initial labor-market advantage of vocational relative to general education decreases with age. There is a trade-off between short-term benefits and long-term costs of vocational education. The skills generated by vocational education appear to facilitate the transition into the labor market but later on become obsolete at a faster rate. Source: Hanushek, Schwerdt, Woessmann, and Zhang (2017) Across our sampled countries, employment rates are higher for youth with vocational education, but this turns around by the age of 50. The employment patterns are most pronounced in the “apprenticeship countries” with combined school and work-based education programs (Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland in our data) and least noticeable in the countries with no formal system of vocational education such as the United States. The figure displays the employment patterns for the three “apprenticeship countries,” and the lower employment at older ages is very apparent. Is the advantage of the early employment sufficient to make up for the later period of less employment for those with vocational education? An overall answer comes from comparing the life-time earnings of those with vocational and general education. When we calculate present values of earnings (discounted at three percent) for a young person, we find that lifetime earnings in vocational education are larger in Switzerland, but lower in Denmark and Germany. Interestingly, Denmark and Germany had noticeably higher growth rates of their economies over the past decades compared to Switzerland. This comparison is consistent with the idea that those with general education are more adaptable to changed economic demands. This general finding is reinforced by several complementary investigations. Three additional sets of analyses strengthen the interpretation that the distinct age pattern reflects depreciated skills rather than other forces inducing retirement. First, using data from the German Microcensus, we show that the same pattern holds in much larger and more recent samples and in estimation within occupational groups that excludes occupations where brawn is important. This latter estimation indicates that the differential movement out of employment is not simply a matter of physical wear and tear of people in specific vocationally intensive occupations. Second, using Austrian Social Security data, we show that after a plant closure, the relative employment rates of displaced blue-collar workers (with more vocational training) are above those of white-collar workers at younger ages, but below them at ages above 50. The exogenous nature of the employment shock removes concerns about unobserved retirement preferences that could threaten identification. Third, the analysis of the IALS data for the 1990s is reproduced in Woessmann’s recent work with Franziska Hampf for the 2011-12 period using the parallel data of some 29,000 adults from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). The same employment pattern with vocational and apprenticeship training is found for the recent period – despite the fact that several countries have enacted labor-market and pension reforms that have made early retirement more difficult in the meantime. The decrease in the relative labor-market advantage of vocational education with age is apparent not only in employment, but also in income. One reason underlying the estimated labor-market patterns in the apprenticeship countries seems to be adult training. With increasing age, individuals with general education are more likely to receive career-related training relative to those with vocational education. In sum, in dynamic economies, policy needs to consider the full life cycle. Our estimates of the impact of vocational education on age-employment profiles indicate that much of the policy discussion about education programs is too narrow. Vocational education has been promoted largely as a way of improving the transition from schooling to work, but it also appears to reduce the adaptability of workers to technological and structural change in the economy. As a result, the advantages of vocational training in smoothing entry into the labor market have to be set against disadvantages later in life, disadvantages that are likely to be more severe as we move more into being a knowledge economy. The key to understanding these results and to thinking more broadly about education policy is to recognize the importance of adaptation to changing economic conditions. Strong general education promotes greater cognitive skills that pay off in dealing with new economic processes (as seen in our recent paper with Guido Schwerdt and Simon Wiederhold). Importantly, the return to skills in the U.S. (or conversely the penalty for lack of skills) is greater than found in almost all developed countries. Recent U.S. proposals for expanding apprenticeships by the Trump administration portray this as a way for compensating for the failure of U.S. K-12 education, but this is likely to make the long-run skill problems worse. One of the most significant labor-market problems facing the U.S. today is the number of workers whose middle-class jobs are slipping away and who are not prepared to adjust to a rapidly moving labor market. We are struggling to find ways of dealing with that problem. The caution here is that we should not lock in this situation for the future by failing to provide basic skills to the next generation. We should not delude ourselves into thinking that we can easily bring in apprenticeships to substitute for failing K-12 schooling.
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7dd43cf0f9de90fedcf5520b085edfb6
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/07/20/building-better-preschools-but-for-which-kids/
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Building better preschools—but for which kids?
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Building better preschools—but for which kids? Few policy ideas rival the popularity of spreading preschool about the land. George H. W. Bush created a national child care program in 1990, granting federal support to working-class families not served by Head Start. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio hopes to extend free pre-K to all 3- and 4-year-olds, whether raised in rich or poor families. Even the macho-leaning Trump administration talks of buoying young parents, as Ivanka Trump presses Congress to pump $25 billion into paid family leave (mainly for high-bracket taxpayers). Yet prickly questions continue to nag advocates of a universal pre-K entitlement. First, do the benefits of pre-K extend beyond poor children, including offspring of middle-class parents? Or should government continue to focus on lifting youngsters who start school already behind? Enthusiasts like de Blasio seem lost in tortured logic: If pre-K elevates all kids, rich and poor, how will this small-scale institution narrow disparities in children’s growth? Second, even the early boost enjoyed by poor children–repeatedly found in research over the past half-century with local and national samples, randomly assigning kids or deploying quasi-experimental methods–often fades through elementary school. If high-quality programs cannot be built on a wide scale, why not pursue more cost-effective strategies, such as paid leave, liberalizing earned income credits for families, or lifting school quality? And interwoven with these empirical questions, parents wring their hands over what kind of preschool best nurtures their youngster. Early educators preach learning through play. But don’t I want to ready my child for the cognitive rigors of school? My research team began to ask whether certain facets of pre-K quality might enhance or constrain effects that result from pre-K. Maybe if we isolated on “high quality” preschools, we could detect benefits of larger magnitude, even for middle-class kids. Or, perhaps it’s particular facets of the social organization found inside classrooms that drives stronger gains for young children. We are not the first investigators to pursue this question. But we opted to innovate on the measurement side, thanks to a huge birth sample, drawn and tracked over time by the National Center for Education Statistics. This dataset–the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort–tracked child care and pre-K experiences of 6,150 children from birth through 5 years of age. We estimated pre-K effects for the average American child, along with benefits enjoyed by those from poor households. The middle class, strictly defined by the median income of this national sample of families with young children, earned just under $38,000 yearly (current dollars in 2005). Our team found that the nation’s average 4-year-old attending a typical pre-K does show slightly accelerated cognitive growth when compared with peers who remain in their home with a parent or informal caregiver. But the magnitude of this advantage remains small, a finding that’s consistent with two prior national studies. We could not detect any discernible boost when children attend preschools scoring higher on a conventional observational measure of classroom quality, confirming earlier work by Rachel Gordon at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Nor could we discern any boost for children attending pre-K for the entire day, when compared with youngsters enrolled for half days. One important exception is for black preschoolers, who benefit more from full-day programs. But when isolating on preschools in which teachers spend more time on oral language, preliteracy skills, and math concepts–programs we call academically oriented–we found considerably stronger benefits on children’s cognitive growth. Estimated effect sizes moved up from about one-sixth to two-fifths of a standard deviation for children who entered close to age 4 and attended a full year. Even middle-class children, when attending academic pre-Ks, were about two months ahead of peers who sorted into garden-variety programs. These benefits persisted into kindergarten. We found no slowing of children’s social development in these instructional rich preschools. Herein lies the rub, as the New York Times headline writer put it when covering these results: “Free Play or Flash Cards.” Old-line early educators emphasize how the cognitive apparatus of toddlers and preschoolers is maturing. This requires what they dub “developmentally appropriate practices.” It doesn’t work to teach physics to toddlers, so the logic goes, although they may be constantly in motion. But in a somewhat twisted interpretation of the Swiss learning theorist Jean Piaget, learning-through-play is put forward as the exclusive way of engaging young children, even purging cognitively challenging activities or discouraging guided play that advances complex language, solving puzzles, or tackling basic mathematical dynamics. Anecdotally, a journalist friend asked his son’s pre-K teacher why no letters or words appeared on classroom walls, only to be told that it would be “developmentally inappropriate.” Our study falls short of classroom prescriptions. But the findings do suggest that when teachers purposefully embed richer language, familiarity with children’s books, and counting or set theory into invigorating tasks, the benefits rise–even for children of the nation’s true middle class. Researchers as the University of Virginia have spent decades showing how playful activities inside pre-K classrooms can be infused with cognitively demanding tasks and plenty of emotional support. We still do not know whether a crisper focus on language and preliteracy skills packs a sufficient punch to lift downstream school performance of children raised in middle-class households. Another intriguing question is whether pre-K benefits now emerge as America’s middle-class becomes more diverse, with upwardly mobile families of Asian or Latino heritage only recently acquiring fluency in English. More research is required to understand these pluralistic home conditions, set against efforts out in the states to improve pre-K quality. For now, our new findings show how certain facets of quality may widen the punch packed by quality pre-K programs–lifting not only poor children but also peers raised in more secure homes and neighborhoods. Fellow scholars report similar results for local samples in Boston and Tulsa. But then again, if we verify that pre-K is lifting a wider range of children, including those situated in America’s colorfully diverse middle class, have we arrived at the optimal policy for narrowing early gaps in children’s growth? Or will we find that pre-K acts to simply reinforce disparities put in place by differing family practices and neighborhood inequities–much like the effects of stratified public schools?
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9c25901a33cf5c405c8dbc5e3a906082
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/07/27/what-should-we-pay-school-boards-reflecting-on-las-174-percent-raise/
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What should we pay school boards? Reflecting on LA’s 174 percent raise
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What should we pay school boards? Reflecting on LA’s 174 percent raise This month, Los Angeles local school board members received a 174 percent raise in their salaries, from $45,637 to $125,000 per year. Members who receive a second salary or stipend from another organization will receive $50,000 per year, nearly double their previous annual salary of $26,437. In comparison, the starting salary for a teacher in the LA Unified School District (LAUSD) is just over $50,000, while City Council members made $191,616 last year. Moving beyond the initial shock of a 174 percent raise for public officials, the recent raise for LAUSD board members prompts important questions about how school board members are compensated—not just in LA, but nationally as well. We explore some of these questions here. First, note that the school board did not give itself a raise. The independent LAUSD Board of Education Compensation Review Committee, comprised of members appointed by local leaders, reviews the board member salaries and benefits every five years. When last evaluated in 2012, amidst the recession, board member salaries remained flat. Board members, in recent testimony to the committee, reported working many more than 40 hours a week and struggling to manage second jobs on top of their board responsibilities. The Board of Education determines the school calendar, sets the budget, oversees curriculum and instruction to achieve educational equity, authorizes new charter schools, and maintains the health and safety of the district’s more than 650,000 K-12 students. Certainly, the extent and type of school board responsibilities vary across the nation’s roughly 14,000 districts, and LAUSD board members may spend many more hours working than the average school board member. Consider, for example, that a 2010 survey of 900 board members from 418 different districts nationwide found that almost 40 percent of board members in districts with at least 15,000 enrolled students reported working more than 40 hours per month, or more than 10 hours per week. Nonetheless, it is worth situating LAUSD in a more specialized national context, particularly with respect to compensation. Thus, we examined the salaries of school board members in the 20 largest districts, measured by number of students in the 2014-15 school year. (LA is the second-largest district, in between New York City and Chicago.) Of the 20 largest districts, school board members in six districts receive no compensation at all in. In Texas, which contains two of these six uncompensated districts–Houston and Dallas—state law prohibits school board members from receiving compensation for their service. In the other four uncompensated districts, board members are appointed, not elected. The figure below illustrates how salaries for LAUSD board members compared to salaries in the other 13 paid districts in 2016. We also include a bar that indicates the new 2017 salary for LAUSD, for the sake of comparison. As the figure shows, in 2016, LA school board members were the highest paid of this group, but were not obvious outliers. Among these 14 districts, including LA, the average board member salary in 2016 was $29,066. Under their new salary raise, LAUSD board members will make more than four times this amount. For another angle of comparison, consider the following findings from the same 2010 survey: “Nationally, 62.3 percent of board members report that they receive no salary, while 14.3 percent receive an annual salary of $5,000 or more and 2 percent earn a salary of more than $15,000 per year.” The same report found that the majority of board members in large districts receive a salary, but only 7.8 percent of respondents from large districts earned over $15,000 a year for their service. At first glance, it may seem that the LAUSD raises are outrageous–after all, the new salaries of these board members dwarf those of their peers in other large districts, who presumably are tackling similarly thorny, pressing issues as the LAUSD Board. Not to mention that, according to the survey, the majority of board members across the country receive no salary at all. But, could it be the case that LAUSD board members are appropriately compensated, while others are vastly underpaid? Let’s entertain this possibility for a moment. A typical justification for paying school board members nothing, or very little, is that this position constitutes volunteer public service, or at the most, a part-time position. Historically, this may have been true of many districts, large and small. However, according to testimony from LAUSD board members, managing the second-largest school district in the country is not a part-time job. It seems possible that other board members across the country, especially those in large, urban districts, may similarly find themselves working long hours for little pay. Indeed, with the growing thicket of federal education reforms over the past 30 years, school board members have most likely seen their responsibilities increase substantially. If this is the case, at least in some districts, there are clear downsides to under-paying these public servants. The lack of pay (or minimal pay) may mean that only those who have the means to support themselves otherwise have the time and financial resources to serve in this position. If so, the pay structure of local districts may be a barrier to entry for lower-income individuals, with clear implications for minority group representation. Nonexistent or uncompetitive pay may mean that many well-qualified individuals never consider this type of position, choosing instead careers where their skills will be adequately compensated. Many have raised this concern about our teacher workforce, of course–it is entirely possible that a similar problem may characterize the school board workforce, so to speak. Further, if school board members receive part-time pay for what amounts to a full-time position, members who hold additional part-time jobs to make ends meet may not have enough hours in the day to carry out all of their school board obligations. Testimony to the LA committee bears out this reasoning, with one former board member asserting that her board work suffered–she could not attend meetings or visit schools during normal business hours–when she held a second job. Consideration of the recent raise for LAUSD school board members points to important issues that merit further investigation, not only in large districts, but in small- and medium-sized districts as well. LAUSD may be an outlier in terms of the number of hours that board members work and the scope of their responsibilities. At the same time, the recent raise in LA provides an opportunity to ask important questions. Should communities assume that school board members are volunteers or part-time employees? Do the number of hours worked and their current responsibilities justify this assumption? If not, it is worth assessing whether this pay structure is damaging the diversity and quality of local school boards by keeping out talented individuals who pursue other opportunities that offer adequate compensation. Sarah Novicoff contributed to this post.
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f7f02440f7cbb90e9f8c1d021ac26eda
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/08/15/what-emerging-research-says-about-the-promise-of-personalized-learning/
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What emerging research says about the promise of personalized learning
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What emerging research says about the promise of personalized learning Personalized learning has grown increasingly popular in recent years, encouraged in part by a 2015 RAND study showing large gains from the practice. But newer research has found more modest achievement gains and identified implementation challenges. At first glance, this might seem like bad news, but a more encouraging picture emerges by looking at details of the two studies together. In the earlier study, my co-authors and I provided evidence from the largest, most-rigorous evaluation of student achievement in schools adopting personalized learning across all grades and subjects. These schools seek to break away from age-based classrooms—where all students learn the same material on the same day—in favor of providing an individualized educational experience to every student. The study found large positive achievement gains in mathematics and reading. Students started below national norms for their age and grew to surpass those norms two years later. These results helped to set high expectations for personalized learning as the practice spreads. Last month, our new study reported smaller achievement gains for personalized learning schools. Results were still positive in both mathematics and reading, but the achievement gains were modest, and statistically significant only in mathematics. How can educators, funders, and policymakers make sense of the differing results from the two studies? First, it is important to consider the differences in the sets of schools included. The 2015 sample included only schools that had been implementing whole-school personalized learning for at least two years, and many were members of charter networks that were early pioneers of the concept; more than two-thirds of students were in elementary grades. In contrast, nearly half of the 2017 sample were in their first year of implementation, and only a few were members of those pioneer charter networks; three-quarters of the students were in secondary grades. Those sample differences likely contributed to the differing results in the two studies. Education research studies often find that the largest effects occur in the younger grades. (The reason is unclear, but may simply be a result of how achievement is measured and analyzed.) It is also common for innovations to take time to gain traction and sometimes even produce a dip in achievement the first year implemented, before maturing to show more positive effects. Both of these facts favor the 2015 sample and could help explain larger effects in that group. Research also commonly finds that when innovations are spread to new contexts and scaled up to serve larger samples, they produce smaller effects than were seen among the earliest adopters. This, too, favors the 2015 sample and probably explains some part of the differences in effects measured in the two studies. This problem of replication and scale-up speaks more directly to the question of whether personalized learning holds promise to dramatically improve educational outcomes for all students. If effects diminish when implemented more broadly, it will not have the magnitude of impact that many are hoping to see. A more optimistic interpretation? Personalized learning continues to look promising because positive effects were evident in the 2017 study despite these hurdles. Of course, work remains to validate this sign of promise using the most rigorous experimental research methods. Meanwhile, the 2017 results could help other sites implementing personalized learning set realistic expectations: The size of effects will likely depend on the grade levels involved, may take several years to fully develop and may not fully replicate the results seen for the earliest adopters. The new study also shows huge variation in the effects estimated for individual schools, with some seeming to replicate the large positive effects seen for early adopters and others producing strong negative effects. Although the study cannot explain results school-by-school, it does offer many details about how personalized learning is implemented, noting some factors that may hinder the realization of its full potential. One example: Teachers reported concerns related to personalized learning’s goal of identifying each student’s level of achievement, focusing on material the students are ready to learn, and giving them time to master that material before moving on. Theoretically, these practices can be beneficial for all, and particularly for students who have fallen behind, because they will work on attainable goals, achieve the gratification of success, and become equipped for more advanced work. We have not yet seen how this strategy will play out over the long term, but it has the potential to lead to greater achievement. Think of “tortoise” students, who develop strong fundamentals they can capitalize on later, versus “hare” students, whose schools have them racing through content underprepared and thus aren’t given the chance to develop the deep understanding needed for long-term success. However, many teachers in the new study reported discomfort with the slow pace of some students, and such concerns can be magnified by existing policies around grade-level standards and assessments. Students who start well below grade level could make extraordinary learning gains, yet not adequately cover the material on end-of-year state tests. In some cases, teacher performance may be judged by student performance on those tests. These tensions can be further aggravated by another aspect of personalization–giving students choices in the content and sequence of their studies–because the material students learn might not align well to the standards and assessments. Personalized learning might not be able to flourish until these tensions are relieved by policy adaptations around standards and accountability. Another challenge identified by the study: There are too few ready-made resources to draw on to provide more personalized pathways and activities for students. Teachers reported that this puts additional burdens on them to develop personalized content, taking time that might be better spent working directly with students, or forces them to limit the amount of customization available to students. In the short term, educators must consider this burden on local staff, while in the long run funders and curriculum developers must seek to provide more materials that can be readily assembled into customized learning plans. The new evidence continues to suggest that personalized learning holds promise as an innovation that can lead to improved educational outcomes for students. But implementers should have modest expectations for the magnitude of the benefits, and patience for the full benefits to emerge. It is also important to consider the challenges of implementing this innovation and the policies and resources that may be necessary for it to prosper. Meanwhile, it will be important to advance this “evidence of promise” through rigorous causal studies and to develop a greater understanding of the critical components of this complex innovation.
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240bd53d74a448e0d7b9bea8aa85790e
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/08/25/gender-hostilities-disparities-among-economics-professors-keep-women-from-ascending-ranks/
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Gender hostilities, disparities among economics professors keep women from ascending ranks
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Gender hostilities, disparities among economics professors keep women from ascending ranks Women receive 57 percent of the bachelor’s degrees in the United States, but only 52 percent of the doctorates. In looking at recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics, we find: Women receive only 23 percent of Ph.D.s in computer science; in mathematics and statistics, the share is 28 percent; in engineering, 23 percent. STEM fields are often a path to high-paying careers, and the presence of women in the professoriate can serve as a role model for both undergraduates and graduate students. One might hope that the gender disparities in STEM fields are legacies of a bygone era, and that there is little active opposition to women in the professoriate today. Sadly, harassment of and hostility toward female academics continues—at least in economics, the area we know best. All this is illustrated by a major contretemps in economics set off by, of all things, an undergraduate senior thesis from Berkeley. The story begins with Alice Wu’s senior thesis, “Gender Stereotyping in Academia: Evidence from Economics Job Market Rumors Forum.” Economics Job Market Rumors (EJMR) is a web forum notionally focused on discussing the job market for economics Ph.D.s, but more often a site for gossip and discussion by self-described internet trolls. Wu web-scraped text from a million-plus posts and then used machine-learning techniques to look for correlations. She found two main results: First, nine of the top 10 words predictive of a post about a woman are explicitly sexual references (The Washington Post even bowdlerized some of these terms); second, posts about women contain 43 percent fewer academic or professional terms and 192 percent more terms related to personal information or physical attributes. Observation of the EJMR site shows that these terms tend to be used in the context of a hostile or sexual comment about a female economist. Discussions of economists and economics as an academic profession aren’t usually the stuff of headlines. The explosion came when Justin Wolfers wrote about Wu’s paper in the Upshot column of The New York Times, followed by a piece by Elisabeth Winkler in The Washington Post’s Wonkblog. Wolfers was blunt, writing that Wu’s paper “quantifies a workplace culture that appears to amount to outright hostility toward women in parts of the economics profession.” Winkler wrote, “Women economists are hardly surprised. …. Wu has now managed to quantify that misogyny using men’s own words.” It should be understood that EJMR is, using the words of one prominent male economist, “a cesspool.” To be clear, there’s nothing subtle about EJMR: Postings go so far as to suggest sexual assault of named female economists. Anonymity on the internet permits the kind of behavior that would get one arrested if done in person. Despite this, some economists dismiss the problem as so-called locker room talk. As another prominent male economist has written, “I personally find the forum refreshing. There’s still hope for mankind when many of the posts written by a bunch of over-educated young social scientists illustrate a throwing off of the shackles of political correctness.” Compared to other academic fields, economists have little sympathy for political correctness. What is surprising is how many economists still don’t think that gender-based hostility has any effect on the underrepresentation of women in the profession. This might be less concerning if the professoriate in economics were making significant progress toward gender balance, but this is not the case. Even though women slightly outnumber men in getting bachelor’s, men overwhelmingly outnumber women as economics concentrators. The figure below shows that about a third of first-year graduate students and new Ph.D.s in economics are women. These numbers have been essentially unchanged for two decades. So the input end of the pipeline to the professoriate is narrow, and not approaching gender parity. Unfortunately, the pipeline is also leaky, and female Ph.D.s do not become assistant professors nor advance to tenured positions at the same rate as men, per the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession’s 2016 Annual Report. Women full professors still comprise less than 15 percent of full professors at Ph.D.-granting institutions (the green line in the chart below), implying a very small cohort of senior women who can act as role models and mentors for female grads and undergrads. This fraction has risen very slowly, increasing by about five points in 20 years. If the female proportion of full professors were to continue at this growth rate, it will reach the graduate-school level (30 percent) in about 2080. Approaching gender parity would probably require tackling the pedagogic and information barriers that appear to dissuade women from majoring in economics at the undergraduate level. The recent explosion following a memo widely viewed as hostile toward women in tech written by a Google engineer suggests that problems are not at all limited to the discipline of economics. We would all like to think that having the STEM professoriate reflect something like the gender balance in society will happen naturally, or that it will happen if only K-12 would somehow make math equally attractive to girls and boys, or that at least it will happen when STEM majors learn to attract more women. Unfortunately, female academics still have to deal with open hostility from some of their peers, and with a see-no-evil attitude from many more. (Photo credit: Flickr user CAFNR)
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4efa2be20f37a6e70da1a84e15cbcacc
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/11/01/the-education-melting-pot/
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The education melting pot?
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The education melting pot? While education is largely oriented toward teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic—and other academic subjects—we also hope that schools warm our melting pot by bringing together members of different racial and ethnic groups. Though having students of differing backgrounds attend school together does not guarantee an increase in inter-group harmony, having schools segregated by student background pretty much guarantees no increase in harmony. I’ve taken a look at who goes to school with whom at both the K-12 level and in four-year colleges. The results were not really what I was expecting—nor were they very encouraging. I thought I would find that colleges are pretty well integrated, while finding this to be much less true for K-12. We know that many elementary and secondary schools are not terribly diverse. Some of this is an accident of geography, and some of this is an “on-purpose” of geography. (You will likely remember recent stories about race-based school district secessions. For research on the subject check out “Brown fades: The end of court-ordered school desegregation and the resegregation of American public schools.”) The bottom line from my investigation into segregation is that colleges are not so diverse either. That surprised me—and, as a college professor, disappointed me. To measure “getting together,” I’ll use a tool called the dissimilarity index. Given a list of schools and the number of students from each of two groups in each school, the dissimilarity index can be interpreted as the minimum percentage of students in one group that would have to move from one school to another to make all the schools exactly representative of the overall population. For example: If we had two schools, the first with 10 black students and the second with 90 white students, what is the share of students in the smaller group (the black students in this illustration) that would need to switch to the other school to achieve perfect integration while moving the fewest students? In this extreme example, the math calls for shuttering the first school and moving all the black students to the second, which would then be perfectly integrated. In this case, the dissimilarity index for the initial distribution of students would be calculated to have a value of 100 percent, since all 10 black students had to move in order to achieve an integrated school. (Remember this just an interpretation of the math. No one is suggesting that minimizing the number of students moved is the only criterion or even that a perfect balance is necessity.) What really matters is that situations with high dissimilarity indices are much less diverse than situations with lower dissimilarity indices. Let’s begin with an oversimplified view of segregation in higher education, grouping students into “minority” (black and Hispanic) and “majority” (white and Asian). In the chart below, the dissimilarity index is shown separately for K-12 public school students (data is from the Common Core of Data) and for four-year college students, including all public, private, and for-profit institutions (data is from IPEDS). The chart illustrates three stylized facts: In this overview graph, I’ve grouped black and Hispanic students together and Asian and white students together—not because this necessarily makes a lot of sense but rather because that’s what’s so often done. The next set of graphs shows dissimilarity indices across four groups: Asian, black, Hispanic, and white. None of these groups is monolithic either, but it’s as far as the data will take us. This first graph shows dissimilarity indices for K-12. The first lesson is that there’s not much mixing of any of the four groups. The second lesson is that, though a slight declining trend is evident, little has changed over more than two decades. The most mixing occurs between Asian and white students (probably no surprise). Note that the second-to-the-most mixing, the second line from the bottom, is between Asian and Hispanic students. The least mixing is between Asian and black students. But fundamentally, none of the groups mixes much with any other group. One thing the graph illustrates is that thinking of “minorities” as a group, or putting Asians and whites together as a group, isn’t really supported by the data—at least not if we’re interested in which students go to school together. Note that Hispanic and black students are essentially no more mixed than are Hispanic and white students. Turn now to the breakdown for four-year colleges. The college dissimilarity indices are lower than the indices for K-12—but not all that much lower. And again, there’s been not much change over 35 years. The lowest dissimilarity is for Asians and Hispanics; the highest is Asian and black. Once again though, the dissimilarity indices just are not that different among the various combinations of groups. I have to be honest, I was expecting that colleges would be much more melting-pot like than K-12. That’s because K-12 is so geographically constrained, whereas colleges draw from larger catchment areas. Colleges do a little better, but not that much. I was also expecting to see a real downward trend at the college level over recent decades given the emphasis all colleges I know put on diversity. The downward trend is not there. Getting students of different ethnic and racial backgrounds together on each campus does not guarantee an improvement in inter-group understanding. And apparently it’s not easy to arrange. Still, I was hoping to see different numbers for colleges in the 21st century. Colleges generate our next generation of leaders. We’d be better off if our future leaders experienced more diversity instead of just reading about it in class. UCSB undergraduate and Gretler Fellow Isabel Steffens provided research assistance for this post.
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f243f8b0ba282f63a09b5921a8ead65c
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/11/16/american-students-need-to-be-able-to-dream-big/
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American students need to be able to dream big
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American students need to be able to dream big “Don’t dream too big.” This was a subtle and overt message sent to students of color in the America of our childhood. Decades later, has it really changed? Our shared experience as low-income students of color struggling for equality a mere 40 or 50 years ago is just as relevant today: A poor black girl raised in the Jim Crow South by a single mother who wasn’t thought to have a chance; a Puerto Rican boy from a low-income Spanish-speaking household who seemed destined for vocational work with just a high school diploma. Neither of us was expected to go very far. In fact, there were systemic barriers in place to prevent academic achievement. The message at every step: “You don’t belong here.” We ignored and defied those messages and barriers, both of us going on to achieve a series of firsts in our families, culminating in doctoral degrees. Both of us marched forward, alongside many of our generation, determined to clear the path to educational opportunity and attainment for the next generations of young people. We have dedicated our professional lives to that work, one of us primarily in P-12 education, and the other focusing on equity in higher education. And we, as a nation, have made good progress. But you’d think that more than half a century after Brown v. Board of Education, there would be even greater progress. After all, we live in a more diverse country than ever before, and America is projected to become even more racially and ethnically diverse. By 2025, students of color are expected to make up the majority of high school graduates. Yet currently, more than 80 percent of the teaching force is white, and 40 percent of schools have no teachers of color at all (according to a 2011 report), depriving all students of the benefits of learning from diverse educators. Moreover, as we look at the actions of the current administration and gaze out over a country racked by racial injustice and rhetorical division, we worry that if change travels at the same sluggish speed—backwards, even—today’s students will have to face many of the still-standing barriers and injustices that we had to surmount so many years ago. Right now, students of color, their families and their communities, our schools and our universities, and our very democratic values are under attack. And students are feeling this both inside and outside the school doors. Just in recent months, white supremacists have marched on college campuses spewing hate and inciting violence. Undocumented immigrants worry whether they are safe at school, or whether their parents will be deported while they’re in class. Children and young adults of color are receiving the message loud and clear: You don’t belong. And we fear, given the actions of this current administration, that things will only get worse. Just as America needs to be investing more to close gaps in educational funding equity P-12, Congress is hiding behind its self-imposed budget caps, which “prevent” them from appropriately funding the programs that will make a difference for students. Just as America needs to be equipping teachers with increased skills and knowledge to teach all students to new rigorous college preparatory standards, the administration proposed gutting Title II of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. This essential measure supports teacher training and gives critical support to educators in schools serving concentrations of low-income students and students of color who too often get the least well-prepared teachers. And just as America needs to be getting more students to and through college, Congress and the administration are working against that goal. Congress, for example, wants to raid Pell Grant funding, which helps more than 7.5 million students attend and complete college. And the administration has attacked DACA, putting the futures of 800,000 children and young adults, many of them students, at risk. The administration is also moving to thwart affirmative action. There’s a perception that African-American and Latino students are somehow taking spots that qualified white students should have access and are entitled to. But the data show otherwise: Only 5 percent of students enrolled at public flagship institutions are black, and less than 9 percent are Latino, compared with 63 percent of white students. So although we all now drink from the same water fountains, children of color still go thirsty for the education they need and deserve. In an America plentiful with opportunity and resources, no child’s well should run dry, no child’s potential should go undernourished, and no child should be told to do anything less than dream big. Just like that little Southern black girl and that Puerto Rican boy from L.A., students of color and low-income students need access and opportunity. School shouldn’t be something students survive—like we did—but an environment where they are given an opportunity to thrive.
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31d0163d5f61648b225196bc5f3a35c1
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/11/20/discipline-disparities-and-discrimination-in-schools/
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Discipline disparities and discrimination in schools
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Discipline disparities and discrimination in schools In the United States, black and poor students are suspended at much higher rates than their white and non-poor peers. This point is essentially undisputed, due in large part to data that the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has compiled and made public through the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC). While the existence of these disparities is not controversial, how to interpret the disparities is bitterly disputed. Just last week, for example, National Review ran an op-ed on discipline disparities with the subtitle, “Are America’s teachers a bunch of racists? Democrats seem to think so.” At the heart of this dispute is whether racial discipline disparities reflect discriminatory discipline practices by educators. On one hand, discriminatory school discipline practices—punishing different groups differently for similar behaviors—certainly could contribute to the disparities we see. Researchers have found evidence of both implicit and intentional forms of bias in many parts of American life, and that bias surely could extend to schools. On the other hand, students of different backgrounds might behave differently in school, in which case discipline disparities could arise even if schools administer punishments consistently across groups. Some other form of discrimination or injustice, inside or outside of schools, could be to blame. In reality, the question of whether discipline disparities reflect large-scale discriminatory school practices is extremely difficult to answer. Researchers typically cannot observe the actual behaviors of large numbers of students. Moreover, researchers often have little, if any, data on student infractions and punishments—data that we are fortunate to have from Louisiana as the basis of our recent work. Today, we released a study (and accompanying policy brief) on discipline disparities by race and family income in Louisiana. It draws on rich, student-level data from the Louisiana Department of Education for the 2000-01 through 2013-14 school years. The study explores topics related to today’s policy discussions about discipline disparities. These topics are too numerous and complex to explain in detail here (but are described in detail in the paper). The list below highlights a few findings, before we delve into the part of the study that specifically examines discrimination: The most novel part of the study looks directly for evidence of discriminatory discipline practices in schools. This is difficult. To date, the most compelling large-scale, quantitative evidence of discrimination in student discipline comes from comparisons of how black and white students are punished for the same types of infractions. For example, when black students fight, do they receive longer suspensions than white students who fight? While the logic of these comparisons is sensible, we worry that they cannot rule out confounding factors related to discipline and student backgrounds. Are fights between black students more severe, on average, than fights between white students, making longer suspensions warranted? That is hard, if not impossible, for researchers to know. Our data enable us to explore a very particular context in which disparities seem likely to reflect discriminatory school practices, with alternate explanations seeming unlikely. We compare the punishments that result from a fight between a black student and a white student in the same school. To address the possibility that schools might punish students differently for reasons other than race (and the possibility that one group might tend to instigate or escalate these fights), we control for a number of student characteristics. These include prior discipline history, test scores, special education status, and free or reduced-price lunch eligibility. The resulting analyses, we believe, represent the most credible exploration of discriminatory discipline practices possible using our data. We find that black students are systematically punished longer than white students for interracial fights. The difference appears small in magnitude—about one additional suspension day for black students for every 20 interracial fights—but consistent and statistically significant in all models tested. Our analysis is not a comprehensive look at all possible forms of discrimination in schools. Rather, we looked for evidence of disparities in the corner of our data where we would least expect to find them if not for discriminatory discipline practices. Notably, these differences arise from situations in which administrators likely know they are punishing black and white students differently—and know those differences are visible to students, parents, and staff. It seems possible, if not likely, that punishment disparities are larger in less visible circumstances. Questions about discipline disparities are being actively debated in Washington, including whether we should be paying much attention at all. On Friday, education officials in the Trump administration assembled a group upset with what they believe was Obama-era overreach to address how students are punished. Clearly, this issue is complex, and individuals on all sides of discipline debates have made statements that reach beyond the supporting research evidence. However, there is also clear reason to track, monitor, research, and attend to these disparities. Whatever mix of in-school and out-of-school problems cause discipline disparities, they are problems. Solving these problems will require that we diagnose and address them appropriately.
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412591a8bef4879b212b11f480b2bc32
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2018/01/11/new-survey-of-minorities-adds-dissenting-view-to-public-satisfaction-with-schools/
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New survey of minorities adds dissenting view to public satisfaction with schools
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New survey of minorities adds dissenting view to public satisfaction with schools How do members of racial minority groups view public education in the U.S.? This question is important, given both the widely recognized achievement gap between white students and students of color, as well as systematic differences in public schools by neighborhoods—differences which strongly correlate with income and race. Yet, public opinion polls typically do not offer detail on racial differences in opinions of local public schools. We know from nationally representative surveys that the average American tends to view their local public schools in a positive light. The 2017 PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools finds that nearly half (45 percent) of Americans give public schools in their community an A or B grade, with many fewer giving such grades to public schools nationally. This is a long-running trend, with other surveys finding similar results. Among those polls that do provide racial differences in opinion, the findings are usually limited to black-white differences only. With a new survey conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Healthwe can take a deep dive into perceptions about the quality of public schools among both whites and multiple racial and ethnic minorities.[1] The NPR/RWJF/Harvard survey includes nationally representative samples of white, African-American, Asian-American, Native American, and Latino respondents. As a result, this survey offers rare and valuable insights into perceptions about public education among racial minorities in the United States. One of the most striking themes that emerges from the survey is the difference between how whites and African-Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos view public K-12 education. Consider Figure 1 below, which shows respondents’ answers to the following question: “Because of the way the schools operate where I live, (respondent’s own racial/ethnic identity) children here don’t have the same chances to get a quality education as white children.” This figure also reports the degree to which white respondents agree with the corresponding statement: “Because of the way the schools operate where I live, white children here don’t have the same chances to get a quality education as racial and ethnic minority children.” The differences between whites and Asian-Americans, on the one hand, and African-Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos, on the other, is striking. Only 12 percent of white respondents agree that white children don’t have the same chances to get a quality education as racial and ethnic minority children. In contrast, 64 percent of African-Americans, 45 percent of Latinos, and 40 percent of Native Americans agree that children in their own racial or ethnic group don’t have the same chances to get a quality education as white children. While many African-Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans see their children as disadvantaged by the school system as a consequence of their race or ethnicity, most white Americans and Asian-Americans do not share this concern. Figure 2 shows that Americans of different races and ethnicities also have different perceptions of how their local schools compare to schools in other neighborhoods. Respondents were asked, “Compared to other places to live, do you think the quality of public schools where you live is better, worse, or about the same as other places to live?” While a plurality of each group (except Asian-Americans) says the quality of local public schools is “about the same” as in other places to live, there are distinct racial differences in explicitly positive or negative evaluations of local schools. Nearly a third (31 percent) of African-Americans and exactly a quarter of Native Americans think the quality of public schools is worse where they live than elsewhere, while only 17 percent of whites, 12 percent of Asian-Americans, and 11 percent of Latinos think this is the case. Asian-Americans are the most likely (44 percent) to say the quality of their local public schools is “better” than in other places to live, compared to 38 percent of Latinos and 35 percent of whites. Only 20 percent of both African-Americans and Native Americans say the quality of their public schools is better than in other neighborhoods. Furthermore, African-Americans’ perceptions of public school quality vary depending on whether or not respondents live in a majority-black neighborhood. Among African-Americans who say they live in a majority-black neighborhood, only 8 percent say that the quality of public schools is better where they live. African-Americans living in nonmajority-black neighborhoods are more than three times more likely (26 percent) to say the quality of their local public schools is better than in other places to live. These findings seem to reflect the consequences of residential segregation and income inequality by race: High-income neighborhoods are more likely to be majority-white, and public schools in these neighborhoods are, on average, higher performing than their counterparts in low-income, majority nonwhite neighborhoods. Differences between whites and African-Americans are also evident in the context of higher education. Figure 3 shows, among those who have ever applied to or attended college, the percent of each racial or ethnic group that say they have ever been personally discriminated against because of their race or ethnicity.[2] Compared to whites, a higher percentage of each minority group surveyed reports personally experiencing discrimination in higher education, though in some cases only by a small margin. However, the rate is noticeably high among African-Americans: 36 percent of African-Americans report having personally experienced discrimination in this context, compared to 11 percent of whites. Additionally, there are important racial and ethnic differences in whether people had ever applied for or attended college. While roughly two-thirds or more of African-Americans (65 percent), whites (66 percent), and Asian-Americans (72 percent) say they have applied for or attended college, only about half of Native Americans (53 percent) and Latinos (49 percent) have done so. This gap is likely due in part to this additional finding from the survey: Respondents were asked whether, while growing up, they were encouraged to apply for college, discouraged from applying, or if applying to college was simply never discussed. As Figure 4 shows, for roughly half of Latinos (52 percent) and Native Americans (49 percent), applying to college was simply never discussed. In comparison, fewer than one-third of African-Americans (32 percent), whites (31 percent), and Asian-Americans (29 percent) report this. In short, these survey results suggest that many people of color in the U.S. perceive fundamental inequalities within the public school system, as well as in their personal experiences with education. This is particularly the case for African-Americans and Native Americans, both groups that have experienced systemic discrimination at various points in American history. We see a different story for Latino respondents. While a large share of Latino respondents believe their local schools do not allow their children the same chances for a quality education as for white children, Latinos also tend to believe that their local public schools are better than in other neighborhoods. Latino respondents may be satisfied with their own local schools while still perceiving barriers their children face when compared to white children. When it comes to personal experiences, Latinos are less likely to say they have personally been discriminated against while in or applying to college, but more likely to say that applying to college was not discussed while they were growing up. These results highlight important differences in perspectives and experiences across racial and ethnic groups that are not often part of the conversation when we talk about the average American’s relationship to public education. This omission stems at least in part from choices about survey design. Surveys that do not over-sample respondents from minority groups will likely not have a sample large enough to reliably report on the views of these groups. Yet, if public policymakers primarily draw on data about the perspectives of “the average American” with respect to public schools, they will miss important differences in perspective among their constituents, particularly along racial and demographic lines. To address this problem, researchers could design surveys that over-sample respondents from different minority groups, allowing for a better understanding of the diversity of viewpoints that are evident within the country. Researchers might also include a question at the end of a survey that asks respondents if, from their perspective, the survey omitted relevant issues. From these responses, researchers can incorporate questions that more accurately reflect and help us measure perspectives held by members of different minority groups. We also encourage researchers to reflect on the representation of views and identities among their own research team and work environment. Moving forward, policymakers and researchers alike should pay more attention to the perspectives and experiences of minority groups, not only “the average American.”
