Decades of research document the significant negative impacts of student absenteeism on academic achievement, emotional development, graduation, health, and long-term success (Gottfried, 2015). Yet, until just a few years ago, the U.S. K–12 education system was virtually unaware that it had a chronic student absenteeism problem. Prior to that time, chronic absenteeism was never tracked by school systems, let alone addressed. A recent analysis of the data revealed that a significant number of students (one in seven) were chronically absent, defined as missing 10% of school days (Balfanz & Brynes, 2012). And that was the threshold number. Many students identified as chronically absent missed more than 10%. The corresponding negative impacts worsen with every additional day of school missed.
This overview looks at the best available evidence on chronic student absenteeism in the context of (1) the scale of the problem at all levels of the education system: national, state, school, and grade; (2) the impact on student academic performance, graduation, health, and financial impact on school districts; (3) impact multipliers that exacerbate chronic absenteeism, such as poverty, student mobility, homelessness, and disciplinary suspensions; and (4) interventions utilizing a public health tiered model for different levels of action depending on need, a performance feedback system to track and modify the results of each intervention, and coordination of resources across a wide range of education stakeholders.
Citation: Keyworth, R., Detrich, R. & States, J. (2019). Overview of Chronic Student Absenteeism: A Significant and Overlooked Obstacle to Student Achievement. Oakland, CA: The Wing Institute. https://www.winginstitute.org/perform-levels-student.
Principal Pipeline: A Feasible, Affordable, and Effective Way for Districts to Improve Schools. The Rand Corporation just released its report evaluating the impact of the Principal Pipeline Initiative (PPI),a project supported by the Wallace Foundation to create and implement a strategic process for school leadership talent management. PPI was operated from 2011 to 2016 in six large school districts. It was composed of leadership standards, pre-service preparation opportunities for assistant principals and principals, selective hiring and placement, and on-the-job induction, evaluation and support. The Rand Study evaluated PPI’s feasibility, effectiveness, and affordability. It concluded that the model was feasible as each participating district was able to implement all components of the model at scale in different ways depending on the unique aspects of the district. From an effectiveness standpoint, newly placed principals in PPI districts had a greater statistically significant impact on student reading and math scores than non-PPI principals, they were more likely to stay ion their schools for at least two years, and the novice principals rated the program’s hiring, evaluation, and support process higher than non-participating principals rated the baseline model. And finally, the study found the model affordable at $ 42 per student per year, which represented a significant return on investment. Note: It is hoped that future studies will include outcome measure such as teacher retention, effectiveness, and satisfaction in the context of principal development.
Citation: Gates, Susan M., Matthew D. Baird, Benjamin K. Master, and Emilio R. Chavez-Herrerias, Principal Pipelines: A Feasible, Affordable, and Effective Way for Districts to Improve Schools, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, RR-2666-WF, 2019.
The Effect of Teaching “Learning Strategies” on Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis Study: Two recent studies have been published in Turkey on the topic of teaching learning strategies. Both studies are meta-analyses that examine the effect of learning strategies on student academic achievement. Learning strategies are methods for teaching students how to learn, how to remember, and how to think. Learning strategies involve some simple study skills such as underlying the main idea in a text or complex thinking processes such employing analogies or using analysis to relate prior knowledge to new information. Learning strategies have been classified as rehearsal strategies, elaboration strategies, organizational strategies, comprehension monitoring strategies, and affective strategies.
Both meta-analyses find teaching learning strategies has a significant positive effect size on student achievement. These studies support research on this topic conducted by Hattie, Biggs, and Purdie (1996) and Donker et al. (2014) that revealed an overall medium effect size on student achievement for teaching learning strategies. Both studies find that teaching learning strategies is effective at all levels of education and is most effective in the early grades. The Bas study reveals there was no significant difference between effect sizes in terms of SES or with regard to setting (rural or urban). The Yildirim study concludes that teaching learning strategies can be incorporated into the normal curricula or taught independently. Learning strategies that were found to be effective include; repetition, sense-making, integrated strategies, organizing, and monitoring comprehension.
Citation:
Study 1: Bas, G., & Beyhan, Ö. (2019). Revisiting the Effect of Teaching of Learning Strategies on Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of the Findings. International Journal of Research in Education and Science, 5(1), 70-87.
Study 2: YILDIRIM, I., CIRAK-KURT, S., & SEN, S. (2019). The Effect of Teaching” Learning Strategies” on Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis Study. Eurasian Journal of Educational Research (EJER), (79).
The Effect of Team-Based Learning on Content Knowledge: A Meta-Analysis: As educators struggle with finding interventions that make a difference, focus increasingly shifts to pedagogy and how teachers deliver instruction. This meta-analysis examines the impact of team-based learning strategies on achievement and student engagement. The study finds that team-based strategies were found to have a positive impact on grades, test performance, and engagement. This research specifically looked at Team-Based Learning (TBL), a collaborative learning teaching strategy designed around small-group learning. Students are organized into teams of 5-7 students that work together throughout the class. The program is designed around preparation (reading prior to class), in-class readiness assurance testing, and application exercises. The overall mean effect size of 0.55 indicates a moderate positive effect of TBL on content knowledge when compared to non-TBL comparison groups.
Citation: Swanson, E., McCulley, L. V., Osman, D. J., Scammacca Lewis, N., & Solis, M. (2017). The effect of team-based learning on content knowledge: A meta-analysis. Active Learning in Higher Education, 1469787417731201.
The Value of Smarter Teachers: International Evidence on Teacher Cognitive Skills and Student Performance: This new research addresses a number of critical questions: Are a teacher’s cognitive skills a good predictor of teacher quality? Using this measure, does teacher quality account for the wide variation of student achievement across ours and other nations? This study examines the student achievement of 36 developed countries in the context of teacher cognitive skills. It uses data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which generates the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which tests the literacy and numeracy skills of 15 year old students and the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) which tests literacy and numeracy skills of adults 16-65 (which includes teachers).
