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This paper describes the approach used successfully at California State University, Dominguez Hills, to instruct college students in the research paper writing process. To achieve the results, the instructor followed a specific set of steps during a class meeting set aside for this specialized training. This paper details each step in the instructional process. By using this outline as a guide, student researchers are guided through the term paper writing process with the hope of significantly increasing the quality of term papers. (EH)

In recent years, "continuous improvement" has become a popular catchphrase in the field of education. However, while continuous improvement has become commonplace and well-documented in other industries, such as healthcare and manufacturing, little is known about how this work has manifested itself in education. This white paper attempts to map the landscape of this terrain by identifying and describing organizations engaged in continuous improvement, and by highlighting commonalities and differences among them. The findings classify three types of organizations engaged in continuous improvement: those focused on instructional improvement at the classroom level; those concentrating on system-wide improvement; and those addressing collective impact. Each type is described in turn and illustrated by an organizational case study. Through the analysis, six common themes that characterize all three types of organizations (e.g., leadership and strategy, communication and engagement, organizational infrastructure, methodology, data collection and analysis, and building capacity) are enumerated. This white paper makes four concluding observations. First, the three case studies provide evidence of organizations conducting continuous improvement work in the field of education, albeit at different levels and in different ways. Second, entry points to continuous improvement work are not mutually exclusive, but are nested and, hence, mutually informative and comparative. Third, continuous improvement is not synonymous with improving all organizational processes simultaneously; rather, research and learning cycles are iterative and gradual in nature. Fourth, despite being both iterative and gradual, it is imperative that improvement work is planned and undertaken in a rigorous, thoughtful, and transparent fashion. The following are appended: (1) Selected Continuous Improvement Methodologies; (2) Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence Framework; (3) Examples of Improvement Artifacts from the School District of Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin; (4) Examples of Improvement Artifacts from Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland; and (5) Examples of Improvement Artifacts from Strive Partnership Cincinnati.

This paper critically examines traditional means of assessing college students' need for remediation and suggests as a replacement an expanded definition of college readiness, where readiness is more complex than rudimentary content knowledge and more multifaceted than a single cut point. The paper presents and explains four dimensions of readiness that should be assessed, considers types of additional measures and methods needed to collect such information, offers a model for a student profile that captures and communicates this richer information, suggests some of the ways this information might be put to use by schools and students and the changes that would result from doing so, and considers the challenges involved in doing so. (Contains 2 tables and 3 footnotes.)

We find an individual's rank within their reference group has effects on later objective outcomes. To evaluate the impact of local rank, we use a large administrative dataset tracking over two million students in England from primary through to secondary school. Academic rank within primary school has sizable, robust and significant effects on later achievement in secondary school, conditional on national test scores. Moreover we find boys gain four times more in later test scores from being top compared to girls. We provide evidence for a mechanism using matched survey data, which shows that rank affects an individual's self-concept. The paper discusses other potential channels but concludes that malleable non-cognitive skills such as confidence and belief in own ability are most likely to generate these results. We put forward a basic model where rank effects costs and effort allocation when faced with multiple tasks. We believe this is the first large-scale study to show large and robust effects of rank position on objective outcomes of that have consequences in the labour market. The following are appended: (1) Model; (2) Peer Effects; and (3) Measurement Error in Test Scores. Five tables are also included in the appendices.

Over the past fifteen years, new types of "professional practice" doctorates in fields ranging from nursing to bioethics have increased exponentially, from near zero to over 500 programs in at least a dozen fields in the U.S. today. This growth raises many policy questions. For example, do doctorate holders serve their clients and organizations more effectively? How do new credential requirements affect access to these professions? How are they shaping institutional missions, pressures, and resource allocation? Using national data and case studies, this paper examines the forces driving the growth of new types of professional practice doctorates and their impacts on higher education institutions, especially those that had not previously offered doctorates.