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ce95f2396f611ddfb114b39d12f274d5
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2018/02/20/comparing-what-parents-and-the-public-and-democrats-and-republicans-want-from-schools/?shared=email&msg=fail
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Comparing what parents and the public—and Democrats and Republicans—want from schools
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Comparing what parents and the public—and Democrats and Republicans—want from schools School choice, as a type of market reform, makes schools more directly accountable to parents by tying funding to enrollment. Schools need to attract families to remain open, so their survival depends on being responsive to families’ desires. In holding schools more directly accountable to parents, school choice reforms reduce the influence of the democratic structures and processes that govern traditional public schools. For example, being more responsive to parents generally means being less responsive to school boards. This can have important implications if parents’ desires for their own children’s schools differ from the broader public’s desires for its education system. For instance, schools may look different under school choice reforms if—as is often argued—parents are preoccupied with getting their own children ahead, wanting schools to prepare their children for college and career success at the expense of serving more collective interests for social, political, civic, and economic health. Questions about how parents’ and the public’s desires for schools differ are among the richest questions surrounding school choice reforms. They are also among the least explored empirically. We recently released a study looking at what parents and the public want from schools. Instead of finding the parents-public distinction we expected, we found a Democrat-Republican contrast we had not considered. With a sample of online participants constructed to be roughly nationally representative, we ran a set of survey experiments. In essence, we wanted to compare what parents want from their children’s schools to what the broader public wants from U.S. public schools. In the first study, which we emphasize in this post, we asked parents of school-age children which of three educational goals was most important for their child’s school to pursue successfully. We asked a broader group of adults the same question about either schools in their community or schools around the U.S. This provides a direct comparison of what parents and the broader public want. (Further, by asking some parents about their children’s schools and other parents about schools in their community or country, we assessed whether parents have different desires for their own children and for children more generally.) The three goals from which participants chose correspond roughly to the historical goals for U.S. education that David Labaree identified in his seminal article, “Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle over Educational Goals.” The first is what we call students’ “private success,” which was described to participants as, “Prepare students for the careers that are best for them personally … even if other careers would benefit the economy more.” The second is “shared economic health,” described as, “Prepare students for the careers that are best for the economy, even if other careers would be better for the students themselves.” The third is “democratic character,” described as, “Prepare students to be engaged, ethical members of their communities who treat others with kindness and respect.” A follow-up survey moved from abstract to tangible questions, asking respondents about their desires for the structure and content of the school day (e.g., how much time to allocate to each subject), what and how schools should teach, and how to evaluate school performance. We expected to find that parents tend to emphasize private goals while the broader public emphasizes societal goals. What we actually found were similar responses across groups, with hardly any significant differences. Consider how these groups responded to the question about which goal schools should prioritize (n=1,264): Across the parent and public groups, respondents’ preferences for school goals were similar. We also saw similarities between what parents want from their own children’s schools and what they want from schools more generally, and between the tangible school behaviors desired by parents and the public. Given these similarities, we wondered who—if anyone—is particularly drawn to “private success.” Did any subgroup of respondents want schools to prioritize students’ private interests over more collective, societal interests? We ran a logistic regression model to examine which, if any, respondent background characteristics were associated with choosing “private success” as the most important goal. We included all of the usual respondent characteristics in the model: gender, race, ethnicity, educational attainment, age, political affiliation, and parent status. Only one was a significant predictor: Republican respondents were much more likely than Democratic respondents to want schools to prioritize “private success.” So what do these results mean for debates in education policy? First, we should scrutinize the idea that market pressures from school choice reforms will lead schools to emphasize students’ private interests. Maybe parents want schools to nurture their children as engaged, ethical citizens more than we realize. Maybe the public has adopted a consumer-oriented notion of public education, even at the expense of directly serving the country’s social, political, civic, and economic needs. Maybe it’s a combination of the two. Or maybe parents just want their kids’ schools to do what other schools do—only better. Second, members of different political parties seem to want American schools to prioritize different educational goals. Republicans, more than Democrats, believe that schools should serve their students’ private interests before they serve broader societal interests. Of course, these pursuits are not always mutually exclusive, nor are they particularly defined or explicit. However, understanding the lens through which Democrats and Republicans see schools can help us understand why the parties’ policy goals diverge as they do—and where they might converge.
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a4c8bc983bf916021af7eb2814a95634
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2018/03/07/a-time-for-school-choice-if-so-lets-make-sure-we-ask-the-right-questions/
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A time for school choice? If so, let’s make sure we ask the right questions
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A time for school choice? If so, let’s make sure we ask the right questions Will we have public schools a decade from now? What will they look like? For the first time since the 19th century, or perhaps since debates over desegregation, we are facing these fundamental questions. A recent article argued that the Koch brothers are investing heavily to disrupt public schools in Arizona. Current Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos promotes parental choice, including public support for private and religious schools. The recent tax reform bill expanded tax benefits for parents of children in private schools and almost expanded tax benefits for homeschooling parents. The number of charter schools continues to grow, and in some cities educate 40 percent or more of students. In this time for choosing, we need to look back as well as ahead. In my recent book, “Democracy’s Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America,” I sought to understand why earlier Americans expanded access to schooling, what they sought to accomplish, how they went about it, as well as their vision’s limits. While the book’s story ends nears the Civil War, it speaks to us today. Like school reformers past, we must determine what kind of institutions will best promote the purposes of democratic education. Americans today are deeply divided over public education, and our divisions lead to different policy preferences. Research abounds. Do charter schools outperform traditional district schools? Do teachers’ unions improve or reduce student achievement? Should parents have the choice to send their child to a school that matches their own religious or political values? What will work? These are all important questions, but they are secondary ones. The fundamental questions concern why we have schools in the first place. Without asking these, we cannot determine which policies best serve America’s future. Worse, we may focus so exclusively on one issue—test scores, for example—that we lose sight of the ends of schooling itself. Why do we have public schools? For Americans between the Revolution and the Civil War, the reasons were primarily civic. They wanted, first, to ensure that all Americans had the skills, knowledge, and values to be effective citizens. As North Carolina state Senator Archibald Murphey put in an 1816 report, “a republic is bottomed on the virtue of her citizens.”They wanted, second, to foster solidarity during a time of increasing immigration when, like today, Americans’ divisions often led to violence. As the Fond du Lac, Wis., superintendent of schools put it in 1854: In a society divided by religion, race, party, and wealth, public schools would “harmonize the discordant elements” as students “sympathize with and for the other.” Earlier Americans also argued that a democracy should develop every child’s potential. This required a rich curriculum in the arts and sciences. As the Rev. William Ellery Channing put it in the 1830s, every person is entitled to liberal education “because he is a man, not because he is to make shoes, nails, or pins.” Indeed, as one Alabama public school advocate argued, schools would not “weaken the self-reliance of the citizen” nor “destroy his individuality,” but “teach him to feel it.” Finally, earlier Americans wanted to equalize access. At the time of American independence, education had remained a family responsibility. How did it become a public good? Here, the past speaks directly to the present. Convincing Americans to pay taxes to support other people’s children was not simple. Pennsylvania Superintendent Francis Shunk noted in 1838 that it was no easy task to persuade someone that “in opposition to the custom of the country and his fixed opinions founded on that custom, he has a deep and abiding concern in the education of all the children around him, and should cheerfully submit to taxation for the purpose of accomplishing this great object.” Public school advocates succeeded not by arguments alone, but by building institutions. As Americans invested in and went to public schools, more parents wanted access. As demand increased, so did support for taxes. Horace Mann recognized that this cycle succeeded because most families had a stake in the schools. Wealthier families invested in other people’s children because their own children attended. If some families decided to “turn away from the Common Schools” to send their children to a “private school or the academy,” Mann worried that poorer children would end up with a second-class education. Unless all families had a stake in public schools, the Kentucky legislature noted in an 1822 report, schooling would be charity rather than a public good. American reformers were right. Historically, the most successful public programs have benefited a broad constituency. When policies are seen as “welfare,” taxpayers resent their money being spent on others. Public education—like Social Security—succeeded because most Americans benefited. The principles above guided public education’s advocates. And public schools were—and remain—among America’s most successful institutions. Our public schools struggle largely in places where poverty makes it difficult for students to learn. Our efforts to reform, then, must build on public schools’ immense historical success. But public schools have always faced challenges. For starters, public schools have never been truly common places. Catholics in the 19th century criticized the schools’ Protestantism and opted to build separate, parochial schools. As Catholics opted out, African-Americans fought for integrated schools that treated all Americans equally. But Americans did not really want to go to school together. After Brown v. Board, public policy and individual choices led to greater segregation and inequality. In the post-WW2 era, the real estate market served as a proxy market for schools. Yet this history also raises important questions for advocates of choice today. If Americans have used choice in the past to increase racial and economic segregation, how do we ensure that they do not do so in the future? This presumes that we want our schools to bring diverse Americans together. Is that still a goal? The most compelling argument for school choice is not that it raises student achievement but that we are a diverse society. As Ashley Berner argues in her important book Pluralism and American Public Education, we can learn from other nations. She notes that high student achievement is possible in both common and plural systems. The more significant question is whether parents should be allowed to choose schools that share their values, including their faith. Pluralism is one of the largest challenges facing Americans, and how to respond to it one of the most vexing questions facing school reform advocates. On the one hand, if we let parents choose schools, we may have to give up on the ideal of desegregation. Even if we find ways around this challenge, the deeper question is whether we need common schools precisely because we are diverse and need to come together as Americans. Or does a democratic society need to respect citizens’ diversity by empowering parents to choose their schools? As European nations become more ethnically and religiously diverse, they too are struggling with these questions. Will choice allow us to put aside the culture wars or will it deepen our divisions? And will we still invest in each other’s children if we no longer send them to the same schools? Another important question we face is how to raise student achievement without sacrificing the various other goods that make up public education. We need to make sure that we care for and value the other things public schools should do, especially civic education, as Paul Hill writes. We need to ensure that Americans have a liberal education with a content-rich curriculum to promote critical thinking and students’ capacity for insight. Yet an unyielding emphasis on raising scores risks narrowing the curriculum so that our students have less time for literature, social studies, sciences, and arts. In the future, we must ensure that students have deeper and better opportunities to engage the arts and sciences. We cannot let one goal override all others. We can enrich our conversations about the future by taking seriously public schools’ historical goals. The point is not that they got it all right in the past. Clearly, they did not. Yet the aspirations of the founders of our schools can help us focus on purposes, not just policies. At this moment, filled with hope and anxiety about the future, when radical change seems imminent, it may seem odd to ask the past for guidance. We need bold action, we are told. There may be—some say there must be—better ways to organize our schools than what we do now. That may be true, but successful reform must further our values and aspirations. It is worth taking a moment, therefore, to remind ourselves why our democracy invested in public education in the first place.
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9fe07fd1923c1a58442dec6be9305559
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2018/06/29/one-charter-school-networks-positive-impact-on-registration-and-voting/
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One charter school network’s positive impact on registration and voting
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One charter school network’s positive impact on registration and voting As the latest Brown Center Report on American Education usefully reminds us, the original purpose of public education was to prepare students for citizenship. Horace Mann and the other early supporters of universal public education believed it to be essential for the functioning of a democracy. And the system of “common schools” they established was built on the assumption that effective education for citizenship would follow from the fact that the schools were organs of government, under the control of democratically elected officials. The structure of the American public education system, in short, was designed to promote the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed for effective citizenship. Charter schools, which have come into existence only in the last quarter century, depart from the common-school model: They are publicly funded, open to the public, tuition-free, and publicly regulated—but privately operated. (It isn’t a coincidence that one prominent charter-school network calls itself Uncommon Schools.) The private operation of charter schools makes some commentators deeply suspicious. Some even refuse to call them public schools. Concerns about private operation of charter schools are partly motivated by the belief that the old common-school advocates were right in thinking that public operation of schools is necessary to serve public purposes. That assumption deserves empirical attention: Evidence about whether charter schools prepare students for effective citizenship can inform the debate over their “publicness.” Such an empirical examination is especially timely in a political environment that is increasingly polarized and rancorous. The skills and attitudes needed to engage in constructive democratic discourse appear to be in short supply. Moreover, the stakes are arguably higher today, because government plays a substantially larger role in the lives of most Americans than it did two centuries ago. Education for citizenship may be more important now than it has ever been. We recently completed a study that provides the first rigorous evidence on the impacts of charter schools on civic preparation, as indicated by eventual registration and voting after students reach adulthood. Democracy Prep is a New York City-based charter school network that serves a low-income, minority population with an explicit mission “to educate responsible citizen scholars for success in the college of their choice and a life of active citizenship.” Although Democracy Prep is surely not typical of charter schools across the country, it represents a test case of how well charter schools can promote civic preparation when they make it an explicit aim. Since the founding of the first Democracy Prep school, many of its grades have had more applicants than available seats. Like many charter schools, it admits students by lottery. The admission lottery creates a randomized experiment—the gold standard of research designs—in which a comparison of outcomes for lottery winners and lottery losers provides a clear indication of the school’s impact on those outcomes. In other studies, admission lotteries have been used to measure charter schools’ impacts on test scores, graduation and college enrollment, and non-academic outcomes. We collected data from Democracy Prep admission lotteries dating back a decade. By November 2016, many of the students who had applied to Democracy Prep’s middle- and high-school grades in the first several cohorts were old enough to register and vote. We matched the data from Democracy Prep’s admissions lotteries to public registration and voting data (compiled nationally by Catalist from public databases maintained by each state). We engaged in a three-step analytic process to assess the impact of enrolling in Democracy Prep on the probability that a student would eventually register and vote. In the first step, we measured the impact of the offer of admission to Democracy Prep as determined by the lottery. But not all lottery winners ultimately enrolled in Democracy Prep, and some lottery losers were subsequently admitted off the wait list. The second step in the analysis therefore involved a standard adjustment of the impact of the admissions offer to account for the differences between admissions offers and actual enrollment. In the third step, we used a Bayesian statistical approach that incorporates information from the larger research literature on the effect of education on registration and voting, to reduce the likelihood of being misled by random outliers in the data. The Bayesian approach not only provides a better indication of the true impact, but also produces a measure of the probability that the true impact is positive. In the first step, we found that lottery winners experienced positive impacts of about 6 percentage points on the likelihood that they would register and the likelihood that they would vote. The impact on voting is statistically significant in conventional terms, but the impact on registration is not quite statistically significant. Because only about half of lottery winners enrolled in Democracy Prep and about one-quarter of lottery losers enrolled, the second step of the analysis suggests that the impact of enrolling must be much larger (again, statistically significant for voting but not registration). But the second-step impacts are measured imprecisely, indicating that the true impacts could be anywhere within a wide range. In the third step of the analysis, the Bayesian method accounts for the imprecision of the second step. Implicitly, the Bayesian analysis recognizes that the true impact is more likely to fall at the lower end of the range of possible impacts than the higher end. Even so, with the Bayesian analysis we find large impacts on registration and voting: Democracy Prep increases the voter registration rates of its students by about 16 percentage points and increases the voting rates of its students by about 12 percentage points. And we have high confidence that Democracy Prep’s impact is real: There is a 98 percent probability that enrolling in Democracy Prep produced a positive impact on registration, and the same probability that Democracy Prep produced a positive impact on voting. Nationwide, only half of 18-21 year-old citizens are registered to vote, and only two in five actually voted in 2016. In that context, any intervention that increases registration by 16 percentage points and voting by 12 percentage points deserves attention. Although we cannot conclude that charter schools in general produce such effects, Democracy Prep provides an existence proof that “uncommon” charter schools are capable of effectively preparing students for citizenship. More broadly, these findings suggest reason for optimism about the capacity of any school—public, charter, or private—to promote civic participation, if it chooses to make it a central focus. If Democracy Prep’s impacts could be replicated nationwide, over 2.5 million 18-21 year-olds would be added to voter rolls. In an era in which civic knowledge is low and civic discourse is characterized by rancor and invective rather than respect and reason, a return to the original aims of public education might be just what the country needs.
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26ef535523cb1bdf6c6159a4716f3099
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2018/07/10/how-gender-diversity-among-the-teacher-workforce-affects-student-learning/
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How gender diversity among the teacher workforce affects student learning
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How gender diversity among the teacher workforce affects student learning Our ongoing teacher diversity series has, to this point, focused on the underrepresentation of racial and ethnic groups among the public teacher workforce in America. As best we can tell, the lack of teacher diversity is associated with an assortment of negative outcomes for minority students. These findings raise another important question: If we worry about racial/ethnic underrepresentation among teachers, should we also care about gender underrepresentation? The difference in gender representation—75 percent female teachers for a student body that is evenly split by gender—is nearly as large as the gap in race and ethnicity (roughly 80 percent white teachers for a student body that is roughly 50 percent white). Might teacher gender be contributing to the growing gap favoring females in college graduation? In this post, we examine the evidence on gender gaps and discuss three ways gender mismatch between teachers and students may play out in K-12 classrooms. Our conclusion: It is not clear that the plethora of females in the teacher workforce is worrisome in most circumstances—more female teachers may even be preferred in math and science classrooms. Targeting male teachers of color is the only place where there could be strong enough rationale to warrant recruiting more males into the profession, though it is not clear recruitment efforts alone would be enough to make much of a difference. Hence, we argue promoting gender diversity in the workforce does not warrant equal priority to that given racial and ethnic diversity. The rise of women’s status in industrialized countries around the world in recent decades is unmistakable. Meanwhile, a counter-narrative laments the dwindling status of men relative to women, decrying that the overwhelmingly feminine K-12 teacher workforce creates the conditions for a “war against boys.” This story has been around for nearly two decades, drawing attention in some parenting corners, and has seen a bit of a resurgence in the new era of Trump and gendered politics. Simply put, this idea alleges that the female-dominated teacher workforce imposes norms of learning and behavior on all students that are developmentally appropriate for girls but implicitly disadvantage boys. This is essentially a parallel argument to the ways ethnic and racial mismatch between students and teachers could undermine educational achievement for students of color through implicit bias. Yet, we need to be clear that any analysis of gender achievement gaps is inherently different from the analysis of racial/ethnic achievement gaps. The key difference is that girls and boys are about equally distributed across all different types of schools and communities, while this is not the case for racial and ethnic minorities. Consequently, any opportunities to differentiate based on gender must happen in subtle ways that are not dependent on different geographies or physical facilities, which is often a primary cause of racial/ethnic inequalities. Beyond this theoretical difference, when we look at the numbers, are boys actually losing ground on girls in the U.S.? Though the argument of women outperforming males seems compelling when looking at some outcomes—particularly college graduation rates—we do not see evidence that is nearly so persuasive across other educational outcomes. Take the recent results from the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP), for example, where boys are slightly ahead of girls in math in both 4th and 8th grades. Boys continue to lag in reading, but they have actually made steps toward narrowing their performance gaps in comparison to the mid-1990s in both grades. Combining the NAEP’s reading and math scores by grade and tracking them over time, as shown in the figure below, girls do have the upper hand by a small margin that has slightly narrowed since 2003. The performance of both genders during elementary and early secondary grades is actually increasing over time, while the share of male teachers in the workforce declined by about 2 percentage points (see the bars in the figure below). In fact, the teaching profession has slowly become more female over several decades. According to the most recent data, women constituted 76.3 percent of the workforce, compared to 70.5 percent 30 years ago. Though this percentage change may seem trivial, these are big numbers: We would need nearly 200,000 more male teachers today to return to the gender balance the workforce had in 1988. Importantly, these gender-based achievement gaps are also notably smaller in kindergarten, in comparison to known racial/ethnic gaps. These gaps also shift during kids’ grade progression without consistently advantaging either gender; for example, boys tend to outperform girls more in math during elementary years, while girls consistently outperform boys in reading. Also, math gender gaps are sensitive to socio-economic conditions, though reading gaps are not. It is also worth noting that gender performance gaps are prevalent across the world. Boys in the United States actually perform quite favorably, relative to their female peers, in comparison to other countries. Though far more factors go into these scores than the share of male teachers in the workforce, the pattern of observed results where boys are still doing all right as the workforce becomes more feminine runs contrary to the “war against boys” hypothesis. More to the point, evidence based on classrooms with male teachers compared to female teachers have shown mixed results on whether teacher gender impacts student learning. If anything, teacher expectations (at least in math) appear to advantage boys over girls, where teachers systematically underrate girls’ abilities unless they demonstrate hard work. Female teachers also appear to have the best relationships with all students, regardless of gender. Hence, it is unclear that promoting more gender diversity among all teachers would do anything to improve boys’ school performance. As we mentioned above, the one educational outcome where females hold a clear edge over males is in college attendance and graduation. Yet, it is not clear that this is the result of a disproportionately female K-12 workforce landing them there. Rather, it appears that women need to succeed in school to have a decent shot at middle-class earning power, where many men can earn equal wages with fewer years in higher ed. Evidence suggests that much of the reason why women persist in higher education longer than men is likely because of the higher returns to education that women receive, roughly double those earned by men. Further, in spite of the larger number of female graduates, college-going women typically major in relatively low-paying fields, such as social work and education. Consequently, for this and other reasons (like childrearing and discrimination), the gender pay and wealth gaps that arise after graduating college still overwhelmingly favor men. Seen through this lens, where boys ultimately triumph in the workforce despite lagging in the classroom, it’s reasonable to interrogate the idea of developing a K-12 strategy that may ultimately reinforce those inequalities in the long run. In fact, it may be the girls who actually need the help, and STEM fields are an area that appear to hold the most leverage for reversing those workforce trends. For quite some time, we have known of a role modeling link between female professors in STEM subjects and women undergraduates—the best evidence available shows this is a causal relationship that results in higher grades and persistence for the women undergraduates. Might this also be true in K-12? A couple of studies in recent years suggest the answer is yes, while finding no evidence that female teachers harms boys’ interest in pursuing STEM fields. In other words, having more women leading math and science K-12 classrooms could actually be a preferred strategy to promote more gender equity in workforce outcomes. Based on the most recent data from the 2015-16 National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS), secondary teachers in math and science are already 65 and 62 percent female, respectively. Interestingly, these numbers are not the same across the country. Rather, as shown in the map below, many states in the South have relatively high shares of female math and science teachers, while the tech-focused Washington state has few. (The map uses data from the Schools and Staffing Survey to calculate the percent of female math and science teachers because the NTPS is not representative at the state-level; additionally, states with fewer than 30 survey respondents are withheld.) These results suggest some geographical areas may benefit from more female teachers in STEM subjects. Returning once again to the boy-girl gap in test scores, the demographic group that does suffer from a clear gender-based disadvantage is boys who are raised in households with low socio-economic status. Evidence from 1 million birth and student records in Florida suggests being raised in disadvantaged conditions (which includes a disproportionate share of racial/ethnic minority groups) has particularly bad impacts on boys—far more than on girls. Black boys are particularly set back by these circumstances. This finding aligns with recent evidence from the Equality of Opportunity Project, which finds black boys lag far behind white boys on their likelihood of upward social mobility and a number of other dimensions, while almost no gap exists between white and black girls. Among the teacher workforce, there is a growing chorus of policymakers and practitioners looking to recruit more minority, male teachers into the profession on the belief that doing so will provide critical support for a high-risk population of students. Though we are unaware of any empirical evidence that male teachers of color have any different impact on students (beyond that already documented by virtue of racial matching), there is some suggestive evidence that they could likely help. The Equality of Opportunity Project’s results pointed to a lack of father figures as a likely factor to low social mobility, and male teachers of color could arguably help fill that role in socio-economically disadvantage communities. Also, many stakeholders agree that teachers can provide role models and cultural bridges for students of color, even contributing to a sense of belonging in the academic sphere. Thus, promoting the hiring of male teachers of color could represent one way of targeting the needs of minority male students. Men of color are acutely underrepresented in the teacher workforce. Black male teachers and Hispanic male teachers each account for roughly 2 percent of the K-12 workforce overall. Yet, our analysis of data from the American Community Survey suggests that convincing minority male college students to enter the teaching workforce is not the reason for their underrepresentation. In fact, roughly equal proportions of white, black and Hispanic male college graduates report working as public school teachers (see the dark blue bars in the figure below). Compare this against the patterns among females (the light blue bars). In general, we see all college-educated females—regardless of race/ethnicity—are more likely than their male counterparts to enter teaching. Yet, white females are considerably more likely to be a teacher than college-educated females in other racial/ethnic groups. What this suggests is that the largest contributor to the low representation of male teachers of color is low college-going and graduation among minority males overall, not a failure to convince members of these groups to choose teaching over other professions. By this point in the discussion, it should be clear that the relationship between student and teacher gender is complex and plays out differently than those based on racial and ethnic characteristics. After reviewing all of the evidence, it is not clear that boys in general are at a systematic disadvantage because of the predominantly female teacher workforce. Despite the resurgence of the war on boys narrative, there is no reason to think that a female-dominated teacher workforce is problematic. Any efforts focused on teacher workforce related to gender may instead focus their efforts in a more productive way, perhaps through increasing the share of female STEM teachers and minority male teachers. However, we hasten to note that the evidence on whether these strategies would improve student outcomes is fairly thin. Given the negative impacts of the lack of racial diversity in the teacher workforce that we have discussed in these series (and the strength of evidence supporting that), our recommendation is to prioritize a focus on addressing those gaps rather than the gender representation gap. Maximiliano Rombado and Bethany Kirkpatrick contributed to this post.
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77ff2087e0c83a2d6416f2bcd12652e3
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2018/10/24/how-many-humanities-ph-d-s-should-universities-produce/
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How many humanities Ph.D.s should universities produce?
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How many humanities Ph.D.s should universities produce? If you have been anywhere near a university that trains doctoral students in the humanities, you will know that the market for new Ph.D.s is abysmal. The plain fact is that we train far more humanities Ph.D.s than there are jobs for. In a recent year, the American History Association reported about 340 tenure-track job openings for historians, plus maybe another hundred jobs outside history departments that might recruit a historian. In the same year, American universities minted about 1,150 new Ph.D. historians. In economics, there were 2,650 new jobs and about 1,250 new Ph.D.s. The contrast is stark and largely typical of the situation in humanities versus STEM fields. In part, this is not new. The “crisis” has been going on for an academic lifetime—at least since the 1970s. Academics who started their career when the Modern Language Association first reached the “melancholy conclusion” that, “should present trends continue, life … particularly in the humanities, could turn grim indeed,” well, those academics have now mostly retired. I want to talk about some possible reasons why more humanities Ph.D.s are produced than there are jobs for, especially in light of how long we’ve been in this dismal situation. First though, I want to raise a concern that conditions may be moving from dismal to disaster. Here are four graphs showing the most recent 10 years of data for the number of bachelor’s degrees (in blue) and the number of doctorates (in red) across economics, English, math and statistics, and history. The count of the former says a lot about the demand for the latter. Look at economics and math/statistics on the left side of the figure. The number of bachelor’s degrees has grown, and the number of Ph.D.s has pretty much grown in parallel. Now look at English and history on the right. For the first half of the graph, the number of B.A. degrees was flat while the number of Ph.D.s grew rapidly. More recently, the number of bachelor’s granted in a year has plummeted while the number of doctorates has leveled off. One wants to be careful about extrapolating from five years, or even a decade. Nonetheless, things don’t look good. Why do the gaps matter? Because a big part of the demand for Ph.D.s in an area is to provide teaching for students pursuing their bachelor’s. The economic problem in the humanities market is too much supply chasing too little demand. While one may lament the too-little demand, we’re left with the question of why supply hasn’t adjusted. Why do universities keep training so many humanities Ph.D.s when their market is so weak? It helps to understand that decisions about the number of Ph.D. students to admit are partially at the discretion of individual academic departments and partially decided by the choice of university administrators about how much money to allocate to a given department. It’s worth pointing out that resource allocations change very slowly in universities (but that’s slow on a scale of years, not slow on a scale of decades.) Let me suggest some reasons why universities continue to churn out so many Ph.D.s in the humanities. Maybe, but I am less than enamored of this explanation because of the arrangements of salaries in research universities—which is where Ph.D.s are trained. Teaching assistant (TA) salaries are often set across the board, so they are the same in humanities and STEM disciplines. (More or less, as STEM fields are more likely to provide some supplements to TA pay. The “across-the-board” pattern is generally stronger in universities where the teaching assistants are unionized.) On the other hand, STEM faculty salaries are a lot higher than humanities faculty salaries. So if it’s a “cheap labor” argument, the excess supply should show up in STEM rather than in the humanities because the faculty/TA salary gap is larger there. I suspect there is something to the need for graduate students to support research. And that makes it a valid reason, at least it makes it a valid reason for the university. This is the explanation that I mostly believe, and this is also the explanation that I have no hard evidence for whatsoever. Just to be clear, economists also often like to teach graduate courses. I’m not suggesting any difference in attitudes or desires among humanities faculty versus STEM fields. The difference is that after coursework and after dissertations STEM Ph.D.s get jobs. There’s no doubt about the importance of the humanities in helping us all do a better job of thinking through the problems faced in the world outside the ivy walls. I’m less sure whether producing an excess of Ph.D.s helps promote the value of the humanities in general. Whatever the explanation of how universities benefit from producing more humanities Ph.D.s than the market will support, the question remains: Is it fair to the Ph.D. students? The Modern Language Association recommends “graduate programs routinely send applicants … data on the placement of recipients of PhDs from the department in the last three to five years (names of institutions, numbers of placements, fields of specialization).” Do humanities departments routinely make this sort of information available on the web? (Economics departments typically do.) I did some spot checking. Harvard does. Yale does. Michigan does. (My university, UC Santa Barbara, mostly does.) At three other major public universities I checked—nope. My suspicion is that humanities departments that place well despite the abysmal market are more upfront about placements than are departments with less enviable records. Nothing I’ve said here will be new to anyone in the humanities. What’s more, the Modern Language Association, the American History Association, and others deserve credit for recognizing the situation and doing what they can about it for decades now. The problem does not lie in particular universities; the problem is that each university’s reasonable behavior adds up nationally to more humanities Ph.D.s than there are jobs for. Everyone wants some other university to shrink production. One more thing. Humanities Ph.D.s do find jobs. After all, one has to be very smart to get into a Ph.D. program, and very persistent and talented to earn the degree. Unfortunately, while humanities Ph.D.s can find jobs outside academia, the financial reward isn’t much at all considering the 6 to 10 years the Ph.D. takes. The National Science Foundation reports that the average annual salary for new humanities and arts Ph.D.s who do have a job is about $52,000 a year. A comparable salary number for people with a bachelor’s in any field, aged 30 to 35 with full-time employment, is about $61,000. It’s a depressing state of the world.
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e17df9e17aed314154f4744046dc9fc7
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2018/12/21/school-safety-commissions-report-uses-tenuous-logic-to-walk-back-guidance-on-school-discipline/
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School Safety Commission’s report uses tenuous logic to walk back guidance on school discipline
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School Safety Commission’s report uses tenuous logic to walk back guidance on school discipline On Tuesday, the Federal Commission on School Safety released its report on how to prevent, mitigate, and recover from acts of violence in schools. President Trump established the commission in March, following the horrific shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. While the commission’s purported mission was to improve student safety amid a series of school shootings around the country, the commission’s most substantive action was to rescind a 2014 “Dear Colleague Letter” (DCL) from the Obama administration that sought to address racial disparities in student discipline. School suspension and expulsion rates differ sharply across racial and ethnic groups in United States, and many voices in education have raised concerns about harsh discipline practices toward students of color and their long-term effects. In essence, the DCL: (a) outlined federal law related to discrimination in student discipline; (b) described the investigative and enforcement authority of the departments of Education and Justice; and (c) gave recommendations on issues such as trainings for school staff, data collection, and alternative approaches to student discipline. The relationship between school shootings and the DCL struck many in the education community as tenuous at best—with the report seeming like an opportunistic way to rescind a letter that has long bothered conservatives. In this post, we examine that relationship and what rescinding the letter means for addressing discipline disparities. Chapter 8 of the commission’s report focuses on the DCL. It critiques the letter on legal grounds (e.g., its application of disparate impact legal theory) and principle (e.g., saying that it “offends basic principles of federalism and the need to preserve state and local control over education”). These critiques make for important topics of debate—for example, scholars have argued that the federal government’s primary role in education is to protect civil rights—but are tangential to the question of what this guidance has to do with school shootings. On that question, the report’s basic argument seems to be that school and district leaders feel threatened by the possibility of federal investigation of their discipline practices, which has made them reluctant to discipline students (specifically, students of color) in the ways that would be most effective. It warns of a chilling effect that has prevented some students from being disciplined or reported, and of schools feeling pressure to adopt alternatives to suspensions and expulsions. The report provides little empirical evidence related to the effects of the DCL on student safety aside from anecdotes and survey responses. (In fairness, the challenges of studying student discipline have left this research literature relatively thin, even as research emerges on topics such as discriminatory discipline practices and the effects of student suspensions.) While the report does not explicitly make this connection, Sen. Marco Rubio and others have suggested that the DCL played a role in the Parkland shooting, as the shooter was apparently served poorly, if at all, by a Broward County program intended to decriminalize student misbehavior. Notably, the purpose of the DCL is to address racial disparities and discrimination in student discipline, motivated by concern about the high rates at which students of color are suspended and expelled from school. The Parkland shooter, like the majority of shooters whose race is identified in the Washington Post database of school shootings, is white. (The shooter’s race is not available for about half of the observations in that database.) In fact, relative to other acts of violence in schools, homicides in schools are an outlier in that most homicides occur in schools that are majority-white. To explore this, we collected data on violent incidents in schools as reported in the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC). The CRDC reports on schools’ responses to questions about the types of incidents that occurred on their campuses during the 2015-16 school year. The dataset contains information about school demographics, which enables users to examine the relationship between school demographics and the incidence of violent events in schools. In general, the concentration of white students in the schools where these violent offenses occur hovers around 40 percent. The most notable outlier is homicides. On average, these schools are 62 percent white. At schools where shootings took place (regardless of injury), schools were an average of 43 percent white. The commission’s rationale for rescinding the DCL might be that schools have made across-the-board changes to their discipline practices that have left them vulnerable to more shootings and homicides. However, it bears noting that school shooters are not predominantly students of color, and that schools’ efforts to eliminate racial disparities in their suspension and expulsion rates do not have immediately clear implications for the occurrence of school homicides. The rescission of the DCL is a setback for efforts to eliminate discipline disparities and stem the “school-to-prison pipeline”—one that too quickly ushers kids into the criminal justice system and too reluctantly addresses the causes of student misbehavior. However, we should be clear on how, and to what extent, it is a setback. Nothing in the commission’s report prevents school and district leaders from working to address discipline disparities that concern them. Nothing prohibits the use of alternate forms of student discipline intended to be more restorative and less exclusionary than suspension and expulsion. (In fact, the report was generally supportive of the idea of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports.) The federal government still has a responsibility to enforce civil rights law, and students, parents, and school officials still have avenues available to them if they suspect discriminatory treatment. What has been lost, through this report and other Trump administration decisions, is a sense that the federal government fully appreciates its role in protecting students’ civil rights and is committed to preventing violations of those rights. While the report laments that school and district leaders are worrying about discipline disparities and possible federal intervention, one can take the opposite view—that the DCL drew attention to an important issue, and that making people in schools aware of the consequences of violating federal law isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Finally, we would be remiss not to state the obvious about this report: that seeing a federal report about how to prevent school shootings that is virtually silent on the topic of guns is sobering. However the DCL might have contributed to the incidence of school shootings—a connection the report fails to make persuasively—it is hard to digest that a report like this could place more emphasis on rescinding guidance on discipline disparities than addressing shortcomings in gun laws. Francesca Royal contributed to this post. Update 2/13/19: This piece initially used an older version of the CRDC report, which examined the types of violent incidents that occurred on school campuses. The figure above and the corresponding text has been updated to reflect the new data.
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2e1a3ac0732512601e00656f926c0578
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2019/02/15/chicagos-mayor-sees-through-the-fog-on-school-autonomy/
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Chicago’s mayor sees through the fog on school autonomy
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Chicago’s mayor sees through the fog on school autonomy In politics, there is nothing like a hard knock to focus the mind. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel tells how this happened for him. In The Atlantic, Emanuel describes himself as once a believer in teacher-focused reforms, particularly test-based accountability. But in the middle of a bruising teacher strike, he had a moment of clarity. Emanuel then adds: Two decades ago, I, along with colleagues at the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), coined a term for what Emanuel calls principal-centric reform: “the portfolio strategy.” The strategy holds that schools work when the professionals in them know their students, build on student strengths and address needs, adapt learning opportunities in light of evidence, and make sure student experiences add up from one classroom to over time. Schools can’t be like that if teachers are controlled by rulebooks or strict job descriptions, or if principals must accept teachers who can’t or won’t contribute. At the same time, it holds that lower-performing schools must be replaced with higher-performing ones (as Emanuel argues elsewhere in his article) to ensure the system of schools improves continuously over time. Emanuel claims school autonomy is the root cause of Chicago schools’ recently dramatic improvements, which have been documented by Stanford and the Chicago Consortium on Schools Research. Though they tell a more complex story, the Chicago Consortium’s studies confirm that the city’s dramatic gains in student learning stem from school-level coherency, staff sharing responsibility for students, thoughtful use of student data, and quick response to issues that arise in individual students’ learning. Sometimes it takes an outsider like Emanuel to see so clearly. In a city as diverse as Chicago, no two schools face exactly the same challenges. Mandates on instructional method, use of time, student grouping or teacher assignment encourage uniformity in situations requiring innovation, problem solving, and initiative. When Emanuel saw this, he was able to pull back from a struggle over who would control the schools. The mayor sees what researchers have been telling us for a long time: School autonomy matters. It’s what distinguishes high-performing district schools from the run of the mill. Even among charter schools, the highest-performing ones have freedom to select teachers, adjust teacher and student assignments, and invest in teacher training. As CRPE’s and RAND Corporation’s recent studies of personalization show, heavily regulated schools can’t personalize instruction and let students develop special talents. The World Bank has found school autonomy to be the key to performance, all over the world, both in rich countries and poor. In America, this message is slow to sink in. Like Emanuel before his eureka moment, school board and union leaders think it is their job to say what schools will do, who will work in them, and what every student should experience. These entities are acting in their own self-interest, as unions’ power depends on their ability to wrest control away from school leaders, and school board members often measure their influence in terms of policies adopted and school decisions reversed. Autonomy is where the interests of teachers unions diverge from those of individual teachers. While unions benefit by controlling decisions via the collective bargaining agreement, teachers benefit from having influence over selection of their co-workers and school priority setting. Teachers with good ideas get a much better hearing from their immediate colleagues than from distant union leadership or central office bureaucrats. Autonomy must be defined in terms both of what schools can do and in what the district and union can’t undo. However, autonomy can’t be absolute. Schools that squander students’ time and public funds must pay the price, in staff and leadership changes. When teachers and principals can’t work together effectively, school boards and superintendents must find alternatives for children. But they must seek to put schools on their feet, not to make them dependent. For autonomy to be real, unions can still negotiate over salaries and benefits, but school staffing and priority setting, the sticking points in recent Chicago and Los Angeles strikes, should be left to schools. Some justify controlling schools from the outside by saying that school leaders will make a mess of things, or really don’t want to make consequential decisions. But that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: when everything is prescribed, people who would prefer not to solve problems and take responsibility are willing to be principals and initiative-takers stay away. But there is no shortage of smart, ambitious teachers who would take the job if it were not a dead end. When—as in Chicago, New York City, New Orleans, and Denver—principals are leaders, not rule followers, new leaders emerge and some incumbents rise to the occasion. School district centralization is deeply entrenched, so that half-hearted efforts to increase autonomy are not enough. It doesn’t work to tell school leaders they can choose staff and then tack on a union veto. Or to transfer money from other schools to pay the salary costs of a school with all senior teachers. Or to maintain strict rules about maximum class sizes and teacher work assignments. Or to force a child to attend a particular school when another school is a better fit. Creating supportive conditions for high-performing schools is what the portfolio strategy is all about. It’s also why charter schools, relieved of district oversight, have a built-in advantage. As Emanuel argues: A city committed to autonomous schools will benefit now and in the future. As automation and economic change transforms work, schools will need to change their curricula, provide much better information about the demand for skills, and link students to promising career pathways. These events, and constantly growing opportunities to personalize and nurture talent, will transform schools—if schools have the freedom to change.
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9a9584600ecb26cf8f94537f74730fa9
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2019/04/29/teacher-turnover-and-the-disruption-of-teacher-staffing/
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Teacher turnover and the disruption of teacher staffing
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Teacher turnover and the disruption of teacher staffing Much has recently been written about the growing problem of teacher shortages. While such shortages may sometimes result from, or lead to, high rates of teacher turnover at the school level, turnover—defined as the yearly rate of departure of teachers from a school—is of policy interest in its own right. It imposes financial costs on schools and districts because of the need to find replacement teachers, and it has been shown to reduce student achievement. Here we highlight a concern related to the within-school turnover of middle school teachers, namely the disruption of teacher staffing in core subjects. We draw on a recent paper in which we examined how middle schools in North Carolina responded to changes in the rates of turnover of their math and English language arts (ELA) teachers in grades six, seven, and eight from 1998 to 2016. Within a middle school, the teachers of a single subject area are likely to teach similar types of material, may work together to offer a coherent curriculum, and, to some extent, may be interchangeable. Regardless of whether a teacher leaves one school to move to another school or quits the profession, the departure of one is likely to affect the others. We focus on middle school teachers because comparable groups of teachers would be difficult to identify at the elementary school where self-contained and multi-subject classrooms are more common, or at the high school level where subjects often become highly specialized. The middle school subjects of math and ELA are also student tested subjects, and therefore directly affect a school’s accountability rating. When teachers leave a school, one option for the school is not to replace them and to opt instead to raise class sizes. Alternatively, the school may replace departing teachers with other teachers who have either weaker or stronger qualifications, or it might switch teachers across subjects. In contrast to much of the earlier research on teacher mobility, our approach allows us to examine the net effects of teacher turnover on the mix of teachers in a school, where net effects take into account both the qualifications of the teachers who leave and the qualifications of those who replace them. We are interested in responses to teacher turnover by school, subject, and year. The figure shows that turnover rates (as measured by three-year averages of math and ELA teachers in middle schools) exhibited substantial variation in North Carolina over our 18-year time period and are currently high. Starting at about 23% in 1998, the rate rose reasonably steady to nearly 28% in 2008, before dropping precipitously during the recession. The recession-induced drop is not surprising given that teaching jobs may be preferable to outside options during a period of rising unemployment. But the turnover rate then increased from its nadir in 2012 to 29% in 2016, the final year of our sample. Our empirical strategy was straightforward: Our goal was to estimate how changes in a school’s turnover rate affect the mix of teachers or class sizes in the following year, controlling statistically for other factors that might affect the outcomes (including school or school-by-year fixed effects). Our outcome variables are the percentages of teachers with three or fewer years of experience, with lateral or provisional licenses, or who are teaching out of subject; average teacher licensing exam scores; and average class sizes. We chose the four teacher characteristics because studies show they are predictive of student achievement. The class size measure allowed us to determine if schools responded to teacher turnover by raising class sizes, a change that could also be detrimental to student outcomes. The evidence is clear that higher teacher turnover leads to higher proportions of teachers with limited experience, lateral entry teachers, or those with provisional licenses. The increased reliance on lateral entry teachers or those with provisional licenses was particularly evident among schools with large concentrations of low-performing students or high rates of poverty. We found no differential responses across urban and rural schools, or schools categorized by their geographic distances to the nearest teacher education program. Somewhat less consistent evidence suggests that schools also respond by hiring teachers with lower licensure scores or by increasing the proportions of teachers teaching out of subject. We find essentially no evidence that middle school administrators in North Carolina respond to teacher turnover in their schools by increasing class sizes. That is not surprising given that math and ELA are core subjects with state end-of-grade tests and that the state has maximum course size regulations. Our empirical findings highlight three potential mechanisms through which high rates of teacher turnover may adversely affect the joint capacity of teachers within a middle school. First, the resulting higher proportions of teachers with weak qualifications are likely to reduce the quality of teaching, and, as shown in prior studies, to reduce student achievement. Second, the influx of new and inexperienced teachers is likely to be disruptive and could interfere with the development of a coherent curriculum. Lastly, the compositional change is likely to increase turnover in subsequent years because of the greater proclivity of novice teachers and alternatively certified teachers to leave schools. The potential for higher subsequent turnover strengthens the case for policymakers to address directly the challenges posed by high teacher turnover rather than focusing only on longer-term strategies designed to improve the quality of the overall teacher labor force. One strategy for reducing the probability of high rates of teacher turnover is to improve school working conditions by raising the quality of a school’s leadership or providing differential pay for teachers to remain in hard-to-staff schools or subjects. A complementary strategy would be to adopt policies designed to make schools more resilient to the loss of teachers, like enhancing the teacher pipeline for such schools and providing strong mentorship programs for early career teachers. While those policies might also help reduce overall teacher shortages, their main goal would be to reduce high rates of teacher turnover within individual schools and thereby to enhance the quality of those schools.
