A Review of the Major School Counseling Policy Studies in the United States: 2000-2014

Jay Carey and Ian Martin conducted a review of the major policy studies concerning school counseling in the United States. The authors located 37 documents disseminated between 2000 and 2014 that were either intentionally written with a focus on policy implications or were frequently used to attempt to influence policy decision-making. Their review is organized by types of policy studies: Literature Reviews, Survey Research, Statewide Evaluations of School Counseling Programs, State Evaluations of School Counseling Practice, Existing Database Investigations of School Counseling, Research Identifying Elements of Exemplary Practice, Studies of Evaluation Capacity and Practices in School Counseling

Usage Patterns and Perceptions of the Achievement, Reporting and Innovation System (ARIS)

This report offers the first systematic examination of actual usage of New York City's Achievement Reporting and Innovation System (ARIS). ARIS is a comprehensive data system designed to put student information within easy reach of school administrators and teachers. The findings suggest that ARIS has been used successfully as a school-wide planning tool, but was less valuable as a direct aid to classroom instruction. The Research Alliance will continue its study of ARIS through 2013, including an examination of some of the new components and features that have been developed recently by the Department of Education

USA educator perspectives regarding the nature and value of social and emotional learning

This paper discusses the US educator perspectives regarding the nature and value of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) skills. This research is part of a larger study being conducted by 33 career development investigators from 15 countries. SEL skills are becoming increasingly critical to helping youth develop the competencies needed to become employable within the emergent 4th Industrial Revolution. Today’s youth must articulate how their competencies align to multiple career opportunities. They need relationship skills and social awareness to interact with different managers and work environments. Youth need self-management skills to advance in the workplace and engage in lifelong learning. For this study, educators were asked to provide written responses to a series of open-ended questions about their understanding of SEL, their perspective on SEL’s relevance to their own effectiveness as educators, and whether and how they perceive SEL as relevant to teaching in classroom settings. This paper will report on the results of how U.S. educators perceive the value and relevance of SEL. Using a modified grounded theory approach, responses from 40 educators were analyzed and 123 SEL themes emerged. The results will be discussed in relation to existing SEL and career readiness frameworks.First author draf

KIPP Middle Schools: Impacts on Achievement and Other Outcomes

The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) is a rapidly expanding network of public charter schools whose mission is to improve the education of low-income children. As of the 2012 -- 2013 school year, 125 KIPP schools are in operation in 20 different states and the District of Columbia (DC). Ultimately, KIPP's goal is to prepare students to enroll and succeed in college.Prior research has suggested that KIPP schools have positive impacts on student achievement, but most of the studies have included only a few KIPP schools or have had methodological limitations. This is the second report of a national evaluation of KIPP middle schools being conducted by Mathematica Policy Research. The evaluation uses experimental and quasi-experimental methods to produce rigorous and comprehensive evidence on the effects of KIPP middle schools across the country.The study's first report, released in 2010, described strong positive achievement impacts in math and reading for the 22 KIPP middle schools for which data were available at the time. For this phase of the study, we nearly doubled the size of the sample, to 43 KIPP middle schools, including all KIPP middle schools that were open at the start of the study in 2010 for which we were able to acquire relevant data from local districts or states. This report estimates achievement impacts for these 43 KIPP middle schools, and includes science and social studies in addition to math and reading. This report also examines additional student outcomes beyond state test scores, including student performance on a nationally norm-referenced test and survey-based measures of student attitudes and behavior

Differentiated instruction: a comparison of elementary and secondary school use

Includes bibliographical references

Building a Districtwide Small Schools Movement

Presents a case study of community organizing for school reform by Oakland Community Organizations: how parent and community engagement in a campaign for small schools shaped leadership development, district policy, school capacity, and student outcomes

Preparing Secondary Mathematics Teachers: Focus on Modeling in Algebra

This study addressed the opportunities to learn (OTL) modeling in algebra provided to secondary mathematics pre-service teachers (PSTs). To investigate these OTL, we interviewed five instructors of required mathematics and mathematics education courses that had the potential to include opportunities for PSTs to learn algebra at three universities. We also interviewed a group of three to four PSTs at each of the universities. We coded the interview transcripts using an analytic framework developed based on related literature and policy documents. We report the similarities and differences in perspectives among instructors and PSTs related to modeling at each university, along with comparisons of OTL across universities

Interpersonal perceptions of adverse peer experiences in first-grade students

Aim: The aim of this study was to identify which adverse peer experiences better predict perceived negative peer relationships among elementary school first graders according to sex. The peer experiences examined were peer rejection, peer victimization, and mutual antipathy; the interpersonal perceptions studied were perceived peer victimization, dyadic meta-perception of peer disliking, and loneliness. Methods: The participants were 809 children (Mage = 6.4 years, SD = 0.32; ngirls = 412, 50.9%) enrolled in 35 first-grade classes from 15 schools in 4 Spanish regions: Valencia, n = 276, 34.1%; Balearic Islands, n = 140, 17.3%; Andalusia, n = 199, 24.6%; Castile-Leon, n = 194, 24%. We calculated sex differences in peer experiences and interpersonal perceptions by means of one-way ANOVA for means differences and Fisher’s r-to-z transformation for correlations differences. We used a multilevel regression analysis (nesting variables: class and region) to determine whether the associations between each peer experiences and each perception were unique. Results: Each adverse peer relationship predicted each interpersonal perception differentially. Peer victimization was a good predictor of the three interpersonal perceptions, and the only predictor of perceived peer victimization. Peer rejection predicted loneliness, whereas mutual antipathies predicted dyadic meta-perception of peer disliking, although more so among girls. A significant effect at region level was found but not at class level. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that research should take into account the different levels of the social peer system when analyzing peer experiences within the classroom context. The study contributes to sensitize teachers about the greater responsiveness of 6-year-old girls to adverse peer experiences, and it could be useful for designing interventions that would help children oppose rejection and empower active bystanders to fight against peer mistreatment.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad de España EDU2012-35930Universitat Jaume I P1-1A2012-0

Developmental changes in achievement motivation and affect in physical education: Growth trajectories and demographic differences.

Objective: We examined changes in student achievement goals, perceptions of motivational climate and affective responses in secondary school physical education. Method: Greek junior high school students (N ¼ 394; 191 males and 203 females) responded to a multisection questionnaire twice a year from the ages of 12 to 15 years. Results: Multilevel modeling analyses showed significant linear decreases in perceptions of taskinvolving teacher climate, task and ego goal orientations, which were somewhat reversed by the beginning of the last year of the junior high school. Significant linear decreases were also observed for enjoyment whereas there were significant linear increases for perceptions of ego-involving climate and boredom. There was significant variability in the intercepts and/or average changes over time for all variables and, therefore, we included demographic and theoretical predictors in an attempt to account for such variations. Conclusion: The results indicated that decreases in adaptive motivation over time vary across students and in some cases may be tackled by fostering a task-involving teacher climate