The purpose of this Issue Paper is to provide a framework and justification for effective ways that teachers can collect and use assessment data to make instructional decisions. This framework is provided as an indication of what effective linking of assessment data to instructional decisions "ought" to look like--rather than a summary or survey of current practices. The framework and respective Innovation Configuration for Linking Assessment and Instruction in Teacher Preparation and Professional Development (provided in the Appendix, pages 31-34) are primarily designed to provide a blueprint for preservice teacher preparation; however, they also may be used as an evaluation rubric or development guide for inservice professional development. Although many schools and districts may not currently have in place the practices discussed in this Issue Paper, these practices are strongly endorsed by the requirements of the 2002 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)--also known as the No Child Left Behind Act--and the competitive grants to states that were made available through the Race to the Top Fund. This paper begins with a discussion of why assessment and instruction should be linked. It continues with an overview of the innovation configuration, describing essential components in preservice and inservice teacher training to identify the skills and competencies that teachers need to make sound decisions about using assessment information to improve instruction. Next, the major points within the innovation configuration are provided, with a rationale for their importance and elaboration of some of their core characteristics. Last, recommendations are provided regarding how the components of the innovation configuration might be included in teacher preparation and professional development practices. (Contains 2 figures.)

This paper examines whether teachers in schools serving students from high-poverty backgrounds are as effective as teachers in schools with more advantaged students. The question is important. Teachers are recognized as the most important school factor affecting student achievement, and the achievement gap between disadvantaged students and their better off peers is large and persistent. Using student-level microdata from 2000-2001 to 2004-2005 from Florida and North Carolina, the authors compare the effectiveness of teachers in high-poverty elementary schools (greater than 70% FRL students) with that of teachers in lower-poverty elementary schools (less than 70% FRL students). The results show that the average effectiveness of teachers in high-poverty schools is in general less than teachers in other schools, but only slightly, and not in all comparisons. The authors also find differences in within-school-type variation in teacher effectiveness in nearly every comparison. These differences are largely driven by the longer tail at the bottom of the teacher effectiveness distribution in high-poverty schools. Teachers at the top of the effectiveness distribution are very similar across school settings. The observed differences in teacher quality between high-poverty and lower-poverty schools are not due to differences in the observed characteristics of teachers, such as experience, certification status and educational attainment. Rather, they appear to arise from differences in the marginal return or payoff from increases in a characteristic. In particular, the gain in productivity from increased experience is much stronger in lower-poverty schools. The lower return to experience in high-poverty schools does not appear to be a result of differences in the quality of teachers who leave teaching or who switch schools. Rather, it may be the case that the effect of experience on teacher productivity may depend on the setting in which the experience is acquired. If there are positive spillovers among teachers that depend on teacher quality (ie. teacher "peer effects") or if exposure to challenging student populations lessens the future productivity of teachers (i.e. leads to "burn out"), teachers in schools serving large proportions of low-income students may simply not improve much as time goes by. These findings suggest that solutions to the achievement gap between high and lower-poverty schools may be complex. Changing the quality of new recruits or importing teachers with good credentials into high-poverty schools may not be sufficient. Rather, the findings suggest that measures that induce highly effective teachers to move to high-poverty schools and which promote an environment in which teachers' skills will improve over time are more likely to be successful. An appendix is included. (Contains 8 figures, 15 tables and 14 footnotes.) [This is an updated version of Working Paper 41.]

One of the lightning rods in the discourse over teacher pay has been the question of "how much" teachers should be paid. What the "how much" debate does not directly address, however, is the question of "how" teachers should be paid. This paper attempts to help lay groundwork for a better understanding of what exactly teachers want in terms of how they should be paid. Nontraditional teacher pay (NTTP), which is considered here to be pay systems that diverge from exclusive reliance on the traditional salary schedule, continues to be a high-profile and controversial issue. Often lost in the debate over NTTP is a thorough assessment of what teachers "actually prefer" in a pay system, which has important implications for teacher recruitment, retention, and motivation. While teachers are sometimes broadly described as resisting NTTP, the truth is much more nuanced. Using data collected in 2005 from over 2,500 unionized teachers in a single state, this paper explores: (1) whether teachers favor or oppose four different bonus-based NTTP systems, and the demographic and attitudinal characteristics associated with these preferences; (2) levels of teacher support for traditional (i.e., education, service) and nontraditional (e.g., standardized test score) criteria for salary increases, as well as teacher characteristics related to this support; and (3) changes over time in NTTP preferences, as additional survey data from six years earlier allow for a unique opportunity to examine possible cohort versus service effects. Some of the main findings are the following: (1) Teachers supported an emphasis on education and service as the basis for salary increases, preferring these criteria to student test scores and performance evaluation; (2) Merit-based bonus plans were the least favored of the four bonus plans presented, as only 28% of teachers favored their adoption; and (3) Evidence indicated that the average teacher becomes less NTTP-friendly over time, growing less likely to favor the adoption of the bonus-based NTTP plans or to support the use of NTTP criteria in salary increases. (Contains 5 figures, 6 tables, and 11 endnotes.)

