Search

Who ends up in the teacher workforce is greatly influenced by who is admitted into teacher education programs (TEPs). To better understand how the preferences of teacher education faculty might shape admissions of STEM teacher candidates, we surveyed faculty who teach content or methods courses to STEM teacher candidates across five universities. Faculty reported that they most value information collected from individual interviews with applicants and data on the number of STEM courses taken in college and their performance in these courses, and least value data on university admissions tests, high school GPA, and teacher licensure test scores. When we investigate faculty members' revealed preferences through a conjoint analysis, we find that faculty most value applicants who have worked with students from diverse backgrounds and applicants from a marginalized racial or ethnic community, and least value whether they received high grades in math and/or science courses. Finally, we find significant variation in these perceptions across respondents in different faculty roles, who teach different courses, and from different institutions: for example, Arts and Sciences faculty tend to value TEP applicants' performance in college STEM courses relatively more than STEM education faculty, while STEM education faculty tend to value applicants' race and ethnicity relatively more than Arts and Sciences faculty.

We use over 25 years of longitudinal data from Washington state to provide a descriptive portrait of the paraeducator workforce in the state. Paraeducators are more racially and ethnically diverse than special education teachers, particularly in the last decade, and tend to be less experienced. They also have full-time salaries that are about half of the average special education teacher salary. Paraeducator-to-student ratios have decreased over time in the state, but they are higher in schools serving more students of color. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, paraeducator attrition rates from the state's public school workforce have increased dramatically over time; for example, the paraeducator attrition rate after the 2021-22 school year (23%) was over twice as high as the attrition rate after the 2008-09 school year (8%). These findings have implications for how policymakers and school leaders should approach decision-making related to the paraeducator workforce, as well as how researchers might approach further research with this group of educators.

Many factors impact one's ability to complete an apprenticeship program. According to the 2015 National Apprenticeship Survey, the most commonly stated reasons for not completing an apprenticeship program were job instability, receiving a better job offer and financial constraints. This survey also showed that apprentices who dropped out of their programs experienced difficulties securing permanent employment with adequate benefits and were more likely to be self-employed (Frank & Jovic, 2017). In addition, those who discontinued had a lower median employment income compared with those who completed their training (Jin, Langevin, Lebel and Haan, 2020). Using data from the Education and Labour Market Longitudinal Platform (ELMLP), this study looks at apprentices who registered between 2008 and 2010 and discontinued their apprenticeship programs within six years of registration. Their future interactions with the Canadian postsecondary education system, up to 2020, are then profiled.

Early care and education (ECE) teachers are paid strikingly low wages yet are increasingly expected to advance children's learning by offering high-quality classroom environments. Teachers' capacities to provide high-quality instruction should be affected by the stressors they encounter and the supports they receive. This study describes ECE teacher supports, experiences, and well-being in a sample of teachers serving 4-year-olds from families with low incomes in a mixed-delivery ECE system in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We find that teachers who reported high levels of teamwork among colleagues and those who reported more wellness supports in the workplace had classrooms that scored higher on observed quality; teachers who reported more depressive symptoms scored lower on observed classroom quality. If these findings are replicated in other samples--using additional measures of ECE teacher supports, experiences, and well-being--they point to areas ripe for investment in ECE teacher professional development and workplace supports. [Additional funding was provided by the George Kaiser Family Foundation.]

While more women than ever now participate in the paid workforce, it still can be hard to find women in top leadership positions. To understand why so few women are in top leadership positions, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) set out to understand what factors help women achieve leadership positions, what factors prevent it, and how organizations could add more women to their leadership ranks. In this paper, the authors raise five key questions that women should reflect on as they consider their ambitions. They summarize five key lessons that came up repeatedly in conversations with women leaders who had worked their way into leadership positions. The authors also discuss some of the changes organizations can make to increase the number of women leaders. These include policies and changes in organizational culture. Research was conducted two phases. First, the authors surveyed 204 women leaders from Singapore, Australia, India, and Korea. The authors gave them a list of reasons that might contribute to the lack of women in leadership positions and asked them to select up to five items they most agreed with and five they most disagreed with. In phase two, the authors conducted 27 face-to-face interviews with women leaders working in Singapore. Women told their personal leadership stories, shared their perspective on women leaders' career enablers and blockers, and also completed the phase 1 survey. The authors learned that there is no single reason or simple solution. Increasing the number of women in leadership positions will require aspiring women leaders to develop themselves professionally and, in some cases, adopt new behaviors. But the organizational context that women work within is also important.