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26d8aa5f7b28ce186c8b54a9e1a86d05
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2019/05/20/leveraging-the-student-teaching-experience-to-train-tomorrows-great-teachers/
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Leveraging the student-teaching experience to train tomorrow’s great teachers
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Leveraging the student-teaching experience to train tomorrow’s great teachers The precise amount spent on teacher education is difficult to quantify, but one estimate suggests that the aggregate annual investment in the development of teacher candidates—i.e., an investment before individuals are even hired as teachers—is around $7 billion, or about $38,000 per teacher who enters the workforce. This figure, which is based on estimates of average college tuition costs, is quite significant. To put it in perspective, estimates suggest that annual per-teacher professional development costs are about $4,500, and teachers on average spend 14 years in the workforce, meaning that the investment in building teachers before they are hired is about half of the overall investment in professional development over the course of an average teacher’s career. Yet, until recently, most quantitative research on teacher development has focused on interventions targeting in-service teachers. New data systems that connect the preservice experiences of teacher candidates with their in-service outcomes have expanded the evidence on how preservice experiences influence teacher effectiveness. This research has concentrated on whether a student teaching school’s student demographics, staff turnover and collaboration, and value-added estimates of school-level effectiveness predict student teachers’ subsequent outcomes. Although these school-level factors do appear to matter for future teacher performance, one student teaching placement practice appears to generate even larger returns: placing student teachers in classrooms with effective mentor teachers. Several studies have now confirmed the importance of being assigned to a mentor who is highly effective (in value-added terms) with his or her own students. One of these is a study that we did in Washington state that followed more than 1,000 student teachers into the workforce, where we observed the later test performance of their students. We matched student teachers with their mentor teachers and identified the mentor teacher’s value added in the years before they supervised their student teacher (to avoid any confounding influence between the mentor and student teacher). It turns out that when former student teachers began teaching their own classes, their students performed better on standardized tests when their teachers had had a highly effective mentor teacher. Specifically, being assigned to a mentor that has value added that is two standard deviations above average (implying that the mentor raises the achievement of his or her own students by about 0.4 standard deviations more than the average teacher) is estimated to lead that teacher candidate to eventually, as a teacher, have students who do about 0.08 standard deviations better than average on standardized tests, all else equal. Although this gain in performance may seem small, it is about the average difference in test score gains between students in a novice teacher’s classroom and students who have a third-year teacher. As we describe in more detail in a companion brief, this effect is larger than the effect of placing student teachers in highly effective schools or matching the classroom characteristics of the student teaching experience with those in student teachers’ first job. It is also larger than the perceived effect of a high congruence between the focal topics in a teacher preparation program and the skills needed on the job. If being mentored by a highly effective teacher during student teaching is so productive, why doesn’t it happen more often? In the state of Washington, only 3% to 4% of teachers serve as mentors in an average year, which mirrors our best estimate of the percentage nationally (4%), given that there are about 3.2 million public school teachers in the United States and about 130,000 graduates of traditional teacher education programs (TEPs). Thus, at first blush, it seems straightforward that there is a significant scope for change in mentor assignments. Yet the limited quantitative evidence on this topic suggests that geographic proximity to a TEP and similarities between the mentor and student teacher are far stronger predictors of where and with whom student teaching occurs than mentor effectiveness. For example, a candidate is about five percentage points more likely to student teach with a mentor teacher who graduated from the same TEP than a mentor teacher from another TEP, whereas a very large increase in teacher effectiveness (two standard deviations) increases the probability of hosting a student teacher by less than a percentage point. In some ways, these findings are not surprising because it is logistically challenging for TEPs to oversee internships that are more geographically dispersed. Thus, we are particularly interested in whether there are more effective teachers in schools and districts that already tend to host student teachers who might serve as mentors. To assess the potential for change regarding who serves as a mentor teacher, we use data on student teaching placements from 15 TEPs in Washington; this same dataset was used in the Washington state research discussed above. Based on these data, we created a figure that illustrates the availability of effective potential mentors relative to the number of teachers currently serving as mentors. Each icon in this figure represents 10 math teachers in grades four through eight in Washington (grades in which value-added (VA) models of teacher effectiveness can be estimated) who teach within 50 miles of a teacher education program. We group these teachers into six categories based on their value added. Within each group, we highlight in red the number of teachers who serve as mentor teachers in a given year. Although more effective teachers are somewhat more likely than less effective teachers to host a student teacher, it is clear from this figure that a huge number of effective teachers are available to host student teachers. In fact, enough highly effective teachers are available to host all the student teachers currently hosted by teachers who are less effective than the average teacher in the state. Although this evidence paints a rosy picture of the potential scope of change for student teacher placements, recent qualitative evidence from Washington suggests that there are also considerable challenges to changing the status quo placement processes. Interviews with individuals responsible for student teachers reveal skepticism that good teachers are also good mentors. Furthermore, some individuals appear to shy away from mentoring because they are uncomfortable with being differentiated from their colleagues. Perhaps most importantly, while mentor teachers may wish to give back to the profession by contributing to the development of teacher candidates, little financial incentive exists for teachers to serve as mentor teachers. For instance, one study estimated that an average mentor teacher receives only slightly more than $200 per student teacher. This is much smaller than our back-of-the-envelope calculation of what effective mentor teachers are “worth” to students, schools, and districts. To calculate the value of effective mentors, we draw on evidence that having an effective teacher increases students’ long-term outcomes appreciably, including their labor market earnings. Now recall the result that the average teacher mentored by a highly effective teacher (two standard deviations above average value added) begins their career with the same effectiveness as the average third-year teacher in the state. This means that the present value to students of having a first-year teacher who student taught with a highly effective mentor teacher relative to an average mentor teacher is roughly $70,000 in lifetime earnings across an average classroom. While this estimate of the value of more effective mentor teachers exceeds the range of reasonable compensation in the public education system, we can also draw inferences from how more experienced teachers are currently paid. In Washington state, we use publicly available salary data and calculate that the average full-time third-year teacher is paid $3,500 more than the average full-time first-year teacher. In other words, to the degree that the financial reward for teaching experience reflects the value that policy makers place on the increased value-added effectiveness of third-year teachers over novice teachers, policy makers ought to be willing to invest over 15 times more ($3,500 as opposed to $200) to encourage effective teachers to become mentors. Teacher value-added effectiveness is only one dimension of teacher quality, and as noted above, being an effective teacher does not necessarily equate to being an effective mentor. With that said, evidence about the importance of mentor teachers for teacher candidate development is compelling, and the best evidence we can generate suggests substantial underinvestment in this crucial role. Consequently, we conclude by advocating greater focus on research into what constitutes effective teacher candidate mentorship and more policy attention (and potentially funding for teacher mentors) on how to ensure that teacher candidates receive high-quality mentorship during their student teaching.
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6a906f6e62d394062b9976c18a53dc95
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2019/06/03/8-reasons-why-education-may-be-pivotal-in-the-2020-election-and-beyond/
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8 reasons why education may be pivotal in the 2020 election (and beyond)
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8 reasons why education may be pivotal in the 2020 election (and beyond) Among politicos, education is not usually considered a top-tier issue in presidential elections. The issue tends to get overshadowed by other issues where the president is the obvious leader and decisionmaker—defense, security, climate change, health care, Social Security, and economic affairs. Education, in contrast, has been seen as a state and local issue. But times have changed, especially when it comes to Democratic primaries. It is worth starting with a brief recap of the recent federal role in K-12 education. President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law in 2001 represented an unprecedented increase in the federal role in K-12 education at the time. President Barack Obama increased the federal role even more—introducing $100 billion in federal education spending (prompted by the financial crisis) and leveraging NCLB to make deals with states that allowed the U.S. Department of Education, through a waiver process, to pressure states to adopt the Obama administration’s preferred accountability-driven policies without getting congressional approval. Indirectly, this gave the federal government a hand in academic standards, which had been previously left to the states, and in teacher evaluation, which few governments, at any level, had ever really tried to touch. Republicans saw this as executive overreach and Democrats became more disenchanted with the policies themselves, especially their focus on high-stakes testing. This led to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which pulled federal law back to something closer to, and a bit less aggressive than, the original NCLB (but still more active than the pre-NCLB era). Many long-term members of Congress even recanted their original support for NCLB and their support for ESSA was meant to send just that message. Given the NCLB-ESSA story, one might think the federal role would fade as a political issue in presidential elections, but this has not happened. In fact, I argue that education might be more important than ever in the 2020 election and for years to come: In perception and reality, education is becoming more and more important to parents and the long-term life success of their children. It is also a key cog in the macroeconomy, with over $1 trillion in spending annually (mostly from public sources). These are the underlying forces that led to NCLB and the importance of education has only continued to grow. The sector has simply become too important for politicians at any level to ignore. Education has increasingly become a pocketbook issue as the share of women in the workforce has increased. Working parents need someone to care for their children, and given what we know about social and cognitive growth in the early years, publicly-funded early childhood education has many potential advantages. Meanwhile, federal policy has been remarkably stagnant, still rooted in LBJ-era policies like Head Start and federal tax credits. The issue is ripe for policy change and offers yet another reason for voters and presidential candidates to pay attention to education. Support for early childhood is very high in polls, with bipartisan appeal. The federal government has long played a significant, though quiet, role in funding colleges and universities with Pell Grants, student loans, and regulations. However, as student loan debt has skyrocketed, the federal government is a natural place to look for solutions. While more contentious than early childhood, many of these ideas also poll well across the political spectrum. Education—especially any new programs addressing early childhood education and college affordability—requires resources, something in short supply at the state and local levels. Health care and pension benefits are taking on a larger and larger share of state spending. States have also shown a strong inclination to cut higher education first when budgets are tight. The federal government, with its borrowing power, almost has to be involved in any major spending effort. Inequality is real and fast-rising issue, and one of the key concerns among Democrats. Income inequality is partly caused by unequal educational opportunity (though not as much as some education advocates would have it). Early childhood education is also a factor in gender-based income inequality since child care and early education are central to allowing women—still the primary caregivers—to have equal access to opportunities in the labor market. More so than other issues, because most people interact with public education in some way, education positions can be used to attract support from very specific constituencies. Want to attract younger voters? Promise more money for higher education, like free college and loan forgiveness. Want to attract African-Americans? Support for historically black colleges and universities. Want to attract rural voters? Create a rural education proposal. Want to attract women? Focus on early childhood education. Education is the Swiss army knife of policy and politics. In the early 2000s, voters with more formal education voted fairly equally for Democrats and Republicans. Not anymore—53% of college-educated white voters went for Democrats in 2018 compared with 37% of non-college-educated whites (I could not find the same numbers for people of color or the whole population). It stands to reason that voters with more formal education are especially likely to see education as an important policy issue. Education is also more of a pocketbook issue for women, who also vote disproportionately for Democrats. DeVos is one of the more reviled figures in what is, for Democrats, a highly reviled Trump administration. Her lack of experience in education (especially public schools), early glaring missteps (“guns and bears”?), and strong support for vouchers and online schooling, generally opposed by Democrats, make her an easy target for generic political attacks. (Not that it matters for purposes here, but her ideas also lack research support to recommend them.) For all of these reasons, education will be a major issue on the minds of Democratic voters. One poll has it among the top five issues for Democratic voters. Only health care beats it (and only slightly). This rising importance may also be long-lasting. The first seven factors above seem like structural changes, unlikely to shift with the political winds. Reinforcing this point, the candidates are coming out with major education policy proposals on an almost daily basis (more to come in later posts). The rising importance of education as an issue in the party is not the only reason that it will matter more in 2020. For more on the importance of education in the upcoming election, read this piece that focuses on the state of the Democratic primary and teacher unions.
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8c45e96099c04cc88122aa55a7f46abd
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2019/08/01/states-lead-the-way-on-community-school-innovation/
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States lead the way on community school innovation
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States lead the way on community school innovation Policymakers and leaders at multiple levels have been paying increased attention to community schools—schools that engage families and community organizations to provide well-rounded support to students. Recently, presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden called for expanding community schools. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, another presidential candidate, has created the largest community school initiative in the country with over 200 sites. And Randi Weingarten, president of the powerful American Federation of Teachers, has been a vocal advocate. At the local level, grassroots organizers are calling for more community schools. Community schools seem poised to become an increasing presence in education politics—and policy—going forward. Community schools identify what students, families, and communities need to succeed and use community assets—partnerships with local organizations and agencies—to meet those needs. The Learning Policy Institute describes four common pillars of a community school: expanded and enriched learning time and opportunities; collaborative leadership and practices; active family and community engagement; and integrated student supports. In identifying a typology of school-community partnerships, my colleagues and I suggest that community schools are more than just wraparound services provided to individual students in need. Rather, community schools use strategic, results-focused partnerships to improve a wide range of outcomes. Evidence of the potential and effectiveness of community schools is growing. While I am not aware of studies showing adverse impacts of community schools, critics argue that the focus of schools should remain on academics, and not the areas that are outside the traditional purview of schools. Some also claim that community schools are an overreach of the nanny state. On the other hand, supporters argue that providing sick kids immediate medical attention, offering enriching educational opportunities, and making meals available for children and families that are hungry doesn’t require research about effectiveness—they are moral obligations. They also argue that providing these resources support the needs of the whole child, better positioning them for academic success. More research needs to be conducted to understand how and in which contexts community schools work, how we can identify their causal effects, and how the approach can be sustained after policymakers and school leaders move on to other priorities. Interest in community schools has grown over the past 20 years, but does this education reform strategy have the staying power of other approaches like charter schools, turnaround schools, and vouchers? Each of these approaches has solidified its prominence through statewide policies. In recent years, community schools advocates have secured victories at the national level, including sustained and increased funding for the Full-Service Community Schools Grant program and the inclusion of this program in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Now, many community school leaders are focusing on state-level policy. As responsibility for education has once again moved to the states with ESSA, there are new opportunities for these local initiatives to advocate for state support to solidify the community schools approach as a large-scale, long-term education reform strategy. The following examples illustrate considerable recent progress at the state level: Community schools are beginning to find support in purple and conservative-leaning states as well, with legislation introduced this session in Arizona, Georgia, Arkansas, and Mississippi. In Texas, the House passed a bipartisan bill to allow school sites to use the strategy as a campus turnaround plan. While not becoming law, these steps help set the stage for future legislative sessions. And sometimes state action doesn’t require new legislation. For example, in its state ESSA plan, Pennsylvania encourages local education agencies to use existing state and federal funds to create community schools and offers state-supported technical assistance. These examples show that community schools are on the move at the state level. The ground-up strategy is receiving bipartisan, state-level policy support across red and blue states that could help solidify it for years to come. However, challenges to this trajectory remain. First, many of these policies are grant programs, subject to funding swings or eliminations year-to-year. Local leaders are organizing to build advocacy mechanisms that will help maintain and grow supportive policies. Second, there are many competing but interdependent strategies that, while worthwhile, all require funding and policy support. Community schools have an opportunity to serve as a vehicle to lift up each of these strategies by integrating them into a more comprehensive site-level framework. Third, defining a community school has always been a challenge. States need to be clear about what a community school should look like in state policies in order to fully fund necessary components (e.g., a full-time coordinator), while providing maximum flexibility in programs and services for local needs, assets, and decision-making. The field-developed community school standards provide a common language around the necessary implementation components and recommended programmatic elements upon which to build. Finally, while the evidence is growing, community schools will need to continuously improve their practice, learn from mistakes, celebrate successes, and keep a focus on results-based partnerships. The increase in state-level community school action provides an opportunity to make community schools the norm, and a necessary component of effective school reform.
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b373790a5ca2337a0eac9007c8aaa147
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2019/11/22/the-youth-vaping-epidemic-addressing-the-rise-of-e-cigarettes-in-schools/
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The youth vaping epidemic: Addressing the rise of e-cigarettes in schools
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The youth vaping epidemic: Addressing the rise of e-cigarettes in schools Last December, the U.S. surgeon general raised an alarm regarding the rise in e-cigarette use among the nation’s youth, saying it has increased “at a rate of epidemic proportions.” According to the 2019 National Youth Tobacco Survey, over 5 million youth are currently using e-cigarettes, primarily the JUUL brand, with nearly 1 million youth using the product daily. This substantial increase in teenage vaping is seriously impacting middle and high schools across America. Teen vaping has gained a significant amount of media attention since President Trump expressed concern about vaping’s public health effects in a September meeting with the FDA. While Trump had suggested a ban on flavored e-cigarettes, it seems that he has backed away from that idea due to political fallout among voters. Of the youth population, 27.5% regularly use e-cigarettes, approximately 22 percentage points higher than high schoolers who smoke normal cigarettes. These numbers are alarming because vaping has various types of negative impacts on health. First, e-cigarettes have been linked to severe lung and heart diseases. Second, e-cigarettes with high levels of nicotine can put youth at risk for developing a nicotine addiction which subsequently hinders brain development. Third, e-cigarettes expose youth users to harmful substances, like heavy metals, and are a gateway to smoking cigarettes. E-cigarettes are causing public health and disciplinary concerns in schools nationwide. Teenagers are being hospitalized for vaping-related diseases, with at least one confirmed death. Teachers and school administrators are trying, yet failing, to prevent students from vaping in classrooms and on school campuses. Administrators are struggling to combat vaping with both punitive and restorative disciplinary measures, and students continue to vape even when facing penalties as serious as suspension. With the number of youth e-cigarette users increasing in the last decade and roughly doubling since 2017, there may be a need for new policies that could standardize an approach to combating teenage vaping and help curb the impact on students. President Trump proposed two routes to tackle vaping: a ban on flavored e-cigarettes, and raising the minimum age of purchase on e-cigarettes from 18 to 21. According to recent reporting, Trump has delayed a flavor ban. In response to Trump’s inaction, the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed a bill on Tuesday that would ban flavored tobacco products, raise the minimum age of purchase to 21, and restrict online sales of tobacco products. Despite the bill in the House, Trump is meeting with vaping industry executives and public health advocates. It is unclear how vaping regulations will unfold, but it is worthwhile to examine potential plans and their implications on students. Major vaping companies, like JUUL Labs, have pushed against the flavor ban, which may have influenced Trump’s sudden decision to pull back from the policy. JUUL, which controls three-fourths of the e-cigarette market and has a forecasted 2019 revenue of $3.4 billion, is being investigated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for allegedly illegally advertising its products as less harmful than regular cigarettes. Consequently, JUUL altered its leadership and marketing practices by suspending all advertising in the U.S. and replacing its CEO. Banning the sale of flavored e-cigarettes would have hefty implications on vaping companies since they employ thousands of small shop owners and hardware designers. Banning the legal sale of flavored vaping products would also create a robust black market for e-cigarettes. A black market for vapes could be lethal for youth who find themselves smoking from cartridges cut with cheaper substances. Trump faced pressures from the vaping lobby, which flocked to the nation’s capital claiming, among other things, that flavored e-cigarettes help smokers quit regular cigarettes. It is unproven, however, if there are health benefits to a regular smoker who instead becomes a long-term vaper. Research further suggests that while e-cigarette use was associated with high rates of smoking cessation, more than 80% of smokers who entered a randomized trial to stop smoking with the help of e-cigarettes continued to smoke e-cigarettes a year later. This is especially concerning given that smoking e-cigarettes has a negative impact on health. Whether by congressional action or Trump’s executive authority, the age minimum to purchase e-cigarettes can be changed from 18 to 21. Some vaping advocates believe that youth vape because of the nicotine in e-cigarettes. While the nicotine content in e-cigarettes can get students addicted to vaping, our analysis of the 2018 National Youth Tobacco Survey indicates that the most students report vaping for the flavor (about 35%) and because their family and friends use e-cigarettes (about 30%). Increasing the age of purchase to 21 would not address either of those incentives to vape. Changing the age limit to 21 might fail to prevent many minors from getting their hands on e-cigarettes; in fact, 19% of youth report first trying an e-cigarette before the age of 13. Starting at the age of 13, rates of youth vaping in each age group increase. In 2018, 22% of 16-year-olds and 24% of 17-year-olds reported smoking an e-cigarette. This is an increase from 2017, when 11% of 16-year-olds and 14% of 17-year-olds reported smoking an e-cigarette. This shows that students are gaining access to and using e-cigarette products at an age well below the current age limit of 18. Further, over 70% of youth e-cigarette users report buying e-cigarettes from people rather than a shop, and 27% of frequent users reported living with someone who smoked. Youth vapers are typically not going to shops to buy vapes, they are buying vapes from their peers. Thus, minors who vape may still have access, although slightly restricted, to flavored e-cigarettes from friends and family who are over the age of 21. We cannot know what will happen to e-cigarettes if the minimum age increases, but we can look to the experience of increasing the minimum age on alcohol for some suggestive evidence. According to the 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 30% of youth drank some amount of alcohol while 14% of youth engaged in binge drinking. Though raising the age limit for purchasing alcohol helped reduce youth alcohol consumption, youth consumption of alcohol persists. Federal action to stop the teenage vaping epidemic will likely fall short on some, if not most, metrics. Consequently, the onus will fall on state governments, boards of education, and local school districts to combat the issue of teen vaping. Several localities have already taken vaping into their own hands. For example, four states have banned vaping on school grounds, seven states have enacted or will enact a ban on flavored vaping products, and 18 states have raised the legal smoking age from 18 to 21 in the past three years. While the numbers show that vaping has increased drastically even with these state-level bans placed in populous states like New York and Texas, the effect of these state policies is largely unknown. Beyond traditional tactics like monitoring bathrooms and hallways to confiscate vaping devices, states could also take a new approach to fighting the e-cigarette epidemic, like offering grants to schools to invest in on-site counseling. South Portland High School has been addressing teen vaping by offering mental health services and guiding students away from the social influences that encourage vaping. This school—and others, like Arrowhead High School in Milwaukee—have also been getting students involved in their anti-vaping campaign via peer-to-peer education. The teenage vaping crisis calls for innovative solutions. In collaboration with federal and state action, local actors can look at the FDA’s Youth Tobacco Prevention Plan for insight on ways to initiate community-supported approaches that restrict access to vaping products, curb teenage-focused marketing tactics, and educate teenagers about the harmful, long-term effects of vaping.
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840df301b3e2ce110e8cbb3ca9a3fb79
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2019/12/04/reviewing-the-evidence-on-teacher-attrition-and-retention/
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Reviewing the evidence on teacher attrition and retention
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Reviewing the evidence on teacher attrition and retention Decades of research have shown that teachers are the single most important school-based factor in student achievement. The research base on teacher attrition continues to grow as teacher turnover remains a salient issue for many schools, particularly in economically disadvantaged districts. A high level of turnover is negatively associated with student achievement and there are monetary (and human capital) costs of replacing teachers. Moreover, teacher mobility patterns play an important role in the equitable education of all students, and there is strong evidence of inequities in access to highly effective instruction across schools and districts. Taking advantage of the robust literature on factors of teacher attrition and retention, working with Lam Pham and Michael Crouch at Vanderbilt, we conducted an exhaustive search reviewing more than 25,000 scholarly records and synthesizing effects across 120 of these studies to better understand what drives teacher mobility. This post describes the findings from our analysis and offers some discussion on their policy implications. For our meta-analysis, we adopt a school-centered perspective. In other words, we focus on whether teachers leave a particular school, regardless of whether they move to another school or leave the profession entirely (though our results are substantively similar when looking at attrition from the profession). We examine factors in three primary categories that influence teacher attrition. “Personal correlates” refer to teacher characteristics—such as age, race/ethnicity, and gender—and qualifications that may shape teachers’ decisions to leave a school. “School correlates” contain factors that describe the schools and conditions in which the teachers work, including school organizational characteristics and school resources. “External correlates” are factors that come from national or state policies, such as accountability and school improvement efforts. Since our study includes several dozen factors across the three categories, we discuss a few of the more relevant findings in this brief. Focusing first on personal correlates, in contrast to prior narrative reviews and meta-analyses, we find female teachers are no more likely to leave than male teachers, and that teachers with graduate degrees are no more likely to leave than teachers without graduate degrees. We find teaching specialty areas, such as STEM or special education, significantly increases the odds of attrition. We do not find all minority teachers are less likely to leave; only Hispanic teachers have reduced odds of attrition relative to white teachers. We also find strong evidence that teacher satisfaction plays an important role in teacher decisions to stay in teaching. Moreover, traditionally certified teachers are less likely to leave teaching than those teachers entering through alternative routes. In terms of school correlates, we consistently find various measures of school organizational characteristics—such as student disciplinary problems, administrative support, and professional development—strongly influence teacher turnover. In terms of school resources, we find providing basic teaching materials, such as textbooks and binders, reduces odds of attrition. We find most characteristics of the student body do not seem to influence attrition (or that the influences are small). Finally, we find that many external correlates are associated with teacher attrition and retention. Interestingly, being evaluated, even for accountability purposes, does not seem to increase teacher attrition. In fact, the odds of attrition for teachers who are assessed are somewhat smaller than those who are not. Our meta-analytic findings have important implications for policy, practice, and future research. We find some suggestive, if limited, evidence that retention bonuses and limiting late hiring could reduce teacher turnover. Not surprising to those in the trenches, additional supports and incentives appear necessary to keep specific types of teachers in their school—namely, STEM teachers, special education teachers, and novice teachers. We see some evidence that improving school organizational characteristics, such as reducing student disciplinary problems and improving administrative support and teacher collaborations, can reduce the risk of turnover. We are not suggesting it would be simple to change these organizational features, but the evidence warrants further exploration. While there are efforts being made in this area, we need more research and experimentation to bear on these issues. Despite concerns of potential negative consequences of teacher evaluation and accountability, we do not find that performance evaluations increase teacher exit. To the contrary, we find when teachers are evaluated and the results of their evaluations or measures of effectiveness are made available, teachers are no more likely to leave. In fact, the evidence suggests that teachers may be enticed to stay as they are provided with some urgency, sense of empowerment, and evidence of areas for professional improvement. This holds true even when teacher evaluations are being used for accountability and pay raises. Related, teachers in merit-based pay programs are less likely to leave teaching than those who are not. This is noteworthy when paired with the fact that we find evaluation and accountability policies tend to be associated with keeping the most effective teachers as measured by value-added scores and removing the least effective teachers. Although differentiated compensation can be a contentious practice, it does provide suggestive evidence of the important role that strategic compensation reforms can play in improving the composition of the teacher workforce. We have a separate paper that examines merit pay in depth. Ultimately, while there may be negative consequences and warranted concerns about teacher evaluation and accountability policies, they are positively perceived by some teachers and have more beneficial effects than previously recognized. Evaluation and accountability practices may improve the teacher workforce and reduce turnover. It is important to put findings from our meta-analysis in context of future research on teacher turnover. Two areas requiring further development and exploration are relational demography (e.g., the race-matching between teachers and principals, or between teachers and students) and school improvement. There are only a few studies on the relationship between relational demography and attrition. The same holds true for how school reforms and research-practice partnerships influence teacher attrition and retention. The nascent evidence, however, suggests relational demography, particularly parity between principal-teacher, may reduce turnover. While there is an ever larger proportion of studies using quasi-experimental techniques to estimate causal effects of programs and policies on teacher attrition and retention, we need to further explore policy levers that can positively impact the teacher labor force and improve the educational opportunities for students from traditionally marginalized backgrounds. In an effort to propel this dialogue, our meta-analysis offers nuance to many commonly held beliefs on teacher turnover while providing new suggestive evidence of what we can do to positively impact the profession. It is now time for policy, practice, and future research to push our understanding and impact further.
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a00c9432c817cd5f362c536f33a62768
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2020/01/27/we-should-be-focusing-on-absenteeism-among-teachers-not-just-students/
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We should be focusing on absenteeism among teachers, not just students
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We should be focusing on absenteeism among teachers, not just students Measures of chronic student absence are now taking on important policy roles across the country. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) required the adoption of non-test-based performance measures in revamped school accountability systems, with chronic absenteeism emerging as a common preferred measure. Thirty-six states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have included either chronic absenteeism or other measures of student attendance as a factor in their school-quality indicators. Since then, chronic absenteeism has further gained attention from researchers. Our colleagues in Brookings’s Hamilton Project have put together an impressive body of work on student absences, as well as resources for policymakers on how to incorporate these measures into school accountability systems, including a recent interactive data feature on school and community factors contributing to chronic absence. The focused attention on student absences is for good reason. About 8 million students missed at least 15 days of instruction during the 2015-16 academic year. Chronic absences put students at risk of lower test performance, disengaging from courses, and dropping out of high school. Using chronic student absenteeism as a measure of school quality, however, could disproportionally affect schools serving low-income students due to its strong correlation with non-school factors, such as poverty and family background. Our calculations using data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) shows chronic student absenteeism and the percentage of students eligible for subsidized lunch service (a proxy for poverty) has a correlation coefficient of 0.23 across schools. Thus, without otherwise correcting for it, using student absence measures in school accountability systems could inadvertently perpetuate the tendency to punish schools serving high-need students, one of the well-known shortcomings of No Child Left Behind that the new ESSA law was trying to correct. Fortunately, there is a closely related measure that we believe warrants attention. In this post, we explore teacher absences, an important in-school factor that affects student learning but has received comparably little policy attention. We also discuss teacher- and school-level approaches to tackle teacher absenteeism and provide guidance for policymakers. Research has long established that teachers are the most significant school-based inputs into student learning. Empirical evidence now presents a persuasive case that teachers impact a range of student outcomes beyond test scores, including student absences, suspension rates, noncognitive skills, and college attendance. Naturally, teachers need to be physically present in the classroom to provide these benefits to students. Data from the OCR, however, suggests teacher absenteeism is a concern across many schools nationwide. On average, nearly 29% of teachers were considered chronically absent (missing 10 or more school days) in the 2015-16 school year. This is nearly twice the 15% of students who are counted as chronically absent (though we should note that OCR sets a bar of 15 or more days absent for students). When teachers miss school, substitute teachers need to be called in to cover the class. Substitutes are not nearly as effective in promoting student learning, presumably due in part to the disruption of the classroom’s instruction and the fact that substitutes are typically less-experienced instructors. For example, 10 additional days of teacher absence are associated with a decline between 1.7% to 3.3% of a standard deviation in math achievement. Further, teacher absences are costly to districts given the financial cost associated with finding and hiring substitute teachers, which accounts for roughly 1 percent of all public education spending annually. Though it may not sound like much, 1 percent of over $700 billion is not exactly pocket change. Despite the documented negative effects of excessive teacher absences, they have received little policy attention to date. It is not clear whether this lack of attention is due to union resistance, policymakers’ reticence to burden teachers with more scrutiny, or some other cause. Regardless, we feel teacher absences could be useful accountability measures for several reasons. First, chronic teacher-absence rates are less strongly related to student poverty in comparison with student absence measures. Our tabulations of the OCR data show the correlation coefficient with the share of students eligible for subsidized lunch service to be 0.05. The logic here is that school accountability measures should reflect the school’s input, and teacher absences are better than student absences at signaling that input. Second, and more importantly, teacher absences in the U.S. are notably large in comparison to other industries and countries. Though comparatively high absences among teachers have been documented previously, we suspect these rates may not be perceived as worrisome because teachers have good reasons for being absent. After all, the nature of the job entails high levels of contact with kids who get sick frequently, and the large share of women in the profession could imply teachers take more days off due to maternity leave or other household caregiving responsibilities. Yet, our tabulation of data from the Current Population Survey suggest these reasons may not pass muster (see Figure 1). Both male and female teacher-absence rates are significantly higher than college-educated workers in other industries, including other public service occupations. (Note that we intentionally excluded summer and winter holidays to avoid overcounting teacher absences.) And nurses’ working conditions certainly expose them to sick people more frequently, yet the female nurse-absence rate is comparable to teachers and male nurses are absent about 20% less than male teachers. The data suggests absences among public school teachers are relatively elevated—and a point of leverage worth policy consideration. Prior evidence on the topic also corroborates excessive absences among school teachers, and that a notable share of teachers’ absences appears to be discretionary. For instance, teachers are more likely to be absent on Mondays and Fridays, and a large percentage of absences due to illness tend to be next on days adjacent to weekends or holidays, or in short blocks of time that do not require medical certification. The discretionary nature of absences suggests that teacher behavior could respond to different policies. For example, a study using teacher contracts from New York school districts found stronger teacher attendance was associated with certain policies like bonuses for high attendance or a sick leave buy-back program. Another analysis of New York teachers showed that teacher attendance increased during the first year of an incentive plan in which teachers could receive monetary compensation for missing less than seven days. A study of teacher absences in North Carolina concludes that a policy that simultaneously raises salaries and imposes small penalties on absences would both increase teachers’ expected incomes and lower districts’ costs. A number of school districts have taken different approaches to address teacher absences and offer some anecdotal evidence. In Aldine Independent School District (Texas), for example, an incentive plan in which teachers with two or fewer absences can receive additional contributions to their retirement plan has helped the school district to reduce costs and increase the number of teachers with perfect attendance in a year. Yet not all evidence is equally positive about reducing teacher absenteeism. An analysis from 40 of the largest school districts across the nation found that school districts with certain leave policies (such as paying teachers for unused leave, allowing teachers to carry over personal leave, and restricting leave on specific dates) had similar attendance rates in comparison to schools without such policies. Though we should note most of the districts in the study had in place a combination of absence-focused policies, making it hard to draw conclusions on the effectiveness of any particular policy. We take the generally positive evidence as suggesting teacher absences could respond to individual intervention aimed at changing teachers’ behavior. However, because the evidence base is still quite small, we see this as an invitation for further policy experimentation and research. The discussion prior to this point implicitly assumes the choice to be absent—whether because of sickness or just taking a personal day—is essentially an individual outcome. But we should also be sensitive to the role schools may play in determining teachers’ behavior. A prior study suggests that school and district policies and practices are important determinants of absences. For example, schools in which teachers experience higher levels of stress, low worker interdependence, or have an unsupportive school climate could plausibly face higher teacher absences. Teaching is an emotionally and physically taxing job. According to the 2013 Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, 46% of K-12 teachers reported high daily stress. More recently, the 2017 Educator Quality of Work Life Survey showed that nearly two-thirds of teachers and school staff find their work always or often stressful. These results suggest that programs aimed at reducing teachers’ stress could be a possible mechanism to reduce teacher absenteeism. Interdependence between coworkers may also play a role. Prior research suggests that low worker interdependence is associated with higher absences, presumably because individuals feel their own attendance behavior does not affect their colleagues. Anecdotal evidence from schools corroborates this idea: Schools in which students from an absent teacher are assigned to other teachers in the school, rather than to a substitute teacher, may have lower absenteeism rates. Teachers might also be inclined to miss class in schools with a lax school climate around absences. Prior research has shown absence behaviors among peer teachers affect individual absences. Yet, if principals stress the importance of attendance by building awareness among teachers and tracking absences more closely, perhaps that culture could help promote attendance. Though reducing teacher absences to zero is unrealistic and should not be the objective, designing policies to discourage the overuse of leave and providing teachers with the support they need to be in class can be a means to improve student outcomes. If we want students to treat their attendance more seriously, we should also consider policies that will encourage teachers to set the right examples for them. To our knowledge, only one state—Rhode Island—has included teacher absence measures along with student absence measures in its school accountability system. We should note some important considerations to keep in mind when thinking about teacher absences for school accountability. First, we suspect that improvements in teacher attendance might be best addressed through a combination of “carrots” (for teachers) and “sticks” (for schools). Much of the evidence shows teachers are generally responsive to individual rewards for better attendance, so carrots could work well for the teachers. Yet, we also want to avoid situations where teachers are individually punished for legitimate absences, thus we discourage the use of punishments (i.e., the metaphorical stick) on individuals. However, given the evidence of schools’ contributions to absence behaviors, we believe sticks could be useful to apply pressure on schools. Though more research is needed here, we suspect school-level attendance measures can flag problem spots for policymakers, indicating which schools’ climates or management practices may be contributing to mediocre outcomes. Though making schools accountable for teacher attendance should encourage school leaders to re-evaluate and improve their practices, we also caution states to carefully define what counts for an absence since that definition could create unintended consequences in schools’ hiring practices. For example, to reduce absences rates, schools could be discouraged to hire teachers with chronic health problems, which would be problematic. Further, we also encourage policymakers and school leaders to consider the specific metrics that absence policies use as they will likely have different effects on teacher behavior. For example, holding schools to account for the average number of absence days among teachers pushes everyone to miss fewer days, while using the share of teachers whose absences exceed a given threshold should discourage teachers with excessive absences, but may not affect most teachers whose absences are more moderate. The appropriate policy levers are going to vary depending on the policy goal. We should be clear that the research evidence to date is agnostic as to which dimension of teacher attendance is most important—all studies we know linking teacher attendance to student outcomes use measures of individual absence and do not consider shares of chronic absenteeism, which is reported in the national OCR data. It may be the case that some dimensions of teacher attendance matter more than others, though we cannot say which is more important without further evidence. High teacher absenteeism has important consequences for students. Chronically absent teachers can cause their classes to stagnate and potentially compel colleagues to work harder to pick up the slack. Excessive teacher absenteeism is a sign that the public’s investment into public education is being underutilized, and we encourage more research and policy experimentation to gain some of the potential efficiency back. Yuhe Gu, Grace Breazeale, and Sarah Novicoff contributed to this analysis. We thank Lauren Bauer, Michael Gottfried, and Jon Valant for helpful comments.
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b7148a2df341ff53180a2e68fd685ea6
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2020/02/06/the-education-data-portal-making-federal-data-accessible-to-study-small-student-populations/
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The Education Data Portal: Making federal data accessible to study ‘small’ student populations
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The Education Data Portal: Making federal data accessible to study ‘small’ student populations American students are a diverse group. According to the U.S. Department of Education, in public schools in 2016-17 there were 24.4 million white students, 7.8 million Black students, 13.3 million Hispanic students, 2.6 million Asian students, 184,000 Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (NHPI) students, 511,000 American Indian or Alaska Native (AIAN) students, and 1.8 million students who reported identifying with two or more races. Education policy research tends to focus on the largest groups of students, in part because reliable data are often not available on smaller groups of students. But groups that make up small fractions of total enrollment, such as AIAN (1%) and NHPI (0.4%), still include hundreds of thousands of Americans. And groups that are small on average can make up a sizable share in particular schools and communities. National datasets collected by the federal government are a vital resource for understanding the educational contexts and experiences of all Americans. But, for too long, these data were hard to access. Historical data needed to understand trends over time were buried in antiquated file formats. And even more recent data often required navigating enormous data files and linking records across different sources. The Education Data Portal, created by my colleagues at the Urban Institute, changes that. It is a one-stop shop for all major national datasets on schools, districts, and colleges, with data in the same format regardless of who collected the data or whether they were collected decades ago or yesterday. The Data Portal makes the data publicly accessible to a range of audiences through a point-and-click online interface called the Education Data Explorer, an application programming interface (API), and packages for Stata and R statistical software. To illustrate how the Data Portal can be put to use, I quickly gathered data on enrollment by race and ethnicity on all schools in the U.S.—more than 96,000 of them. The figure below shows that the enrollment breakdowns of schools attended by AIAN and NHPI students look very different from schools overall. The average AIAN student attends a school that is 35% AIAN, even though this group of students only makes up 1% of students nationwide. Schools attended by AIANs are quite diverse, on average, with student bodies that are 35% white, 7% Black, and 17% Hispanic. NHPI students also attend very diverse schools, which are 21% NHPI, 27% white, 23% Hispanic, 14% Asian, and 8% Black, on average. Students at these schools are more likely to identify with two or more racial groups: 6.3%, compared with the national average of 3.6%. These data tools can be used to dig down to individual schools. For example, the public school in the U.S. with the largest enrollment of AIAN students is Purnell Swett High in North Carolina, where 85% of the 1,707 students are AIAN. Another new tool from the Urban Institute uses the Education Data Portal’s API to quickly call more than 25 years of enrollment data by race and ethnicity for every public school in the U.S. The figure below shows that student demographics at Purnell Swett have been relatively stable since 1989, although the number of Black students has slowly declined over this period and total enrollment has grown over the last 10 years. Simple data on student enrollment by race and ethnicity are just the beginning of what is possible with the datasets in the Education Data Portal. Census data indicate that Robeson County, the school district where Purnell Swett High is located, has the ninth-highest poverty rate in North Carolina (out of 115 districts). And Purnell Swett employs one teacher for every 18 students, the second-highest student-teacher ratio of the seven high schools in Robeson County. Swett High suspends more students—27% received at least one out-of-school suspension—than three out of the other four high schools that reported discipline data. Moving from educational contexts to student outcomes, Purnell Swett students post above-average math scores for the county (24% scored proficient, higher than four out of seven high schools) and below-average reading scores (25% scored proficient, the second-lowest in the county). Data can be broken down by student characteristics such as race and ethnicity. For example, 26% of AIAN students scored proficient on both math and reading tests, slightly above the school-wide average. And 9% of AIAN students took at least one Advanced Placement course, more than the rate among Black and white students (5% and 8%, respectively). These data do not tell us what to do to improve outcomes for AIAN students, but they provide important context including information on how resources and outcomes vary across schools. And the nationwide coverage of these data enables analysts to understand the educational experiences of “small” groups of students such as AIANs and NHPIs in ways that are not possible with many other datasets like nationally representative surveys. These national datasets do have important limitations. They do not tell us everything we want to know about students and schools. And they group students into broad categories such as “Asian” or “Hispanic” that don’t allow analysts to understand the circumstances of more precise subgroups such as Hmong immigrants. Nonetheless, federal data collections provide a useful national resource on education policy even as they merit continued improvement. Hopefully efforts that make them more accessible will lead to a richer understanding of American education—and especially groups of students who are too often ignored in national policy discussions.