The Australian Vocational Education and Training Management Information Statistical Standard (AVETMISS) for vocational education and training (VET) providers (referred to as "the Standard") is currently being reviewed by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER). The Standard is the framework that underpins the National VET Provider Collection. It provides consistency in data definitions, which ensures accurate data for use in national data collections, where information is compiled from many different sources. This discussion paper is the first step in the review. It provides a framework for feedback and identifies key issues for consideration. There are many issues associated with the specification of a Standard, such as what information is to be collected, from whom and how often. Decisions about implementation of the AVETMIS Standard are made by a range of different bodies and, while the focus of this paper is primarily on the information to be collected, comments on the timing and coverage are also welcome. Two appendices are included. (Contains 1 figure.)

Proposition 209 banned the use of racial preferences in admissions at public colleges in California. We analyze unique data for all applicants and enrollees within the University of California (UC) system before and after Prop 209. After Prop 209, graduation rates increased by 4.4%. We present evidence that certain institutions are better at graduating more-prepared students while other institutions are better at graduating less-prepared students and that these matching effects are particularly important for the bottom tail of the qualification distribution. We find that Prop 209 led to a more efficient sorting of minority students and the sorting effects explain over 20% of the graduation rate increase. Further, universities appear to have responded to Prop 209 by investing more in their students, explaining between 30-45% of the graduation rate increase. An appendix contains: (1) Table 9: Characteristics of UC Applicants, Admits, and Enrollees by Race, Pre-Prop 209 and Change Post Prop 209; and (2) Table 10: Estimates Using the Baseline Method for Under-Represented Minorities, Whites and Asian Americans.

The National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) was asked by Technical and Further Education (TAFE) Directors Australia to consider, in a discussion paper for their conference held on the Gold Coast in September 2009, how a "tertiary education" sector impacts on the way people think about research and statistics. While a tertiary education focus would be a forward-looking step, it is important that both vocational education and training (VET) and higher education issues receive due attention. Individuals need to build on the good work done for the VET sector rather than subsume it in any sense. What is needed to make sense of the education, participation and achievement of individual students is an integrated tertiary education statistical system. This would require a common core set of standards. It would be relatively straightforward to populate a tertiary education student database from different collections. This database would then be a resource for policymakers and researchers. An integrated approach is required, not an approach which appends higher education statistics to the VET statistics or vice versa.

As a research and technical assistance organization, CNA Education would be the last to deny the importance of good data and the first to applaud efforts to improve the quality and scope of the data available. Solid data are critical to CNA's mission to further general understanding of the efficacy of specific education reform initiatives and to address the needs of their district-level and state-level customers and constituents for a clearer assessment of their own specific efforts and of the available options for improving their education outcomes. The three papers in this collection ("The State Data Analysis Gap: A Threat to Education Reform" by Arthur Sheekey and Michael Allen; "Getting State Education Data Right: What We Can Learn from Tennessee" by Kyle Southern and Joe Jones; and "The Equitable Distribution of Effective Teachers: Can States Meet the Research Challenges Required for Success?" by Michael Allen) make the strong case, however, that the availability of good data is not all that policymakers and educators need for their decisions. In addition, they need to understand the limitations of their data and how to use and interpret them appropriately. And they must ask--and answer to their satisfaction--a number of conceptual and technical questions that have implications for the validity, interpretation, and very meaning of the data they seek to use.

By definition, youth transitions involve young people moving between school, post-school study and employment. It is a time of flux, as young people try out different school, post-school work and study options. But are those who don't find work immediately likely to make a poor transition? Given that many may well have a spell out of the labour force, everyone needs to understand when this becomes a risk factor. This briefing paper draws on related research and some primary data analysis to consider whether being "at risk" is a permanent or transitory state. It suggests that, rather than counting the numbers of young people who are detached from work, study or other meaningful activities, everyone should focus on those who remain disconnected. It is important to be able to identify who may be most "at risk" of an unsuccessful transition to ensure that targeted and appropriate interventions can be implemented. Young people who accumulate disadvantage through poor literacy and numeracy and who are uninterested in school appear particularly vulnerable. They tend to leave school early and suffer disproportionally in the labour market. If this detachment from work or study continues for an extended period of time, the young person's inability to develop employability skills and their lack of work experience adversely affect their prospects of future employment. This is detrimental not only to the individual but also to the nation's productivity. Therefore, programs which help young people to make smoother and faster transitions into further study or employment are important. (Contains 6 tables, 3 figures and 4 footnotes.)