The number of countries that regularly participate in international large-scale assessments has increased sharply over the past 15 years, with the share of countries participating in the Programme for International Student Assessment growing from one-fifth of countries in 2000 to over one-third of countries in 2015. What accounts for this increase? This paper explores the evidence for three broad explanations: globalization of assessments, increasing technical capacity for conducting assessments, and increased demand for the microeconomic and macroeconomic data from these assessments. Data were compiled from more than 200 countries for this analysis, for six time periods between 2000 and 2015, yielding more than 1,200 observations. The data cover each country's participation in each of six cycles of PISA as it relates to the country's level of economic development, region, prior experience with assessment, and OECD membership. The results indicate that the odds of participation in PISA are markedly higher for OECD member countries, countries in the Europe and Central Asia region, high- and upper-middle-income countries, and countries with previous national and international assessment experience; the paper also finds that regional assessment experience is unrelated to PISA participation.

Amid growing recognition that strong academic skills alone are not enough for young people to become successful adults, this comprehensive report offers wide-ranging evidence to show what young people need to develop from preschool to young adulthood to succeed in college and career, have healthy relationships, be engaged citizens, and make wise choices. It concludes that rich experiences combining action and reflection help children develop a set of critical skills, attitudes, and behaviors. And it suggests that policies should aim to ensure that all children have consistent, supportive relationships and an abundance of these developmental experiences through activities inside and outside of school. The Wallace Foundation awarded a competitive grant to UChicago CCSR in 2013 to undertake the project, which included a review of relevant literature spanning decades as well as interviews with national experts in research, policy and practice, and young people and the adults who work with them in schools, programs and agencies throughout Chicago. The report offers evidence to show how, where, and when the "key factors" to success develop from early childhood through young adulthood, emphasizing the kinds of experiences and supportive relationships that guide the positive development of these factors. Recognizing that there are no silver bullets to promoting social-emotional learning, the report emphasizes a range of factors that build on one another over time. It also emphasizes factors that are particularly malleable, as well as the age at which each of the key factors comes into prominence, offering adults the most promising window for positive intervention. A key problem the report identifies is that disadvantaged youth often face extra challenges. For example, they often have fewer in-school and out-of-school opportunities for consistent, positive developmental experiences and relationships and face significant opportunity gaps to developing the essential skills to become productive adults. An appendix provides a list of experts who provided input and feedback throughout this project. [This report was written with David W. Johnson, Sarah Dickson, Ashley Cureton Turner, Ashley Mayo, and Kathleen Hayes.]

The most recent figures place the number of juvenile arrests in the United States at 2.11 million. (OJJDP, 2009). In some states, children as young as 10 years old are incarcerated for violent offenses. Crowded juvenile facilities are often unable to meet the needs of these large numbers of youth. The cost to treat offenders within long-term residential facilities is expensive. States spend anywhere from $4 million (in smaller states like Hawaii) to $450 million in larger states such as California on their annual juvenile corrections budget (freelibrary.com, 2010). Locked confinement in a state juvenile correction institution can run in excess of $60,000 annually (Tyler, Ziedenberg, and Lotke, 2006). As an alternative to incarceration for adjudicated youth, several forms of adventure therapy programming have been used. Most of these programs were developed around the premise that the structure of the adventure experience and associated facilitation could produce beneficial changes more effectively than time spent within a locked treatment facility. Just as the type of adventure therapy programs are mixed, so are the outcome research findings associated with juvenile delinquency. Several studies criticize adventure therapy with adjudicated youth for having insignificant or no lasting evidence of effectiveness, including Aos, Miller, and Drake (2006), Brown, Borduin, and Henggeler, (2001), Moote and Wodarski (1997), and Wilson and Lipsey (2000). As recognized in these studies, the key to unlocking the understanding of what is an effective adventure therapy program for juvenile delinquents is the inclusion of certain critical elements. Gass (1993), and more recently in Gillis and Gass (2010), identified seven key factors that seem to predominate the treatment elements of successful programs. These seven elements include treatment: (1) enhanced through action-oriented experiences, (2) centered on the use of unfamiliar client environments, (3) producing a climate of functional change through the positive use of stress, (4) highly informed with client assessment, (5) conducted in a small group, supportive atmosphere, (6) focused on solution oriented principles and techniques, and (7) that changed the role of therapist to remain more "mobile" to actively design and frame interventions.