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457e2493398d415b6b52f107b28ecb28
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2020/04/01/workforce-development-ideas-can-promote-teacher-talent-in-rural-schools/
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Workforce development ideas can promote teacher talent in rural schools
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Workforce development ideas can promote teacher talent in rural schools Recently, my colleague Elizabeth Mann Levesque published a series on innovative approaches that some employers have adopted to promote workforce development. Many businesses—often in the manufacturing or service sectors, and outside of major urban centers—have found it challenging to find and hire workers with the specialized skills to thrive on the job. Persistent needs for specialized labor, particularly in a strong economy where candidates have many other occupational choices readily available, have compelled these industries to either invest in internal training programs or partner with higher education partners to develop the talent pool they need. Though we do not often consider the teaching occupation when we discuss workforce development programs, I see several fundamental parallels—particularly with rural schools. In both cases: Employers look for workers that need some specialized training after high school; employers work in geographically constrained labor and service markets; and employers cannot offer higher wages to attract workers due to financial pressures (whether from competitors in the private sector, or anemic budget allocations in the public sector). I argue that rural schools facing similar staffing challenges would do well to study some of the innovative approaches to workforce development coming from the private sector. Similar adaptations have been started in various locales across the country, but these initiatives should be scaled to provide a robust supply of talent to these areas in need. The exact nature of current teacher shortages is not entirely clear, though the long-term signals point to general weakness in the labor market. One perspective argues that declining enrollments in teacher training programs, the continued loss of baby boomer teachers to retirement, and pressures to lower class sizes to pre-Great Recession levels creates an increasing gap between the number of credentialed teachers and the number of new vacancies in schools. Another perspective counters that shortages are not a global problem for the entire workforce, but a local problem, since schools in rural or socio-economically disadvantaged settings disproportionately account for teacher vacancies. Rural schools stand out, as they have particular difficulty in meeting their workforce needs, reporting both large shares of teacher vacancies and experiencing higher levels of turnover than suburban and urban schools. Also, regardless of locale, vacancies are not widespread across all subject areas, but are concentrated in science, math, and special education. Those on each side of this debate agree that the lack of teacher talent—at least in some areas—is an issue that has persisted for years. Consequently, many schools must rely on non-traditional sources to meet their needs (whether from Teach For America, teachers hired from abroad, or long-term substitutes). Opinions vary on whether those sources are good for students and sustainable for the health of the workforce. A common thread that Levesque describes in her workforce development series is the need for employers to think creatively about developing latent talent among their communities, rather than waiting for the right people to apply. For example, Taco Comfort Solutions, a manufacturing company based in Rhode Island, has been partnering with educational institutions in the area since the 1990s to offer learning opportunities—ranging from GEDs to master’s degrees—to help provide training to workers to professionally develop the capacity to succeed on the job. An encouraging outcome from this approach is low turnover, due to the combination of pre-existing ties to the community and a sense of reciprocal loyalty due to the investment in their professional development. This approach, where employers take an active role in investing in and developing the workforce they need, is quite common in private enterprises, though runs against the norm in teacher hiring. This is to be expected, as firm- or occupation-specific skills will require more tailored training experiences before workers can do well on the job. Conversely, teaching requires less firm-specific human capital. After all, teaching third grade, for example, is essentially the same across tens of thousands of elementary schools in the country. Thus, teachers can learn the requisite skills in their teacher training program while earning their bachelor’s degree, and employers only need to advertise their vacancies and hire among the qualified applicants. This approach works well enough in many settings, though because job searches in specific school settings and specializations cannot generate a strong enough applicant pool everywhere, these settings facing persistent hiring challenges stand to benefit most from making longer-term investments promoting workforce development. Some rural districts have recognized these persistent human capital needs and have begun to be strategic in workforce development. Two particular examples of promising approaches for rural settings are worth highlighting and expanding in different ways to continue improving talent pools in rural settings. First, grow-your-own programs are initiatives designed to encourage young people to consider a career in teaching, often organized as partnerships between university-based teacher training programs and local school districts. The programs help identify and steer interested people through the process of completing their teacher training and help connect them back to schools in the communities from which they came. Though not specifically intended to promote teacher diversity, many grow-your-own programs have realized a more racially diverse pool of teacher candidates, which helps to address another shortage in the workforce. Empirical evidence on grow-your-own programs is scant, though the extant qualitative and case study evidence suggests that these programs have helped boost the ranks of teachers in high-need areas. These programs could be even more impactful with a broader geographical reach: Most grow-your-own programs have historically been based in urban areas, though rural schools could really benefit from a more consistent source of teaching talent. A number of states are beginning to develop programs specifically targeting their rural labor markets, including Colorado and Wisconsin, though just about every state could benefit from targeted workforce development for their rural schools. Those who worry that recruiting promising individuals from rural locales to become teachers may inadvertently contribute to “brain drain” should take comfort in empirical evidence that shows teachers often return to schools that are located near (or are similar to) the schools where they were educated. A second approach is opening access to teacher training programs for rural schools. One interesting bit of evidence is that not all rural districts face similar challenges in hiring: Districts geographically close to teacher training institutions report fewer shortages. This corroborates findings from Washington state showing that first-year teachers have a high likelihood of teaching in the schools and districts where they performed their student teaching (essentially internships during their final year before graduation). Naturally, where they perform their student teaching is not random, but is typically based on partnerships between the university training program and hiring districts—and geographic proximity reduces those partnership costs considerably. Making those training programs more accessible to rural districts will engender closer working partnerships, can foster opportunities for student placement, and thus help strengthen the supply of teachers to those locales. Training programs could be strategic in reaching out to further-flung locales to attempt to strategically develop a portfolio of student teaching possibilities in a range of settings. Also, geographic proximity does not need to inhibit working partnerships: Some programs, including Texas Tech’s TechTeach, have established partnerships with rural school districts and community colleges to enable students to earn their degree online while staying home in their communities, and performing their student teaching locally. Both the grow-your-own recruiting model and the access offered through long-distance partnerships offer meaningful ways for school districts in rural settings to engage in workforce development. Investing in workforce development is likely the costlier, further-off option to fill positions when compared against simply reviewing resumes to the vacancy. However, the investment may potentially help change the trajectory of hiring challenges in the long term. As the COVID-19 outbreak forces all work into virtual meeting rooms— putting the furthest-flung rural schools the same distance away as the large urban school district down the street—now may be an opportune time to invest in these long-distance partnerships.
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e03a7caae29024aa8b0d7af49e644d59
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2020/10/16/the-covid-19-pandemic-is-revealing-the-regressive-business-model-of-college-sports/
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The COVID-19 pandemic is revealing the regressive business model of college sports
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The COVID-19 pandemic is revealing the regressive business model of college sports This year’s college football season is shaping up to be vastly different than any other in history. While games are being played, crowds are exceptionally limited or nonexistent. Furthermore, there are simply fewer games—and there is no guarantee of a complete season for any school. The combination of these factors is costing universities tens of millions of dollars and upending the underlying business model of college sports. Universities across the country have already responded by ending many low-revenue sports. This has led to widespread lamentations about the decreased opportunities for intercollegiate athletes who play sports that cannot support themselves financially. However, if we are serious about caring for intercollegiate athletes, we should begin by reconsidering the corrupt bargain at the heart of modern college sports—one that has been magnified by the pandemic. In a new National Bureau of Economic Research paper that we co-authored with Jordan Keener and Nicole Ozminkowski, we empirically investigate the economic business model of college sports. We find that the prevailing model rests on taking the money generated by athletes who are more likely to be Black and come from low-income neighborhoods and transferring it to sports played by athletes who are more likely to be white and from higher-income neighborhoods. The money is also transferred to coaches and used for the construction of lavish (and perhaps overly lavish) athletic facilities. With COVID-19 shutting off the money spigot, schools are being forced to publicly acknowledge that their athletic departments depend on regressively transferring money from athletes who grew up poor to those who grew up in richer households and to wealthy coaches. This has led a variety of policy proposals ranging from paying players directly to allowing players to profit off their name and image, breaking a longtime requirement of amateurism in university athletics. Three states have passed legislation that would allow athletes to participate in a range of activities ranging from endorsements to autograph signings. In response to these widespread policy initiatives, the NCAA this week introduced a set of far more limited proposals that would allow college athletes to earn revenue from third parties. But it remains to be seen exactly how these policies would be implemented, and to what extent it would resolve issues of financial inequities for student athletes. Furthermore, these efforts fall short of the athlete’s bill of rights that was recently proposed by members of the U.S. Senate. We begin by documenting that college sports operates under two distinct business models. These are documented in Figure 1, which shows the relationship between a school’s athletic department revenue and the percentage of that revenue that comes from the university. In the upper-left corner is a set of Division 1 schools that largely resemble the idealistic images of amateur student-athletes competing for school pride. These schools earn relatively low revenues overall, and a large amount of their financial support comes from the university. A second set of schools—those in the lower-right corner—have exceptionally high revenues and nearly all of those funds are generated by athletic endeavors, activities such as ticket sales, television contracts, and merchandise sales. These schools are all members of the “Power Five” athletic conferences, a set of schools that have traditionally fielded high-quality athletic programs. From 2006 to 2016, athletic departments at these schools saw their revenue nearly double, rising from $3.5 billion to $6.7 billion. This difference in business models suggests that optimal policy in this area should distinguish between these two distinct sets of schools when considering how athletes are compensated for their time and efforts. To that end, our subsequent analysis concentrates on the economics of the schools in these Power Five conferences. The athletic departments in these schools resemble commercial enterprises that are generating meaningful economic rents. However, the revenues are largely generated by a small set of athletes. We document that football and men’s basketball generate six times more revenue than all other sports combined. These sports, however, enjoy only 1.3 times more spending than other sports at the same school. This difference between revenues and expenditures demonstrates how the funds generated by football and men’s basketball players fund all of the remaining intercollegiate sports at each school. We estimate that the money generated by football and men’s basketball causes: increased spending on money-losing sports; higher salaries for coaches and administrators; and increased spending on athletic facilities. Today, the average school in a Power Five conference supports 20 sports, but only two sports consistently pay for themselves, and the revenue generated by these two sports supports the seemingly ever-increasing salaries for coaches and athletic department employees. Consider the teams playing the greatest college football rivalry game—the University of Michigan and Ohio State University. (Editor’s note: This fact is debatable. Authors’ note: No, it is not.) When these teams met in 2008, their coaching staffs earned $6 million and $5.7 million, respectively. Just 10 years later, these salaries grew to $15.5 million and $17.3 million—a roughly 300% increase. Even the strength and conditioning coaches for each team earned $600,000 and $735,000 a year, respectively. Conversely, the athletes on the field received no salaries for their efforts. While we support opposite sides of this rivalry, we are united in agreement that this salary growth reflects a system that maximizes profits by limiting intercollegiate athletes’ compensation to no more than the cost of attending school. The schools share these excess profits with coaches, administrators, and money-losing sports. Supporters of the current system offer several arguments in favor of the status quo. Some say it is the deal the athletes signed, without acknowledging that collusion among schools through the NCAA limits the options of young athletes. Others claim that supporting other sports, particularly those played by female athletes, has broader societal benefits. Some argue that college athletics is uniquely attractive to fans because of the disingenuous belief that the competitors are just like the other students. Finally, some argue the athletes are already paid because they receive athletic scholarships, as if paying someone any positive amount is sufficient. These arguments overlook the fundamental injustice created by transferring revenue generated from two sports played disproportionately by Black athletes from poorer neighborhoods to sports where athletes are disproportionately white and from wealthier neighborhoods and to high-income coaches. To approximate the money at stake, we consider as a benchmark a hypothetical situation where athletes could collectively bargain to the same degree as their professional counterparts. If players in football and men’s basketball received a similar share of revenue as NFL and NBA players—roughly 50% of sports-related revenue—then each scholarship football player would earn $360,000 per year and each scholarship basketball player would earn $500,000 per year. If wages by position reflected the relative earnings by position observed in professional sports, the starting quarterbacks would earn $2.4 million per year on average. Even the lowest-paid football players would receive $140,000 per year. Such a system would create winners and losers. We would expect slower growth in coaches’ salaries and facilities spending, for example. After all, intercollegiate athletes are currently “paid” in part with ludicrously lavish athletic facilities, containing features such as lazy rivers and laser tag. Additionally, it may be difficult to continue to abide by Title IX regulations, which require schools to provide equal opportunities for male and female athletes. Title IX has had numerous positive effects and addressed many clear, historical, gender-based inequities in scholastic athletics. This is true at both the college and the secondary school level. However, optimal policy must consider that equity is a multifaceted concern that involves not just gender, but also important issues such as race and income. When viewed in this light, we believe our estimates demonstrate that, even after one considers the positive benefits for female athletes, the equity of Title IX when applied to an athletic department primarily supported by the efforts for poorer Black athletes is questionable at best. Any effort to reform the NCAA must consider a more nuanced regulatory approach that acknowledges the regressivity and racial injustice that is central to modern college sports. However, allowing some intercollegiate athletes to share in the fruits of the labor does not stand in the way of continuing to provide meaningful athletic opportunities for athletes participating in sports that currently generate negative net incomes. To illustrate this point, consider that much of the growth in athletic department revenues since 2005 is driven by the increasingly valuable media rights for football and men’s basketball. This includes both contracts with traditional networks like ESPN as well as the development of conference-owned channels, such as the Big Ten and SEC networks. This revenue growth is largely unrelated to the athletic success of other sports. In Figure 2, we show a comparison between the average actual spending on women’s sports (the solid line) and estimated spending if the costs of these sports had only grown with inflation (the dashed line) for each school in a Power Five conference. This inflation-adjusted spending is an estimate of the resources necessary for a school to both provide athletic opportunities for female athletes, as well as increase revenue sharing for the athletes necessary to continue providing athletic opportunities for women’s sports at the 2006 quality level. For the average school, the difference in this spending amounts to approximately $76,000 per scholarship athlete in football or men’s basketball. This thought experiment demonstrates that there is ample revenue to both continue offering non-revenue sports at some level while compensating those responsible for the large growth in funds available to athletic departments. The pandemic has pulled back the curtain on the ugly business of college sports. Its leaders would like to pretend it remains an amateur endeavor, but they only want to apply those cherished principles of amateurism to the athletes risking their health to generate profits, and not the coaches and administrators who financially benefit from the current system. Addressing this question is even more important as we ask college football players to risk their health to generate the money necessary to perpetuate this fundamentally inequitable system.
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01129087fa3efc1e4ae560776ddc1b8f
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2020/10/19/the-complex-and-dynamic-legal-landscape-of-lgbtq-student-rights/
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The complex and dynamic legal landscape of LGBTQ student rights
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The complex and dynamic legal landscape of LGBTQ student rights In recent years, the rights and experiences of LGBTQ people have been a growing subject of national news media coverage, scholarly research, case law, and policymaking. Within the educational context, the attention has been significant. Thus, it is an important time to examine the legal landscape of this topic, which demonstrates a trend in litigation that recognizes the rights of transgender and gender-expansive students. During the Obama administration, the U.S. departments of Education and Justice released guidance in 2016 clarifying that transgender students are protected under Title IX. The Trump administration rescinded that guidance in February 2017. In that same year, a federal court of appeals judge wrote a moving concurring opinion in a case involving a transgender student (Gavin Grimm or G.G.). At the time, this case was impacted by the Trump administration’s decision to rescind the 2016 guidance. The judge who examined this case stated: Three years later, equality indeed prevailed in G.G.’s case. Specifically, according to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals: Grimm’s case, which is currently being appealed, illustrates one of the many facets of the national LGBTQ legal landscape, a landscape that is both complex and evolving. There have been several other recent legal challenges addressing transgender students’ rights in public schools. The lawsuits span a variety of issues, from restrooms to pronoun preference to athletics. This recent litigation is not entirely surprising as studies suggest that transgender and gender-expansive students often experience discrimination in schools. Before presenting the case law, it is worth noting that throughout this article, we use the word transgender because this is the language often used by the courts. However, the issues before the court may apply to students who identify as gender fluid, gender nonbinary, genderqueer, or gender expansive. In August 2020, the 11th Circuit (Alabama, Florida, Georgia) affirmed a federal district court’s opinion, finding the school’s policy prohibiting a transgender male student from using the boys’ restroom as a violation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and Title IX. The court held that the policy was administered in an arbitrary way and that it lacked any factual support. Also, in August 2020, after five years of litigation, the Fourth Circuit (Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia) issued its decision in Gavin Grimm’s case, finding both a violation of the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX when Gavin was prohibited from using the boys’ restroom. These recent cases are consistent with our earlier research, which reported that every court across the nation that has examined these K-12 restroom access cases (n=10) has ended in a favorable result for transgender students. As the Seventh Circuit observed, “A policy that required an individual to use a bathroom that does not conform with his or her gender identity punishes that individual for his or her gender non-conformance, which in turn violates Title IX.” In addition to these 10 access-related cases, our earlier work reported that there have also been at least three challenges initiated by cisgender plaintiffs who claimed that their constitutional right to privacy was violated when they shared a restroom with a transgender student at school. This litigation did not end in a favorable result for the cisgender students. In all four cases, the courts declined to recognize such an expansive constitutional right to privacy. Although courts have only begun to address this issue, one 2020 federal court decision provides some helpful guidance on the matter. This lawsuit involved a public schoolteacher who refused to address transgender students by their preferred names and pronouns in class because of his religious beliefs. The school district adopted a policy allowing transgender and gender-expansive students to use the restroom of their choice and to change their names in the school database. Teachers were asked to use the names listed in the student database, but one teacher refused to do so. This teacher worked out a plan with school officials to refer to all students by their last names in order to avoid using students’ preferred names. This plan was eventually dropped because it created tension in the school. The teacher refused to comply and was asked to resign. He sued the school district. In dismissing the teacher’s free exercise claim (one of 13 claims), the federal district court found that the school district’s policy was neutral and generally applicable to every teacher, regardless of religious belief. Furthermore, there was no evidence that this policy was developed to target any specific religious belief. There is at least one other lawsuit that has been filed with similar claims that is still ongoing. Similar to pronoun preference, transgender student participation in athletics is starting to attract more attention, but there has not yet been a lot of litigation in this area. In one recent lawsuit, plaintiffs challenged an Idaho law that barred the participation of transgender women and girls in female student athletics. The law would have prohibited participation on female teams without verifying the “reproductive anatomy” if it was called into question. In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs sought a preliminary injunction to enjoin enforcement of the law. The court granted the plaintiffs’ preliminary injunction. South Dakota, Tennessee, and Connecticut have been involved in other controversies involving transgender students and athletics. These matters remain ongoing. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights recently released a “revised letter of impending action” related to the topic. In the preceding section, we have described some narrow legal matters impacting LGBTQ students, but there are other emerging concerns that relate to this topic. Below, we have included an illustrative but non-exhaustive list of ongoing issues to follow: As highlighted above, the outcomes of the court cases have ended in a favorable result for K-12 transgender students. Even though the U.S. Supreme Court has not addressed the matter, these issues present emerging legal concerns that will be important to watch. In addition to litigation, research will continue to increase our comprehension of this important policy topic. For example, current research demonstrates that policies excluding transgender and gender-expansive youth in schools have a detrimental impact on their overall well-being, whereas inclusive school policies increase student engagement and improve academic, emotional, and psychological well-being. These studies will assist school leaders in understanding the need to create a school climate that is accepting of all students.
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2021/02/24/educators-are-key-in-protecting-student-mental-health-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/
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Educators are key in protecting student mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic
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Educators are key in protecting student mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic American students were experiencing widespread mental-health distress long before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. A tragic expression of this distress, youth suicide has been on the rise for the past decade and is now the second leading cause of death for 15- to 24-year-olds. Now, the pandemic is making matters worse. In a recent survey, over 80% of college students reported that COVID-19 has impacted their lives through increased isolation, loneliness, stress, and sadness. Although it’s too soon to conclusively link national youth suicide data to the pandemic, school districts across the nation have been reporting alarming spikes in both suicides and attempts at self-harm. These connections are entirely unsurprising given what we know about the impact of social isolation on mental and emotional well-being. While stay-at-home orders, quarantines, and social-distancing precautions are essential public-health tools for curbing the spread of infectious disease, these measures may well have the opposite effect on the prevalence of psychological anguish and distress. Students in kindergarten through college faced a sudden transition to online learning in the spring of 2020, finding themselves abruptly disconnected from their established daily routines, support systems, and sources of security. This disruption occurred at the precipice of a year of extended isolation in the context of a devastating global pandemic and social, political, and economic unrest. Millions of students have still not returned to the classroom and new research identifies young adults as the most vulnerable group for anxiety and depression during the pandemic. Indeed, we find ourselves amid a student mental-health crisis. As we continue to weather the impacts of the pandemic and work toward recovery and an eventual full return the classroom, here are three things educators, school counselors, administrators, and parents can do. Given the scale of disruption that students have experienced over the course of the pandemic, parents and educators should know that some increased stress, anxiety, and apathy among students is expected. Students who were thriving in an active educational community before the pandemic may resist or find it difficult to fully participate in a virtual environment. As a college professor, I’ve noticed students who were confident and enthusiastic participants in the classroom struggle in finding their voice during a Zoom class riddled with technological glitches and new cultural norms related to communication. As a parent, I’ve navigated myriad meltdowns trying to convince my six-year-old to log on to yet another day of virtual school. While not necessarily normal, this type of low-grade distress has become the norm in these strange times. Parents and educators should expect challenges but keep a careful lookout for sudden or extreme changes in student behavior, moods, and activities. If a student abruptly begins refusing to participate in their normal activities or begins lashing out in ways that cause harm to themselves or others, it is important to connect them with resources to help. As students begin returning to the classroom, educators should watch for new signs of social phobia or discomfort, understanding that students may struggle to transition seamlessly back into the social setting they successfully navigated in pre-COVID-19 times. With so much going on, it may be hard for adults to spot signs of distress in a timely manner. Harnessing increasingly sophisticated technological risk-assessment tools, creating smaller group settings for students, maintaining connection touch points, and championing a culture that empowers peers to look out for each other (such as the Sources of Strength model) are all ways to help ensure that someone spots and acts on a warning sign in time. For students who are struggling, resources for help are out there. The trick is connecting students to the best form of available support, whether in their homes, schools, or communities. Communication is key to this challenge. At my children’s elementary school, a “parents as partners” model establishes and encourages pathways for communication between parents and teachers. This is a great place for educators and parents to start. Parents should know whom to talk to at their child’s school or university about mental health concerns and should be aware of the school’s resources for helping. Educators and administrators should be proactive in sharing information about mental well-being programs available on their campus and in the community as well as school policies with parents, so that adults are working together to identify and address problems before they become more serious. Parents can provide resources at home, including dedicating physical space for virtual learning and creating structure for students to focus on school at home, while offering plenty of breaks to step away from screens and get outside. Distressed students might benefit from at least some in-person connection with peers—another important resource—if (and only if) parents can find safe ways for such interactions to occur. Considering the high levels of stress that students, parents, and teachers have been exposed to over a long time, we all should actively seek pleasant activities and practice self-compassion to increase our ability to cope. Educators and administrators can help by making available dedicated resources for mental well-being, resilience, addressing challenges with online learning, and assisting with the transition back to in-person learning. This may take the form of counseling staff or services, or a comprehensive online program such as the Student Resilience Project Toolkit, a trauma-informed, student mental-health and wellness toolkit recently launched at my university to help students build coping skills and connect them to university resources. Parents, educators, and administrators should always have available community resources at the ready to share with students, such as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or the Trevor Project to support LGBTQ youth. Just as we can intuit that social isolation is likely to exacerbate psychological distress and even suicide risk, we can expect social connection to be a strong protective factor for young people. In fact, research tells us that students at risk of suicide are more likely to turn to a peer than an adult or authority figure for help, and that social connection may reduce the risk of suicide by fostering a sense of belonging. Indeed, tapping into existing peer networks appears to be a promising means of supporting students and intervening with those who are struggling. The challenge, though, is how do schools and universities nurture social connection in the virtual, inherently disconnected environment of the pandemic? I hope to address this question directly in upcoming research, but for now I can share some best practices already at educators’ fingertips. For example, when it comes to social connection in an educational setting, class size matters. Especially in a virtual setting, reducing class sizes or offering ample opportunity for dedicated small-group interaction for the same kids to interact over time can help students feel more connected to their peers. One-on-one connection points are critical, too. If it is not feasible to offer students extended one-on-one time with a teacher, pairing students with a peer or an older student mentor can encourage students to support each other and connect over what they are learning. Educators should also take care to prioritize opportunities for active connection (direct, back-and-forth interactions) over passive connection (scrolling a chat or social-media feed), as passive connection can have the opposite effect on the goal of increasing social connection. Educators should also be explicit with students that they are a source of support for mental-health issues. The bottom line in these challenging times is that focused, meaningful interactions matter greatly. Encourage students to take breaks from screens when they can and take care to cultivate connections wherever possible. Schools and parents may find the benefits to mental well-being extend far beyond the end of the pandemic. Thanks to Lily Swanbrow Becker for writing support on this post.
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c80cf70a99d94948b8e9e01c9bbc129d
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2021/03/02/during-the-pandemic-lost-education-jobs-arent-what-they-seem/
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During the pandemic, ‘lost’ education jobs aren’t what they seem
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During the pandemic, ‘lost’ education jobs aren’t what they seem Throughout 2020, media accounts were filled with stories about private sector job losses, layoffs, and bankruptcies. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), private sector companies employed 7 million fewer workers at the end of 2020 than they had at the start of it, a 6% decline. On a proportional basis, the job losses were actually larger in the public sector, especially in public education. The same BLS data show that employment fell by 8% at public K-12 schools and 11% in public higher education. And yet, there were far fewer stories about public sector job losses. My team at the Georgetown University Edunomics Lab, for example, has been tracking school district budget decisions over the last year, and we have not seen many stories of large-scale layoffs in the nation’s biggest school districts. So, what caused the education job losses? And what do they mean for the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill making its way through Congress? When I dug into the data, I found that education job losses stem from a slowdown in hiring, not layoffs or a surge in worker turnover. While it may not matter much to the delivery of public education services how the jobs were lost, it does have implications for recovery efforts as Congress contemplates the next round of federal aid. Both the private and public sectors suffered major job losses last year. Critically, the numbers refer to lost jobs, not people losing their jobs. This is an important distinction, and it varies across private and public employers. In the private sector, a “lost job” typically means that someone—a person—was put out of work. According to another BLS survey measuring labor turnover, private sector employers laid off more than 35 million workers in 2020, an increase of 81% from 2019. But the same was not true for public education employees. Public colleges, universities, and K-12 schools laid off fewer workers in 2020 than they did in 2019. If layoffs weren’t responsible for the missing education jobs, was the decline due to a surge in retirements, as some news stories predicted last summer? No. For public education employees, separations due to retirement, death, and disability declined in 2020. Were more education employees voluntarily leaving their jobs out of dissatisfaction or in search of better pay? Also no. What the BLS calls the “quit” rate for public education employees fell 27%. The graph below, using data from the BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), shows this discrepancy. The green line represents all private sector employers. The red line represents public colleges, universities, and K-12 school districts. In the private sector, layoffs had a bump in 2009 in response to the last recession and then a much larger spike in 2020. But public education looks different. It was much lower over the entire period and had a more rounded uptick in 2009-2011. Otherwise, layoffs stayed pretty constant over time. And, as a percentage of all public education employees, there were fewer layoffs in 2020 than in any year since 2001. Other state and local government employees had similar turnover patterns in 2020, but the numbers are more extreme in education. So how did public education lose jobs while worker turnover was falling? The answer mainly comes down to slower hiring. State and local governments implemented formal or informal hiring freezes last year that meant they were no longer growing their payrolls organically or replacing the employees who left. In the fall, as many colleges and most K-12 schools continued to operate remotely, they didn’t hire the same number or type of employees that they would have in normal years. Rather than formally laying off workers, schools may just never have hired or re-hired substitute teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria staff, janitors, or other employees who might only be paid when schools are physically in session. In other words, the public sector jobs weren’t “lost” so much as not yet filled. In terms of providing services, it may not matter much whether jobs are lost due to layoffs or from a hiring freeze. What matters is the service that those workers provide. Of course, if schools are not providing the same in-person services, they may not need the same staff as they normally would. Unfortunately, the employment data we have for 2020 doesn’t tell us much about which roles are being unfilled, whether they’re part-time or full-time jobs, or whether the losses are proportional nationally or concentrated in different states or regions. But not all jobs are created equal, and an “education job” does not necessarily mean a “teacher” or “professor.” Another set of Census Bureau data suggests that, during the last recession, schools tended to protect full-time workers—especially those in teaching and other instructional roles. Although we don’t have precise enough data at the moment, it’s likely that education jobs are responding to student-enrollment trends on the ground. For example, in a recent post for this blog, Daphna Bassok and Anna Shapiro found that enrollment has declined in Virginia school districts, especially for pre-K and kindergarten students, and those declines are worse in districts offering remote instruction only. At the higher ed level, enrollment declines have been steeper at community colleges than at four-year institutions. It’s a safe bet that employment figures are following these enrollment patterns. The national figures can also distort what’s happening in different states or communities. In the last recession, some state and local governments suffered heavy job losses, while others barely suffered at all, or decided to protect one sector or another. As one example of the variation, California schools enrolled about 13% of all K-12 students nationwide at the start of the last recession, but it accounted for 35% of all teacher job losses. In higher education, Illinois public colleges and universities employed just 3% more people in 2019 than they did two decades prior, whereas employment at Texas colleges and universities rose 55% over the same period. Those regional disparities are likely to play out again in our current recession. An employment decline due to a hiring freeze requires a different response than one driven by worker turnover. Budget-wise, if schools never hired the staff that they would have in normal years, they may have built up a reserve to be used in the coming years. Schools certainly faced additional costs in 2020, such as new technology or PPE for students or staff, but the savings from lower personnel costs could help offset them, at least partially. The exact balance between the two, however, will vary across the country. State budget situations also vary, but as a whole they are better than initially feared, meaning education funding is likely to hold up better as well. Ultimately, the education labor market will depend on student enrollments, and employment in the public education sector will only bounce back if and where student enrollment bounces back first. Across both K-12 and higher ed, there’s likely to be enormous disruptions if enrollments don’t bounce back quickly, or if students don’t return to the same schools. If nothing else, congressional leaders should be cognizant that some communities may be dealing with budget surpluses even as others face large financial holes. Their responses should be tailored accordingly. For example, the latest draft stimulus bill includes maintenance of effort provisions that would prohibit states and districts from cutting education funding more than other parts of government, and from enacting disproportionate cuts to high-poverty schools and districts. These provisions, while important, are designed for a world where every community is contemplating budget cuts. But that’s not what’s playing out. Instead, Congress should draft language to ensure all money meant for recovery efforts actually makes it to the hardest-hit communities, no matter if their budget is going up or down. Regardless, a new round of federal stimulus would help unlock the frozen education labor markets, which could lead to a scramble for talent. Research has found that K-12 teachers hired during weak economic markets were more effective, on average, than those hired during boom times. Given the slow hiring last year, schools could afford to be selective about whom they wanted to hire, but worker turnover—and job openings—are likely to rise as the economy recovers. With a rise in turnover, an infusion of stimulus money, and more schools and colleges reopening in-person services, education employers may suddenly find themselves competing for workers. If and when that competition arrives, we may start seeing stories of schools struggling to find qualified employees. Even then, it’s worth keeping in mind that public sector employees, especially public education employees, have much lower mobility rates than workers in other sectors of the economy. That held true during the pandemic, and it’s likely to continue after it subsides.
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d772181d170839d94c2f6f3077ec5cd2
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2021/03/04/with-digital-savvy-teachers-can-enliven-americas-classrooms/
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With digital savvy, teachers can enliven America’s classrooms
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With digital savvy, teachers can enliven America’s classrooms While many teachers still endure remote instruction and the Zoom fatigue that comes with it, more and more are returning to schools. Over half the nation’s districts have reopened and children are returning to classrooms, including urban centers like Chicago and New York City—even if they’re peering out from behind plexiglass screens. But as educators breathe a weary sigh of relief, will they simply snap back to the old normal? Hopefully not, for this is a poignant moment that should not be wasted. Many teachers are not only weathering the pandemic, they are crafting novel ways of motivating kids and tailoring instruction, even partnering with parents in potent ways. As educators reopen schools, they just might reinvent classrooms. My research team has followed 32 California teachers since last fall, coding hours of recorded Zoom sessions. It’s clear that many of them feel exhausted after long staring into that flickering grid of bedraggled faces. But we also discovered an uninvited yet living laboratory for creative teachers. Their pedagogical inventions–deploying digital tools that spur lively conversation or offer personalized feedback in real time–have bubbled up from below, rather than mandated by district bureaucrats from above. Our study also reveals pedagogical breakthroughs that help battle ever widening racial disparities in learning. Inspired teachers now deploy video clips, music, and real-time exercises to invite participation and speak to kids’ colorfully diverse communities. A few innovations stand out: materials and new media that spark robust conversations among students and teachers; digital tools that ease student assessment, then tailor exercises to each student’s proficiency; and rethinking the school day to reduce class size and better organize learning at home. “I hate it,” Antoinette Estrada told me, a fifth-grade teacher outside of Oakland, after months of Zoom-based instruction. But Estrada’s eyes brighten when turning to her novel teaching tools. She moved her entire science curriculum online, hosting “tons of videos relating to what they are reading, with investigations they can do at home.” Another tool, emulating action-packed video games, invites students to solve math problems, eager to win their digital adventure. This exemplifies a trend in which designers pull the seductive elements of gaming into formal curricula that match state learning standards in clever fashion. Estrada also deploys software that gauges each student’s reading level, then automatically pegs exercises and homework to their proficiency. In short, teachers are discovering the same engaging dynamics inside digital lessons that motivate children to purloin their parent’s cell phone. Critics often claim that technology breeds impersonal or alienating norms online. But we discovered how digital tools can host safer environs for shy students or those with learning disabilities. “I have kids who participate through chat, but they never talk to me on video,” said Amanda Parker, a Waldorf teacher. Kids with disabilities join mainstream classes in the morning, then break into smaller “intervention groups” during the afternoon. Creative teachers like Estrada and Parker are not alone, as many educators harvest the fruits of their digital labor. One in every five district chiefs say they will retain digital innovations as their students return, according to a RAND study entitled, “Remote Learning Is Here to Stay.” Nearly three-fourths of the nation’s teachers say one-to-one access to laptops, post-coronavirus, will improve their classroom practices. Beyond the move away from didactics, more radical reforms are surfacing as well. Many schools have split classes in half; teachers then repeat new content for tandem groups of just 14 to 16 students. To free morning time for these small classes, asynchronous lectures and written exercises are programmed beforehand, tackled by students in the afternoon. Parker talks of “reversing” her reopened classroom in which stronger pupils listen independently to taped reading passages, “while I teach the material here with my low kids, and then we flip it.” Some charter networks, like Rocketship Public Schools in Silicon Valley, expect students to watch lectures at home, freeing in-class time for hands-on projects. Fewer students are marching back to school with sagging backpacks stuffed with textbooks. Teachers have digitized conventional curricula, along with applied exercises, such as art projects and music pieces enlivened electronically. Nor can the dog still eat the homework, since assignments now live online. Many teachers report housing curricular materials and homework tasks in a single digital location, inviting parents to track their child’s progress and easily lend a hand at home. “I’ve never seen parents so aware of what we are doing day to day,” one teacher told us. Whether these new partnerships with (exhausted) parents can be sustained once kids return to school remains an open question. Key lessons have emerged from talking with teachers, along with observing their lessons online. First, novel digital tools best stoke learning in socially cohesive classrooms. Leaders in the ed tech industry talk constantly of personalizing instruction or breeding great autonomy for the lone child. But this narrative ignores how inventive teachers embed digital tools in ways that get all students into the act, stoking kids’ shared interest in math games or story comprehension by blending videos, animation, and digitally energized applications. Tech-savvy teachers don’t rely on clever digital tools alone, they work from a larger pedagogical toolkit to build socially coherent lessons. They set norms for how children contribute vocally or work on tasks live in unison with one another. Estrada sorts students into breakout rooms where the software reads aloud. Then, kids “explain to each other why they are choosing a certain answer. It’s more interesting doing it together with peers, rather than me talking the whole time,” Estrada said. For more routine tasks, other software magically grades math and vocabulary exercises, freeing her time to devise more challenging activities. The second lesson from our study: These pedagogical innovations may soon evaporate into thin air, lost amidst repressed memories of the Covid-19 era. Educators display a cathartic joy when returning to their classrooms—now with only a fraction of their kids in attendance, the other half huddled in safe pods down the hall or still sitting at home. But a mindless return to stuffy classrooms will not likely recover kids’ lost year of schooling. This is especially important to remember given that campuses serving higher shares of Black and Latino students have remained closed far longer than those situated in better-off suburbs. So, can the renaissance in pedagogy, spurred by teachers themselves, somehow be sustained and trumpeted more loudly? Or, will the centuries-old routines of schooling quietly quell these unprecedented digital and social inventions? Money alone will not be enough. Congress directed $54 billion in fresh stimulus to school districts last December. President Biden aims to more than double this amount, spurring the nation’s momentum in unlocking classrooms. But it remains up to local educators to curate inventive pedagogies that work. We have seen plenty of teaching that fails to engage kids: dreary PowerPoint lectures while students remain dead silent; didactic explication of long division with no opportunity for pupils to practice. Instead, district leaders might propagate a variety of innovations, from better ways to organize the school day to novel means of engaging parents. Teachers have drawn digital tools and fresh ideas from websites and social media, born instantly out of necessity. But careful research could discern which new pedagogies effectively boost the confidence and competence of all children. Our data stem from teachers in charter schools. Can their peers in large urban districts display this level of creative agility? Familiar habits and deep-seated rituals must not swamp all that educators have learned over the past year. Instead, teacher associations, district leaders, and policymakers might cultivate these seeds of innovation, nurturing the creative pedagogies that have sprouted across the land.
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a9e01a32782e4db444a156e2b277eaca
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2021/03/09/debate-centered-instruction-can-be-new-classroom-tool-for-civility-and-racial-justice/
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Debate-centered instruction can be new classroom tool for civility and racial justice
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Debate-centered instruction can be new classroom tool for civility and racial justice When stressed-out students and teachers return to their schools, it will be a challenge not only to re-engage with education, but to do so in an environment where truth itself has come under challenge. One recent report from the RAND Corporation, based on a national survey of elementary and secondary students and teachers, finds that even before the pandemic, the war over “truth” and decline in civility in society at large had seeped into classrooms. Laura Hamilton, Julia Kaufman, and Lynn Hu—the authors of the RAND study, appropriately titled “Preparing Children and Youth for Civic Life in the Era of Truth Decay”—report that, while there was broad support among teachers to address this challenge through enhanced civic education, most social studies teachers felt ill-equipped to do it. A revival of civics instruction in middle and high school can help. But we shouldn’t stop there. By teaching debate techniques, we could enhance civility, improve student engagement and learning, and, in turn, narrow racial and ethnic disparities in educational outcomes. Governments at all levels and education leaders can help catalyze this educational revolution. As I outlined in my recent book, “Resolved,” the pedagogical technique I have in mind is “debate-centered instruction” (DCI), which is modeled after competitive debate. In competitive debates, the student participants offer reasoned positions—backed by evidence—in civil discussion, without name-calling and constant interruptions. In other words, the kind of discourse that should be the basis of all functioning democracies. Two academic studies, one of urban schools in Chicago and the other in Baltimore, confirm what my own experience and common sense suggests: that competitive debate improves students’ academic performance, especially for students of color and girls. They each use proxy variables that attempt to control for self-selection, or the propensity of higher-performing students to engage in debate. However, less than 1% of high school students—and even less for those in middle school—participate in extracurricular competitive debate tournaments. DCI is delivered in classes by posing a claim (such as, “The protagonist in the novel is a universal tragic figure,” or “The U.S. should not have entered World War I.”), then asking student groups to find evidence for and against that claim and the reason why that evidence supports each position. All arguments are presented orally, which develops students’ speaking skills (they’re much more likely to talk with and to their peers than in front of an entire class, at least initially), and ultimately improves their writing and reasoning abilities. My book profiles two entrepreneurs promoting DCI, Les Lynn and Mike Wasserman (both former highly successful debaters), and the teachers they are leading. Since publication, I have learned about many other teachers doing similar things on their own. One outstanding example is AnnMarie Baines, a 20-year veteran debate coach and former high school debater. She founded The Practice Space, a nonprofit in California that champions the practice of valuing and developing voices of all ages through programs, coaching, and curriculum. What is the impact of DCI? Lynn and Wasserman have been surveying their teachers and analyzing student performance in schools with largely nonwhite student populations for over five years. They report substantial gains in students’ standardized test scores, grades, and attendance, among other outcomes, following the introduction of DCI teaching techniques. Teachers and principals who have used or overseen the use of DCI also are overwhelmingly enthusiastic about it. As the former principal of Proviso West High School Chicago, Dr. Nia Abdullah, told me, the teachers in her school embraced DCI, finding it helpful in reducing student boredom by actively engaging students in teaching themselves and their peers. DCI is not just for secondary education. Chris Medina, former debate coach at Wiley College—the HBCU famous for winning the 1935 national college debate championship that was featured in the movie “The Great Debaters¸” and which has continued producing college debate champions—documents in his Ph.D. dissertation unusually large and statistically significant gains in the reasoning ability of Wiley students taught through DCI techniques. Medina is now the executive director of the HBCU Speech and Debate Association. With students returning to in-person learning, DCI is an ideal way to re-engage them in the joy of learning while instilling in them a “learning mindset” that will be benefit them in school and beyond. Instilling a love-of-learning mindset through DCI could help to narrow the gaps in educational attainment across socioeconomic groups that have widened during this crazy year of remote and hybrid learning. Likewise, DCI offers one way to begin to narrow the deep partisan and ideological divisions in our country and to restore the civility in discourse. All these benefits can only be realized over time, but it is certainly time to start trying, beginning with students—our future voters. What better way to begin healing than by teaching students how to engage in civil discourse, and to do so constructively? Governments at all levels and education leaders can promote greater use of DCI in the classroom. At the district level, superintendents (with or without the encouragement of local school boards) can encourage teachers, directly or through their schools, to take professional development (PD) instruction from experienced DCI instructors, using a limited portion of existing PD budgets. Likewise, state education departments can encourage school districts to take this step. And the Department of Education, through matching grants to states or to school districts directly, can incentivize these PD initiatives throughout the country. There are several DCI training models to choose from, all of which use some type of initial teacher training during the summer before the school year begins, and then some type of mentoring or coaching of the teacher participants during the school year: full-time in-school DCI mentors, as is the case now in Boston and Chicago; or instruction and mentorship delivered remotely, a recent initiative for teachers nationwide spearheaded by New York high school teachers/debate coaches Steve Fitzpatrick and Radley Glasser, organized by Christi Griffin of The Ethics Project, and just funded by the Kauffman Foundation (and with which I am personally involved). Fortunately, there are multiple educational innovators out there experienced in using DCI techniques in the classroom to help disseminate an instructional technique they know that works. It does so on multiple levels–improving educational achievement, narrowing achievement disparities, and imparting civility in today’s students and tomorrow’s voters. We could use progress on any one, ideally on all three, of these fronts right now. The author would like to thank each of education pioneers discussed in this essay and Dr. Anna Rosefsky Saavedra, a research scientist with the University of Southern California’s Dornsife Research Center, for their continuing advice and suggestions on earlier drafts. The author has also been providing assistance to each of the organizations featured here on scaling their DCI activities, but has no financial interest in any of these endeavors.