The OECD Survey of Adult Skills is the jewel in the crown of its Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). This paper argues that the findings and policy lessons from the project to date justify the high hopes which were placed in PIAAC when detailed planning for the project began in 2003. First, it presents a brief recap of PIAAC and its two predecessor international skills surveys. Second, it outlines the main themes which have been investigated to date using data from PIAAC. Third, the main findings and policy lessons drawn from PIAAC are highlighted. Finally, looking forward to the second cycle of PIAAC, for which planning is now underway, the paper suggests some priority areas for improvement to the survey design in order to add to its analytical usefulness and enhance its utility to policy makers.

Learning communities are a popular strategy that community colleges nationwide have embraced in support of developmental students. In a learning community, a cohort of students takes two or more courses linked by integrated themes and assignments that are developed through ongoing faculty collaboration. While the number of learning community programs continues to grow, rigorous studies measuring their effectiveness are limited. To address this need for evidence, the Learning Communities demonstration, launched in 2007, uses random assignment to test models of learning communities at six community colleges: Kingsborough Community College, Queensborough Community College, Hillsborough Community College, Merced College, Houston Community College System, and Community College of Baltimore County. The study is designed to determine: (1) how learning communities can be designed to address the needs of academically underprepared students; (2) the effects of learning communities on student achievement, as measured by test scores, credits earned, and grades; (3) the effects of learning communities on students' persistence in higher education; and (4) what learning communities cost and how these costs compare with the costs of standard college programs for students with low basic skills. Preliminary findings will be available in 2009. This working paper describes the study's design, including a summary of the theoretical and empirical research relevant to learning communities, descriptions of the sites and their learning community models, the random assignment procedures, and plans for data analysis. (Contains 7 tables, 1 figure, and 67 notes.) [This paper was produced by the National Center for Postsecondary Research. It was written with the assistance of Oscar Cerna, Christine Sansone, and Michelle Ware.]

Status quo approaches to teacher evaluation have recently come under increasing criticism. They typically assign most teachers the highest available score, provide minimal feedback for improvement, and have little connection with student achievement growth and the quality of instruction that leads to higher student growth. A more comprehensive approach has been demonstrated for ten years by TAP[TM]: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement. This system includes both classroom observations and student achievement growth measures, provides feedback to teachers for improvement, is aligned to professional development and mentoring support, and provides metrics for performance-based compensation. This paper describes the TAP system, and examines data from a large sample of teachers to assess the distribution of TAP evaluations and their alignment to student achievement growth. We find that TAP evaluations provide differentiated feedback, that classroom observational scores are positively and significantly correlated with student achievement growth, that TAP teachers increase in observed skill levels over time, and that TAP schools show differential retention of effective teachers based on these evaluation scores. Appended are: (1) Components of the TAP Skills, Knowledge, and Responsibilities Performance Standards; and (2) Weighting in the Skills, Knowledge, and Responsibilities Score. (Contains 15 figures, 3 tables and 3 footnotes.) [For "A Teacher Evaluation System That Works. Research Brief," see ED533381.]

Providing remedial (also known as developmental) education is the primary way colleges cope with students who do not have the academic preparation needed to succeed in college-level courses. Remediation is widespread, with nearly one-third of entering freshman taking remedial courses at a cost of at least $1 billion per year. Despite its prevalence, there is uncertainty surrounding its short- and longer-run effects. This paper presents new evidence on this question using longitudinal administrative data from Texas and a regression discontinuity research design. We find little indication that remediation improves academic or labor market outcomes. Additional data are appended. (Contains 32 footnotes, 11 tables, and 5 figures.) [This article has been published as: Martorell, Paco and Isaac McFarlin Jr. 2011. "Help or Hindrance? The Effects of College Remediation on Academic and Labor Market Outcomes," The Review of Economics & Statistics, 93(2): 436-454.]