We use detailed data from New York City to estimate how the characteristics of school principals relate to school performance, as measured by students' standardized exam scores and other outcomes. We find little evidence of any relationship between school performance and principal education and pre-principal work experience, although we do find some evidence that experience as an assistant principal at the principal's current school is associated with higher performance among inexperienced principals. However, we find a positive relationship between principal experience and school performance, particularly for math test scores and student absences. The experience profile is especially steep over the first few years of principal experience. Finally, we find mixed evidence on the relationship between formal principal training and professional development programs and school performance, with the caveat that the selection and assignment of New York City principals participating in these programs make it hard to isolate their effects. The positive returns to principal experience suggest that policies which cause principals to leave their posts early (e.g., via early retirement or a move into district administration) will be costly, and the tendency for less-advantaged schools to be run by less experienced principals could exacerbate educational inequality. (Contains 1 figure, 12 tables, and 18 notes.)

This study focused on how students' precollege experiences predisposed them to three democratic outcomes: (1) ability to see the world from someone else's point of view; (2) beliefs about whether conflict enhances democracy; and (3) views about the importance of engaging in social action activities. Data from three flagship universities were analyzed as part of a nationally funded research project, Preparing Students for a Diverse Democracy. Responses from 7,980 entering students indicated that females were more likely than males to report values and beliefs consistent with democratic outcomes. Participation in race/ethnic discussions, student clubs, and volunteer work, as well as studying with students of different groups, and discussing controversial issues were significant predictors in all three models. Results also indicate that students might be unprepared to negotiate conflict in a diverse democracy. The study provides measures of democratic outcomes that can be used to assess the impact of diversity and service learning initiatives. (Contains 6 tables and 34 references.) (Author/SLD)

A study investigated the roles of general ability and specific abilities as predictors of several job performance criteria for Air Force enlistees in eight jobs. Subjects were 1,545 Air Force enlistees entering from 1984 through 1988 who had tested with the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) parallel forms 11, 12, or 13. Subjects had completed both basic military training and technical training and were for the most part working in their first term of enlistment. They were mostly white, male, 17 to 23 years old, high school or better graduates, with an average job tenure of about 28 months. General cognitive ability and specific abilities (the interaction of general ability and experience) were defined by scores on the first and subsequent principal components of the enlistment and selection and classification test, the ASVAB. Multiple regression analyses conducted in correlation matrices corrected for range restriction revealed that general ability was the best predictor of all criterion measures and that specific abilities added a statistically significant but practically small amount to predictive efficiency. For classification of large numbers of applications into large numbers of jobs, the incremental prediction due to specific abilities could be useful. (Contains 47 references.) (YLB)

The foundations of brain architecture are established early in life through a continuous series of dynamic interactions in which environmental conditions and personal experiences have a significant impact on how genetic predispositions are expressed. Because specific experiences affect specific brain circuits during specific developmental stages--referred to as sensitive periods--it is vitally important to take advantage of these early opportunities in the developmental building process. The quality of a child's early environment and the availability of appropriate experiences at the right stages of development are crucial in determining the strength or weakness of the brain's architecture, which, in turn, determines how well he or she will be able to think and to regulate emotions. This report summarizes in clear language the most recent scientific advances in understanding the importance of sensitive periods on brain development, and the implications of those findings for policy. (Contains 2 figures.)