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88a1be6da66e489ce9d206e44c46dad8
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2021/03/12/coronavirus-and-schools-reflections-on-education-one-year-into-the-pandemic/
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Coronavirus and schools: Reflections on education one year into the pandemic
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Coronavirus and schools: Reflections on education one year into the pandemic One year ago, the World Health Organization declared the spread of COVID-19 a worldwide pandemic. Reacting to the virus, schools at every level were sent scrambling. Institutions across the world switched to virtual learning, with teachers, students, and local leaders quickly adapting to an entirely new way of life. A year later, schools are beginning to reopen, the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill has been passed, and a sense of normalcy seems to finally be in view; in President Joe Biden’s speech last night, he spoke of “finding light in the darkness.” But it’s safe to say that COVID-19 will end up changing education forever, casting a critical light on everything from equity issues to ed tech to school financing. Below, Brookings experts examine how the pandemic upended the education landscape in the past year, what it’s taught us about schooling, and where we go from here. Daphna Bassok — Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Brown Center on Education Policy: COVID-19 highlighted the essential role of child care for children, families, and the economy, and our serious underinvestment in the care sector. In the United States, we tend to focus on the educating roles of public schools, largely ignoring the ways in which schools provide free and essential care for children while their parents work. When COVID-19 shuttered in-person schooling, it eliminated this subsidized child care for many families. It created intense stress for working parents, especially for mothers who left the workforce at a high rate. The pandemic also highlighted the arbitrary distinction we make between the care and education of elementary school children and children aged 0 to 5. Despite parents having the same need for care, and children learning more in those earliest years than at any other point, public investments in early care and education are woefully insufficient. The child-care sector was hit so incredibly hard by COVID-19. The recent passage of the American Rescue Plan is a meaningful but long-overdue investment, but much more than a one-time infusion of funds is needed. Hopefully, the pandemic represents a turning point in how we invest in the care and education of young children—and, in turn, in families and society. Lauren Bauer — Fellow in Economics Studies and in The Hamilton Project: Just over a year ago, before the U.S. locked down, Diane Schanzenbach and I wrote a piece on how to prevent the foreseeable food-insecurity crisis. We argued that, if schools were closed, there had to be an aggressive solution to make up for the loss of the School Breakfast Program and National School Lunch Program. Pandemic EBT is a program that Congress authorized to replace missed prepared school meals with a grocery store voucher. We evaluated the effect of Pandemic EBT on measures of food hardship as it rolled out over the country last summer, finding that it reduced the share of households reporting that their children did not have enough to eat by 30%. Congressional reauthorization of Pandemic EBT for this school year, its extension in the American Rescue Plan (including for summer months), and its place as a central plank in the Biden administration’s anti-hunger agenda is well-warranted and evidence based. But much more needs to be done to ramp up the program–even today, six months after its reauthorization, about half of states do not have a USDA-approved implementation plan. Stephanie Cellini — Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Brown Center on Education Policy: The pandemic has affected nearly every facet of higher education, but what is most striking to me is the dramatic decline in community college enrollment. Typically, we see enrollment in community colleges increase during recessions as unemployed individuals seek new skills and first-time students look to gain a credential before embarking on a career path. In this recession, the pattern is reversed: Enrollment in community colleges has dipped by about 10% since last year. Declines are particularly sharp among first-time students and students of color, raising critical concerns about increasing inequality in the coming years. In contrast, enrollment is up in for-profit and online colleges. The research repeatedly finds weaker student outcomes for these types of institutions relative to community colleges, and many students who enroll in them will be left with more debt than they can reasonably repay. The pandemic and recession have created significant challenges for students, affecting college choices and enrollment decisions in the near future. Ultimately, these short-term choices can have long-term consequences for lifetime earnings and debt that could impact this generation of COVID-19-era college students for years to come. Helen Shwe Hadani — Fellow in the Center for Universal Education and in the Metropolitan Policy Program: Academic learning losses in reading and math are a growing concern across the U.S. and globally, especially for children living in low-resourced communities that have been disproportionally affected by the abrupt shift to remote schooling. However, many are equally concerned about the harder-to-predict developmental effects of ongoing social deprivation, both in and out of school, for children. A core part of children’s social experience—interacting with other kids in school and on playdates—has been stripped away and disappointingly replaced with virtual get-togethers and pandemic school. Many U.S. educationalists are drawing on the “build back better” refrain and calling for the current crisis to be leveraged as a unique opportunity for educators, parents, and policymakers to fully reimagine education systems that are designed for the 21st rather than the 20th century, as we highlight in a recent Brookings report on education reform. An overwhelming body of evidence points to play as the best way to equip children with a broad set of flexible competencies and support their socioemotional development. A recent article in The Atlantic shared parent anecdotes of children playing games like “CoronaBall” and “Social-distance” tag, proving that play permeates children’s lives—even in a pandemic. Michael Hansen — Director of and Senior Fellow in the Brown Center on Education Policy: Standardized testing is one of many school rituals abandoned last spring as the unfolding pandemic swept the globe. Last month, the Department of Education announced it would not give states blanket waivers of standardized tests this spring, though offered flexibility in meeting testing mandates this year. With many school leaders balking at the announcement, however, uncertainty remains about what tests will look like. My view: Let’s use this opportunity to revisit how we test students. Tests play a critical role in our school system. Policymakers and the public rely on results to measure school performance and reveal whether all students are equally served. But testing has also attracted an inordinate share of criticism, alleging that test pressures undermine teacher autonomy and stress students. Much of this criticism will wither away with different formats. The current form of standardized testing—annual, paper-based, multiple-choice tests administered over the course of a week of school—is outdated. With widespread student access to computers (now possible due to the pandemic), states can test students more frequently, but in smaller time blocks that render the experience nearly invisible. Computer adaptive testing can match paper’s reliability and provides a shorter feedback loop to boot. No better time than the present to make this overdue change. Douglas N. Harris — Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Brown Center on Education Policy: The COVID-19 school closures have fundamentally changed, and largely undermined, schools for more than a year. This is just the beginning. First, it will take some years for schools to find ways to get current students back on track—academically, physically, mentally, and otherwise. Second, while students, parents, and teachers have been pushed out of their comfort zones for a year, and will seek a return to normalcy, they will also realize that they liked some COVID-19 schooling changes and will push, from the bottom-up, to maintain them. My high schooler, for one, would like a later start time and about half as much time at school. A third push for change will come from the outside in. COVID-19 has reminded us not only of how integral schools are, but how intertwined they are with the rest of society. This means that upcoming schooling changes will also be driven by the effects of COVID-19 on the world around us. In particular, parents will be working more from home, using the same online tools that students can use to learn remotely. This doesn’t mean a mass push for homeschooling, but it probably does mean that hybrid learning is here to stay. Brad Olsen — Senior Fellow in the Center for Universal Education: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused untold devastation across the world, yet it’s also revealed some interesting truths about education. It’s taught us that teachers, learners, and caregivers are incredibly resilient, but not indefatigable. It’s taught us that technology can be wonderful, but it will never replace the value of people in safe but rigorous learning spaces talking, playing, and working together. It’s taught us that a 20th-century model of schooling must be updated to prioritize the human aspects of education—not the mechanical ones—and push education to be simultaneously individualized and of common purpose. It’s taught us that we ignore opportunity inequities at our own cost and at the expense of the most vulnerable. It’s taught us that teachers should not be taken for granted. It’s taught us that not everything in the curriculum matters and not everything that matters fits into the curriculum. And it’s taught us that schools must stock up on hand soap! I am hoping we will use this forced rupture in the fabric of schooling to jettison ineffective aspects of education, more fully embrace what we know works, and be bold enough to look for new solutions to the educational problems COVID-19 has illuminated. Richard V. Reeves — Senior Fellow in Economics Studies: For obvious reasons, the pandemic has hit college enrollment numbers hard. The biggest decreases have been at the undergraduate level, and above all for community colleges. Protecting the finances of these institutions is obviously a key policy concern. Of course, the longer-term effects for social mobility of a disrupted transition to postsecondary education are the deeper concern, along with the consequences for racial and economic equity. But an overlooked dimension of the challenge is the stark gender gap. College enrollment for male students in fall 2020 dropped by 5.1%, according to National Student Clearinghouse figures, several times more than the fall for female students (0.7%). The drop in enrollment in previous years has also been much bigger for men than women, and, as the chart below shows, it comes against the backdrop of lower overall rates of enrollment in the first place. There is already a large gender gap in education in the U.S., including in high school graduation rates, and increasingly in college-going and college completion. While the pandemic appears to be hurting women more than men in the labor market, the opposite seems to be true in education. Jon Valant — Senior Fellow in the Brown Center on Education Policy: When I look back on the last year in education, my first reaction is sadness. It’s just been a very hard year on so many students, educators, and parents across the country. Looking through a policy lens, though, I’m struck by the timing and what that timing might mean for the future of education. Before the pandemic, enthusiasm for the education reforms that had defined the last few decades—choice and accountability—had waned. It felt like a period between reform eras, with the era to come still very unclear. Then COVID-19 hit, and it coincided with a national reckoning on racial injustice and a wake-up call about the fragility of our democracy. I think it’s helped us all see how connected the work of schools is with so much else in American life. We’re in a moment when our long-lasting challenges have been laid bare, new challenges have emerged, educators and parents are seeing and experimenting with things for the first time, and the political environment has changed (with, for example, a new administration and changing attitudes on federal spending). I still don’t know where K-12 education is headed, but there’s no doubt that a pivot is underway. Kenneth K. Wong — Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Brown Center on Education Policy: The pandemic challenges the current capacity of our public education system to address the widening gap in learning and mental well-being of our diverse student population. There is an urgent need to rebuild an education system that embraces equitable learning opportunity for all. Several actions are critical for the new configuration of our education system. These efforts will strengthen the capacity and prepare our education system for the next crisis—whatever it may be.
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743599600e6166d926dc97a5d66e0305
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2021/03/23/almost-everyone-is-concerned-about-k-12-students-academic-progress/
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Almost everyone is concerned about K-12 students’ academic progress
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Almost everyone is concerned about K-12 students’ academic progress Concern about our nation’s children is currently at the center of intense public debate. While the pandemic caused virtually all schools nationwide to close by April 2020—keeping almost all K-12 students home for the remainder of the 2019-20 school year—children’s mode of learning (fully in-person, fully remote, or a hybrid mix of the two) in 2020-21 has been highly variable. Yet with vaccinations accelerating, COVID-19 rates falling, and money flowing, there is clear momentum behind offering in-person instruction. As schools begin to reopen, attention is turning to the deep changes necessary to reverse the learning opportunity disparities that are ingrained in U.S. education. As educators consider possible changes, adults’ beliefs about the impacts of the pandemic on children’s academic progress—overall and for specific student subgroups—matter. These subjective opinions are important because they indicate political support, or lack thereof, for investment in education. Long-needed, fundamental, and sustained investments in and improvements to K-12 education—especially for underserved low-income and racial minority students—will need broad support. Beyond parents of elementary and secondary children and Democrats—those traditionally most supportive of investments in K-12 education—but from older and Republican voters, and from affluent as well as economically struggling voters. To learn perspectives on children’s academic progress from adults with K-12 children in the household and from adults as a whole, we used data collected between Dec. 16, 2020, and Feb. 7, 2021, from a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults through the USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research’s Understanding America Study. We asked how concerned adults were that today’s generation of K-12 students may not make as much academic progress this year as they would during a typical academic year. In addition to asking about concern for K-12 students overall, we asked separately about concern for students from lower-income households, students of color, elementary students, and middle/high school students. The results were clear and overwhelming: Almost three-fourths (71%) of US adults are concerned about K-12 students’ current academic progress. Very few economic, political, or social concerns share this level of agreement in the population, implying policies and programs designed to address the negative impacts of the pandemic on schools could have broad support. Given low-income communities and communities of color have been especially hard hit by the pandemic, schools in these neighborhoods will need even greater levels of resource and policy attention. We find even higher levels of concern for students in these groups: 81% of adults were concerned about lower-income children, and 77% about children of color. Not only did we find levels of concern were high across the board, but we also found more advantaged groups were often more concerned about students’ academic progress (even when statistically controlling for an adult’s age, whether they have a K-12 child living in their household, adult race/ethnicity, household income, adult education level, and partisanship). For instance, we found higher-income and more educated adults are more concerned—both overall and specifically about low-income students and students of color—than are low-income and less-educated adults. Seventy-four percent of adults in households making less than $25,000 are concerned about low-income children—lower than the corresponding rates for adults in households making $25,000-$150,000 (81-83% concerned about low-income children), and households making more than $150,000 (88%). As another example, greater proportions of adults aged 65 and older expressed greater levels of concern for low-income students and students of color, with 86% and 85% of adults over 65 concerned for each respective subgroup, compared to 77% and 72% concerned about these two student subgroups among adults aged 18-34. This is a promising pattern from an education policy perspective, as the unfortunate reality is that power to enact meaningful political change tends to be concentrated among the wealthiest and older individuals. These results suggest that those who tend to hold power may also have a will to enact meaningful, equity-based education policy in the wake of the pandemic. We did not find racial differences. Regardless of their own race, adult Americans are equally concerned about the impacts of the pandemic for K-12 children. Notably, too, we found high levels of bipartisan concern. Republicans (77%) and Democrats (70%) are concerned about K-12 children’s academic progress. Over 80% of Republicans and Democrats are concerned about lower-income children (81% Republicans, 84% Democrats) and close to 80% of each political group are concerned about children of color (76% Republicans, 82% Democrats). In other words, despite Congress’s partisan voting on the American Rescue Plan, there is widespread agreement that the effects of the pandemic on children are concerning. In contrast, in 2019, relevant national survey results reflected much larger partisan differences on public education issues. For example, while 76% of Democrats thought education should be a top federal policy priority, 58% of Republicans felt the same. Also in 2019, 67% of Democrats supported or strongly supported basing part of teachers’ salaries on whether they teach in schools with many disadvantaged students, compared to 52% of Republicans. What does this all mean? There may never have been more widespread, bipartisan concern about K-12 children’s educational progress, especially among adults without a K-12 child in the home. Unjust as it may be, political will to mobilize change often rests with more affluent and more educated groups. It also typically requires at least some degree of bipartisan agreement. The vast majority of affluent adults, and those from both sides of the political aisle, are concerned for K-12 children—particularly those who have been underserved. As districts and schools reopen, with leaders designing and rolling out new initiatives, they will likely find widespread encouragement. The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the National Science Foundation Grants No.2037179 and 2120194. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. The authors are also grateful to Marshall Garland, Shira Korn Haderlein, and the UAS administration team for their contributions to this work.
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2e4d2b986ee74d113acbd8648b803ca6
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2021/03/25/teachers-unions-scapegoats-or-bad-faith-actors-in-covid-19-school-reopening-decisions/
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Teachers’ unions: Scapegoats or bad-faith actors in COVID-19 school reopening decisions?
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Teachers’ unions: Scapegoats or bad-faith actors in COVID-19 school reopening decisions? Northshore School District in Washington state made national news when it shuttered its doors as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic on March 5, 2020, and served as one of the first school districts in the United States to do so. On March 12, 2020, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine became the first state executive to issue a pandemic school closure order, but he was soon followed by 48 other governors who put a pause on in-person schooling, most through the remainder of the school year. Then came fall 2020. While state leaders took a heavy role in spring 2020 school closures, the dog days of summer unfolded to a more “laissez-faire” attitude among top state executives in regard to the fall 2020 schooling decisions. What followed were agonizing reopening decisions that played out in the nation’s over 13,000 school districts, creating lengthy Zoom school board meetings, such as the famous marathon meeting in Miami-Dade. With the venue for school reopening decisions moving from the state to the local level, the teachers’ unions entered the school reopening debate from stage right. The reality is, when reopening decisions were brought into the realm of local control, they became far more polarized and political. This should not be terribly surprising. There are far more education interest groups and competing education policy ideas at the state level, making it much more difficult for a single organization to garner a dominant voice among policymakers. When these decisions are brought down into local school board meetings, there remain only a few organizations that are organized enough to exert influence. The teachers’ unions are the largest elephant in the room and the one that, in most school districts around the country, are directly connected to the supply of teachers to the classroom. With a team of co-authors, I tracked school reopening decisions throughout the fall 2020 semester in 250 of the largest school districts around the country to understand just how much influence teachers’ unions had on these decisions. We measured teachers’ union power in two ways. The first captures a more fixed measure of power that is built up over a longer period of time: the length of collective bargaining agreement. We think of this as a proxy for the detailed working conditions secured by the union. The second is a shorter-term measure, one that captures the reactionary power of teachers’ unions to school reopening decisions. We tracked the Facebook pages of teachers’ unions in our sample for social media posts that made forceful statements on school reopening, including those that discussed lawsuits, membership opinions, and protests. We find that school districts with lengthier collective bargaining agreements were less likely to start the fall 2020 semester with in-person instruction, were less likely to ever open for in-person instruction during the fall semester, and spent more weeks overall in distance learning. We further find that the shorter-term union power flexes—those captured by the social media posts—were associated with a higher likelihood of reopening for full, in-person instruction during the fall semester. These short-term reactionary responses were not enough to slow the pressure toward reopening; instead, it’s the long-standing, entrenched union power relationships captured by the length of the bargaining agreement that are associated with a slowed reopening timeline. But what about COVID-19 rates? We find that pandemic severity, as measured by the county COVID-19 hospitalization rate, had no relationship with the probability of in-person reopening. Instead, the other strongest predictors of an in-person reopening during fall 2020 included political partisanship (the share of Trump voters in the county) and demographics (the percentage of white students in the school district). To be clear, we are not the only authors to document that unions, politics, and demographics matter above and beyond pandemic severity, though we are the first to show these relationships beyond the start of the fall 2020 school year. (You can read four other studies with very similar findings here, here, here, and here.) So, the empirical research suggests that teachers’ unions slowed fall school reopening decisions during a worldwide pandemic, and media accounts suggest their efforts continued as schools returned from winter break. Naturally, some will view union actions as an affront to America’s students and others as a public service. My hunch is that where one stands right now on the debate around teachers’ unions and school reopening does not depend on nor will it be shaped by the evidence as to their influence on school reopening just presented. Instead, it likely depends on whether and how one has formulated opinions on two other bodies of evidence (some of which has emerged more recently): 1) the evidence on the risks of the pandemic to teachers and students returning to face-to-face instruction, and 2) the evidence on the potential harms caused by distance learning. For those that believe the public health risks of in-person instruction far outweigh the harms caused by distance learning, then teachers’ unions are being unfairly scapegoated for their role in reopening decisions. For those that believe the benefits of in-person instruction far exceed the risks of face-to-face instruction during a pandemic, teachers’ unions are then obstinate, bad-faith actors. I will likely not shift readers opinions here on these fronts, but there is now some solid empirical evidence on the risk of in-person instruction during the pandemic (here, here, here, and here) and the impact of distance learning (here and here). We should expect teachers’ unions to slow school reopening decisions just like we should expect them to advocate for increased education funding, lower class sizes, or enhanced teacher sick leave. Protecting and representing teachers is their job and they survive to the extent to which they do this job well. Ever since the Supreme Court’s decision in Janus v. AFSCME (2018) that prohibited the mandatory payment of union fees, unions have had to work harder at this job than ever before (as I have written elsewhere). Teachers’ unions are like an insurance policy to which teachers will subscribe for days like this—worldwide pandemics where the job becomes substantially more uncertain. This should not be mistaken as a ringing endorsement for teachers’ unions to have unfettered influence on reopening conversations. Special interests that represent a few, by definition, exclude many other viewpoints. It is entirely possible, even probable that our localized school governance systems around the country are out of balance—and were this way well before the pandemic. They have become too politically polarized and swayed by entrenched special interests (sometimes nationalized special interests). One solution is to increase the marketplace for local education ideas (consider efforts by parents to form their own unions) such that there is greater competition in the local education space. In these situations, special interests become far less special (and far less influential), thereby helping restore a more balanced form of educational governance. Ultimately, local education control is not going by the wayside anytime soon (though it is eroding). While some focus their attention toward the teachers’ unions and their role in school reopening decisions, we might also take a hard look at our local school boards and other school governance institutions that decide which voices are heard the loudest when policy decisions are made. The COVID-19 pandemic and school reopening decisions that followed should lead us to scrutinize whether our local educational governance systems are properly calibrated to protect and promote student interests over and above special interests.
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7aa251459c94fcc37cf90cd52828083a
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2021/03/30/standardized-tests-arent-the-problem-its-how-we-use-them/
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Standardized tests aren’t the problem, it’s how we use them
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Standardized tests aren’t the problem, it’s how we use them Education Secretary Miguel Cardona is refusing to back down on a federal requirement that states must administer standardized tests this year, although a letter to state leaders from the Department of Education last month said that states will have flexibility on how to apply results. States concerned about the safety of administering a test during a pandemic may implement shortened versions of assessments. This relief from the hammer of accountability, if not from the tests themselves, has gotten a mixed reception from anti-testing advocates, school leaders, and teachers who are still trying to ready schools for face-to-face learning. They’re right: Greater accountability and standardized testing won’t give students the technology they need, give teachers the necessary PPE to stay safe, or give families the income to better house and feed themselves during the pandemic so that kids can focus on learning. And if there was ever a time to see how misguided our accountability systems are in relation to addressing root causes of achievement disparities, it’s now. On its face, relieving students, teachers, and families from the grip of test-based accountability makes sense. We know student achievement, particularly in low-income schools and districts, will dip due to circumstances related to the pandemic and social distancing. We know the source of the decline. And we currently use standardized tests well beyond what they were designed to do, which is to measure a few areas of academic achievement. Achievement tests were not designed for the purposes of promoting or grading students, evaluating teachers, or evaluating schools. In fact, connecting these social functions to achievement test data corrupts what the tests are measuring. In statistics, this is called Campbell’s Law. When a score has been connected to a teacher’s pay or job status, educators will inevitably be drawn toward teaching to the test, and schools toward hiring to the test and paying to the test, rather than making sure students get the well-rounded education they need and deserve. However, there is still a role for testing and assessment. We need to know the full extent of the damage from the last 12 months beyond the impact on academics. For one, the federal government should have states take a roll call to see who hasn’t been in school. The government must also assess families’ technological needs if it is to properly support the states financially. In other words, states should be using multiple assessments to address the range of needs of students and their teachers. This is what the focus of academic and non-academic assessment should have always been, not a means to punish the people who are dealing with conditions that erode the quality of an education. As many have said in different contexts, the pandemic exposed existing structural inequalities that are driving racial disparities. This is as true in education as it is in other sectors. Limited broadband and computer access, home and food insecurity, deferred maintenance on buildings, uneven employment benefits among non-teaching school staff, and fewer resources for schools that serve children of color were throttling academic achievement before the pandemic. They will certainly widen achievement gaps during and after. As a condition for receiving a waiver, Cardona is requiring states to report on the number of chronically absent students and students’ access to computers and high-speed internet, a request that raised the ire of some Republican lawmakers. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) objected in a March 25 letter that the requirements for information on chronic absenteeism and access technologies as conditions are “not permitted under ESEA as amended by ESSA.” The letter continued: “They are both outside the scope of what states are seeking to be waived and violate specific prohibitions on the Secretary requiring states to report new data beyond existing reporting requirements.” Cardona is right in his effort to use tests properly. Gathering information is essential if we really care about closing gaps in educational opportunity and achievement. Information shines light on structural problems. When the effects of structural problems on student learning are ignored, teachers and school boards are blamed for any deficiencies in student performance. Racism ends up pointing a finger at Black education leaders, teachers, and kids for disparities that result from systemic racism. This is why we should rethink how we use tests in the future. States have historically found ways to starve majority-Black and -Brown districts of the resources they need to thrive. Let’s be clear: We need to hold racist policies and practices accountable. Segregation and school financing systems that reinforce segregated housing arrangements reflect the application of racist attitudes about Black people and communities that show up in outcomes. And since No Child Left Behind ushered in an era of accountability in 2001, those accountability systems have largely failed to address those sources of inequality. Black districts in particular have felt as much pain from testing as from the negative conditions that surround schooling. School and district takeovers, mass firings, and the imposition of charter schools have not been applied fairly or evenly because testing didn’t identify the real problems. Amid a pandemic, testing is a necessary inconvenience to help us understand how we can better address structural racism and other root causes of academic disparities. But if tests aren’t used as a way to support Black districts, students, and families by leading to solutions for structural inequities, then they will only facilitate the epidemic of racism that existed before the pandemic.
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2bc38cc7a18f05aa5fb21c4d9130579a
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2021/04/07/why-expanded-student-supports-can-improve-community-college-outcomes-and-boost-skill-attainment/?shared=email&msg=fail
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Why expanded student supports can improve community college outcomes and boost skill attainment
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Why expanded student supports can improve community college outcomes and boost skill attainment There is a great deal of policy attention these days on expanded access to higher education and on the role of community colleges in particular. Deservedly so. Community colleges are a critical access point to higher education in the United States. Last year, roughly 1,000 community colleges enrolled more than 5.5 million students. These schools are also a gateway to a four-year degree for many students. Roughly half of all bachelor’s degree students in the U.S. previously attended a community college. Furthermore, community colleges serve a large share of students who are low-income or first-generation college students, as well as those who are older or from underrepresented minority groups. Given their low tuition and widespread accessibility, community colleges are key to expanding higher educational attainment and boosting skills in this country, which can provide an important avenue for upward social mobility. People who earn an associate degree are rewarded in the labor market. One recent study indicates that an associate degree yields a causal earnings premium of about 30% over a high school degree. Those who begin at a community college and successfully transfer to a four-year degree-granting institution also earn higher wages and greater economic security, given the earnings premium associated with a bachelor’s degree. However, degree completion rates among degree-seeking students at community colleges tend to be quite low. Expanded student supports might be the key to improving student outcomes at community colleges. Many community colleges are resource-constrained and unable to offer comprehensive student supports. Community colleges on average spend less per pupil than do four-year public universities. There is now a growing body of evidence showing that comprehensive student support programs lead to increased persistence and completion among low-income students at community colleges. Too many students drop out of community college before earning a degree. More than two-thirds of first-time, full-time degree-seeking enrollees at community colleges do not complete an associate degree within three years, according to national data. This low rate of persistence is not a new challenge, and there has been a good deal of effort and resources expended to try to improve outcomes for community college students. Billions of dollars annually are spent by states, colleges, and students on developmental education programs—also referred to as “remedial education”—for academically underprepared students. But the evidence on the effectiveness of these programs in improving student outcomes is discouraging. It is unlikely that continued innovation with developmental education programs is the key to bringing about a significant improvement in outcomes for community college students. In addition, federal and state grants already keep out-of-pocket tuition costs at community colleges low for many low-income students. Bringing tuition rates even lower, or making them free altogether, is unlikely to substantially increase community college completion rates. A recent experimental study found little effect of a needs-based scholarship program in the state of Wisconsin on the completion rate of students at two-year public colleges. A more promising approach to improving student outcomes at community colleges has emerged: helping students address the many personal and institutional obstacles they face while trying to persist in school. Challenges arise in the form of family responsibilities, health issues, financial shocks, mental health struggles, among others. For low-income students, a lack of financial resources or buffers could exacerbate the consequences of any setback. Furthermore, successfully navigating the college bureaucracy and various course and program requirements, deadlines, and paperwork can be complicated. Qualitative studies based on interviews with community college students indicate that many students struggle to successfully navigate the system of higher education institutions. Students at community colleges face complex decisions and systems with limited guidance. A comprehensive report finds that students at larger institutions have worse outcomes. The authors speculate that larger institutions might be less structured and harder to successfully navigate. Comprehensive student service programs improve outcomes for community college students. A growing body of evidence from a variety of programs shows that personalized student support programs lead to improved student outcomes. In a recent study, we highlight five such programs: Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), Stay the Course, Inside Track, One Million Degrees, and Project Quest. Each of these programs has been evaluated through a randomized controlled trial (RCT). Table 1 provides some key details about these programs. A central feature of these five distinct programs is comprehensive support provided to the students by an advisor, mentor, or case manager. Though the terminology differs across programs, the intent of this service is similar. The case manager (or coach or navigator) works closely with the student to assess the unique challenges they face, identify appropriate goals and a plan to achieve them, drive accountability to follow through on the plan, and offer personalized guidance when obstacles arise. In addition, all of these programs are designed to provide services to students for an extended period of time, often lasting multiple years. Some of these programs also provide students with academic supports such as tutoring and advising, as well as financial assistance to cover fees, transportation, or emergencies. The most promising evidence comes from evaluations of ASAP, which was initially developed by the City University of New York (CUNY). This program provides full-time, low-income community college students comprehensive support for up to three years. Students receive access to an advisor with a relatively small caseload who supports their academic, social, and personal needs. The RCT evaluation of ASAP showed that the intervention nearly doubled graduation rates after three years; 40% of the program group received a degree, compared with 22% of the control group. In addition, 25% of the served students were enrolled in a four-year institution, as compared to 17% of control group students. A replication of ASAP in Ohio also showed large positive effects on student outcomes, including a doubling of graduation rates after three years and significantly increased transfers to four-year colleges. The initial evaluations of Stay the Course, Inside Track, and One Million Degrees all find statistically significant, positive effects on persistence in school after at least one year. The RCT evaluations of Stay the Course and Inside Track also yield suggestive evidence of positive effects on degree completion, at least for some subgroups of students. A long-term evaluation of Project QUEST shows a significant and sustained impact on earnings for students who were randomly assigned to receive the program services. Nine years after initial enrollment in Project Quest, students who were randomly assigned to receive program services have earnings that are on average 20% higher than for those in the RCT control group. This shows the economic gains to be had from investing more resources in helping community college students persist. Conclusion Evidence suggests that well-designed programs that provide comprehensive student services can improve persistence and completion rates among community college students. The personalized and intensive nature of these programs mean that they can be costly to implement. The costs of the five programs we highlight range from $1,000 to $5,700 per participant per year. Though these are sizable costs, this price tag is low compared to the economic benefits associated with college degree attainment. For the previously listed programs to have a large and sustained impact on college completion rates at a national level, they would need to be implemented on a much larger scale. Recently, higher education advocates and some policymakers have called for enhanced government support for programs that provide wraparound services at community colleges. President Biden endorsed this idea during his presidential campaign. If there is political and philanthropic will, comprehensive student support programs can be made broadly available and help thousands, potentially millions, of students succeed in college. Table 1. Key Features of Select Community College Student Programs
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21f15bfc94b06c83e749e14bbce9cb0b
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2013/05/15/the-impact-of-school-feeding-programs-in-senegal/
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The Impact of School Feeding Programs in Senegal
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The Impact of School Feeding Programs in Senegal Access to universal primary school education has been a key policy priority for many nations trying to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). However, learning outcomes of students in sub-Saharan African, particularly those in rural areas, remain disappointing. Of the continent’s approximately 128 million school aged children, only half will attend school and learn basic skills (see the Africa Learning Barometer). Researchers from the Consortium for Social Economic Research are examining efforts in Senegal to improve the quality of education. On March 28th, the organization’s director, Abdoulaye Diagne, gave a seminar to the Brookings’ Africa Growth Initiative on a recent study on the impact of school feeding programs on the cognitive acquisitions in rural primary schools in Senegal. Hunger, malnutrition, and chronic fatigue are huge hurdles to learning in sub-Saharan Africa. One proposed intervention is the implementation of school feeding programs, or cantines as they are called in Senegal. Diagne’s research seeks to determine whether cantines in Senegal have a significant impact on learning outcomes in the areas of reasoning, memory, comprehension and knowledge. Additionally, the study analyzes the impact of governance (in this case the presence of a parent teacher association) on student achievement. The research sample spanned 120 schools that had no prior cantine programs in four Senegalese provinces that featured a high incidence of poverty. In half of these schools (the treatment group) feeding programs were administered and the other half (the control) received no feeding programs. Over the course of one academic year, students were given cognitive tests in two subjects, French and math. The results showed that the feeding program contributed to the cognitive development of the students and produced positive outcomes that were more pronounced in math than in French. The school feeding program did not have a significant impact on grade repetition or the dropout rate. Also noteworthy was the finding that the program contributed to an increase in the nutritional well-being of both students and children who co-habitat with the students, such as siblings, but who do not attend school themselves. Diagne also found heterogeneous impacts of the treatment on different groups of students. For instance, the treatment had a greater impact on boys compared to girls, and was especially beneficial to students who had delayed entry into school and were over 10 years old. Diagne concluded his presentation by noting that the cantine program in Senegal was effective in raising learning and nutritional outcomes among students. However, the cost of school feedings was a concern expressed by schools during the study. Diagne suggests that if the school feeding programs were administered in conjunction with other health-based programs such as de-worming, the results might have been even more notable. In light of Diagne’s study, programs such as cantines could be considered as a critical intervention that helps holistically address the learning needs of the poorest, most marginalized children. Dr. Abdoulaye Diagne is the director of the Brookings Africa Growth Initiative’s partner think tank the Consortium for Social Economic Research or CRES. He visited Brookings for the meetings surrounding the visits of President Macky Sall and the presidents from Cape Verde, Malawi and Sierra Leone. For more information about his study, please contact Dr. Diagne at [email protected].
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b60d6c6d9d3a90d26bf9bed3989bafb8
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2013/06/17/inclusive-education-a-rising-tide-floats-all-boats/
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Inclusive Education: A Rising Tide Floats all Boats
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Inclusive Education: A Rising Tide Floats all Boats Among the five transformative shifts considered essential within the U.N. High-Level Panel’s (HLP) report to the secretary general for the post-2015 development agenda is one which addresses the Bali communique’s emphasis on social inclusion: “Leave no one behind.” The HLP report, launched at the end of May, points to the challenges of ensuring inclusion for marginalized groups in the post-2015 agenda. Few are more marginalized than those with disabilities, however there are compelling reasons to ensure that learning goals are formulated with this significant segment of the population in mind. By one widely used, albeit speculative estimate, some 93 million children– or 1 in twenty of those aged 14 or younger – live with a moderate or severe disability of some kind. In cases where conflict and the prevalence of landmines overlaps with poverty, disability can be even higher. For instance in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, Brookings’ Echidna Global Scholars Program alum Khadim Hussain found that disability rates are between 15 and 20 percent. Studies across countries show a strong link between poverty and disability, which is in turn linked to gender discrimination, negative health outcomes and employment challenges. While children with disabilities are often caught in a cycle of poverty and exclusion and are less likely to receive an education, a quality education can contribute to poverty reduction in their lives. The HLP report’s illustrative goal for education, “Provide Quality Education and Lifelong Learning,” focuses not only on access, but also on learning standards for reading and writing, work-related skills and other measurable learning outcomes. As the education debate shifts from access to access plus learning it is important to turn attention to what learning means for this segment of the population. The goal of education in the 21st century is not simply the mastery of content knowledge, but the mastery of the learning process: education should prepare all people for a lifetime of learning. All children have the potential to learn, but some learning indicators will need to be different for those with disabilities, both cognitive and physical. However, the individuality of disabilities and their associated learning challenges can seem to make the challenge of equitable learning so daunting that it may seem too complex to take on. Yet now is an opportune moment to do so, when the Learning Metrics Task Force is grappling with the very nature of what constitutes learning across a broad range of domains and how to measure it. Moreover, addressing issues associated with learning for persons with disabilities can illuminate some of the more challenging aspects of the wider learning agenda in ways that may benefit others as well, including in these following three ways: With the issuance of the HLP panel’s report and as groups mobilize for the next phase of discussions and action toward defining the post-2015 development agenda, the education community may find that aiming high to ensure no one is left behind will yield unexpected and positive benefits in learning for all. Hopefully the challenge and benefits of integrating learners with disabilities into the global development agenda will be more fully explored during the U.N. General Assembly High-Level Event on Disabilities on September 23, 2013.
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3253c639ff9933922fd9a5e777accaf8
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2014/01/23/mexicos-education-reforms-and-latin-americas-struggle-to-raise-education-quality/
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Mexico’s Education Reforms and Latin America’s Struggle to Raise Education Quality
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Mexico’s Education Reforms and Latin America’s Struggle to Raise Education Quality On January 10th, the Center for Universal Education (CUE) and the Global-CERES Economic and Social Policy in Latin America Initiative at Brookings (ESPLA) co-hosted an event on education innovation in Latin America. The guest was Andres Delich, the former minister of education of Argentina. Delich now applies his education expertise to the broader Latin American region and his remarks focused on Mexico’s education reform. Afterwards there was a wide ranging discussion with participants from Brookings as well as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the U.S. government, and others. Delich began by providing an in-depth analysis of the origins of education reform in Latin America. He delved into the history of the region, beginning with the first efforts to create coherent national education systems in the 19th century. At that time, shortly after most countries had attained their independence from Spain, political leaders were focused on the creation of a national identity rather than the development of human capital. Young nations were primarily driven by the need to forge a national character that would differentiate them from their former colonial powers. The outcome was a highly centralized state. Education was no exception, and school systems developed largely into top-down institutions, defined by rigidity and homogeneity of structure and curriculum. As Delich argued, this foundational history defined the region’s education systems for the next 100 years. But by the second half of the 20th Century, it was clear that the status quo was suffering from two distinct but interrelated problems. Not only were school systems not reaching everyone—a problem of access—but the quality they were delivering was substandard by international standards as well. In an effort to reverse these trends, the decades of the 1980s and 1990s saw a movement towards decentralization led by countries like Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. Instead of a dominating central administration, more autonomy was given to local institutions. But as Delich pointed out, reformers did not alter the fundamental dynamic of their education systems. Rather, they simply transferred the same bureaucratic mechanisms and centralized controls from the national level to state governments instead. Coverage was indeed improved and more students received access to school. At the same time, the quality of the education they received continued to stagnate and Latin America as a whole fell further behind global education leaders in Europe and Asia. Enter Mexico’s current education reform effort, which was launched by the administration of President Pena Nieto as part of a raft of ambitious reforms to the Mexican state. These reforms are unique in the sense that they seek to address the underlying governability issues of the education system through a pragmatic mix of centralization and decentralization. Under these proposals, the Mexican state will recover some of the powers that it relinquished in previous reforms. While individual schools will continue to be administered by the states, the national government will take more responsibility for teacher certification, evaluation and salary decisions. But there will be some decentralization as well. Schools will be given more autonomy over how they manage their own resources, define their own curriculums and utilize their teachers and staff. In other words, the national government will use its authority to set and enforce broad standards of quality, particularly when it comes to teachers. But within that framework, the local schools will have greater latitude find creative ways to improve learning and student outcomes. The key, as Delich argues, is achieving a new transparency that will allow educators to understand what works and what does not, and to allow a greater linkage between resources and performance. Political opposition from states and local unions who fear seeing their authority diluted means that the implementation and long term sustainability of these reforms is still very much a critical challenge. Some also argue that local schools are not prepared to successfully handle such increased responsibility and that the central government will struggle to transparently manage its new oversight responsibilities—for instance, the creation of the nation-wide teacher training and evaluation mechanisms that need to be set up extremely quickly. Delich did not deny that there will be challenges. But as became clear over the course of the discussion, no one seriously contends that the status quo is acceptable, especially given that spending more money often solves very little. Instead, reforms must go to the heart of the system and change the overarching incentive structures facing teachers and administrators. Mexico is taking a step toward focusing the debate in Latin America around education quality, and at heart, how to leverage resources to achieve the best possible performance. It is a debate that cannot come soon enough and all eyes will be on Mexico as it takes its next crucial steps.
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81622735b4e0a22086a5bf3fe7013c23
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2014/05/15/girlsedu-celebrating-progress-remaining-steadfast-and-asking-whats-next-for-girls-education/
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#GirlsEdu: Celebrating Progress, Remaining Steadfast, and Asking What’s Next for Girls’ Education
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#GirlsEdu: Celebrating Progress, Remaining Steadfast, and Asking What’s Next for Girls’ Education Editor’s Note: The #GirlsEdu blog series is a collection of posts discussing girls’ education and the challenges it faces around the world. Some of the authors are former Echidna scholars, who studied how to improve girls’ education at Brookings before returning to their home countries to implement their research. On May 1, the Women’s Refugee Commission bestowed Voices of Courage awards to three people, including Mary Tal, a lawyer from Cameroon who fled to South Africa and started Whole World Women Association, and Leymah Gbwoee, Liberian peace activist and 2011 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. These two women are powerful reminders of the importance of education in empowering girls and women, especially in the most difficult of circumstances—that in the face of turmoil, violence and displacement education is the one thing that can never be taken away. Over the past 20 years, there has been a striking amount of progress in getting girls into primary school. In 1990, just under half of girls in low-income countries were enrolled in primary school. By 2011 that figure had climbed to nearly 80 percent. Advocates in grassroots organizations, governments, and global policymaking bodies have worked tirelessly to establish clear goals for enrolling an equal number of girls and boys in school, and working collectively towards those goals has worked. Today, one-third of developing countries actually enroll more girls than boys in primary school, and a child’s level of wealth and the area they live in are much more likely than their gender to affect whether they attend school. Yet we cannot rest on these successes. Despite the progress in enrolling girls in school, the job is not done. Instead of all girls facing these challenges, it is now the poorest girls living in rural areas who are, across the board, still the most in need of education. Moreover, experts need to move beyond talking only about primary school and expand their focus to secondary education and girls’ ability to then transition to the workforce and take on leadership roles. And instead of only talking about how many years girls spend in school, we need to talk about what girls and boys are learning, including what they are learning about gender equality. The conversation may no longer need to include all countries, but it still urgently needs to focus on particular regions and countries where girls are fighting to get educated. The devastating events in Nigeria, where close to 300 girls have been abducted out of their schools by Boka Haram, is only the most recent reminder that in some parts of the world girls’ education remains a life and death issue. While acknowledging progress and the challenges that remain, there are four main “second generation” issues for girls’ education that most call for action: The case remains clear for investing in girls’ education. It yields some of the highest returns of all development investments in terms of better health, stronger economic growth and greater poverty alleviation. However, in the words of Urvashi Sahni, an Indian girls’ education advocate, even if it didn’t bring all these “development goodies,” it is still what we should be doing because girls deserve it, we owe it to them, and it is their right.
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665e31b99bda26223037bdd41e61fb75
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2014/05/20/kick-back-relax-and-help-your-children-develop-neural-pathways/
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Kick Back, Relax, and Help Your Children Develop Neural Pathways
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Kick Back, Relax, and Help Your Children Develop Neural Pathways Imagine six, red, three-by-two LEGO bricks. How many unique combinations can be made? This was the opening question posed at the LEGO Foundation’s IDEAs conference in Denmark last month. Less than 50? 100? 1,000? The last was my guess, which it turns out, is not even close. There are almost 1 billion unique combinations possible. Wow, is right. I was amazed not only that someone had sat and figured this out (how long do you think it took them?), but also at the seemingly endless possibilities that unfold for children playing with such toys. I was attending the Lego Foundation IDEA conference in search of ideas that could be useful for education policy in developing countries, the focus of my work at the Brookings Center for Universal Education. But, in truth, I spent the most of time thinking about my own kids. Will my two young boys grow up to be “creative problem solvers?” Many experts, including Tony Wagner at Harvard, say these are exactly what 21st century employers need, and have a hard time finding. It’s true that, for both work and life, the traditional approach of mastering content knowledge is not as useful as it was B.G. (Before Google). Instead, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, well-known early childhood specialists, argue that today’s young people must complement content knowledge with skills like collaboration, communication, critical thinking, creative innovation and confidence. With the total corpus of information doubling every two-and-a-half years, our children will only become successful adults if they can readily adapt to new circumstances and make meaning from new information. The early learning experiences of children are crucial to helping them develop these skills. One conference presentation, by the neuroscientist Randa Grob-Zakhary, showed images of a child’s brain from birth until age 6, and I couldn’t help but think of my own boys, ages 2 and 5. Each picture showed scattered black dots, or neurons, which we don’t really get more of as we grow. However, what does grow, and quite dramatically, are the pathways between the neurons. Slide after slide, as the few lines among the black dots in a young infant’s brain grew to an ever increasing tangle of connections in a toddler and young child’s brain, I became increasingly anxious. A child’s adult capacities, it seemed, rests heavily on neural foundations developed through early learning experiences. With each slide, I thought about what my own kids were experiencing at the time: “that was the year of the new job, I probably wasn’t as attentive as I should have been,” I thought to myself. Next came “the year of the divorce,” then “the year of the inattentive nanny.” The final slide put me over the edge. It compared the brain of 6-year-old and an adult, and it was hard to discern any difference visually between the two—both showed a thick forest of black lines between the neurons. Ms. Grob-Zakhary did point out that of course children’s brains continue developing after age six, but the early years matter and they matter a lot. I went into the next sessions of the conference deeply worried. Had I done enough to give my boys quality early learning experiences? I thought of my busy work schedule, my lackluster showing in the race to sign them up to activities and classes, set up play dates, and take them to any of the often-free, kid-friendly, and I was sure, neural-pathway-inducing, events that Washington, DC offers. Then the guilt set in. Why hadn’t I paid closer attention to the early childhood development literature that my colleagues at Brookings know so well, or for that matter to Hillary Clinton, the world’s most high-profile early childhood advocate who frequently talks about the importance of brain development in young children? Thankfully, a later session remarkably bolstered my mood. An evolutionary psychologist named Peter Gray spoke on the merits of free play, where children play on their own with limited adult intervention. Play is how all mammals’ young learn. Our children need the freedom to test their limits, discover new things, figure out how to interact with others, fail and bounce back, and solve problems. Free play, in other words, is incredibly effective at developing those neural pathways and laying the foundations for the skills our children need. Limiting free play not only undercuts one of the effective ways in which children learn, but also has a negative impact on children’s well-being. Yet over the last 60 years, the amount of time children in the U.S. have for free play has gone steadily down. Over the same time period, the rise of emotional and social disorders in young people has risen dramatically (five to eightfold for some disorders). American children today feel much less in control of their lives than their predecessors. Substantial time for free play, particularly among children of different ages, is an important part of enabling children to learn to control their lives and become resilient and adaptable adults. I latched onto Gray’s words immediately, and quickly sought him out afterward. Here was something I could do to help give my boys quality early learning experiences. My kids already free play quite a bit, and now I can feel less guilty for the “go play out back while I make dinner,” and “go play in your room while I finish this report.” Gray’s talk left room for a number of things I could do without upending my life. I could hover around my 2-year-old less at the playground, give my 5-year-old more choices of activity on the weekend, and intervene less in their arguments. I could focus more on ensuring they were reasonably safe and not hurting each other and less on directing their activities or interactions. Offstage, Gray and I came up with the idea of what I call “neighborhood playdates.” Since letting kids roam freely on the streets is not an option for urban parents, organizing times for neighborhood kids to get together and play with minimal adult direction or intervention seemed like a good approach. Children could be dropped off several afternoons a week to play in a park or other area supervised by a “grandmother-type and a teenager-type,” one providing wisdom and authority and the other energy and mobility. Here is something that not only I could do but parents with access to much fewer resources than I, including those in the developing world, could do too. Perhaps, I thought, starting small with immediate neighbors and two parents or caregivers was the way to begin. In the end, I left the conference feeling pretty good about myself as a parent and excited to think about new ways to let my children explore their world. I know free play is only one of a mix of things that children need for quality early learning (guided play, developing a talent, having responsibility, among others). But perhaps I hadn’t totally screwed up my boys’ chances for quality early learning experiences. Perhaps I should relax. I called a friend, another mother of two young boys, when I got back from the conference and told her “have a drink before dinner and watch the kids play together in the yard, it will be great for developing their neural pathways.” I thought I would do the same.