In 2009, the "East Valley Tribune and the Arizona Republic" alleged that Arizona's individual income tax-credit scholarship program disproportionately serves privileged students from higher-income families over those from lower-income backgrounds. Yet neither paper collected the student-level, scholarship recipient family income data needed to verify their allegation. This analysis does by using family income and related data provided by school tuition organizations (STOs) for 19,990 individual income tax-credit scholarship recipients, representing almost 80 percent (79.4 percent) of all scholarship recipients in 2009. These student-level data show there is no factual basis for claims that the individual income tax-credit scholarship program fails to help poor and lower-income students. This analysis finds that scholarship recipients' median family income was almost $5,000 lower than the U.S. Census Bureau statewide median annual income. It was also almost $5,000 lower than the median incomes in recipients' neighborhoods, as estimated using student addresses and zip codes. More than two-thirds (66.8 percent) of scholarship recipients' family incomes would qualify them for Arizona's means-tested corporate income tax-credit scholarship program, which is limited to $75,467 for a family of four. Finally, a higher proportion of scholarship recipients come from families whose incomes qualify them as poor (at or below $20,050 for a family of four) than the U.S. Census Bureau statewide average, 12.8 percent compared to 10.2 percent. (Contains 2 tables and 19 footnotes.)

This paper explores the ways in which school leaders are turning to student services staff as local experts in data analysis and use to meet the demands of high-stakes accountability. The authors have been collecting data, as part of a 5-year National Science Foundation-funded study, on how school leaders create data-driven systems to improve instruction at their schools. They found that while schools already had significant capacity to design curriculum-level interventions to address the needs of groups of students, leaders in the schools investigated turned to special education practices and professionals to provide the in-house expertise necessary to create a variety of student-level interventions. This paper provides a picture of the increased role that student services staff have had in developing and maintaining program- and student-level support programs. Specifically, it investigates two central issues: (1) the practices of student services staff provide a precedent for student-level intervention design; and (2) student services staff play new roles as data-savvy instructional leaders. (Contains 1 figure and 3 footnotes.) [This paper was originally prepared for the annual convention of the University Council for Educational Administration (San Antonio, Texas, 2006).]

Exploiting a statewide cutoff point on the placement examination used to assign students to remedial courses in Tennessee, this study employs a regression discontinuity research design to provide causal estimates of the effects on student outcomes of recently redesigned remedial courses at three Tennessee colleges. Moreover, using data on student outcomes prior to the course redesigns, the study also tests whether the redesigned remedial programs were more effective in preparing students for success in postsecondary education than the remedial programs they replaced. The findings indicate that, among students on the margins of the cutoff score, the effects of enrollment in developmental mathematics were positive and statistically significant on early student persistence as well as on the number of credits attempted but not completed in the first semester. However, these effects did not persist over time, as the results show no statistically significant differences between groups after two years. Yet the study also finds that students who were exposed to redesigned developmental math courses had more positive outcomes than did their peers in non-redesign institutions during the same period and also when compared with students who were exposed to the previous version of traditional remediation within their institution in prior years. Students appear to have benefited from redesigned courses at two of the three institutions. The results of this analysis provide insight into the extent to which the particular instruction and delivery methods of remedial courses affect subsequent student academic outcomes, thus informing administrators and policymakers as to how best to help underprepared students. Summarizing Course Redesign at Each Campus is appended. (Contains 7 tables, 4 figures and 22 footnotes.)

College students are increasingly combining studying with paid employment, and community college students tend to work even longer hours compared with students at four-year colleges. Yet, there is little evidence on the academic consequences of community college students' term-time employment. Using a rare administrative dataset from Washington State that combines students' quarterly transcript records with earning records from the state Unemployment Insurance system, this study relies on two causal strategies: first, an individual fixed effects strategy that takes advantage of the quarterly nature of the data to control for unobserved and time-invariant differences among students, and second, an instrumental variable--difference-in-differences framework that takes advantage of the fact that there is an exogenous supply of retail jobs during the winter holidays. The study compares academic outcomes in the fall and winter quarters for students who were more likely to work in retail and those less likely to work in retail based on pre-enrollment association with retail jobs. The findings reject the possibility of large negative effects for small increases in employment for community college students. (Contains 6 tables, 3 figures and 5 footnotes.)

The implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) over the coming years will provide an opportunity for K-12 and postsecondary educators to share and use data effectively to support alignment between the sectors and reduce the need for remedial education. This brief describes how these groups can work together to make the most of data and their shared expertise to increase the proportion of students who are college ready. It also provides a framework for collecting data and information on the critical goal of improving college readiness, including data on related outcomes, processes, and inputs. In an upcoming report, the authors will provide recommendations for key data and other information that can be used to support specific goals and strategies being developed by Affinity Network teams. (Contains 9 references and resources and 2 footnotes.)