The Monitoring the Future project was created to measure and report longitudinal changes reflecting the impacts of such post-high school experiences as college, the military, employment, homemaking, unemployment, marriage, and parenthood. In addition to annual surveys of high school seniors, the project includes follow-up surveys extending to 10 years after graduation. This paper provides the first reporting of Monitoring the Future follow-up data on important lifestyle experiences, values, and aspirations during the 6 years following high school graduation. Among the variables covered are marital and parental status, residence and living arrangements, educational plans and experiences, employment status and experience, earnings and sources of income, political and religious orientations, and patterns of recreational behavior. A brief section on methods provides an overview of the study design; further detail is provided in Appendix A. A section entitled "Analysis Strategy" specifies the sets of respondents included in the analyses and the variables used to define subgroups of special interest. This section should be reviewed before using the material in Appendix B. Appendix B contains the most extensive and detailed data, consisting of frequency distributions and means for a wide range of questions asked of follow-up respondents. It includes a descriptive content index as a ready guide for accessing material. A section entitled "Selected Findings" provides commentary on some of the findings. (NB)

Certain scholars in anthropology and education have recently suggested as an approach to combat school failure for minority students the concept of cultural congruence--the idea that learning is best accomplished in classrooms compatible with the cultural context of the communities they are supposed to serve. Although this concept is yet to be fully articulated as theory or extensively realized in practice, it has already received considerable criticism for "blaming the victim," for denying the possibility of "breaking with experience," and for being too difficult for practicing teachers to apply. This paper attempts to clarify just what is meant by cultural congruence, and argues that most of these criticisms assume a far more total merger of community and school than the modest and limited model favored by proponents of cultural congruence, who are simply talking about minimizing differences in speaking and social interactional styles in the classroom. In this limited form, cultural congruence can be a useful addition to educators' repertoire for dealing with minority education. A six-page list of references is included. (Author/BJV)

Compares the performance of novice computer users and users with significant proofreading experience in proofreading from screen and paper. Results showed that the users with previous experience did better in the screen mode, but no difference between the groups was evident in the paper mode. (Contains 22 references.) (JLB)

This paper presents findings from an exploratory study to define associations between social-emotional teaching practices and teacher characteristics through a person-centered approach. The sample consisted of 97 teachers working in center-based early childhood education settings with young children ages 2-5 in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. We analyzed teachers' observed classroom social-emotional teaching practices and self-reported Professional Development (PD) experiences, job attitudes (e.g., job-related stress, satisfaction, and commitment), and disciplinary efficacy to identify profile membership of teachers. A latent profile analysis revealed 4 profiles: (a) higher practice quality, higher PD experience, higher job attitudes, and higher disciplinary efficacy; (b) higher practice quality, mixed PD experience, lower job attitudes, and lower disciplinary efficacy; (c) lower practice quality, mixed PD experience, higher job attitudes, and higher disciplinary efficacy; and (d) lower practice quality, mixed PD experience, mixed job attitudes, and lower disciplinary efficacy. The results suggest that a tailored and tiered professional development approach is needed that considers the complex connections between teachers' practices, beliefs, and job attitudes. [This paper was published in "Early Education and Development" (EJ1323884).]

Addressing inequities in the educational outcomes--particularly for students of color and students from low-income backgrounds--cannot happen without comparable data from statewide summative assessments. Statewide assessment results help schools and district leaders target state and local resources to the students and schools with the greatest need and track whether these resources are impacting student achievement. Despite this, many educators, students, and families say that federal assessment and accountability policies take away from instructional time without providing actionable data. Meanwhile, pandemic pauses in administering statewide assessments and changes in political dynamics at the state and federal levels have opened a window of opportunity to develop new statewide summative assessments that gauge how students are doing, highlight disparities, and show where interventions aren't measuring up to their promise and might be improved. This paper centers the lived experiences and perspectives of students, families, educators, and district and state leaders, so that they can be used to design assessments that provide data that will enable the Ed Trust to promote equitable learning opportunities and improve outcomes for all students. To better understand how directly impacted communities are experiencing statewide assessments, Ed Trust held focus groups with diverse stakeholders who are on the ground, focusing on students of color, students from low-income backgrounds, English learners, and those who work in a school or district in which the majority of students are members of these student groups. The focus group findings informed the creation of "equity pillars," which highlight key values and identify criteria for improving federal assessment policy, and federal policy recommendations for how this vision could be achieved.