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9e6e944c62559b7d78d8b04f1dbc8975
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2014/05/21/girlsedu-fixing-the-education-system-one-piece-at-a-time-in-nigeria/
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#GirlsEdu: Fixing the Education System One Piece at a Time in Nigeria
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#GirlsEdu: Fixing the Education System One Piece at a Time in Nigeria Editor’s Note: The #GirlsEdu blog series is a collection of posts discussing girls’ education and the challenges it faces around the world. Some of the authors are former Echidna scholars, who studied how to improve girls’ education at Brookings before returning to their home countries to implement their research. Twenty years ago, in the department of political science at Bayero University Kano, I came across a poster. “If you think education is expensive; try ignorance” it said. This was my first introduction to a popular Nigerian saying that captures the wit and recognizes the consequences of doing nothing to improve education in the country. Now, 20 years later, the conversation about education in the Nigerian media still centers on the damning consequences of failing to fix the system. Most meetings on education are dominated by the feeling of an urgent need to do something, as NGOs, governments, businesses big and small and international development partners vie with each other for that big idea that could turn things around. For those of us committed to and focused on advancing girls education, we are reminded at these meetings of the challenges facing boys’ education in Nigeria’s southeast; of the problems in educating Nigeria’s nomads and fisher-folk; of the critical lack of investment in training institutions (as the Colleges of Education strike moves into its fifth month); and of the catastrophes brought about by those who believe that Western education is forbidden, or “haram.” So many crises! When so much needs to be done, it’s easy to get stuck trying to make a case for a panacea, and in doing so it’s equally easy to underestimate the power of micro-level innovations. Yet personally, I have found enormous inspiration supporting and initiating micro-level actions which benefit girls in the most difficult circumstances. My journey began in 2002, when I worked on a program targeting AIDS orphans and other vulnerable children in the traditional Kano state (a group referred to as “OVC” in the development world). Members of my team tried hard to convince me that Kano was unlike southern states in Nigeria, where young, vulnerable girls and orphans could access education and psychosocial needs through community schools; in Nigeria’s north, secular community schools did not exist. In northern states, that narrative went, girls were either on the streets hawking, in traditional Islamic schools, or in over-crowded government schools—three situations that did not lend themselves to the typical OVC intervention. After three weeks of field work, however, the reality I encountered was a different one. I found classes of community girls studying math and English lessons in the open sitting rooms of houses in the old walled city. I also found girls huddled together in make-shift nursery classes in the unused silos of farmers associations in rural Rafin Tsara. With no materials and little training, the primary school teachers who volunteered in these “schools” were on their own in a system that prioritized Islamic schooling over community-based secular education. For me, these were great community efforts crying out for support. Fortunately, the Bernard van Leer Foundation shared the same vision and took the risk of supporting the development Research and Projects Centre (dRPC), a non-profit I started to train volunteer teachers in early childhood development teaching methods and to provide teaching aids to more than 100 community schools in northern Nigeria. The key lesson that I’ve taken away from 12 years of running this community project is that success for girls in traditional settings demands building partnerships—both to legitimize and sustain education programs. In 2013, I took this idea forward by seeking to collaborate on an education program with PSIPSE, the Partnership to Strengthen Innovation and Practice in Secondary Education. I recall one of the first queries we received in response the PSIPSE application; the MacArthur Foundation was curious about the design of a community-based girls’ education project in northern Nigeria involving the National Education Research and Development Council, the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, and the Ministry of Education of southern Nigeria’s Ekiti State. The answer was simple, the project connected state officials from Ministries of Education in northern states with education officials at the federal level to strengthen state-level education reforms targeting girls and to mitigate community barriers and obstacles. But the partnerships did not end there. The collaborative project between dRPC and PSIPSE ultimately led to partnerships among state ministries of education, the 13 participating government-run schools for girls, school-based management committees, and the staff and principals of the participating schools. So while the education of girls in northern Nigeria faces increasing challenges, the pilot PSIPSE project has led girls to successfully complete their final year of senior secondary school and complete their senior secondary school exams. State governments in northern Nigeria are taking note of lessons from this pilot and some stand poised to replicate the teacher training and girls mentoring components of the project. As 16-year-old girls now exit the PSIPSE schools with their senior secondary school exams behind them, I have a new challenge before me—how to forge additional partnerships with NGOs, private sector organizations and government agencies working on microfinance, remedial education, apprenticeship and life skills programs. Such challenges are also being discussed at national-level dialogues where there is a new recognition that education cannot be too expensive for development. Yet cost-efficient and effective pilot projects such as the one I coordinated at dRPC reinforce the message of that poster I saw 20 years ago. As Nigerians contemplate the future, there is no need to try ignorance.
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cc018c9466793f27c8de6ce7e85b5e7c
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2014/06/27/delivering-results-for-children-achievable-milestones-toward-2015/
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Delivering Results for Children: Achievable Milestones Toward 2015
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Delivering Results for Children: Achievable Milestones Toward 2015 As the school year lets out for millions of children across the globe, we are reminded of the work we need to do so that many more of the 58 million out-of-school children have the opportunity to start back to school in the fall. Following yesterday’s Global Partnership for Education replenishment, the global community must now follow the roadmap that exists until the end of 2015 where pledges turn into the reality of universal education. As Jeff Sachs pointed out, “there is something absurd, and deeply troubling, about tens of millions of impoverished children being out of school, often in conflict zones, because of a lack of financing so modest it should make us blush.” We face a crisis of declining aid for education and a rising out-of-school population. A failure to correct this trajectory and live up to the promise of universal education will not only delegitimize the post-2015 agenda for education, but leave behind the millions of children who deserve equal opportunity. The UN Special Envoy for Global Education has said that the road to universal education requires unwavering determination and focus if we are to reach our goal. It is time for development banks, bilateral donors, multilateral donors and domestic governments to work together to strengthen systems and tackle the specific challenge of out-of-school children. If we combine financing and deliver capacity with political will and coordination across all sectors, there is still time to prove that having every single child in school and learning is not only feasible, but achievable. It is time for top-down political efforts to coalesce with grassroots mobilization to deliver results in the countries with high burdens of out-of-school children. Just like Jubilee Drop the Debt and Make Poverty History, everyone has a role to play: faith groups, businesses, civil society, teachers, NGOs, and youth. The new social movement of our time is part of the 500 Day #EducationCountdown campaign, where A World at School has mapped out, alongside hundreds of civil society partners, one-hundred day cycles and progress points, targeting countries in need with an eye for equity for the most marginalized. Before the school year starts in September, there are at least four tangible results we can deliver for children on our way to meeting the 2015 goal: These four milestones could make the difference between opportunity and oppression for millions of children. And they could all be achieved before September. As we count down until the 2015 deadline, our final push and journey should be marked by successes. Failure is not an option. The stakes are too high.
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27e7ec7d2ae3256ed59f689b8a8c66c1
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2014/09/17/sexual-and-reproductive-health-as-a-barrier-to-girls-educational-success-in-south-africa/
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Sexual and Reproductive Health as a Barrier to Girls’ Educational Success in South Africa
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Sexual and Reproductive Health as a Barrier to Girls’ Educational Success in South Africa South Africa has made great strides in relation to girls’ access to education, with girls and boys enrolling in equal numbers in grades one through nine. However, unequal gender norms in and around schools continue to pose barriers to the sustained participation of girls at the secondary school level and beyond. Just before I left South Africa at the end of July, a storm had broken out around a group of young students, mostly from poor backgrounds, who had been awarded scholarships by the KwaZulu-Natal provincial government to study pharmacology in India. While many commended the government for providing these opportunities, fierce debate erupted over media reports that the Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Health had announced that the girls and women in the group would be compelled to take a contraceptive before departing to India. Nothing was said about the boys and men in the group. This medical intervention, according to the MEC, was to avoid a repeat of what happened to four girls who had been studying in Cuba and were forced to return to South Africa after falling pregnant. The MEC’s approach to dealing with the students’ sexuality reflects a larger problem in South Africa. Unplanned pregnancies are largely addressed within a framework that places girls and women at fault. Youth sexuality, particularly female sexuality, is viewed as a source of moral panic. Consequently, girls and unmarried women who “fall pregnant” are stigmatized, whereas the boys or men responsible for pregnancies are let off the hook. Significantly, this gender-biased perspective informs many of the archaic interventions aimed at addressing unwanted pregnancies among girls and young women. However, while concerns about the high rates of unplanned pregnancies among secondary and university students and their potential influence on learning may be justified, such a view and the responses linked to it mask a significant underlying problem: Schools do a poor job of educating adolescents about sexual and reproductive health issues. Such inadequate and ineffective teaching of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) issues leaves young people and girls in particular vulnerable to negative health outcomes, including sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies. For example, the 2012 South African National HIV Prevalence, Incidence and Behaviour Survey has found worrying HIV prevalence rates among girls and young women. Among the 15 to 19 year old females straddling both schooling and university education, the HIV prevalence was estimated to be 8 times that of their male counterparts. In relation to pregnancies, a recent review by Samantha Willan found that, even though South Africa has experienced a decline in teenage fertility in recent years, rates of pregnancy are still high at 30 percent among 15 to 19 year olds. These negative health outcomes then lead to poor school attendance, low academic performance, high repetition rates, and high rates of dropout. For example, research by Martin Gustaffson concluded that even though South Africa has achieved universal primary education, of those who enroll in grade one, only 50 percent reach grade twelve, and only 39 percent complete secondary schooling. Forty two percent of the girls in the study cited pregnancy as a reason for dropping out.. Similarly, the General Household Survey 2012 found that while South Africa has achieved universal education at the primary school level—with only 1.2 percent of 7 to 15 year olds not in school—there are still challenges at the secondary school level. Fourteen percent of 16 to 18 year-olds (or 15.4 percent of 16 to 18 year-old girls, and 12.8 percent of 16 to 18 year old boys) had dropped out of school. At the heart of the matter is that without the requisite SRH knowledge, including knowledge of their rights and the resources available to them, girls’ agency is compromised and they are not adequately prepared for life transitions that often place them in environments—like universities—that are characterized by unequal gender norms and gender-based violence, including sexual violence. Yet, universities in South Africa do very little to address the gap in students’ SRH knowledge, focusing instead on remediating their academic subject knowledge on the assumption that their high rates of drop out are due to academic under-preparation. Further, external programs targeting adolescents and young women are either severely under-resourced or informed by a moralistic framework that stigmatizes girls. Thus, if we fail to address the root of the problem at the school level, the effects of poor SRH education may undermine any attempts at empowering girls and improving their educational outcomes. The high dropout rates in South Africa’s secondary schools, and the fact that for girls this is often linked to pregnancy and HIV infection, underscore the significance of focusing on girls in secondary schools. Specifically, what could secondary schools do differently to adequately prepare girls for transitions into higher education environments and to improve their educational outcomes? Could an approach to SRH education in secondary schools that focuses on developing awareness of the socio-political environment give girls the skills and resources they need to make informed decisions about their bodies, including whether, how and when to have sex and/or children? The evidence cited above suggests that negative health outcomes, particularly unplanned pregnancies, make it difficult for girls to persevere and complete secondary school. What is lacking is research into whether SRH education, and in particular, one that takes into consideration the socio-cultural norms which subordinate girls and renders them unable to access and use such knowledge to make decisions about their SRH , would improve their persistence and completion of secondary education. In the next few months I will be researching these questions, by analyzing SRH curriculum policies and teacher training, conducting retrospective interviews with young women on their school experiences of SRH, and examining the pedagogical characteristics of SRH projects that have worked both in South Africa and internationally.
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353b0a4341593f03af973cb4f091c693
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2014/09/22/girls-education-hotspots-a-look-at-the-data/
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Girls’ Education Hotspots: A Look at the Data
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Girls’ Education Hotspots: A Look at the Data Progress in girls’ education has been one of the success stories in women’s rights and global development of the past 20 years. Since 1990, when only half the girls living in low-income countries were in school, the number of girls in primary school increased two and a half times by 2012—from 23.6 million to nearly 63 million—and today 80 percent of girls in low-income countries are enrolled. As leaders are convening for the U.N. general assembly in New York this week, in part to discuss progress and remaining challenges in human development, it is useful to look at where girls’ education stands today. We have looked at three sets of data: enrollment in secondary school, incidents of violent attacks on girls’ education, and child marriage. The data reveals interesting things, including places where high rates of child marriage appears to coincide with gender parity in secondary school enrollments, as well as areas where girls are outnumbering boys in school. Ultimately, what becomes clear in looking across these three sets of data is the band of countries across Asia and sub-Saharan Africa that are girls’ education hotspots. These are places where many girls are married before they are 18, struggling to enroll in secondary school in the same number as boys, and in at least 15 countries facing attacks on their lives for participating in education. In most countries, girls and boys are enrolling in secondary school in equal numbers. However there are places where they are not. In 51 countries, highlighted in blue on the map, girls are actually outpacing boys and there are more than 104 girls for every 100 boys enrolled in secondary school. In a small number of countries, notably Lesotho, Suriname, Honduras, Armenia and Cape Verde, boys are severely disadvantaged. In some of these places, particularly in Latin America, experts attribute this to the growing prominence of gangs and violence, something which frequently hits male youth the hardest and results in higher dropout rates for boys than girls. There are places, however, where girls are still lagging far behind boys. Largely located in Africa and Asia, there are 56 countries where there are fewer than 97 girls enrolled in secondary school for every 100 boys. What is especially worrisome are the 23 countries, seen in dark red, where girls are severely disadvantaged and have less than 85 girls per 100 boys enrolled. This means that while there is nearly the same number of countries where girls are disadvantaged and where boys are disadvantaged; there are nearly four times the number of countries where girls are severely disadvantaged than where boys are severely disadvantaged. There are at least 15 countries where girls’ education in particular has, since 2009, been subject to attack. The range of violence and attacks on girls and their schools and teachers includes kidnappings, bombings, torture, murder, and rape, among others. For example, the cited violence ranges from school girls being abducted in Somalia, to students being raped and harassed by armed groups in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Libya, to schools and buses being bombed and gassed, parents and teachers being threatened with gas attacks and outright bans on girls’ education in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In these countries, many girls are literally risking their lives to go to school. Using the United Nations Gender Statistics database on child marriage, which uses demographic surveys to estimate the number of women between 20-24 years old who report being married or in a union before the age of 18, this map plots the prevalence of child marriage against gender parity in secondary school enrollment in the most problematic regions. Here the circles’ sizes represent the percentage of women married before 18, and the colors represent the level of gender parity. Interestingly, there are countries like Bangladesh where child marriage is prevalent, yet girls still are more likely to attend school than boys. One explanation for this is that the data on child marriage is not as up-to-date as that on enrollment. In the case of Bangladesh, the latest data we have on child marriage refers to women who were 20-24 years old in 2007, versus enrollment data on secondary school from 2012. The measures on child marriage are far too outdated for such an important issue affecting millions of girls, and new, better data needs to be collected. However, despite these countries where girls are enrolling in secondary school in equal numbers as boys, we see a clear pattern in Africa for countries that have low female participation in education and high early marriage rates. In Niger, for example, 75 percent of girls are married before they are 18, and in secondary school there are only 67 girls for every 100 boys. Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Uganda and Somalia show similar figures, running in a band of large, red circles across the continent. Taken together the data on gender parity, attacks on education and child marriage point to very clear hotspots for girls around the world who, despite global gains in girls’ education, still don’t have the opportunity to safely attend school. This blog post was updated on 10/2/2014.
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187215a1b86802d843b734ce0fbe4775
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2014/12/03/the-education-response-to-ebola-the-role-of-business/
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The Education Response to Ebola: The Role of Business
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The Education Response to Ebola: The Role of Business Education has been one of the first casualties of the Ebola crisis in West Africa, leaving five million children without a place to learn due to school closures. And while the public health response continues, the business community is calling for the prioritization of an education response to the crisis. The Global Business Coalition for Education’s new report on the education response to Ebola highlights some of the practical barriers to interim education solutions and calls for the responsible reopening of safe schools as a way to provide hope to children but also support the public health response. In an ideal scenario, where possible, schools should be publicly disinfected and safe schools should be responsibly reopened. A safe school would include: teachers being taught about how to identify and respond to Ebola symptoms (and what to do should a case arise): students learning about how to prevent against Ebola’s spread; the conducting of twice-daily temperature checks to monitor the spread (like Singapore did during the SARS outbreak); improvement of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities; and the rolling out of scaled-up school feeding to serve as a social safety net for the many communities impacted by the virus. Education could be on the front lines of curtailing the Ebola outbreak, and launch a new phase of restoring opportunity and hope. To do so, governments must now come to a common agreement about the essential components of a “safe school” so that in partnership with the international community these programs can be rapidly and responsibly implemented. But financing and capacity are needed if this response is to live up to its promise. And that is where the business community has stepped in to highlight an instance where the traditional humanitarian response has left education—and nearly five million children—behind. This is not the first time this year we have witnessed the business community standing up for the protection of education in emergencies and incentivizing policy change. In May, following the kidnapping of over 200 Nigerian school girls, the Global Business Coalition for Education called for a Safe Schools Initiative in northern Nigeria that has mobilized over $30 million in financing, established a multi-donor trust fund mechanism for donor financing, and started to roll out programs to relocate high-risk students and put in place safe school interventions in some locations. Today, when 58 million children are out of school and over half in conflict-affected and emergency situations, it is more imperative that we respond quickly to education in emergency. But education in these situations continues to fall through the cracks, with humanitarian funding limited to less than two percent to education and international financing mechanisms not able to respond to these emergencies. From Syria, Lebanon and Iraq to the emergency in northern Nigeria and now the health crisis in West Africa, we need a central fund that is topped-off by donor contributions as emergencies arise to make education a priority for education in emergencies. And we need to plan ahead to anticipate emergencies so that education is prioritized and protected. With business leaders responding to this new call to action, the donor community must respond. Some agencies have already come forward with priorities for education programming and we cannot stand by as another emergency threatens to increase the global number of out-of-school children by nearly 10 percent. Education has an important role in the Ebola response. The international community should follow the business community’s lead and support the reopening of safe schools for the children of West Africa.
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d591ff7b03af02181a7b8670934973ca
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2015/02/26/leaving-no-unfinished-business-what-are-we-waiting-for/
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Leaving no unfinished business: What are we waiting for?
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Leaving no unfinished business: What are we waiting for? In just a few short months a post-2015 Education for All agenda will be adopted in Korea at the World Education Forum, and in September the new Sustainable Development Goals will be agreed upon. Many are interested in ensuring a strong post-2015 agenda for education, but we must also ensure urgent and focused action if we are to lend a strong foundation, legitimacy, and credibility to these new and ambitious goals. Fifteen years ago, the global community set its aspirations to reach the Education For All and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. Yet the new “Millennium Development Goal Two Scorecard”—the second MDG is the one focused on education— released by A World at School demonstrates that we still have some work to do, especially if we are to make it clear that the global community means business when it makes promises to children. With less than one year remaining to achieve universal education, many countries have yet to establish strategies to achieve this goal. The MDG scorecard finds that only 13 of the 29 countries with over 500,000 out-of-school children—less than half—have a strategy to achieve the second MDG. The majority of the high-burden countries have no comprehensive action plan that includes interventions with associated costs or target dates for deliverables. This means that in the very year we are to reach our goals, not all of the sector plans financed by the international community include a vision or strategy to achieve them. Only four of the 29 countries with more than 500,000 children out of school have achieved the recommended level of domestic education financing—20 percent of the national budget. While many countries have made pledges to increase funds, most have not been realized. Lastly, 22 of the 29 countries in the scorecard are considered “conflict or fragile states,” with 20 alone in the conflict state category. The 2014 data also shows that only 1 percent of humanitarian funding went to education. Keeping in mind that middle-income countries, such as those impacted by the Syria crisis, are not eligible for development assistance from the current global education funding models, there is a clear gap in the existing financing architecture. Yet it is not too late. While the scorecard shows failing marks, the commitments of donors and developing countries alike do show some success stories. We also know what works to improve the prospects of children having the basic right to go to school and learn: strong plans, donor and country coordination, trained teachers, supportive delivery systems, learning materials, and predictable, adequate financing. As we head into the Oslo Summit for Global Education in July, which aims to improve bilateral donor coordination to establish a stronger foundation for achieving results for the most marginalized, I would like to challenge the global community. Could we achieve just three basic tasks for our children this year? We have had 15 years since launching the MDGs. What are we waiting for?
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f6406864c82c532ab7fa50c7749896dd
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2015/06/18/what-will-the-sustainable-development-goals-really-mean-for-education-part-i/
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What will the Sustainable Development Goals really mean for education? (Part I)
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What will the Sustainable Development Goals really mean for education? (Part I) Well, the World Education Forum in Incheon has come and gone with clear excitement, apparently some controversy, and ultimately another universal commitment to education for all, but now through the full secondary cycle and highlighting “equitable quality.” More studious people than I will undoubtedly now dissect the official declaration and the official documents that contributed to it and will soon emerge from the process. My interest here is to focus on the commitment to quality. Incheon is hardly the first time the world has highlighted either equity or quality. The Dakar Framework also pledged to achieve “equitable access to appropriate learning and life-skills programmes.” Defined in such a vague way, it is unsurprising that few countries and international education agencies undertook abundant and deliberate actions aimed at this outcome. In addition, the “discovery” that neither Johnny nor Jamila nor João nor Jaantje nor Jhanvi nor Jorge can read diverted a lion’s share of attention and resources to “the basics,” seeming to disregard the fact that learning to read and calculate is not just a mechanical process or outcome but, in both instances, is enriched by meaning, purpose, and passion. The renewed commitment made in Incheon brings much greater breadth and precision to the notion of quality, at least as a set of learning outcomes: Wow. Who can argue with these? Unfortunately, there is still no indication in the document of what an education that aims purposefully and strategically to endow its students with such personal competencies and attributes actually looks like in practice. This might be less worrisome if Incheon were truly the first time countries of the world were embracing such educational goals, but it is not. Instead, national education reforms and plans around the globe have featured among their goals those of equipping students with “21st Century Skills,” “Life Skills,” “Citizenship,” “Workplace Skills,” “Personal Competencies,” “Entrepreneurial Skills,” “Financial Literacy,” and other versions since at least Dakar and even some since Jomtien, 25 years ago. Yet only a few education systems around the globe are moving in this direction[1]. More, it seems, are actually moving in the opposite direction, caught in a testing and accountability trap. This scenario is illustrated by the case of the United States, where the journalist Anya Kamenetz was thwarted in her plan to write about some of the most exciting pedagogic models in the country. Seeking to explore project-based learning, maker spaces, blended learning, and other exciting pedagogic innovations, what she found instead was rampant standardized testing and the mechanical instruction of reading and mathematics. So this is the book she was left to write. Now is absolutely the time, however, for systems finally to focus and figure out how to imbue education with quality toward the concrete aims evoked in Incheon and actually to do it. I propose the same motto I used for the USAID-funded ALEF Project I led in Morocco from 2005 to 2009: “There is no quality without relevance.” Such an aspiration is not just about functional learning outcomes. It is also about invigorating the learning process and mastery of the basic academic skills. Learning to read by focusing on the alphabet, phonemes, syllables, vocabulary, and syntax pales in terms of motivation, competency, and utility to learning that links these mechanics to story-telling, discovery, and dynamic interaction. In other words, relevance cannot wait until the basics are mastered; it is also a fundamental asset in the mastery of the basics and of quality education overall. To integrate relevance fully into formal education, it is perhaps most important to recognize that relevance is least of all about information, and certainly not about an olio of diverse information captured between two book covers. Rather, relevance is the ability to seek, identify, analyze, and comprehend—i.e., to learn—knowledge and skills that pertain to a particular place, time, purpose, and/or other interest. It is the ability to combine pertinent information and skills with basic academic skills and knowledge—reading, mathematics, science, history, etc.—to solve problems and engage effectively in other manners of daily social, economic, cultural, and family life. Relevance also comprises the full set of cognitive and non-cognitive competencies and attributes—e.g., creativity, confidence, collaboration, perseverance, and empathy—that ultimately are the basis of ambition and of the effort and steps to mobilize all of one’s assets in order to attain one’s own and society’s ambitions. This is the quality education that systems must now pursue, both to foster personal fulfillment for all children and youth and to equip societies around the globe to achieve the soon-to-be-approved Sustainable Development Goals in whatever ways and at whichever levels they can act. To do this will require a comprehensive systemic approach. Relevance might rightly begin with curriculum, but if it stops there, it is doomed. Similarly, if systems (and their partners) approach the integration of relevance into curricula as an additive process, quality is also likely doomed. To repeat, relevance is least of all about information but rather about seeking, mastering, and using information and the comprehensive range of competencies required to do so effectively and appropriately. As such, a relevant curriculum will be one that provides ample free space for students to use their academic skills to discover, analyze, and engage with the world around them and, in the process, to consolidate their academic and other knowledge and skills. This is not easy to do, but it is absolutely necessary. And it requires that all aspects of the education system conform to this vision of learning, including teacher training and support, textbooks and other supplies, pedagogic methods, classroom management, organization of the school day, resource allocation, and student assessment, among others. A deeper discussion of what relevance looks like in the classroom and how the different aspects of an education system can, and must, operate and fit together to yield quality education in this manner will be the topic of my next blog.
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2015/10/02/perspectives-on-impact-bonds-the-next-five-years-for-international-development/
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Perspectives on impact bonds: The next five years for international development
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Perspectives on impact bonds: The next five years for international development Editor’s Note: This blog post is one in a series of posts in which guest bloggers respond to the Brookings paper, “ The potential and limitations of impact bonds: Lessons from the first five years of experience worldwide.” Reading Brookings’ outstanding report charting the trajectory and lessons from the first five years of Impact Bonds made me reflect on my own journey into impact bonds. It was early 2011 and the first social impact bond in the U.K. had just been launched. As I saw what were then novel ideas start to percolate into the U.S., I couldn’t help but think how this instrument might be used to address some of the unique challenges to delivering services in low- and middle-income countries. The time was ripe for this approach as results-based initiatives were gaining traction in international development. Governments, particularly in Latin America where I was working, had a long history of public-private partnerships. This particular instrument was new, but there was a strong foundation upon which to build. At the same time, the $135 billion aid industry was confronting some big questions. How should aid agencies disburse hundreds of millions of dollars while ensuring that they were achieving their intended results? How could the private sector be engaged in partnerships centered on clear lines of responsibility, accountability, and results? An increasing amount of rigorous evidence was being generated about what works, but how could an environment be created to scale that evidence into policy? Impact bonds provided a potential response to each of these questions. While impact bonds spoke to some of these higher-level questions in international development, for them to be more than just the latest development fad, they would need to deliver lasting value. Some of the bells and whistles of impact bonds that draw the most attention (for example, mobilizing private investment capital for social good) matter only if they lead to meaningful change on the ground—a new way of delivering services. Five years into the use of this tool in the developed world, I see that the application of impact bonds to international development is not so much about the financial innovation, but rather what that financial innovation can unlock. Impact bonds, when designed appropriately, can move from a top-down aid planner’s mentality, to a bottom-up searcher’s mentality. The challenges of poverty, health, and education are rarely simple or straightforward. The solutions are unlikely to be either. Impact bonds can incentivize the discovery and scale of locally appropriate, adaptable solutions to meet the needs of the very poor. We’re at the early stages of seeing that now in India, in the Educate Girls Development Impact Bond—a unique partnership between Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, UBS Optimus Foundation, Educate Girls, Instiglio and the evaluator, IDinsight. This new funding model is enabling Educate Girls, a nonprofit provider, to change the way they deliver their services—accelerating learning and continually improving program effectiveness over time. Field staff enter data into mobile devices, which are then uploaded into a performance dashboard, enabling staff across the organization to analyze that data on a near real-time basis. Educate Girls’ staff, who are brimming with new ideas to improve their program, can now test out their ideas in a structured, data-driven way. Villages that are struggling to improve girls’ education will now have the data to be able to turn to other nearby villages that have been successful and learn how they do it. This is not the donor-driven model of reporting common in many development programs. Instead, it’s data being used by those who are producing it, in near-real time, for better decision-making. It’s a structured system for feedback and learning-by-doing embedded in a managerial and funding environment that rewards its use. Unfortunately, this is far too rare in international development. As the report points out in challenging the 10 common claims, impact bonds vary in the degree to which they use performance management to achieve better outcomes. This is ultimately why a thoughtful approach to designing impact bonds is so critical to getting them right. One thing that the report showed was the sheer diversity of different approaches to impact bonds. The Educate Girls Development Impact Bond was designed to maximize learning-by-doing through program flexibility, while other impact bonds maintain a rigid program model (Ian Galloway, in his excellent response to the report, notes how the Rikers SIB was explicitly designed to maintain fidelity to a pre-defined program model—perhaps to its own detriment). From the choice of how to measure and evaluate outcomes, to the structure of payouts, to whether providers stand to be rewarded financially for successfully achieving outcomes, the variations on impact bonds are endless. Each of these design features is an explicit choice. Developing a theory of change of how it is that a particular impact bond in a particular place will lead to better outcomes is fundamental to making an informed choice about the most appropriate design. In the Educate Girls Impact Bond, a hypothesis around the complexity of changing social norms around girls’ education and the widely varying contexts in which Educate Girls implements its program (even within the same state of rural India) led to an explicit design that enabled the program to adapt to incorporate new learning. Different theories in different settings will reasonably lead to different design choices. There is no one-size-fits-all option. Which leads to my last comment. An impact bond is just an instrument. The nature of public debate tends toward polarizing opinions—those that think impact bonds are universally good, and those that think they are universally bad. Like any instrument, but particularly one with such diversity, the true answer is likely to be somewhere in the middle. Impact bonds need to be applied in the right places and designed in the right ways in order to ultimately achieve their intended goals. Not all impact bonds may be successful in achieving outcomes, but as we look towards the next five years of impact bonds, we need to be thinking explicitly about how we develop a learning agenda to help understand when, how, and why impact bonds drive more cost-effective service delivery. Michael Eddy is a partner and co-founder at Instiglio , a nonprofit advisory services firm that works in low- and middle-income countries in the market development, design, and implementation of impact bonds and other types of results-based financing instruments. Disclosure: The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation provides support to the Center for Universal Education at Brookings. The Foundation was not involved in the underlying analysis, drafting or production of this post or the related study.
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e81f95c4e338818b9cebb87b51d67d1c
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2015/10/11/what-works-in-girls-education-evidence-for-the-worlds-best-investment/
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What works in girls’ education: Evidence for the world’s best investment
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What works in girls’ education: Evidence for the world’s best investment Every girl deserves a high-quality education. And yet, in virtually every nation resources are scarce and those arguing for a greater investment in girls’ education must come to the table with not only a soft heart but also hard-headed evidence. In our new book, What Works in Girls’ Education: Evidence for the World’s Best Investment, we detail the abundance of evidence that girls’ education has incredibly high returns, including not just increasing economic growth and wages, but also saving lives by making mothers and children healthier, lessening the effects of natural disasters and climate change, and ensuring better access to education for future generations. But despite the enormous gains that could be achieved if we ensured every girl in the world completed a high-quality education, from early childhood up to the end of secondary school, millions of girls still are out of school around the globe, because they never had the chance to start, or because they were forced out of the system and unable to complete it. Millions of girls attend schools where the quality is so poor they aren’t learning even basic skills, and too many have to risk their lives and safety in order to go to school. And yet, there is also an abundance of evidence on how to solve these problems. Policies and programs have shown in diverse geographical contexts how to get girls into school and help them complete their education, how to improve learning outcomes for both girls and boys, and how education can empower girls and promote female leadership. In our book we have compiled a comprehensive body of this evidence, drawing on hundreds of studies that show proven, effective ways of improving education for the world’s most marginalized girls. These are just a few examples of the incredible amount of evidence on how to improve girls’ education. For more, you can check out factsheets on the Malala Fund website, buy our book to get a comprehensive analysis, or download it for free as a PDF. No doubt many policymakers will ask how can we possibly afford to do this. But when one looks at both the moral imperative and the rigorous evidence of such high returns from secondary girls’ education, the right question is how can we afford not to do so?
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f23448dfdddfec775bd2a3adc18ad3e9
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2015/10/19/thank-you-sherry-turkle-conversation-is-important-for-adults-but-it-is-even-more-critical-for-kids/
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Thank you, Sherry Turkle: Conversation is important for adults, but it is even more critical for kids
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Thank you, Sherry Turkle: Conversation is important for adults, but it is even more critical for kids In her new book, Reclaiming Conversation, MIT Science and Society Professor Sherry Turkle bemoans the current state of conversation—or the lack thereof. Replaced by gadgets and gizmos that are supposed to keep us more connected, social media divides us. “Likes” on a Facebook page often replace smiles at a dinner table. Is it any wonder that 83 percent of adults find the constant interruptions from cell phones unnerving? At a gut level, these perturbations in the natural flow of our conversations impact our well-being. Why bother spilling your emotions if you do not have a person’s undivided attention—if no one is listening? This lack of human interaction, however, has even deeper implications. It is robbing us of our humanity. Professor Mike Tomasello from Duke University reminds us that though we share 99 percent of our genetic makeup with the apes, humans are ultra-social. We thrive on connecting with others. And we use our sophisticated social acumen to figure out just what a person meant irrespective of what she said or did. These features of connectedness are built upon a foundation of human interaction. Human conversation and interaction occur with intricate timing. Adults can deal with mistimed responses from a person glancing down at her incoming texts. Adults have learned to deal with mechanized voices that masquerade as a company’s customer service manager. We accommodate to digital attendants each time we book a train, order a book from Amazon, or find the nearest restaurant. Yet breakdowns in conversational timing and lack of meaningful dialogue can spark the equivalent of technological road rage. Real conversations do not take place with a machine that does not care. Such everyday annoyances are the stuff of humorous Facebook posts for adults. For our children, however, science tells us that the lack of human conversations has more profound consequences. Hidden inside the natural back and forth of human conversations are subtle lessons about how to take turns, how to respond appropriately in language or gesture, and how to ask questions to bolster our learning. Recent studies in developmental psychology are starting to unpack just how important these conversations are for young children. Mark Bornstein, a lead scientist at NIH and the current President-elect of the Society for Research in Child Development, finds that around the world, babies develop a back and forth non-language conversation by the time they are 11 months of age. Others find that turn-taking during “conversation” between infants and adults emerges at a mere 3 months. The kinds of back and forth interactions we have in these conversations lay the foundation for communication quality that predicts later language, social, and academic performance all the way through formal schooling. Research in our lab and in many others confirms this. Scientists consistently find that the quality of conversation is central to later development and that it is itself build upon parents’ contingent responding to their children. When we respond to children in a timely way and in a way that extends the meaning of the conversation, they thrive. We took a close look at this quality of parent-child interactions at age 2 years and examined which aspects of these conversations predicted language learning one year later at age 3 years. The fluid and connected timing of the conversations (contingency) along with the parent and child’s joint use of symbols (such as pretending to drink from an invisible cup) and of routines (knowing what to do with a new book) were excellent predictors of later language in our tasks. Two additional studies—one with video chats that preserve the quality of the responses and one with cell phones that breaks the parents’ contingent responding—confirm our findings. Sarah Roseberry (now at the University of Washington), the architect of the video chat research, discovered that children could learn language from video chats, but not from televised displays. Video chats include contingent adult responses that are missing in television. Jessa Reed, now at Ohio State University, asked whether children could learn new words when parents were interrupted by cell phone calls in the middle of their parent-child conversations. If contingency and flow are key to learning, we might hypothesize that interruptions might disrupt the conversation and subsequent learning. That is precisely what happened: 2-year-olds failed to learn new words their mother was teaching them when their interaction was disrupted by a cell phone call. As Sherry Turkle suggests, we must reinstate face-to-face conversation to reclaim the value of human empathy and connection. For adults, conversation fosters introspection and belongingness. We have let technology interfere with these basic human needs. But her argument is so much deeper than it might at first appear. For our children, the lack of conversations has dire consequences. In conversation, our children flex the mental muscles that underpin interacting and learning from others. We owe our children a world rich in conversations. To give them that gift, we will need to look into their eyes and value their contribution to the dialogue. We must reclaim conversations with our children and celebrate the very core of what it means to be human. Roberta Michnick Golinkoff is the H. Rodney Sharp Professor at the University of Delaware.
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fdd70080ab5ddc68e7137ce2831c9602
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2016/02/16/made-in-america-how-celebrating-muslim-culture-at-the-childrens-museum-of-manhattan-feeds-childrens-minds-and-hearts/
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Made in America: How Celebrating Muslim culture at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan feeds children’s minds and hearts
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Made in America: How Celebrating Muslim culture at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan feeds children’s minds and hearts Twenty children sit in the miniature courtyard in front of a central “mosque” built of beautiful designs beneath a rich lattice structure. In front of them, a fountain filled—not with water—but with handwritten notes from the Asian, black, Hispanic, and white preschoolers who were challenged to write their wishes for a better world. The exhibit was in many ways like others found in children’s museum settings. Playful learning abounds as pretend sailors work collaboratively to place coconuts and special pots on the big ship bound for the Americas. Children climb atop a large camel, poised in front of pictures from the African deserts. Shops carry beautifully woven Moroccan rugs bearing designs native to North Africa, custom-made in Morocco for the exhibit. The shops—of rugs, rarely found fruits from Indonesia and spices from Egypt are modeled after those in the home country. But in real streets in Queens, Brooklyn, and Harlem—within a few miles of the museum itself—these same items can all be found. In this miniature world, children have implicit lessons in counting and spatial arrangements, skills reinforced in the block-building area where six children are busily constructing architectural wonders with Arabesque flare. Children attend the “America to Zanzibar” exhibit at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, which celebrates the diversity of Muslim cultures in America and around the world. Children’s museums are hubs where discovers and explorers unite to learn precisely those skills that prepare them for learning in a fast-paced 21st century world—collaboration, communication, content (physics, math, narrative), critical thinking (problem solving that helps them construct the beautiful mosques), creativity, and confidence (to take intellectual risks). These “6Cs” are an integrated suite of skills born from research in the science of learning—skills that we argue are the key to Becoming Brilliant, our forthcoming book to be released this summer. One could stop here, admiring the beautifully conceived and richly researched context for playful learning that emerges in the Muslim Cultures exhibit. One could merely see this as a place to groom 21st century skills and real learning. To do so, however, would cheapen the breadth of the experience for children and their families. When you enter the central courtyard at the Muslim exhibit, children are also transported to a new culture. They are invited to understand more about the varied people who make up the tapestry of New York, and of America itself. To the west of the exhibit courtyard—children can see and experiment with instruments from across the Muslim world. Apps in the museum even give them a chance to listen to and interact with the sounds of the culture. To the east of the courtyard, they can trace their name in Arabic, and in the far reaches of the exhibit they can go on a virtual Google map journey to beautiful mosques around the world—all designed in surround visuals to transport, immerse, and inform. Here, children go into the homes and shops of their Muslim neighbors and see that “Muslim” is not just a singular noun; it represents a diverse set of people and customs. A young boy plays in front of the community water fountain in the courtyard of the “America to Zanzibar” exhibit held at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan. Creating a Muslim Cultures exhibit in a children’s museum, right in New York, is a bold move. It is a stake in the ground against racism and it is a statement that if we are going to change our attitudes and behaviors about people different than we are, we must do so by learning more and by respecting others. In a sense, the Muslim Cultures exhibit at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan (CMOM) is an act of faith that our children will appreciate this exhibit as they have others. In their eyes, differences among people nourish a world of possibilities—of new sounds and sights that foster the creative spirit. Children seem to understand that we are united, not separated, by our differences. Perhaps we can all learn from children’s play and from the way children of all shades and religions interact in this exhibit. Perhaps we too can add to that fountain of wishes, encouraging more institutions to shine a spotlight on the riches of Muslim culture in an era that is often punitive and disrespectful to our fellow Americans. Thank you CMOM for enabling playful learning that not only feeds our minds but also our social conscience.