By probing the micro-level interactions and experiences shaping students' thoughts, behaviors, and decisions during college the authors hope to generate a better picture of how individuals enact the intersection of their own agency with their given social context. Such insights may enable a more accurate and meaningful interpretation of the association between parental education, first-year GPA, and reverse transfer. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the "remain or reverse transfer" decision more closely by focusing on how it occurs among graduates of Chicago Public Schools (CPS). This study reveals the multiple and complex ways in which a sample of low SES four-year college students enact choices and strategies that have an impact whether or not they remain on a four-year trajectory or experience reverse mobility. Findings demonstrate how the nuances of the pre-college goal-setting process have implications not just for access to college but also for students' trajectories through college. The importance of risk-inducing contexts and risk-management strategies emerge prominently, with the role of social capital in negotiating this process gaining central focus. As the authors see from the quantitative findings, CPS students who enroll in 4-year colleges experience reverse transfer at relatively high rates, and this pathway increases their risk of non-completion. Moving beyond the role of parental education, this analysis of qualitative data highlights the pivotal role of advocates in helping students negotiate institutional contexts that induce risk and present serious academic and financial challenges. (Contains 14 endnotes 2 tables.)

Information on the divergence between student numbers and delivery hours for the period 2002 to 2007 is provided in this technical paper. The change in hours from one year to the next is decomposed into three effects, one of which is "hours inflation", whereby nominal hours increase over time for the same unit of competency or module. Here we show that the "hours inflation" explains relatively little of the divergence between students and hours. However, another form of hours creep, whereby new modules have higher average hours than ceased modules, was of some significance at the start of the period in question. A list of tables representing change in hours by state and territory is appended. (Contains 2 footnotes, 7 tables, and 3 figures.) [This work has been produced by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) as a joint initiative of the Australian Government, and state and territory governments, with funding provided through the Australian Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.]

Principals tend to prefer working in schools with higher-achieving students from more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. Principals often use schools with many poor or low-achieving students as stepping stones to what they view as more desirable assignments. District leadership can also exacerbate principal turnover by implementing policies aimed at improving low-performing schools such as rotating school leaders. Using longitudinal data from one large urban school district we find principal turnover is detrimental to school performance. Frequent turnover results in lower teacher retention and lower student achievement gains, which are particularly detrimental to students in high-poverty and failing schools. (Contains 10 tables and 3 footnotes.)

This paper uses administrative data from the University of Texas-Austin to examine whether high school peer networks at college entry influence college achievement, measured by grade point average (GPA) and persistence. For each freshman cohort from 1993 through 2003 we calculate the number and ethnic makeup of college freshmen from each Texas high school, which we use as a proxy for freshmen "peer network." Empirical specifications include high school fixed effects to control for unobservable differences across schools that influence both college enrollment behavior and academic performance. Using an IV/fixed effects strategy that exploits the introduction and expansion of the Longhorn Scholars Program, which targeted low income schools with low college traditions we also evaluate whether "marginal" increases in peer networks influence college achievement. Results show that students with larger peer network upon entering college perform better than their counterparts with smaller networks at the beginning of their freshman year. Average effects of network size on college achievement are small, but a marginal increase in the size of same-race peer networks raises GPA by 0.1 point. We also find some suggestive evidence that minority students with large high school peer networks reap larger academic benefits than their white counterparts. (Contains 7 tables and 9 footnotes.)

There are fierce debates over the best way to prepare teachers. Some argue that easing entry into teaching is necessary to attract strong candidates, while others argue that investing in high quality teacher preparation is the most promising approach. Most agree, however, that we lack a strong research basis for understanding how to prepare teachers. This paper is one of the first to estimate the effects of features of teachers' preparation on teachers' value-added to student test score performance in Math and English Language Arts. Our results indicate variation across preparation programs in the average effectiveness of the teachers they are supplying to New York City schools. In particular, preparation directly linked to practice appears to benefit teachers in their first year. Sample Results for Math with Pathway/Institution Effects and Description of Variables are appended. (Contains 6 footnotes, 9 tables and 4 figures.) [Funding for this report was provided by the City University of New York.]