Existing research demonstrates that teachers have the greatest impact of any other school-based factor. It also tells us that teachers’ experience, advanced degrees, and professional development are not very good predictors of teacher effectiveness. There is increasing evidence that a teacher’s own scholastic performance (literacy and numeracy cognitive skills) is consistently related to student outcomes.
The study used multiple approaches to examine the data, and found that: (1) there was great variability in both student achievement and teachers’ cognitive skills across countries, (2) the higher the teachers’ cognitive skills, the more academically successful the students, (3) the effects were more pronounced within a subject area (teachers with higher numeracy skills in math produced higher student achievement in math than reading and vice versa), and (4) students performed better where teachers had higher salaries. One of the implications of the study is the value of targeting potential teachers with higher cognitive skills. High scoring Singapore, Finland, and Korea recruit their teachers exclusively from the top third of their college graduating class. Less than a quarter of U.S. teachers came from this same group.
Citation: Hanushek, E. A., Piopiunik, M., & Wiederhold, S. (2014). The value of smarter teachers: International evidence on teacher cognitive skills and student performance (No. w20727). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups 2018: This report examines key indicators on the educational progress and challenges students face in the United States by race/ethnicity. There is extensive data on thirty indicators across home, K-12 education, and postsecondary environments, including: demographics, education participation, achievement, student behavior, completion rates, and post school results. The report also has special sections on public school teachers by race/ethnicity and characteristics of postsecondary institutions serving specific minority racial/ethnic groups.
A sample of the many analyses include: (1) the percentage of children under the age of 18 living in poverty was 31% for Black children, 26% for Hispanic, 10% for White, and 10% for Asian; (2) over half of Hispanic (60%) and Black (58%) students attended schools where the enrollment of minority students was at least 75% of total enrollment versus 38% of Asian students and 5% of White students; (3) there has been no significant change in the reading and math White-Black and White-Hispanic achievement gaps; (4) over 5% of public school students received one or more out-of-school suspensions: 13.7% of Black students, 4.5% of Hispanic, 3.4% of White, and 1.1% of Asian; (5) from 2000 to 2016 the high school status completion rate for Hispanic increased from 64 to 89 percent, for Black students 84 – 92%, and White students 92 – 94%,
Citation: de Brey, C., Musu, L., McFarland, J., Wilkinson-Flicker, S., Diliberti, M., Zhang, A., Branstetter, C., and Wang, X. (2019). Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups 2018 (NCES 2019-038). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved [date] from https://nces.ed.gov/ pubsearch/.
The purpose of the Wing Institute Graduate Research Funding Program is to:
Sponsor and promote new research in areas of evidence-based education, including: efficacy research, effectiveness research, implementation, and monitoring
Sponsor and promote new research across disciplines, types of research, and venues
Encourage graduate students to focus their future professional work in this subject area, increasing the number of professionals dedicated to the field of evidence-based education
Disseminate research findings for application in real world” settings, further bridging the gap between research and practice.
FUNDING
Grants vary in size; the maximum grant is $5,000 per annum. These funds will be available to recipients as they achieve agreed upon “benchmarks” in the research process.
Applications available: Immediately Application deadline: May 15, 2019 Funding decisions: June 15, 2019
ELIGIBILITY: Applicants must be enrolled full-time and be in good standing in a masters or doctoral at a regionally accredited university or college.
Increasing Teachers’ Use of Behavior-Specific Praise with the Teacher vs. Student Game. Research has long supported the importance of teacher behavior specific praise in the classroom. This study examines the impact of a Teacher Versus Student Game, a program that is based upon The Good Behavior Game (GBG). GBG has been in use since 1967 and is an evidence-based behavioral classroom management strategy that helps children learn how to work together to create a positive learning environment. Pressure for teachers to show academic results is hindered by challenging student conduct. Maintaining control of student behavior is a critical factor in teacher’s ability to effectively deliver instruction that results in increased student academic outcomes. Using group contingencies found in the Teacher Versus Student Game provides teachers another program designed to accomplish this important goal. This paper found that the game increased teachers rates of praise; however, the teachers gradually decreased their use of BSP over time.
Two additional papers on practices to increase teacher praise are identified under citations.
Gage, N. A., MacSuga-Gage, A. S., & Crews, E. (2017). Increasing teachers’ use of behavior-specific praise using a multitiered system for professional development. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 19(4), 239-251.
White, K. (2018). Increasing Teachers’ Use of Behavior Specific Praise Via a Smart Watch.
STEM Performance and Supply: Assessing the Evidence for Education. Policy. Concerns that the United States is not training a sufficient number of students in the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) has been of ongoing concern for policy makers for decades. This study examines the evidence and concludes that U.S. education system is producing ample supplies of students to respond to STEM labor market demand.
Bachelor’s degree graduates: rate of growth from 1970 base year (Source: Digest of Education Statistics, 2015 NCES . (calculations by authors)
Citation:Salzman, H., & Benderly, B. L. (2019). STEM Performance and Supply: Assessing the Evidence for Education Policy. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 28(1), 9-25.
Big Data and data science: A critical review of issues for educational research. Big data proliferates across a wide spectrum of fields in the 21stcentury. Education is no exception. This paper examines critical issues that must be considered to maximize the positive impact of big data and minimize negative effects that are currently encountered in other domains. This review is designed to raise awareness of these issues with particular attention paid to implications for educational research design in order that educators can develop the necessary policies and practices to address this complex phenomenon and its possible implications in the field of education.
Citation: Daniel, B. K. (2017). Big Data and data science: A critical review of issues for educational research. British Journal of Educational Technology.