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2e52fdb2548e7e160c2f68413f1dd24c
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2016/03/24/the-future-of-impact-bonds-globally-reflections-from-a-recent-brookings-event/
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The future of impact bonds globally: Reflections from a recent Brookings event
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The future of impact bonds globally: Reflections from a recent Brookings event “For a not-for-profit it’s the equivalent of venture capital,” said Sir Ronald Cohen, chairman of the Global Social Impact Investing Steering Group, about impact bonds in his keynote address at a recent event at the Brookings Institution. Impact bonds combine results-based financing and impact investing, where investors provide upfront capital for a social service and government agencies, or donors, agree to pay investors back based on the outcomes of the service. At their best, they could allow for innovation, encourage performance management and adaptability, promote learning through evaluation, and create a clear case for investing in what works. However, impact bonds thus far have had immense transaction costs and there are risks that poor execution of the impact bond mechanism could have negative consequences for beneficiaries. It has been six years since the first impact bond was implemented in March of 2010, and the field is beginning to move from an exploratory stage to looking at systemic change, as Tracy Palandjian, CEO and co-founder of Social Finance U.S. described. The event, “The Global Potential and Limitation of Impact Bonds,” served as a point of reflection for stakeholders at this pivotal stage of the field, bringing together over 500 individuals in the room and on the webcast, including practitioners developing impact bonds around the world. While context matters, there were notable similarities in the motivations and challenges across regions. In our presentations of our research and subsequent panels, we focused on the potential value and challenges of combining results-based financing and impact investing through an impact bond. Shri Naveen Jain, mission director of the National Health Mission of Rajasthan, India, who is working to develop an impact bond for maternal and child health services across his entire state, pointed out that the value of a results-based financing contract to him was in the added transparency it provides—the government is able to see what they are paying for, keep service providers accountable, and incentivize providers to achieve better outcomes. Louise Savell, a director at Social Finance U.K., the entity that first put impact bonds on the map, explained that results-based financing contracts are often arranged such that only one portion of the contract is based on results. This, she explained prescribes a model and does not allow for flexibility; furthermore, it forces service providers to bear a significant risk. Impact bonds allow for the entirety of payments to be based on results, which gives the provider full flexibility (at least in theory), but puts the risk of service performance on the investor. The shift of risk to investors could be particularly useful for service delivery in conflict affected areas, where donors are often highly concerned about how money will be used, mentioned Francois de Borchgrave, co-founder and managing director of Kois Invest, who is working on an impact bond with the International Rescue Committee of the Red Cross. The panelists also emphasized that impact bonds are more powerful than results-based financing contracts alone because, if successful, they pay real financial returns to investors. This draws a great deal of attention from policymakers and the public, and the added scrutiny helps in making the investment case for preventive interventions highly explicit. Mayor Ben McAdams of Salt Lake County, Utah said that “data and evidence is bridging a partisan divide” in his state—when the case for investment is clear, policymakers from both sides of the aisle are willing to invest. Impact bonds do not necessarily add value by increasing the total amount of funding available for social services, because investors are repaid if outcomes are achieved. Rather, impact bonds could help increase the outcomes achieved with given funding. Overall there was agreement that impact bonds have enormous potential to lead to more outcome-focused financing that focuses on preventive interventions and incentivizes collaboration. However two critical considerations for the use of impact bonds arose throughout the day. The first consideration discussed was whether or not impact bonds can support innovation or scale. As found in our first report, impact bonds have been relatively small in scale in terms of capital and beneficiaries. The average upfront investment in impact bonds to date is $3.7 million, reaching an average of 1,900 beneficiaries. They also have not, on average, focused on particularly innovative interventions—in fact they have almost all had a relatively strong base of evidence behind them. Views on the panel differed on whether the uses of impact bonds could be expanded—if they could be used for highly innovative pilot programs or proven large scale programs. One perspective was that impact bonds could indeed provide seed capital to test new ideas for service delivery. This would require investors who are willing to test not only the innovation but also this relatively new financing mechanism. Given the high transaction costs that impact bonds entail, however, this may not be the most efficient use of resources. Impact bonds could also reach more beneficiaries per transaction (greater scale) with changes in public procurement and the creation of markets for tradeable impact bond assets. Government can play a role in facilitating larger impact bonds by creating central government outcome payment funds, providing tax breaks for investment in impact bonds, and enabling the development of investment vehicles, all of which are being implemented in the U.K. Impact bonds could also help effective social services reach scale by encouraging government to fund programs at scale after the impact bond is over or by improving data use and performance management in government-funded services broadly. A second, and related, discussion happened around evaluation methodology—which may differ depending on whether the impact bond is intended to test an innovative intervention or scale an intervention already backed by significant evidence. The “gold standard” randomized controlled trial (RCT) is the only methodology that eliminates the possibility that impact could be attributed to something other than the intervention, though the majority of impact bonds thus far use evaluation methodologies that are less rigorous. The panelists explained that it is important, however, to consider the status quo—currently, less than 1 percent of U.S. federal spending on social services has been shown to be effective. The same is true in low- and middle-income countries, where there are relatively few impact evaluations given the number of interventions. At the end of the day, the government agency acting as the outcome funder must decide on the importance of attribution to trigger payment through the impact bond in view of the already available evidence of program effectiveness and weigh the criticism that might ensue in the absence of a valid counterfactual. Though impact bonds are a potentially useful tool in the toolbox of many financing mechanisms, there are some significant constraints to their implementation. The biggest barrier to impact bonds and other results-based contracts is the administrative hurdle of contracting for outcomes. Peter Vanderwal, innovative financing lead at the Palladium Group, and Caroline Whistler, co-president and co-founder of Third Sector Capital Partners, both stated that governments often are unable or do not know how to contract for outcomes, and there is a need to invest in their capacity to do so. Appropriation schedules are part of this challenge, governments are often not allowed to appropriate for future years. When an audience member asked how we go about changing the culture in government to one of contracting for outcomes, Mayor McAdams answered that impact bonds may have a contagious effect—contracting for outcomes will be the expectation in the future. Additionally, the transaction costs of establishing the partnership are large relative to other mechanisms, though they may be worthwhile. Jim Sorenson, of the Sorenson Impact Center, pointed out that service provider capacity and data collection systems could be barriers to the development of future impact bonds. There is also still a long way to go in developing outcome measures and in particular in calibrating those outcome measures to low- and middle-income countries. The influence that impact bonds have on the provision of quality services globally depends on the quality of implementation. With a rapidly growing market, there will inevitably be “bad” impact bonds in the future. To ensure that impact bonds are used as effectively as possible, governments and the research community have a pivotal role to play in asking the right questions: Will a results-based contract help improve outcomes in this particular case? What should the outcomes be to avoid perverse incentives or potentially negative externalities? And would an impact bond structure add value?
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2016/05/17/watch-carol-williams-shares-the-role-of-education-alliances-in-worldreaders-scaling-success/
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WATCH: Carol Williams shares the role of education alliances in Worldreader’s scaling success
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WATCH: Carol Williams shares the role of education alliances in Worldreader’s scaling success As part of our Millions Learning video series, we are diving into Worldreader, one of the 14 case studies explored in the Millions Learning report. Worldreader provides culturally and linguistically relevant digital books on low cost e-readers and mobile phone applications to children and their families in low- and middle-income countries. The non-profit organization integrates context-appropriate technology, access to more than 31,000 books in 43 languages, teacher support, and community engagement to help instill a love for reading among users. In this video, Carol Williams, director of Worldreader West Africa, discusses the different uses of Worldreader’s digital content by girls and boys, as well as the role that partnerships have played in Worldreader’s success. In doing so, Williams explains some challenges Worldreader has faced in scaling up to ultimately reach 5.6 million people. To learn more about Millions Learning, please visit our interactive report, Millions Learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries, and/or visit our webpage.
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2016/05/20/becoming-brilliant-reimagining-education-for-our-time/?shared=email&msg=fail
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Becoming brilliant: Reimagining education for our time
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Becoming brilliant: Reimagining education for our time Editor’s note: In the “Becoming Brilliant” blog series, experts explore the six competencies that reflect how children learn and grow as laid out by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Golinkoff in their new book “Becoming Brilliant.” The amount of knowledge available in books and online is doubling every two and a half years. The consequence? Even if we knew every bit of information available today, we’d be at a 50 percent deficit by 2018 and 75 percent by 2021! If our education is founded solely on our ability to learn facts, we will not succeed in a Google and Wiki world. Education is often relegated to our schools, but sadly across the globe there are cries that our systems are failing our youngest citizens. Children graduating from the K-12 system are largely unprepared for workplace challenges. CEOs across the world look for strong communicators, creative innovators, and expert problem solvers. Yet, formal schools remain narrowly focused on a definition of success that includes only outcomes in reading, writing, and arithmetic with little attention to the needs articulated by the business community. We wrote “Becoming Brilliant” to reimagine what successful learning looks like in a dynamic, global world. The American education system must move from the more traditional definition of success as good test scores in reading, writing, and mathematics (with a little science and social studies thrown in) to one that prepares our children to become competitive business leaders, entrepreneurs, and scientific pioneers. Success should be best judged by outcomes that nurture happy, healthy, thinking, caring, and social children who will become collaborative, creative, competent, and responsible citizens. Ways of achieving this goal can vary dramatically; however, a common core of skills should feed the new definition of success. Based on research in the science of learning, we propose six key competencies: Each of these skills is interrelated and builds on one another, continually improving across a person’s lifespan. Each is malleable, and each is measureable. Further, each is as adaptable to the classroom as it is to the boardroom. Collectively, they offer a dynamic and systemic way of achieving a new vision of successful education. This suite of skills, that we dub the “6Cs,” forces us to reimagine the goals of education within the context of a child’s future in the workplace and in society. It also offers one way to realize a new vision that has at its core breadth along the three dimensions of skills, context, and time. A more realistic vision of education demands that we move beyond the narrow confines of memorizing facts and adopt this breadth in the number and kind of skills that must be mastered to achieve success. Such a vision also demands that we broaden the context in which learning occurs. Learning does not just take place in rows of desks aligned in classrooms. Rather learning happens in and out of school. Today our children are as likely to learn from digital content on apps as they are from textbooks. Our new image calls for us to rethink schools and to give more attention to learning in “the other 80 percent” of waking time in which children are not in school. Finally, our vision calls for breadth such that learning is lifelong—rather than trapped within a K-12 framework. With few exceptions—notably Finland and Canada—nations are preparing children to do well on tests that are not predictive of life success. Indeed, scholars in Taipei recently questioned why the United States educational system persisted on teaching narrowly construed outcomes at a time when Taiwan and mainland China are transforming their education to build creators rather than memorizers! In “Becoming Brilliant,” we ask how scientific evidence could be used to reimagine a new view of success and to provide us with an evidence-based, dynamic learning model that has breadth at its very core. Too often, we use our science to tweak the existing system rather than to reinvent it. We ask how we can draw better diagrams in existing textbooks. We find better ways to learn letter-to-sound correspondence. While these are noble efforts, we will never make marked change unless we have the courage to start over and to dream about what education can be in and out of school. “Becoming Brilliant” is for the architect, the dreamer, and the inventor who hopes for a new model of educational success based in evidence. It is for those of us who want to prepare our children for the challenges we face in the 21st Century.
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2016/05/25/watch-esvah-chizambe-explains-the-strength-of-government-partnerships-in-zambias-lesson-study/
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WATCH: Esvah Chizambe explains the strength of government partnerships in Zambia’s Lesson Study
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WATCH: Esvah Chizambe explains the strength of government partnerships in Zambia’s Lesson Study Up next in our Millions Learning video series, we explore the Zambian government’s Lesson Study practice, which is one of the 14 case studies investigated in the Millions Learning report. Lesson Study is a practice of peer-to-peer collaborative learning by which teachers share knowledge and skills to improve teaching methods. This approach promotes teamwork among teachers and improves the supervision of school managers, ultimately strengthening Zambian school systems. In this video, Esvah Chizambe, assistant director of the Directorate of Teacher Education and Specialized Services in Zambia’s Ministry of General Education, discusses how Lesson Study has maintained quality as the practice has scaled across the country. This has been possible by establishing clear roles, structure, and responsibilities across the education system, while also providing enough flexibility to adapt the practice to the needs of teachers and students. Chizambe highlights the importance of Zambia’s 10-year partnership with the Japan International Cooperation Agency, which has provided important technical assistance and ensured that the Zambian government maintains program ownership. To learn more about Millions Learning, please visit our interactive report, Millions Learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries, and/or visit our webpage.
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2016/06/02/watch-deema-bibi-discusses-how-injaz-partners-with-the-private-sector-to-help-bridge-the-skills-gap-for-jordanian-youth/
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WATCH: Deema Bibi discusses how INJAZ partners with the private sector to help bridge the skills gap for Jordanian youth
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WATCH: Deema Bibi discusses how INJAZ partners with the private sector to help bridge the skills gap for Jordanian youth As part of our Millions Learning video series, we learn about INJAZ, one of the 14 case studies explored in the Millions Learning report. INJAZ, an independent Jordanian nonprofit, provides youth from grade 7 to university level with workforce readiness and entrepreneurial education to prepare them for changes in the labor market. Since its inception, the INJAZ curriculum has been delivered through a network of 28,000 trained volunteers across Jordan, reaching 1.2 million youth to date. In this video, Deema Bibi, CEO of INJAZ, discusses how partnering with the private sector has contributed to INJAZ’s expansion in Jordan, allowing it to shift from an extracurricular activity to part of the official secondary school schedule. Bibi then shares INJAZ’s experience of scaling across all 12 Jordanian governorates, as well as the specific factors that have contributed to the program’s overall success. To learn more about Millions Learning, please visit our interactive report, Millions Learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries, and/or visit our webpage.
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2016/06/09/watch-madhav-chavan-discusses-the-successful-expansion-of-prathams-read-india-program-across-23-indian-states/
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WATCH: Madhav Chavan discusses the successful expansion of Pratham’s Read India program across 23 Indian states
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WATCH: Madhav Chavan discusses the successful expansion of Pratham’s Read India program across 23 Indian states As we near the end of our Millions Learning video series, we highlight Pratham’s Read India initiative, one of the 14 case studies examined in the Millions Learning report. Read India works to ensure that children in grades three to five acquire basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills by identifying children’s current learning levels, regardless of age or grade, and grouping them by level for instruction—also known as “teaching at the right level.” Starting in 2007, Read India reaches today more than 6 million children indirectly through its state- and district-level partnerships. In this video, Madhav Chavan, Pratham co-founder and executive board member, sheds light on Pratham’s experience working with policymakers at all levels to implement Read India across 23 Indian states. He then discusses the role of technology in Pratham’s work and its future potential, as well as Read India’s success in mobilizing a broad volunteer base. Chavan closes by outlining the importance of scaling up in small steps, ultimately using “quick wins” to demonstrate that large-scale progress is possible in the long run. To learn more about Millions Learning, please visit our interactive report, Millions Learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries, and/or visit our webpage.
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39139b1ca48e8718f33cdab06f1ea7b6
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2016/06/15/watch-sashwati-banerjee-explains-the-role-of-technology-and-research-in-sesame-streets-expansion-across-more-than-150-countries/
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WATCH: Sashwati Banerjee explains the role of technology and research in Sesame Street’s expansion across more than 150 countries
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WATCH: Sashwati Banerjee explains the role of technology and research in Sesame Street’s expansion across more than 150 countries We conclude our Millions Learning video series with Sesame Workshop’s Sesame Street program, one of the 14 case studies examined in the Millions Learning report. Sesame Street utilizes television, radio, videos, websites, books, and social media to educate preschool-aged children on literacy and math, emotional well-being, health and wellness, and respect and understanding across more than 150 countries. Sesame Street began in the United States in 1969 and today serves as the single largest informal educator of young children in the world, reaching approximately 156 million children. In this video, Sashwati Banerjee, managing director of Sesame Workshop, India, shares how research is part of the organization’s DNA, as well as the role that technology plays in expanding access to Sesame Street and evaluating its impact. Banerjee then explains how Sesame Street’s 39 local co-productions balance maintaining Sesame Street’s universal style with localizing content based on country-specific needs. To learn more about Millions Learning, please visit our interactive report, Millions Learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries, and/or visit our webpage.
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ee9a71e89c6324fb4f659f8a0e173ce6
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2016/07/07/thinking-differently-in-education-to-deliver-breadth-of-skills/
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Thinking differently in education to deliver breadth of skills
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Thinking differently in education to deliver breadth of skills Editor’s note: As part of the Skills for a Changing World project, this blog series explores opportunities for innovation in education to develop breadth of skills. Schools, teachers, parents, and students in rich and poor countries alike must transform the teaching and learning environment to catch up and keep pace with rapid advances in technology, major changes to the world of work, and to solve complex global challenges. This means mastering literacy, numeracy, and content in traditional academic subjects, but also requires young people who can think critically, solve problems and collaborate with diverse groups of people. Rather than a narrow set of competencies, education must deliver the breadth of skills urgently needed not only in the labor market but also for helping solve some of the most world’s most pressing social problems. Since the mid-20th century interpersonal and analytical skills have across the globe been increasingly in demand and will continue to as technology automates many occupations. But currently these skills are lacking in the labor market. In a global survey of employers in developing and developed countries alike, 17 percent reported difficulty hiring talent due to a lack of “workplace competencies” like communication, problem solving, creativity, and teamwork. Cultivating these skills requires new models of education and schooling; traditional classrooms that task teachers with transmitting content for students to learn will not suffice. Today’s classrooms also need to do a better job of ensuring everyone is included. From poor neighborhoods in the United States to rural villages in Nigeria—many of the world’s education systems are deeply inequitable. Globally there are 650 million children around the world who have not even reached basic developmental and learning milestones. There are an estimated 200 million children not developing to their potential in their first five years of life, including not meeting basic socio-emotional and cognitive growth. There are 250 million children who have not learned the very basics of reading or math, half of whom have spent four years in school and half of whom have either never entered a classroom or dropped out before fourth grade. There are also an estimated 200 million youth who do not have the basic literacy and numeracy skills needed for learning further skills for work. The vast majority of these children and youth are poor, living in the poorest countries in the world and in forgotten areas such as urban slums or remote villages. Many also are members of ethnic or linguistic minorities, living in communities affected by extreme violence or armed conflict, or living with disabilities. All children, including those left behind, deserve learning opportunities that help them develop to their full potential and cultivate the breadth of skills needed for succeeding today and in the future. The good news is that there is renewed global consensus to do just this. The United Nations Sustainable Development goals, adopted by the 193 countries of the U.N. General Assembly in September 2015, calls for concerted actions to help children and youth develop the skills they need from early childhood through adolescence. With this in mind, our center’s Skills for a Changing World project is conducting research on how to help children globally develop the breadth of skills. We are examining the changes needed in policy and practice both in and out of school to positively impact young children’s development through their educational career. One question we are examining in depth is how to massively accelerate progress both in improving learning outcomes across the breadth of skills and improving education equity. It is clear that a new path for educational reform is needed to quickly help all children develop the skills they need. In fact, in our recent analysis we found that developing regions are approximately 100 years behind developed regions in many measures of education related to school completion and learning outcomes. Most shocking is that based on business as usual, it is projected that it will take another century to close those gaps. Luckily, there is reason to hope. We have found that in and out of classrooms, in poor and wealthy communities alike, innovators around the globe are implementing new approaches and solutions that promote the “hands on, minds on” learning strategies that will help achieve breadth of skills for all. Many innovations are finding ways to unburden and support teachers so they can focus on facilitating learning and evidenced-based practices. Other innovations look to how we can involve communities and diverse partners to improve education, and others are streamlining administrative tasks so more resources can be channeled into teaching and learning. We will explore these themes of innovation and look at interesting examples already in action over the coming weeks. In some cases these approaches are new and employ cutting-edge technology, while others have been around for decades. We have drawn from our recent study Millions Learning as well as a diverse array of existing and new research on education innovation to inform our research and highlight key principles of innovation in action.
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fdcfedc5eb6bc65425354af8d6cadfe0
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2016/07/22/innovating-to-unburden-teachers/
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Innovating to unburden teachers
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Innovating to unburden teachers Editor’s note: As part of the Skills for a Changing World project, this blog series explores opportunities for innovation in education to develop breadth of skills. The importance of teachers cannot be overstated, and good teachers are often shown to be the most important factor in a child’s schooling—even more important than going to a good school. Ideally, teachers guide learning so that each student is active and engaged, they make learning relevant to students’ lives, and they foster the full breadth of skills young people need. But despite their important role of guiding students’ education, teachers are burdened with crowded classrooms, a range of administrative tasks, difficulty designing lessons, and finding content. They are expected to be experts in academic subjects, child development and pedagogy, adept at managing a classroom and discipline, along with collecting data and carrying out administrative duties. In many places, teachers have to wait months for their paychecks and are forced to hold multiple jobs to make ends meet. What can be done to unburden teachers? Our ongoing research has revealed there are many innovations helping to support teachers, like developing technology to ease teachers’ burdens, leveraging community members to take tasks off teachers’ plates, or utilizing innovative teacher training models that foster collaboration and peer learning. Crucially, many of these innovations can help give teachers the space, tools, and support to facilitate active hands-on, minds-on learning with their students. For example, technology is helping teachers to focus on personalized instruction and relieve them of administrative tasks. Often teachers are limited by large classes and varying ability, making it challenging to provide individual practice for students to apply what they are learning. But recent advancements in technology are allowing higher levels of personalization, with activities and games on mobiles, tablets, and computers adapting to students’ individual levels and providing ample practice of what they are learning. These applications generate instant data on student progress, what they’re learning, and how long it takes them to progress through each learning module, relieving teachers of the need to spend hours and hours grading problem sets. Pixatel is one such tool being applied in low-resource settings in India. It utilizes tablets to provide math activities that teachers can pair with their lessons to give students individualized and engaging practice while assessing their learning levels. While results are still waiting a rigorous evaluation, preliminary reports from teachers showed that students were more engaged and for longer amounts of time, and that girls and the weakest students have benefitted the most. Another example is the African School for Excellence in South Africa, which has utilized technology to implement a rotational classroom model. There, classes are split into small groups and students rotate between teacher-facilitated lessons, small group, peer-learning activities, and individual work on computers. This model places a premium on self-directed learning among students, giving teachers the tools to act as facilitators rather than lecturers. This model, which costs just 60 percent per student of what traditional government secondary schools spend, uses technology to help teachers more effectively teach large classes. In other situations schools are leveraging community members rather than technology to unburden teachers. For example, Pratham’s Read India program, one of our Millions Learning case studies, focuses on personalized remedial instruction in math and literacy for those students who are farthest behind. In many places the interactive and group-based “Teaching at the Right Level” modules have been facilitated by trained community volunteers who act as tutoring support helping teachers meet the particular needs of struggling students. This has been an effective way of personalizing learning without burdening teachers with additional lessons or after-hours sessions. Similar models of tapping community volunteers to help teachers on specific tasks have been employed to teach entrepreneurship and business skills in Uganda and Rwanda by Educate! and in Jordan by INJAZ, also Millions Learning case studies which have successfully scaled up. Finally, our research has revealed a number of education innovations that elevate and support teachers through collaborations and peer-learning professional development. Often teacher training reinforces a teacher-centered model of lecturing rather than encouraging the social nature of teaching and a hands-on, minds-on learning environment. STIR Education is a new model in India and Uganda that identifies highly motivated teachers and offers them small grants to implement innovative ideas in their classrooms. They have found that the real value in their model, however, comes from connecting teachers to each other and forming collaborative networks where they can visit and learn from one another. Similarly Edmodo, a free online platform that functions as a social network for teachers, has seen much success by capitalizing on the social nature of teaching and connecting teachers around the world to one another. These innovative models hold much promise for supporting overburdened teachers all over the world, and show a variety of contexts and approaches that aim to improve teaching. Ultimately, whatever approach is used—and there certainly is a range—the goal should be to create an educational experience that cultivates the breadth of skills students need for life and work and where teachers feel supported and respected in their roles.
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87d86a22858f1522bbef0c957be3af93
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2016/09/21/three-principles-for-global-support-to-refugee-education/
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Three principles for global support to refugee education
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Three principles for global support to refugee education Refugee children are five times more likely than their national peers to be out of school. Almost 4 million refugees globally do not have access to school, among them nearly 900,000 Syrian children and young people. The absence of educational opportunities for refugees fuels ongoing migration, xenophobia, and despair. A good education, on the other hand, is fundamental to enabling bright futures for refugees. The goal to increase the number of refugees in school—an issue that is shaping conversations at the United Nations General Assembly meetings this week—is an important one. To create the kind of education that does enable bright futures, however, this global action must include the following three dimensions: Encouragingly, educational planning is increasingly linked to development priorities, with possibilities for longer-term planning. Historically, refugees have been absent from national development plans and education sector plans. Yet recently, Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Pakistan, and South Sudan have included refugees in provincial and national planning documents. This action can facilitate multi-year planning and global support. For example, in 2016, Chad became the first country to receive funding from the Global Partnership for Education to support the education of refugees. In most refugee contexts, however, multi-year, predictable funding options remain an ongoing challenge. The newly launched Education Cannot Wait holds promise in its attempts both to increase the amount of funding available for education in emergency settings and to ensure its predictability in protracted settings. To be effective, it will need to mobilize significant new funding and ensure coordination among humanitarian and development actors. Promisingly, in these contexts, even amid major resource constraints, organizations and governments have worked together to create opportunities. National Ministries of Education in Turkey and Lebanon are working to enable refugees to access national schools; the Kenyan Ministry of Education has partnered with U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to register camp-based schools as formal Kenyan schools; and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency continues its long-term investment of substantial resources in schools and teacher training and shows strong academic results. Yet individual nation-states cannot bear the financial costs alone. Only political commitment to a shared global responsibility for the futures of refugee children and young people can enable their education and the harnessing of their many potential contributions to the global community in which we live. But this promise of education is empty without the right to work. Unemployment is rife in many countries of exile, and global support is essential to work with neighboring states to grant work permits and, moreover, to create employment opportunities that can benefit both refugees and nationals. As an unprecedented global conversation on the education of refugees unfolds this week, let it be not only a temporary clarion call. Let it be the basis for global commitment to these three principles in order to facilitate greater resources and collaborative work toward meeting the educational needs of refugees globally.
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2016/11/22/ensuring-millions-of-children-have-the-opportunity-to-learn/
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Ensuring millions of children have the opportunity to learn
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Ensuring millions of children have the opportunity to learn On Thursday, October 27, the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings and the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID) co-hosted an event, “Ensuring millions of children have the opportunity to learn,” in London to share findings and recommendations from the report, Millions Learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries. Anna French, education policy team head of DFID’s Youth and Education Department, opened the event with introductory remarks and Jenny Perlman Robinson, fellow at CUE, presented on the Millions Learning report. Perlman Robinson then moderated a panel that included Lucy Lake, chief executive officer of Camfed International; Lord Jim Knight, chief education adviser at TES Global Limited; and Deema Bibi, chief executive officer of INJAZ to discuss the Millions Learning report’s findings in the context of the panelists’ experiences. Below are some of the panelists’ responses. Jenny Perlman Robinson: One of the core ingredients in the Millions Learning report is designing education interventions based on local education demand. An important strategy for ensuring this is improved accountability between education providers and their clients. In what ways has Camfed International approached accountability to its “clients,” or girls? Lucy Lake: Camfed’s underpinning principle is accountability to the girl—to each individual girl. The systems and processes we’ve created are all designed to enforce that accountability. Camfed scaled up very dramatically from supporting tens of thousands of marginalized girls to supporting hundreds of thousands of girls to go to secondary school, within the space of just a few months. And it was not just the scale-up in numbers that we achieved but the improvement in girls’ learning outcomes. When programs go to scale, this often leads to the exclusion of the most marginalized, because it requires a highly contextualized approach to ensure that the most marginalized children are in school and learning, recognizing that the barriers to their education go well beyond the school gates. So our challenge became how to deliver a highly contextualized, community-led approach to scale, in tandem with government school systems. The critical success factor was our governance model—governance at every level and in relation to three core areas: finance, data, and partnerships. Jenny Perlman Robinson: Another key finding in the Millions Learning report is this notion that context-appropriate technologies can accelerate education progress. Based on your experiences at TES Limited, what role do you see technology playing in scaling up quality learning opportunities and reaching more children—today and in the future? Lord Jim Knight: Technology has been effective in schools by making administration more efficient and, where implemented well, by saving teachers time outside of the classroom. The disappointment is in the enhancement of teaching and learning by technology. In simple terms, I think that this is explained by too much product development being led by the technology rather than the teaching. At tes.com, we have built a hugely popular resources bank for teachers by accident! We built something simple to respond to demands from our teacher users to be able to easily share stuff with each other. Now, teachers keep coming back because the content all comes from teachers. In the future, I would expect to see a shift from technology for efficiency to technology for teaching. In many countries, children are growing up with smartphones and tablets, and this will only increase as technology becomes more embedded in their home lives. We need to smooth the experience of informal learning out of school with the reality of formal learning in school if we want to keep young people engaged with school based learning. I also anticipate more use of artificial intelligence in schools. If leaders believe that there is one standard way to teach standard subjects so that pupils pass standardized tests, then they may as well use robots following algorithms over teachers following manuals. However, I think that instead, we will want to trust teacher professionalism. Teachers can then individualize the learning informed by data-driven artificial intelligence. This may also help us raise the quality and productivity of teachers, as we face predictions of a shortfall of 26 million primary teachers globally by 2030. Making space for teachers is certainly our focus at tes.com, and I hope others will do the same. Jenny Perlman Robinson: The Millions Learning report finds that an enabling environment is an essential element for scaling quality education. In the context of Jordan, what are some of the core factors behind the government creating an enabling environment and mainstreaming INJAZ’s Financial Education Program (FEP) across Jordanian schools? Deema Bibi: At INJAZ, we believe that financial literacy is the first step towards achieving financial inclusion and empowerment and that mainstreaming financial literacy in school curricula is one of the most effective ways to reach young people. An exciting milestone occurred in March 2015, whereby the Central Bank of Jordan, the Ministry of Education, and INJAZ agreed to jumpstart financial education in Jordan on a national scale. As a result, the FEP is now being mainstreamed as a core subject for grades 7-12 in all public, private, military, and United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) schools across Jordan. I think a key reason that this initiative has been possible is because of INJAZ’s multi-stakeholder approach, which demonstrates a clear public private civil society model that is led by the government—across institutions—and actively engages civil society and the private sector to work together to achieve clear goals. Additionally, the role of the private sector was crucial as it is a key source of relevant knowledge and skills, in addition to being a main source of funding for the initiative. The private-public partnership model was reflected and adopted in every phase and element of the program. The Millions Learning event concluded with closing remarks from Beau Crowder, education advisor at the Vitol Foundation, who underscored the importance of collective action in accelerating progress toward reaching more children and youth around the world. As a follow up to the Millions Learning launch in the U.K., the CUE will launch the report in Brazil on Monday, November 28, and in Jordan on Monday, December 5. Please get in touch if you have ideas for future report dissemination opportunities.
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2017/02/16/what-the-uks-evaluation-of-girls-education-got-right-and-wrong/
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What the UK’s evaluation of girls’ education got right, and wrong
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What the UK’s evaluation of girls’ education got right, and wrong The recent independent performance review of the United Kingdom Department for International Development’s (DFID’s) efforts to educate marginalized girls sparked debate and scrutiny at a parliamentary hearing held in London on January 30. With another round of evidence to be heard by the U.K. International Development Committee on February 21, it seems timely to add another voice to the floor. The negative amber/red score meted out by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) does not justify a Brexit from helping to educate marginalized girls; nor should funds be diverted from DFID’s Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC), a multi-year, multi-country program worth a total of 455 million pounds (roughly $560 million). As the minister of state, Rt Hon. Lord Michael Bates, said at the January hearing: “DFID is being bold and ambitious in tackling a problem that everyone in the education world knows exists, but other countries […] have not had the guts to actually put their money where their mouth is and actually go out and challenge it.” DFID deliberately chose to target the hardest-to-reach girls in its strategy to educate girls, and not merely aim for the lowest-hanging fruit. And it is prepared to “put up with a bit of flak” to do so. That flak came in the form of an unsatisfactory effectiveness from ICAI, along with a call for significant improvements to the DFID’s strategy. DFID can absorb many lessons from this, as can other girls’ education actors. Following is an attempt to distill several of ICAI’s findings, and to glean key takeaways about implementing at scale and using a payment-by-results model. A key criticism was that DFID’s supported projects and programs lost their focus on marginalized girls over the course of implementation. The evaluators attributed this fuzziness in part to competing priorities between DFID’s girls’ education programs and DFID country-level programs. This critique can be easily misconstrued as a lack of commitment on DFID’s part, when it actually reflects the complexity of working on girls’ education issues in settings where both boys and girls experience sub-optimal educational outcomes. For example, Gene Sperling, Rebecca Winthrop, and I have shown that, amidst a widespread learning crisis, families are merely forced to make choices that still shortchange girls; for instance, using freed up resources to send a son to a higher-quality private school. Losing focus on marginalized girls should thus not be confused with strategically shifting implementation strategies to adapt to contexts with low overall attainment levels or to circumstances where the value placed on girls’ education is extremely low. Nor should it be confused with approaching girls’ education barriers through non-girl-focused entry points (e.g., by changing boys’ perceptions about masculinity or convincing community leaders that educating girls is valuable). Indeed, success in the most discriminatory settings often requires deftly addressing the unique needs of marginalized girls, while at the same time avoiding cultural backlash against girls for receiving priority treatment. The U.K. government’s method of accountability to its taxpayers may have tripped up the innovativeness of GEC’s financing model. According to the review and to interviews with a few GEC program implementers, it appears that the “3 Es” bottom line—economy, efficiency, and effectiveness—together with basing disbursements on results has led programs to pursue the wrong outcomes: larger numbers of girls reached rather than the most marginalized girls; girls who are easier to access rather than girls located in harder to reach communities; girls with higher levels of baseline learning levels versus girls with little to no exposure to schooling. The value-for-money framework and payment-by-results model also discouraged, or in some cases, dis-incentivized programs to consider and plan for program delivery and operation in difficult environments. This includes circumstances such as drought or other climate-related emergencies, unexpected shifts in the political environment, or the scarcity of physical or digital infrastructure in areas where the neediest girls are located—which ultimately led to dissatisfactory outcomes for GEC programs and complications with payment. The review rightly argues that, without consideration of equity (and, I would add, without providing incentives to make mid-course corrections), DFID’s financing approach the education of marginalized girls will continue to thwart its ability to make good on its pledge to “leave no one behind.” Another ICAI finding was that DFID lacks a cohesive and consistent approach to addressing the needs of the most marginalized girls. This wasn’t at all surprising to actors in the field. Indeed, the critique affirmed that the complexity and context-specific nature of the challenges in girls’ education make it extremely difficult to design a single solution—a point the evaluators seem to appreciate when citing DFID’s incorporation of a diverse range of on-the-ground interventions. Room for context-specific strategies is especially significant for the GEC, considering it funds projects in 18 diverse countries in Africa and Asia. Flexible adaptation is essential to implementing a program at scale such as the GEC, something highlighted by Jenny Perlman Robinson, Rebecca Winthrop, and Eileen McGivney in the recent Millions Learning study. Large-scale programs should also be centered on core elements or principles. According to Anna Wechsberg, director of policy and global partnerships at DFID, for GEC, these principles include putting girls and women front and center, while also taking care to “create an opportunity to gather lots of ideas, to try different approaches in different contexts, and see what work[s].” This is where DFID has been at the forefront in girls’ education—testing and innovating at scale. From engaging private sector actors new to the space of girls’ education, like Avanti and Coca Cola, to those who have been in the space for a long time, like Camfed and Save the Children, DFID’s strategy has provided a rare opportunity to test the best ways for getting the most marginalized girls into school and learning. A final ICAI criticism centers around the lack of longer-lasting system-wide work to promote the interests and needs of marginalized girls in national education systems and education policy. Essentially, the review is calling for DFID to do a better job of linking non-state actors to state actors through policy dialogue and advocacy. This particular critique was misinterpreted as DFID’s negligence in fulfilling its commitment to marginalized girls. In reality, not enough actors working on girls’ education engage in policy advocacy work that is specifically geared toward changing policies and legislation. The Center for Universal Education and the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI) found during a recent analysis of major girls’ education organizations (including DFID) that just a few organizations, like Plan International, Rise Up, UNGEI, and the Center for Universal Education, are actually engaged in this work. To continue leading and innovating on girls’ education, DFID needs to step up its policy advocacy. This means using the data and experiences of its 18 partner countries and 37 GEC programs to identify how it can better advocate for girls’ education as a complementary, not competing, priority to broaden education agendas, including national education strategies. The ICAI review recognized that GEC constitutes a significant investment in girls’ education, both symbolically and financially. Not only did the high profile nature of DFID’s investment, commitment, and advocacy signal to other governments that investing in girls’ education is the smart thing to do, it also helped to prioritize girls’ learning outcomes, not just their access to school. The ICAI review should not lead other governments to conclude that girls’ education is a risky investment, when it is anything but. Instead, DFID’s investment in girls’ education is both worthy and urgent. Its decision in 2016 to extend the GEC and to add 100 million pound to the fund signals an important attempt to provide long-term educational support for a cohort of girls. Amidst a Brexit from the European Union and the rise of isolationism, it is more important than ever for the U.K. to keep leading on girls’ education. According to What Works in Girls’ Education, it is clear that this investment will reap knock-on benefits for girls’ families, communities, and countries that are critical for achieving the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals.
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9d2acbd8faadf53ffcac9411d9a08abc
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2017/03/16/digital-natives-are-born-global-citizens/
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Digital natives are born global citizens
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Digital natives are born global citizens I’ve been teaching 18- to 22-year-old undergraduates at Temple University for about 6 years, so I was really interested in The Varkey Foundation’s new report entitled, “Generation Z: Global Citizenship Survey.” I was curious if my experience with millennials reflected broader global trends. First some background: I’m a liberal arts instructor, with a Ph.D. in psychology/philosophy, and one of 40 or so instructors who teach a required intellectual history course that aims to expose young people to great books and key ideas while cultivating critical thinking and discursive analytic skills. My profession is often the butt of jokes, and every student hates that my class is a requirement. “What are you going to do with a degree in the humanities?” is a common question, on the basis that my field does not provide hard-skills or specific training applicable to the workplace. Instead, I offer something more abstract: the ability to leverage so-called “soft-skills” in a way that leads to increased agency. Students learn complex metacognitive skills—the ability to reflect on their value systems and to understand and locate their own ideas within the context of a broad historic, intellectual, and global perspectives. I help them find images they can relate to, pictures of themselves in art, and literature that initially feels unapproachable, distant, or foreign. Through that practice, they become equipped to make meaning out of their experience within a specific and familiar context—a 21st century world that is economically globalized and infrastructurally networked. These days, I attempt to remind students that even though Brexit and the U.S. Presidential election have put nationalist and isolationist tendencies in the spotlight, humanity has actually become more connected. Interdependence is more important than ever. Trade, transportation, and technology have created a world in which putting any one country first necessitates simultaneously considering the interests of many others. Students get this intuitively. Millennials understand hyper-linked life in a way that most adults cannot comprehend. They are not wedded to the nostalgic mythos of pre-industrial, self-sustained, small-town economies and homogenous tribal villages. Today’s young people live in a world in which meaning is made on the internet. And the web makes for a strange agora. Somehow, the web-based social life is insulated within a private bezel of handheld devices but also, simultaneously, excruciatingly public and global. How does that affect the way one thinks? The Varkey Foundation-commissioned survey of 15- to 21-year-olds around the world offers some answers. As it turns out, I am not living in a bubble of intellectual urban elitism. The world’s young people are just like the students I encounter every day: tolerant and open-minded. In the 20 countries represented, the majority of young people thought that their governments “should be making it easier for immigrants to live and work legally.” And about two-thirds say they “have close friends who belong to religions different to their own.” But only 42 percent consider religious faith to be an important part of their lives. In fact, when asked what factor would make the greatest difference in uniting people, “a greater role for religion in society” scored only 5 percent. Less prejudice (30 percent), more socioeconomic equality (21 percent), better access to good quality teaching and education (19 percent) all ranked much higher (curiously, I suspect Pope Francis would say that these are precisely the values that the Catholic Church promotes). Which makes me wonder what “better access to good quality teaching and education” really means. After all, the distinction between many of the values traditionally taught by religious institutions and the social skills taught in the classroom is not so clear. What’s more confusing is the section of the survey that asks who young people identify as their greatest source of influence when it comes to values—89 percent parents, 78 percent friends, 70 percent teachers, 54 percent books/fictional characters, 53 percent faith, 32 percent sports people, 30 percent celebrities, and 17 percent politicians. These influential people do not seem to be providing them with much comfort. In 16 out of 20 countries, more young people believe “the world is becoming a worse place to live” than believe “it is getting better.” What is making it worse? What are their fears? Not refugees. More than 80 percent list “extremism and terrorism” and “conflict and war” as their biggest fears. China was an exception; 82 percent were most concerned about climate change. Fortunately, many young people are interested in being part of the solution to these problems. Two-thirds said they crave the opportunity to make a “contribution to society beyond themselves and their family.” Vikas Pota, chief executive of the Varkey Foundation, sums up the results nicely, “It is reassuring to know that, in the minds of young people, global citizenship is not dead: It could just be getting started.” I would like to think it is a result of their digital nativity. Facebook, Twitter, and Minecraft has an effect on young minds. It is not just about tools. It is about ideas. It is about the structure of consciousness. It is about how one defines the self and how agency and autonomy are leveraged in the contexts of ideas, skills, and knowledge. I’m not sure I get it, but my kids do. And I like to think that all those massive multiplayer video games, YouTube channels, and always-on cable television shows are honing their perception of the world as a wide network in which geographically divided individuals will always discover ways of working, living, and playing together.
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2017/03/30/watch-pathways-for-scaling-up-quality-education-in-developing-countries/
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WATCH: Pathways for scaling up quality education in developing countries
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WATCH: Pathways for scaling up quality education in developing countries The recent study, Millions Learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries, tells the story of where and how quality education has scaled in low- and middle-income countries. The story emerges from wide-ranging research on scaling and learning, including 14 in-depth case studies from around the globe. In the study, we use the term “scaling” to represent a range of pathways that expand and deepen effective approaches that help ensure that millions of children are learning. In celebration of National Crayon Day, we build on our first video, in which we used crayons to introduce the research focus of Millions Learning. This second video demonstrates the different pathways for scaling up impact. We will release a third video in the coming months that will discuss the 14 underlying factors, or core ingredients, that contribute to scaling up quality education. To learn more about Millions Learning, please visit our interactive report, case studies, blog series, and project webpage.