The recent demand for schools to respond to external accountability measures challenges school leaders to create school instructional systems that use data to guide the practices of teaching and learning. This paper considers how local school leaders build data-driven instructional systems (DDIS) by developing new programs and using existing school functions to create an information flow through a school. The paper considers how leaders work with teachers and students to create DDIS to intentionally and systematically improve student learning. The paper begins by presenting a theoretical and analytical framework for understanding the systems that local school leaders create to develop a DDIS to facilitate an information flow about student achievement in schools. The DDIS is presented as six component functions involving (1) data acquisition, (2) data reflection, (3) program alignment and integration, (4) program design, (5) formative feedback, and (6) test preparation. The second part of the paper reviews data collected in a year-long study of four schools, using the DDIS cycle as a framework for describing how school leaders structure opportunities to engage in data-driven decision making. The data provide rich examples of how schools facilitate and impede the flow of student achievement information, and call into question any simple definition of data-based decision making in schools. The following are appended: (1) DDIS Interview Protocol; and (2) DDIS Coding Scheme. (Contains 1 table, 1 figure, and 2 footnotes.) [This paper was prepared for the Annual meeting of the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration (Washington, DC, July 2005).]

Over 2000 teachers in the state of Washington received reduction-in-force (RIF) notices in the past two years. The authors link data on these RIF notices to a unique dataset that includes student, teacher, school, and district variables to determine the factors that predict the likelihood of a teacher receiving a RIF notice. They find a teacher's seniority is the greatest predictor, but (all else equal) teachers with a master's degree and teachers credentialed in the "high-needs areas" of math, science, and special education were less likely to receive a RIF notice. Value-added measures of teacher effectiveness can be calculated for a subset of the teachers and these show no relationship between effectiveness and the likelihood of receiving a RIF notice. Finally, simulations suggest that a very different group of teachers would be targeted for layoffs under an effectiveness-based layoff scenario than under the seniority-driven system that exists today. (Contains 3 figures, 7 tables and 68 footnotes.)

This report describes a conversion experiment and subsequent reader survey conducted by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Humanities E-Book (HEB) in late 2009 and early 2010 to assess the viability of using scholarly monographs with handheld e-readers. As sample content, HEB selected six titles from its own online collection, three in a page-image format with existing OCR (optical character recognition)-derived text and three encoded as XML files, and had these converted by an outside vendor with minimal editorial intervention into both MOBI (prc) and ePub files. During its in-house assessment phase, HEB experienced some navigational difficulty with both formats and found that annotation and other interaction with the text was difficult using a number of popular e-readers. HEB also found the XML titles to be of limited functionality in the MOBI format and therefore opted not to further poll readers on this subset. About 88% of the 142 survey participants expressed overall satisfaction with the appearance and functionality of the three remaining handheld samples, although roughly half reported some level of frustration with the search function using either format, and only 26% felt they would have an easy time citing and referencing these editions. Satisfaction with other interactive features, such as adding notes, bookmarking and highlighting, was noticeably higher; however, the "n/a" option was also selected frequently for these categories, and it appears that a large number of participants were unable to perform the tasks in question due to confusing or insufficient instructions from the device manufacturer. As formats evolve, future satisfaction with these features may increase. Irrespective of specific limitations, 75% of participants were interested in potentially downloading additional similar titles for free or if priced below $10. HEB's initial findings in this study indicate that titles formatted for existing handheld devices are not yet adequate for scholarly use in terms of replicating either the benefits of online collections--cross-searchability, archiving, multifarious interactive components--nor certain aspects of print editions that users reported missing, such as being able to mark up and rapidly skim text. A turnaround is underway once a common and more robust format optimized for handheld readers is determined and devices themselves evolve, adding improved display options and better and more intuitive web-access, searching and other interactive use of content. Survey Results is appended. (Contains 30 footnotes.)

Remediation is the most common policy designed to prepare students academically and socially during their early stages of college. But despite its profound importance and its significant costs, there is very little rigorous research analyzing its effectiveness. The goal of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework for evaluation of remedial education programs. Based on previous literature, we review a list of ingredients for successful interventions, present a number of approaches to remediation that make use of these ingredients, discuss alternative research designs for systematic evaluations, and enumerate basic data requirements. (Contains 19 footnotes.)

This paper explores the relationship between teacher testing and teacher effectiveness using a unique dataset that links teachers to their individual students. My findings show a positive relationship between some teacher licensure tests and student achievement. But they also suggest that states face significant tradeoffs when they require particular performance levels as a precondition to becoming a teacher: some teachers whom we might wish were not in the teacher workforce based on their contribution toward student achievement are eligible to teach based on their performance on these tests, while other individuals who would be effective teachers are ineligible. (Contains 4 tables, 1 figure and 25 footnotes.)