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2017/07/25/how-girls-education-intersects-with-maasai-culture-in-kenya/
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How girls’ education intersects with Maasai culture in Kenya
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How girls’ education intersects with Maasai culture in Kenya If you thought laws and policy would positively impact girls’ education in heavily patriarchal Maasai culture in Kenya, then you need to think again. In countries like Kenya, culture and traditions heavily impact girls’ ability to enroll and complete schooling and transition to college. To improve girls’ education we need to engage the custodians of tradition and culture: elders, community and spiritual leaders, elected leaders, youth, and warriors. They are the primary decisionmakers and wield the power, influence, and authority to control the quest for girls’ education. Although the introduction of free primary school in Kenya in 2003 led to an increase in school attendance across the country, enrollment rates in marginalized areas remain much lower. Of those who enroll in the first year of school, barely one in five make it to their eighth year—with dropouts attributed to early marriage, female genital mutilation (FGM), poverty, and other factors. In Narok County, a predominantly Maasai area, only one in 15 girls enrolled in primary school proceeded to secondary school. Girls’ transition rates to university are even less common: 2.4 percent in Trans Mara West and 1 percent in Narok North. Despite a strong political commitment to education, access is still lopsided. Maasai traditions play a big role in the education challenge; coupled with poverty, ignorance, and preference for boys, these factors all conspire to disadvantage girls’ education. In addition, there is a strong correlation between parents’ education status and mediating socio-cultural issues. Maasai girls and women are never seen as permanent members of their families. Instead, they pass between households and clans when they are married. Marriage is an important part of Maasai culture and young women and men have little say in who they will marry. Early and forced marriages are still common in rural areas and bride wealth is a big deal. In the Maasai community, a girl is worth the value of a cow or two, a herd of sheep and goats, or both. In other words, girls often have little use except as a conduit to bring bride wealth to their families. Such practices have ensured that less than 20 percent of Maasai girls enroll in school, few finish primary school, and even less transition to secondary school and universities. FGM, a long-standing socio-cultural practice deeply rooted in tradition, has a prevalence of nearly 89 percent throughout Maasailand. While FGM is outlawed in Kenya, a large number of parents still force their girls to undergo FGM to avoid teenage pregnancies and increase their marriageability. Typically, Maasai girls are circumcised between ages 11-13 and then soon married to a man chosen by her father in exchange for cattle. The consequences of FGM and early marriage on girls are grave. Evidence, together with my own findings from working with survivors of FGM, shows that not only does FGM harm girls personally, physically, and psychologically, it also heavily impacts economic development. Girls who marry early are often forced to leave school and terminate their education. They will likely never return to school after marriage because of household chores, frequent pregnancies, child-rearing, and other restrictions. Besides, many pastoralists’ parents do not see the immediate benefits of an education. Consequently, many are not willing to wait for nearly 20 years to see returns on their education investments, when girls bring immediate returns in the form of dowry. Despite this problem, the Maasai have a rich socio-cultural and spiritual heritage that can be harnessed as a force for social good. Spiritual and community leaders are thought leaders and opinion shapers. They are likewise crucial voices in confronting FGM and early marriage, especially if they are engaged in the process with respect and cultural sensitivity. Respectable spiritual leaders can also build a concern for girls’ education into their sermons. We need such leaders to have these frank conversations with men and elders. They need to interrogate culture, traditions, and their impact on girls’ health and education. I strongly believe that by focusing on community-led solutions and leveraging the power of these critical stakeholders we can better ensure that Maasai girls have an access to education. Already, there is progress: A local cricket team, the Maasai Cricket Warriors, is fighting against FGM by encouraging young men to say no to the practice. Such groups can be leveraged to build agency, concern, and action for girls’ education at the local and national levels. Girls from all over the world hold the key to our most pressing challenges, including climate change and environmental sustainability. Studies suggest girls’ education significantly and positively impacts families and communities. Investing in girls’ education is imperative. It is this agency that has propelled me to create Let Maasai Girls Learn, an initiative to mobilize local and global action to enroll and keep Maasai girls in school. As an Echidna Scholar, I am exploring innovative ways in which we can overcome educational barriers and rally action to let Maasai girls learn. To accomplish this, I seek to further engage with a diverse group of actors—the gate keepers of tradition, youth and women—through training and sustained dialogue. It is evident that there is a research gap in Maasai girls’ enrollment, dropout, and transition rates. This is important because the lives of millions of out-of-school Maasai girls depend on it. As a Maasai woman and passionate role model, I am working tirelessly to ensure the future and dignity of all Maasai girls.
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c91b7cb80df3b38f54c3fd07852619ee
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2017/07/27/cycling-to-success-a-road-to-empowerment-for-rural-girls-in-india/
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Cycling to success: A road to empowerment for rural girls in India
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Cycling to success: A road to empowerment for rural girls in India Although major strides are being made worldwide to reduce the gender gap in education, there continue to be significant barriers to girls’ education and empowerment—particularly for adolescent girls. In India, a country where dominant patriarchal norms continue to persist, the birth of a girl is still a cause for mourning. India has a long way to go to ensure that every girl has the opportunity to complete secondary school. Fortunately, simple interventions, like the humble bicycle, which can promote accessibility to distant schools, and providing life skills education can increase school retention rates, improve learning outcomes, and reduce early marriages. Despite the many efforts made by the Indian government and nonprofits, the high drop-out rate of girls, particularly in rural areas, leads to 47 percent of girls getting married before the legal age of 18, and 20 percent before their 15th year. In addition to child marriages, some of the major barriers to educational attainment for adolescent girls are a lack of access to secondary schools in rural areas and social mind sets among parents that do not value the importance of educating daughters as compared to sons. Ashta No Kai, the nonprofit I founded in 1998 in 10 villages near Pune, India, aims to empower and educate rural women and girls. In the belief that the educated girl of today is the empowered woman of tomorrow, ANK has introduced several interventions including a Bicycle Bank and Kishori Mandals; a weekly life-skills program for adolescent girls in the rural communities in which it works. In the early years of Ashta No Kai’s founding, the dropout rate of adolescent girls from secondary school and their consequent early marriage rate was high. Many of the girls lived four to seven kilometers away from the nearest high school, which often prevented them from continuing their education beyond the seventh grade. Village parents, fearful for their daughters’ safety and skeptical of the benefits of educating them, tended to marry them off soon after they reached puberty. This led to the launch of the Bicycle Bank in 2001, an initiative that, to date, has enabled more than a thousand rural girls to travel to secondary schools in distant villages. Bicycles have proven to be wheels of change and evidence suggests they can successfully boost rural girls’ enrollment in secondary school. In the Ashta No Kai project, for example, bicycles have facilitated access to schools, reduced travel time, and provided enhanced security as girls travel together in small groups. This has produced the following results: Ashta No Kai’s other main initiative, Kishori Mandals, instill values of gender equality by providing the life skills girls need to help shape their growth into adulthood. Specifically, Kishori Mandals focus on critical topics such as sexuality, health, legal rights, and adolescent issues. Moreover, they strive to enhance awareness of social issues such as the importance of girls’ education, and the negative effects of dowry and early marriages. Moreover, Kishori Mandals promote adolescent girls’ negotiation and decisionmaking skills by encouraging them to find their voice and exchange views and experiences on gender issues and socially taboo subjects. Both the Bicycle Bank and the Kishori Mandals are bringing dramatic change in villagers’ attitudes towards girls’ education. These interventions have become catalysts in nurturing a first generation of female learners in rural areas of Maharashtra. Since the 1000th bicycle was donated, village parents, realizing the value of educating their daughters, now buy the bicycles for their daughters themselves. As an Echidna Scholar, I will be examining the impact of Ashta No Kai’s interventions in promoting the educational outcomes of adolescent girls and arresting the rate of early marriages. I intend to also assess whether there has been any change in perceptions in our rural communities of marriage practices and the importance of girls’ education. Such a study will help to shed greater light on a serious social problem, perhaps illuminating how simple, low-tech, cost-effective community-level interventions such as a Bicycle Bank and life-skills education could have a much greater impact on promoting girls’ education than policy-level approaches. Susan B. Anthony, a women’s rights activist, who believed that “the bicycle has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world” might possibly agree. Header photo credit: Deb Clearwater/Embraced Photography
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ff635a79bd0acb463af4fd17b0b3baae
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2017/08/31/new-data-on-the-breadth-of-skills-movement-over-150-countries-included/
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New data on the breadth of skills movement: Over 150 countries included
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New data on the breadth of skills movement: Over 150 countries included With rapid technological advances and changes in the global job market, students around the world require a more diverse skillset than ever before. To prepare students for the 21st century, many countries are adapting education policies to include the skills and competencies needed for contemporary and future challenges. The Skills for a Changing World project seeks to understand how countries globally are moving toward an explicit focus on breadth of skills. As part of this project, researchers at the Center for Universal Education at Brookings examined publicly available education policy documents to understand a country’s intention to help students develop breadth of skills. For the final update in this series, 21 countries were added to the global scan between June and August 2017 for a total of 152 countries. Figure 1 lists the 21 countries, which are also a part of the interactive map that provides a visualization of the breadth of skills movement. Figure 1: 21 Countries added to the mapping database Four sets of publicly available information (mission or vision statements, skills identified in policy documents, skills in curriculum, and skills progressions) provided evidence of a shift in education systems toward broadening their provision beyond academic subjects to include a wider range of skills. Of the 152 countries in the scan, 117 countries (76 percent) identify specific skills somewhere within their national policy documents, 71 (47 percent) within the curriculum, and 58 (38 percent) within mission and vision statements. As seen in Figure 2, fewer countries mention skills progressions, or the sequence of knowledge and understanding children develop as they progress through their education, which remains consistent with prior updates for the breadth of skills movement database. While these findings show a trend in education around the world, countries differed in how consistently they mentioned skills across the four categories (Figure 3). Over half of the countries mention skills in two or three categories, 20 percent of the countries mention skills in one of the categories, and 18 percent of countries do not mention skills in any of the four categories. Of the 152 countries, only 6 percent meet the criteria for identifying skills within their vision or mission statement, policy documents, curriculum, and specifying skills progression. The four most frequently identified skills within policy documents show that communication, creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving continue to be the most cited (Figure 4), as was the case in the original report as well as all previous updates. In addition to these four skills, countries mentioned a wide range of other skills outside of the realm of literacy and numeracy, including information technology skills, social skills, and entrepreneurship. This blog post completes our series on education systems’ online descriptions of aspirations for their students associated with breadth of skills. This large database of 152 countries has led us to the major finding that countries globally are moving toward an explicit focus on skills beyond academic ones. Countries vary in the consistency of skills identification across the four categories, with only 6 percent of the 152 countries mentioning the concept of skills progression or development. This may suggest that countries may be only beginning to develop approaches to teaching and integrating skills enhancement in their curricular and pedagogical practices. At Brookings, we are initiating new research to support and explore this development—focusing on describing the path individuals travel to develop their cognitive and social skills within the education context, and how knowledge of these paths will inform their integration in daily teaching.
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697947ef366d871d369cdb60db7c4bb9
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2017/11/21/life-skills-education-is-more-than-teaching-skills/
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Life skills education is more than teaching skills
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Life skills education is more than teaching skills Today the buzz around life skills education for girls is at an all-time high. Policy and civil society actors—from United Nations agencies to grassroots community-based organizations—have made great strides developing life skills programming to help girls achieve a wide range of empowering cognitive, health, social, economic, and political outcomes. But in many cases, such newfound empowerment is met with violent backlash by family and community members, particularly when girls attempt to apply skills like communication, negotiation, or leadership outside of the safe spaces provided by a program. As a result, the burden of social change has been largely placed on the shoulders of the girl-child. At Brookings, we are examining how policy and civil society actors can do a better job shifting that burden of change from girls themselves to her broader social and political context. As part of our larger work on Skills for a Changing World, we’re asking questions about how girls’ life skills programming can be better linked to transformative social change and the disruption of structural inequalities that sustain barriers for girls and women. One answer is that life skills education should be more than just about the girl’s own skills development. Practitioners should also be focused on the girl’s agency (her capacity to see and to make choices) and whether enabling opportunity structures (like policies, social norms, and institutions) exist in her environment. In our new framework on girls’ life skills education, we draw on the fields of gender empowerment and the psychology of learning to help practitioners better design life skills programming that connects girls’ life skills development not only to empowerment but also to wider social change. We’ve summarized this into four guiding principles: 1. Consider a broader range of competencies For starters, practitioners need to conceptualize life skills as a range of competencies (what one can do) that enable girls (and boys) to function, thrive, and adapt in their lived realities, rather than a narrow set of skills for life. These competencies are comprised of networks of Knowledge (what one knows), Skills (what one has), and Attitudes (what one believes and values), or KSAs. Conceptualizing life skills in this way well help encourage practitioners to be more purposeful not only around the whats of life skills, but also the hows of applying such competencies to navigate unique challenges at pivotal moments across her life and in different contexts. 2. Design for five touch points in programming Moving the focus of life skills programming beyond the girl means designing programs that begin with 1) the dynamic process of building girls’ competencies, but continue on to focus on: 2) whether the girl can translate her skills into 3) empowered action amidst a host of mediating factors that can influence the degree to which her action is empowered. And, if actors seek to achieve wider goals for girls and women, programs must also take into account 4) the range of life outcomes impacted as well as whether 5) systemic change has been achieved. (Watch our animation below for an illustration of how these five touch points come together.) 3. Be intentional about development and change Evidence from the psychology of learning stresses the continuous, dialogical, and non-linear nature of skills development over the child’s life. Life skills development is no different. Practitioners must therefore be more intentional about building upon foundational KSAs throughout key moments of the girl’s life, including early childhood through adolescence and young adulthood. But tied to development is change. This rings true not only at the individual level of the girl, but also for her wider social context. As girls build KSAs important for her empowerment, there is a consequent reaction and response by her peers, family, and community that must be accounted for by programs. This interaction can lead to the strengthening of her agency, as well as to the weakening of it. 4. Support girls to “read” context, gender, and power Finally, if there is one “life skill” that we believe is foundational for girls, it is the ability to read her social, political, and economic contexts with an understanding of how gender and power have structured her realities and opportunities. Life skills programs must support girls to recognize, navigate, and leverage the dynamic structures in her life if she is to translate KSAs into empowered action. Without this, programs risk girls’ life skills development getting “stuck” in the safe spaces in which they are learned. As the girls’ education community continues to center life skills across program, donor, and government policy priorities, we must ensure that actors take into account the urgent need to focus on more than just the girl’s skills development—lest we continue to place the burden of social change on girls themselves rather than on the gender unequal societies in which she lives. We acknowledge that this will be difficult to apply in practice, but catalyzing transformative social change has and will never be a straightforward process. Our hope is that by focusing on the above four principles, policy and civil society actors will be to push the field even further to ensure that life skills initiatives move girls and women toward both improved life outcomes and wider systemic change.
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ca6a0ba6ecb298afca2b05f149efe433
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2018/03/06/educating-empathy-inspiring-students-to-develop-their-passions/
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Educating empathy: Inspiring students to develop their passions
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Educating empathy: Inspiring students to develop their passions Research shows that the healthy development of social and behavioral skills is crucial to health and well-being. The ability to empathize, for example, allows us to have healthy interpersonal relationships, promote social understanding, and engage in altruistic acts. However, understanding and teaching empathy is too often not prioritized in our education systems, which can be detrimental to development. How can innovation address this? Venezuelan-based Trix and Trax is one example of an innovation tackling this through a peer-to-peer learning system that leverages live events and social media to inspire young people to gain valuable skills whilst developing their passions. The program begins by engaging 10-18-year-olds to be “superheroes” who can inspire, teach and share with others, online and offline. The program centers on five zones: non-traditional sports, music, dance, visual arts, and media/tech that create the right conditions for any student to perform in a safe environment to display their passions and learn from each other. Through a set of sessions, each superhero first learns to discover and present their talents. They then work as a group, divided by their zone of choice, to work in teams, teaching and motivating their peers to prepare a final group performance for each zone. Videos of these performances are shared on the Trix and Trax social media tool where students can provide positive feedback and recognize each other’s strengths. All participants of the program then take on the final challenge of organizing a Trix and Trax event for the school, not only to highlight their talent but also to welcome other students who want to experiment. They are now ready to show, teach, motivate, and inspire others to develop their passions! This program is a favorite with educators since the curriculum itself can be tailored. The recommended time to dedicate each week for the program is 2 sessions of 45 minutes over the course of the year. Educators can incorporate it into the school day or as an extra-curricular activity. Since 2011, Trix and Trax has worked with 15,000 students to record 1,000 video performances, with over 2 million collective views. Their continued success is evident in their emphasis on collecting data and feedback to improve impact and reach. Each year, they tour schools with students from all socio-economic backgrounds and, in that process, collect valuable information about their perceptions of their own passions and dreams. They have found that students from low socio-economic backgrounds are more susceptible to questioning their talent, demonstrating the high value the program can have on self-confidence, empathy, leadership, and much more. Their latest data shows that 80 percent of 12-13-year-olds feel they’re talented independent of socio-economic status. However, by age 16-17 they become more aware of their current context and this percentage drops to around 60 percent for those from low-socioeconomic areas, compared to 80 percent still for higher socioeconomic areas. Fortunately, close to 90 percent of low-income students expressed their interest in any program that can help them develop their passions. Following participation in the Trix and Trax program, over 90 percent of the participants say that they feel more motivated to pursue their dreams. Developing these skills and opportunities are essential for anyone but are particularly important for youth in Venezuela who face an economic collapse—a threat to their ability to be empathic, confident students. In addition to Venezuela, this innovation has also been successful in Chile, and there are developments to establish it in the U.S. The program is so popular that it has become a yearly fixture in many schools and a popular content channel for youth. By engaging students in this multi-dimensional way, innovations like Trix and Trax are teaching skills like empathy. To be empathic we need to understand what someone is thinking and feel a certain level of emotion about it (cognitive & affective empathy), but we must also be able to demonstrate this understanding automatically through the physical, such as facial expression and/or body language (motor empathy). Trix and Trax facilitates this so young people can develop their cognitive empathic abilities through understanding how someone else might learn their passion, as well as enhance their effective empathic abilities towards fellow students who may feel nervous when experimenting with something new or share happiness with others when celebrating accomplishments. The opportunities to engage in activities, such as music and dance, can particularly facilitate the improvement of more automatic, motor aspects of empathy. This can be developed through aspects such as emotional connectedness to music, mirroring and synchronous movement. The recent Brookings report Can We Leapfrog? The Potential of Education Innovations to Rapidly Accelerate Progress shows that one path forward to ensure our young people gain these important skills is through harnessing the power of innovation. The world of education is full of great innovations. Unfortunately, they seldom manage to spread from classroom to classroom, school to school, let alone around the world. This is where HundrED comes in. HundrED is a not-for-profit organization that seeks and shares inspiring innovations in K-12 education. Our goal is to help improve education and inspire a grassroots movement through spreading pedagogically sound, ambitious innovations across the world. HundrED shares a collection of 100 innovations annually, all with toolkits, so that anyone can implement the innovation themselves for free. We have a fast-growing network of ambassadors and schools, from over 40 countries, alongside our HundrED Spotlights, focused partnerships on locations or themes and independent research into how and why innovation spreads in education, including youth voice. For all innovations, an internal educational specialist research team and an expert advisory board research and interview innovations for selection. In 2018, educators and youth will also have the opportunity to vote and provide feedback in our new Academy model. When selecting innovations they must be innovative, impactful, and scalable: For example, in the case of Trix and Trax, innovativeness is shown by its divergence from the norm by re-inventing a traditional talent show model utilizing online and offline tools. The innovation sets clear, demand-driven, child-centered goals that support learning breadth and depth of skills in an active, engaging, and useful way. They demonstrate impact through their high number of engaged online users, many case studies of attendee pursuing careers in their passion, as well as monitored skill development. The scalability of the model is shown through its expansion across Venezuela, and into Chile, with a design and implementation structure to both improve and expand as they create meaningful stakeholder partnerships. Get Involved with HundrED Do you have an educational innovation that the world should know about? Share it with us! Submitting to HundrED Open makes your innovation visible to an international audience enthusiastic about education change. It also means your application will be considered for our list of 100 Global Inspiring Innovations 2018. Before submitting, be sure to explore our 2017 toolkits to get an idea of the innovations changing the face of education today. As a rapidly expanding global network, we also need the support of dedicated ambassadors to help discover and share innovations around the world. If you’d like to join our growing community of passionate ambassadors, we’d love for you to apply here.
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9b1955318c34dc72042678c1d2662579
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2018/03/20/many-students-are-unengaged-in-their-learning-how-schools-can-create-opportunities-for-participation/
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Many students are unengaged in their learning—how schools can create opportunities for participation
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Many students are unengaged in their learning—how schools can create opportunities for participation Just as the futures of students depend on their schools, so do the future of schools depend on the students. Most students in classrooms today were born at the turn of the millennium. The world is changing rapidly, demanding new knowledge and skills, and offering new learning environments and ways of learning. Yet educational institutions often continue to look at reality through the rear-view mirror. In Brazil, my home country, this contradiction has created additional challenges that sit alongside the chronic problems which have long jeopardized the quality and equity of public education. While solutions to many of these issues remain elusive, one thing is certain: we will continue to struggle to move forward without the active participation of students in the process. In this case, involvement means not only understanding how new generations learn, but also relying on their collaboration to introduce in schools innovations with which their teachers are unfamiliar. Many of the main trends in education are intrinsically related to increased student participation in the educational process. Personalized learning, for example, requires that the individual characteristics of students are increasingly considered, and that they have greater autonomy and flexibility when choosing what and how to learn. New technologies have also created conditions for students to become more autonomous and to make choices. Hands-on learning fosters authorship through encouraging students to put their knowledge and skills into practice by creating projects and products. Curricula focused on 21st century skills also call for more active pedagogical techniques, which not only broaden student engagement, but also develop their critical, creative, and purpose-based abilities, allowing them to remain proactive throughout adulthood. Even tendencies in school management and the school environment require the greater engagement of students in the decisionmaking processes, with more horizontal and collaborative relationships between educators and pupils, as well as spaces and infrastructures that are more connected with the reality of today’s generations. More than a practice, participation must be understood as a principle capable of reorienting the way students are involved in their pedagogical process. Only then will it be incorporated into schools not as an occasional event, but as a value inherent in the school community. Promoting student participation, therefore, requires the willingness of administrators and teachers to share information and power. Openness, dialogue, understanding, and cooperation are key factors in this process, which must balance the responsibilities of educators with contributions from students. On the one hand, it is vital not to underestimate the potential of the students, even when they are young children or seem unengaged. But it is also important not to romanticize such learners, nor make participation a burden. Engagement needs to make sense and match the abilities of students, as well as collaborate with their learning and development, which are the key goals of every school. Participation should also consider the students’ culture, rather than forcing them to fit into models of the adult world. A playful approach, as well as art, culture, and digital media are some of the elements that can enhance the contribution of children, adolescents, and young people. The intention is to take these young people seriously, but also to respect their own forms of organization, expression, and contribution. Student engagement is strengthened when the school creates opportunities for listening, choosing, co-authoring, and co-responsibility. Listening: Consulting students about their own educational process, when they share opinions on a variety of subjects from everyday issues, such as school infrastructure and classroom activities, to more complex matters such as changes in curriculum and school organization. Choosing: Allowing students to make choices regarding their educational process, whether choosing between different pedagogical activities or ways of learning, or selecting the subjects they wish to study, to mention just a few examples. Co-authoring: Fostering the participation of students in learning processes that stimulate authorial productions, starting with simpler creations and progressing to involvement in the elaboration of more sophisticated projects such as writing a book, producing a video, or solving a problem in the community. Co-responsibility: Engaging the students as agents of innovation in education, promoting their participation in discussions and initiatives aimed at improving their daily school life or even creating solutions to more challenging educational problems. Everyone can be an agent of positive change at school and in the community if they are encouraged to empathize with, be concerned about, and commit to common issues and collaboration. Teaching institutions that foster this kind of attitude in their students not only rely on their contributions to strengthen their own schools, but also prepare them to be proactive citizens outside the school environment. Since 2015, Instituto Inspirare has promoted a range of initiatives to encourage the participation of Brazilian students in improvements in education. The Our School In (Re)Construction survey heard from 132,000 students about their current school reality and their ideal school. The Make Sense platform, meanwhile, stimulates educational systems to listen to students and involve them in design thinking workshops to solve the problems of their schools in tandem with educators. The initiative has resulted in creative and interesting solutions that encourage and support school principals and teachers to visualize ways that educational institutions can be relevant and engaging for students. After joining the Make Sense, a group of middle schools from Alagoas State in the Northeast of Brazil heard from their students that classes were boring and too disconnected from their lives. One of the solutions prototyped to solve the problem was the Box of References. The idea was to invite the students to make a list of their favorite songs, books, blogs, YouTubers, celebrities, and deposit them into a collector box. Teachers would then use the lists to better understand their students and design learning activities connected to their interests. Although simple, the solution proved to be very effective in engaging students and improving their relationship with their teachers.
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290662949edeb0920e9eb1b6c1cf3277
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2018/04/13/teaching-preschoolers-learning-strategies-what-meets-how/
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Teaching preschoolers learning strategies: ‘What’ meets ‘how’
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Teaching preschoolers learning strategies: ‘What’ meets ‘how’ During group time in a preschool classroom, a teacher asks the children to, “Raise a nice quiet hand,” in order to share an idea. What does a child need to know and do in order to comply with this request? Children are being asked to: What appears to be a simple task can turn into frustration for child and teacher alike without awareness of these functions and behavioral norms. It would not be surprising to step into a preschool classroom and observe children learning about numbers, colors, and shapes. It might, however, be surprising to encounter preschool children learning about thinking—their own thinking. That is, preschool children tend to receive instruction and exposure to declarative knowledge (What is a nice quiet hand?), but less so procedural knowledge (How do I plan my response or question before speaking? How do I control myself while raising my hand?). This example is simple, but highlights a larger issue: in early childhood, the focus is often on academic content, but that is not enough. Children need to be able to attend and access instruction as well as apply and elaborate on information gathered from others. The strategies and underlying thought processes that enable children to engage in these behaviors are often known as approaches to learning—a critical foundation for children’s learning and development. Figure 1 illustrates a sample of these strategies, which apply to any grade level. Figure 1. Three categories of approaches to learning strategies Source: Chamot, 2009; Bodrova & Leong, 2003 To help teachers isolate and develop learning strategies, AppleTree Institute for Education Innovation (“AppleTree”) developed nine approaches to learning standards (Figure 2) designed to be taught in both explicit and embedded ways. Figure 2. Approaches to learning standards These standards were designed to be the backbone of instructional practices and materials, while also providing a roadmap for the progression of typical development and suggested instruction. The standards and their more specific indicators increase in complexity as a teacher moves with a child or class, top-to-bottom and left-to-right (Figure 3). Using this structure, a teacher can identify where a child or group is in their mastery of learning strategies. The teacher may think: Where is this child in their learning? What did he/she already master? What should I target next during direct instruction and purposeful play? This is not a perfectly linear approach, as children may master skills slightly out of order. However, the general framework operates to show increasing difficulty and skill building in a way that informs instruction, operates as a precursory professional learning tool, and offers a more nuanced approach than a traditional standards list. Figure 3. Organizing standards and indicators into a progression Figure 4 shows a sample progression that takes the generic structure in Figure 3 and specifies indicators of increasing complexity for one of the approaches to learning standards “Interactions with Peers”. The indicators can be explicit in small and whole group instruction and built into organic, teachable moments as children interact with each other during child-directed activities. For example, children may complete a silly song or cheer after a peer has a good idea or completes a “tough” task (e.g., finishes a puzzle or jumps really far). A teacher may also use peer partnering so that a child who is adept at writing or making the letter sound for “T” is supporting a child with emerging knowledge of the letter so they may work and learn together to address indicators at the “Approaching” and “Progressing” levels in the progression simultaneously. In this example, approaches to learning standards are embedded within a literacy lesson. Figure 4. Sample Every Child Ready approaches to learning preschool standard To bridge the gap between research and practice, professional learning and development of instructional materials are critical to using any progression. Figure 5 shows examples of instructional approaches that can be coupled with a standards-based progression. Figure 5. Instructional approaches Note: The term pacing guide can also be referred to as a curriculum map, scope and sequence, or standards schedule. These guides lay out expectations of the material that is to be covered in each subject at each grade level, as well as when they must be taught and how many days to devote to each topic. Overall, there are a variety of possible complex and rich uses for the information presented above. However, if nothing else, AppleTree hopes that the following message is received by all who participate or implement: Children need to know how to learn not just what to learn. Considerable progress has been made in extending what is known about approaches to learning in preschool and applying that in a way that is age-appropriate and engaging for very young learners. Additionally, this extensive work in early childhood can and should be extended meaningfully into later grades, in an effort to better support both teachers and children. There are multiple goals to this work, including the push to provide preschool as an early prevention measure and the hope of expanding current learning progressions to support the continuum of learning. Although much has been accomplished, there is still more work to be done. Existing literature on learning progressions must be paired with empirical evidence to create a validated and tested framework that educators can use to guide their instruction and scaffold children’s learning. Tables and graphics created by Adrienne Gaither of AppleTree Institute for Education Innovation.
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879f4b2ae79938d31635d996de7656a9
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2018/04/26/using-learning-progressions-in-teaching-students-with-disabilities-in-inclusive-classrooms/
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Using learning progressions in teaching students with disabilities in inclusive classrooms
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Using learning progressions in teaching students with disabilities in inclusive classrooms Successful teaching and learning demands a series of observations and decisions, led by fundamental questions: An experienced teacher will answer these questions based on deep knowledge of both her students and what she is teaching. However, challenges arise when a teacher is inexperienced; is teaching material with which she is less familiar; or is teaching students whose starting point for learning sits outside her range of experience. The last situation describes the challenge for many teachers of students with disabilities in inclusive classrooms. These students often demonstrate skills and understanding that are significantly less well developed than their classroom peers, and some teachers struggle to recognize these skills as a foundation for further instruction. The Students with Additional Needs (SWANs) program identifies a suite of learning progressions in a range of foundational or enabling skills (i.e., communication, literacy, numeracy, social and emotional skills, learning and thinking skills, movement, and digital literacy) that can facilitate instructional planning. This enables teachers to adapt and adjust learning opportunities that provide a differentiated, flexible, and personalized approach for students with disabilities. The progressions have been empirically validated for use by teachers of students with additional learning needs in almost 1700 Australian schools through a program of research at the University of Melbourne. For example, while training a special education support officer working with students in remote Australian communities, I was told about her efforts to help teachers write instructional goals and plans for a student aged eight years who had severely limited verbal communication. His mother’s strongly expressed wish for his learning was to hear him say “I love you, Mum.” Teachers of students with disabilities cope with the emotions and concerns of parents as an everyday component of their work, and need to consider these in the learning goals they write for students and are expected to share with parents. For this student, the development of an instructional plan certainly needed to identify goals that recognized his starting skills as a foundation for future learning, and that documented achievable but challenging next steps on a progression of increasing proficiency. Well-written goals should explicitly describe skills the teacher expects the student to be able to achieve with effort within the timeframe set for the plan. The addition of the qualifying words with effort guides the teacher to think about the purposeful aspects of an instructional plan and the way that it should ideally describe a compact between educators, student, and parents. The special education support officer noted that the student was working at the first level on the SWANs communication progression. The student could show that he wanted an object that was in sight but out of reach by calling out, moving towards it, and expressing annoyance until he had attained it. With the guidance of the special education support officer, his teacher was learning how to use simple picture symbols to help the student express his basic wants and needs. This was seen as an important, even urgent, learning goal for the student to help him reduce his considerable frustration and anxiety. For example, the teacher was guided to model the use of pointing to communicate the desire for a particular object out of two or three. This was recognized as foundational to the skill of being able to make and communicate a choice, a powerful enabling skill for the student. The communication learning goals for the student were thus grounded on skills he could already demonstrate, with the idea that learning goals could be drawn from these as well as from the immediate next level on the SWANs communication progression. The second level on the communication learning progression describes goals of being able to use names, words, signs, symbols, gestures, physical contact, and facial expressions to gain or direct attention, make requests, or convey feelings. It directs the student’s teacher to consider important skills such as shared attention and pointing, and encourages the teacher to guide the student’s learning towards being able to communicate a simple desire, interest, or message with the aid of pictures or objects. While supporting the student’s development of communication skills was clearly a priority, an expectation of inclusive education practice is that all students can learn material drawn from a common curriculum, including the development of literacy and numeracy skills. For numeracy, the student was working within the second level on the SWANs numeracy progression. He was learning to take part in numeracy activities, but needed support for his participation, and activities that included materials that interested him. The support officer worked with the student’s teacher to set goals for numeracy learning drawn from his current and immediate next level on the progression. She expected that these were likely to include short-term goals of exploring and sorting objects of different sizes and then, looking ahead to the next level, learning to use picture symbols to identify object size (e.g., short or long, big or small). She expected that, as the student was already responding to activities that involved sharing food and drawing materials being added to or taken away from a group, a reasonable goal based on the next level on the progression would be to learn and respond to words or picture symbols for adding and taking away. His numeracy and communication goals thus showed significant overlap, with both addressing similar priorities for the student. The result was likely to be a personalized learning program for the student that built on his abilities, acknowledged his right to participate in meaningful and curriculum-based learning, and represented a purposeful plan that the teacher could implement in the classroom. In summary, a well-designed learning progression is a useful tool that helps both teachers and students identify the skills that have been learned and those that are within the immediate grasp of the learner with support and instruction. For teachers of students with disabilities in inclusive classrooms, it helps them to recognize the skills their students can demonstrate and to plan for future learning. All students are entitled to experience the joy of successful progress as learners.
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30830e07c4ac193bdec37df667a0ad33
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https://www.reuters.com/article/markets-bofa-survey-idINKBN27X0ZX?edition-redirect=in
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Investors in 'full bull' mode as vaccine hopes run high: BofA survey
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Investors in 'full bull' mode as vaccine hopes run high: BofA survey
By Reuters Staff2 Min Read
FILE PHOTO: Bull and bear, symbols for successful and bad trading are seen in front of the German stock exchange (Deutsche Boerse), in Frankfurt, Germany, March 25, 2020. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo
LONDON (Reuters) - Investors are in “full bull” mode, deploying more money into emerging markets, small-cap stocks and the banking sector on hopes a COVID-19 vaccine will turn around these hard-hit market segments, BofA’s monthly investor survey showed on Tuesday.
Global stocks hit a new record high on Monday as positive data for a potential COVID-19 vaccine came from Moderna, following similarly upbeat data from rival Pfizer. Investors surveyed by BofA expect a “credible vaccine” by January.
The euphoria sent investors’ cash levels down to 4.1% in November, from 4.4% last month, to pre-COVID-19 levels last seen in January, according to the survey of 190 fund managers with $526 billion in assets under management.
With global economic growth and profit expectations running at a 20-year high among the investors surveyed, the “reopening rotation” into oversold business sectors is likely to continue in the fourth quarter, BofA said.
But the bank advised clients: “We say ‘sell the vaccine’ in coming weeks/months as we think we’re close to ‘full bull’.”
Meanwhile, in U.S. Treasuries, 73% of the investors surveyed were expecting steeper yield curves -- rates on longer-term U.S. Treasury securities rising faster than short-term rates. Expectations were far higher than after the 2008 Lehman bankruptcy, 2013 taper tantrum and 2016 elections.
For 2021, investors named “long” emerging market assets, S&P 500 and oil as their favourite trades. Nearly half of the investors surveyed by BofA said they expect emerging markets to outperform in 2021.
Reporting by Thyagaraju Adinarayan; editing by Sujata Rao and Ed OsmondOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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22e3587064778d6bf8e7c8b4fe35b01f
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https://www.reuters.com/article/markets-bonds-ecb/bofa-says-24-firms-elegible-for-bond-buying-schemes-of-both-ecb-and-boe-idUKL8N2BD6Y8?edition-redirect=uk
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BofA says 24 firms elegible for bond-buying schemes of both ECB and BOE
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BofA says 24 firms elegible for bond-buying schemes of both ECB and BOE
By Yoruk Bahceli2 Min Read
LONDON, March 20 (Reuters) - Daimler and Deutsche Telekom are among 24 firms that stand to benefit the most from central bank asset-purchase schemes as their debt is eligible for the UK as well as euro zone stimulus programmes, investment bank BofA said on Friday.
The Bank of England announced this week it would restart buying corporate debt for the first time since 2016, while the the European Central Bank also ramped up bond purchases, bringing total planned purchases of corporate and government bonds to 1.1 trillion euros.
Auto companies Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen, as well as utility Deutsche Telekom , which have notable debt piles outstanding in both euros and sterling, are eligible for both corporate bond purchases, BoA analysts told clients.
That would imply tighter supply of these bonds in the market, potentially boosting their prices.
“These names could be the ultimate beneficiaries as two central banks fight over squeezing their bonds,” wrote BofA.
“We expect these 24 names to become core longs for credit investors at this juncture.”
Two of the companies: Unilever and Engie , opened Europe’s corporate bond market on Friday, which had been shut since March 11, according to Refinitiv IFR, with books heavily subscribed on both deals.
Here are the rest of the companies BoA has identified, ordered by the number of eligible bonds they have outstanding:
* Daimler
* BMW
* Deutsche Telekom
* Volkswagen
* Deutsche Bahn
* Engie
* Telefonica
* Anheuser-Busch InBev
* EDF Energy
* Siemens
* Total
* Unilever
* E On International
* Iberdrola
* BASF
* Suez
* Veolia Environnement
* Compagnie de Saint Gobain
* Nestle Holdings
* ESB Finance
* Linde
* Bouygues
* Compass Group
* WPP (Reporting by Yoruk Bahceli;Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
BreakingviewsReuters Breakingviews is the world's leading source of agenda-setting financial insight. As the Reuters brand for financial commentary, we dissect the big business and economic stories as they break around the world every day. A global team of about 30 correspondents in New York, London, Hong Kong and other major cities provides expert analysis in real time.Sign up for a free trial of our full service at https://www.breakingviews.com/trial and follow us on Twitter @Breakingviews and at www.breakingviews.com. All opinions expressed are those of the authors.
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4aea7510dc70dc03325d635d07865f8b
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https://www.reuters.com/article/markets-canada-currency-bonds-idCAL1N0QX0XI20140827?edition-redirect=ca
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CANADA FX DEBT-Loonie extends rally to hit one-week high
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CANADA FX DEBT-Loonie extends rally to hit one-week high
By 0 Min Read
* Canadian dollar at C$1.0894 or 91.79 U.S. cents * Bond prices higher across the maturity curve By Leah Schnurr TORONTO, Aug 27 (Reuters) - The Canadian dollar strengthened against the greenback on Wednesday, extending the previous session's gains as it benefited from broad U.S. dollar weakness and as investors looked ahead to key data releases at the end of the week. The rally in the U.S. currency over the past two months has been one of the major forces behind the loonie's recent weakness that sent it close to the key resistance level of C$1.10 earlier in the week. The softness in the greenback on Wednesday drove the Canadian dollar to a one-week high, with the currency pairing testing support around C$1.09. "As much as we want to look at Canadian specific factors, I think the bigger story is just a broader U.S. dollar move lower, where you're getting some of the geopolitical premium that had been priced in slipping away," said David Tulk, chief Canada macro strategist at TD Securities in Toronto. The leaders of Ukraine and Russia held talks late Tuesday on resolving the five-month conflict between the two countries. Meanwhile, an open-ended ceasefire in the Gaza war was holding. The Canadian dollar was at C$1.0894 to the greenback, or 91.79 U.S. cents, stronger than Tuesday's close of C$1.0952, or 91.31 U.S. cents. A quiet economic calendar has left the loonie without many domestic catalysts until the gross domestic product report is released on Friday. Analysts forecast the economy picked up to a 2.7 percent rate of growth in the second quarter, bouncing back from a slowdown in the first three months of the year. Although there is a risk that growth could accelerate more than the market expects, that is unlikely to cause the Bank of Canada to alter its cautious tone when it releases its monetary policy statement next week, said Tulk. "We've seen this from the bank time and time again; anything that looks like it's either stronger than forecast or something with a seemingly positive undertone, they are inclined to find the dark cloud hanging somewhere out in the distance. That's their overarching strategy, just to sound as cautious as they can." Canadian government bond prices were higher across the maturity curve, with the two-year up 1-1/2 Canadian cents to yield 1.097 percent and the benchmark 10-year up 28 Canadian cents to yield 2.014 percent. (Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
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7e1965c8e1b2005707a6c3234863aa3e
|
https://www.reuters.com/article/markets-canada-currency-bonds-idCAL1N0SN0VY20141028?edition-redirect=ca
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CANADA FX DEBT-C$ strengthens as U.S. durable goods orders drop, eye on Fed
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CANADA FX DEBT-C$ strengthens as U.S. durable goods orders drop, eye on Fed
By 0 Min Read
* Canadian dollar at C$1.1205 or 89.25 U.S. cents * Bond prices mixed By Andrea Hopkins TORONTO, Oct 28 (Reuters) - The Canadian dollar strengthened against the greenback on Tuesday after U.S. durable goods orders came in weaker than expected, helping nudge oil prices higher, but markets were already looking ahead to the conclusion of the Federal Reserve's policy meeting on Wednesday. The U.S. dollar weakened after government data showed new orders for capital goods by U.S. businesses recorded their biggest drop in eight months in September. The drop in the U.S. dollar helped Brent crude oil prices rise above $86 a barrel. A weaker dollar helps global consumers buy dollar-denominated commodities such as oil. "Oil has been one of the key drivers of markets generally and so we have a more encouraging sentiment within market generally, and typically that's usually a fairly good environment for the Canadian dollar," said Camilla Sutton, chief currency strategist at Scotiabank. "But the broad picture is that the Canadian dollar has really been stuck in a range, a lot of currencies have, trying to look for where the next shift is going to be, and with the Fed meeting tomorrow, that puts a big risk in the horizon." While the Fed is expected to announce the end of its bond-purchase program at the conclusion of its two-day meeting, the U.S. central bank will likely reinforce its willingness to wait a while before raising interest rates. At 9:19 a.m. Eastern time the Canadian dollar was at C$1.1205, or 89.25 U.S. cents, stronger than Monday's North American session at C$1.1238, or 88.98 U.S. cents. Sutton expects the currency will trade between C$1.1200 and Tuesday's opening level at C$1.1247, but she said if the loonie breaks through the C$1.1200 level it could test last week's strength of C$1.1184. At home, traders are looking ahead to testimony by Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz to the Senate banking committee on Wednesday. His testimony had been scheduled for last week but was canceled due to a gunman's attack on Parliament Hill. Canadian government bond prices were mixed, with the two-year up half a Canadian cent to yield 1 percent. The benchmark 10-year was down 3 Canadian cents to yield 2.018 percent. (Reporting by Andrea Hopkins; Editing by Chris Reese)
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708f54888f764568850228d98a86a221
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https://www.reuters.com/article/markets-canada-currency-bonds-idCAL1N0TW0ZK20141212?edition-redirect=ca
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CORRECTED-CANADA FX DEBT-Sinking crude pushes C$ to 5-1/2-year lows near C$1.16
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CORRECTED-CANADA FX DEBT-Sinking crude pushes C$ to 5-1/2-year lows near C$1.16
By 0 Min Read
(Corrects third paragraph to say stock index has fallen about 5 percent, not 10 percent) * Canadian dollar at C$1.1558 or 86.52 U.S. cents * Bond prices higher across the maturity curve By Solarina Ho TORONTO, Dec 12 (Reuters) - The Canadian dollar was within striking distance of C$1.16 against the greenback on Friday as it hit fresh 5-1/2 year lows on new worries over a supply glut in the oil market spurred by an International Energy Agency report. The agency, which coordinates the energy policies of industrialized countries, forecast an increase in global supplies next year but cut its outlook for global oil demand by 230,000 barrels per day. Canada is a major oil exporter and the currency's sensitivity to crude prices has magnified as the prices have plunged to 5-1/2 year lows since June. Canada's main stock index, home to a hefty number of oil and gas producers, has dived about 5 percent this week. "Generally, it's just ongoing pressure with oil prices still moving more, equities lower and risk aversion higher, and none of it is feeding particularly well into the Canadian dollar outlook," said Camilla Sutton, chief currency strategist at Scotiabank. "We haven't been at these levels in over five years, so it starts to make the whole numbers pretty important, like C$1.16, C$1.17." At 9:17 a.m. (1419 GMT), the Canadian dollar was at C$1.1558 to the greenback, or 86.52 U.S. cents, after touching C$1.1591, or 86.27 U.S. cents earlier in the session, its weakest level since July 13, 2009. It finished at C$1.1527, or 86.75 U.S. cents on Thursday. Next week, Canada will release a slew of top-tier economic data, including manufacturing sales, wholesale trade, retail sales for October, and November inflation figures. The U.S. Federal Reserve will also meet to make its next policy decision. "So we'll have a really good update on how the economic outlook is unfolding," Sutton said. Canadian government bond prices were higher across the maturity curve, with the two-year adding 5.5 Canadian cents to yield 0.990 percent and the benchmark 10-year rising 33 Canadian cents to yield 1.790 percent. (Reporting by Solarina Ho; Editing by Peter Galloway)
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