This report from the Charter School Achievement Consensus Panel, a group of nine researchers convened by the National Charter School Research Project, examines the existing research on student achievement in charter schools and details how future research could be improved. The panel reviewed and rated more than 40 evaluations of charter school performance released between 2000 and 2005. Studies evaluating charter schools nationally or across states were found to be "fair" to "poor." Two key findings are that: (1) no one research method or approach is problem-free; and (2) the results of studies focused on one kind of charter school cannot be generalized to all charter schools. The panel offers guidelines for local, regional, and national studies and recommends that the research community consider the pattern of results from multiple studies instead of relying on a single study for definitive results. This White Paper is the first in a series of reports from the consensus panel, all of which will be concerned with assessing and strengthening the evidence about charter school outcomes. Appended are: (1) List of Charter School Studies Included in Literature Review; and (2) Details on the Literature on Charter Schools. (Contains 6 tables and 3 figures.) [Principal drafters of this report were: Julian Betts and Paul T. Hill.]

The U.S. Department of Education recently held a competition for grants to support states in their efforts to build longitudinal data systems to track and analyze student and school performance. The Value-Added Research Center (VARC) at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison, proposed a Tri-State Partnership in collaboration with the states of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Fourteen states were funded, with the Tri-State Partnership proposal the only multi-state effort to win approval. This paper outlines the initial design and work plan of the partnership. It also presents several of the design concerns related to complex system development for educational improvement. (Contains 2 figures.)

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Validity Studies Panel undertook a systematic analysis to consider the domain of validity threats to NAEP and to identify the most urgent research priorities. A framework of six broad categories was developed: (1) the constructs measured within each of NAEP's subject domains; (2) the manner in which these constructs are measured; (3) the representation of the population; (4) the analyses of data; (5) the reporting and use of NAEP results; and (6) the assessment of trends. Panel subcommittees prepared papers laying out the critical validity issues in each area. These papers, which are presented in chapters 2 through 7 of this report, are: (1) "Validity Issues Representing Populations" (Donald H. McLaughlin, Peter Behuniak, and James R. Chromy) (Chapter 4); (2) "Issues and Recommendations on NAEP Data Analysis" (R. Darrell Bock, Albert Beaton, and Gerald DeMauro) (Chapter 5); (3) "Validity and Utility Issues in NAEP Reporting and Data Releases" (Frances B. Stancavage and Ina V. S. Mullins) (Chapter 6); and (4) "Estimating Trends from NAEP Scores: Rationale and Research Directions" (David Grissmer, Albert E. Beaton, and Larry Hedges) (Chapter 7). The panel reviewed these papers and set priorities in each area by a consensus process. Sixteen suggested studies or areas of study were identified. Four stood out as essential, nine others were considered "highly needed," and three were found to be less important. The panel indicated unanimously that studies are essential to evaluate the validity aspects of NAEPs new role under the No Child Left Behind Act. The appendix to chapter 4 is attached. (Contains 6 figures and 26 tables.) (SLD)

This paper addresses three key topics related to making state National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessments more efficient: (1) reducing the burden for the states; (2) stabilizing the assessment schedule; and (3) facilitating and promoting the use of state NAEP data. The paper recommends promoting the use of state NAEP data for the continued success of the NAEP program. It suggests that this could involve devoting greater attention to how best to link state assessment and NAEP results, developing more timely and user-friendly reports and working with states and other organizations to address the needs of different NAEP audiences more effectively. The paper also suggests spending proportionately less of the state NAEP resources on data collection and more on disseminating information about the many uses of the program. (Contains 3 tables and 10 references.) (SLD)

Using detailed administrative data for the public K-12 schools of North Carolina, we measure racial segregation in its public schools. With data for the 2005-2006 school year, we update previously published calculations that measure segregation by unevenness in racial enrollment patterns, both between schools and within schools. We find that classroom segregation generally increased between 2000-2001 and 2005-2006, continuing, albeit at a slightly slower rate, the trend of increases we observed over the preceding six years. Segregation increased sharply in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, which introduced a new choice plan in 2002. Over the same period, racial and economic disparities in teacher quality widened in that district. Finally, we compare our basic measure to two alternative measures of segregation. An appendix is included. (Contains 31 footnotes and 11 tables.)