Are Early Investments In Computer Skills Rewarded In The Labor Market?

The paper assesses the relationship between investments in computer skills by adolescents and earnings at age 26. The heaviest investors earned 9 to 16 percent more than otherwise equivalent NELS-88 classmates. The payoff to early computer skills was substantial in jobs involving intense and complex uses of computers; negligible when computers were not used at work. It was non-gaming use of computers outside of school that enhanced future earnings, not playing video/computer games—which lowered earnings. Children in low SES families invested less in computer skills and thus benefited less from the job opportunities generated by the digital revolution

The influence of program participation in business education courses on standardized test performance among secondary students in Louisiana

The primary purpose of this study was to compare the academic achievement, as measured by scores on the English and math portions of the Graduate Exit Examination (GEE), of public high school students in Louisiana by whether or not they were identified as business education students. The GEE is a high-stakes test that is administered to high school students in Louisiana. Students must pass specific portions of the test to obtain a diploma. Academic achievement data on the GEE was obtained from the Louisiana Department of Education. The sample for the study was all 10th and 11th grade students enrolled in public high schools in Louisiana during the 2008-2009 school year who were initial testers and who were not classified as “special education,” “504,” or “Limited English Proficiency.” Data acquired from the Louisiana Department of Education was recorded in a computerized recording document. Academic achievement, as measured by math and English scores on the GEE, was described and correlated with selected demographic characteristics. In addition, achievement was compared by whether or not the students were classified as a business education student. Demographic findings of the study showed that the largest groups of subjects were of the White race and female gender. In addition, more students were found to be in the socioeconomic group that was defined by receiving free lunch in school. Findings of the study indicated that business education students scored higher than non-business education students on all math and English measures examined. Additionally, business education students were found to have achieved at higher GEE classifications than non-business education students in both English and math areas. The researcher concluded that business education students perform better academically than non-business education students. Another conclusion of the study was that business education is no longer a female dominated program. The researcher recommended that state level administrators of educational programs in Louisiana develop new courses that would integrate academics and business education courses that would be approved for high school graduation credit. Some of these courses might include: business technical writing, applied mathematics, applied technology, research in careers and math for business decisions

Relationship Among Demographic, Academic and Curriculum Characteristics, Emphasizing Arts Education and Critical Thinking Performance in 12th Grade High School Students

The ability to think critically is an important condition for success in school and life. Promoting the development of critical thinking skills through arts education would have an impact on curriculum developments, specifically the utilization of study in the arts as a learning strategy and the revisiting of the purpose of arts education. Arts education has the unique capacity to teach children to think creatively, imaginatively, and critically, while also benefiting subject-specific curriculum (Deasy, 2002). Eisner (2005) asserts that the arts are as essential to students\u27 intellectual development as study in mathematics or the sciences. The purpose of this non-experimental, exploratory (comparative), and explanatory (correlational) secondary research study was to investigate the relationships among student demographic characteristics, curriculum characteristics, i iv characteristics, and critical thinking as measured by performance on the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test (FCAT) for Broward County 12th grade students. Secondary analysis of data previously collected by the researcher was used for answering the research questions and testing the hypotheses presented in the study. The study is significant in that exploration of the topic may provide implications for reform in curriculum design to better focus on the promotion of students\u27 acquisition of essential skills for success in school and subsequently in the workplace, such as critical thinking. In an educational system strapped for money and increasingly ruled by standardized tests, arts courses can seem almost a needless extravagance, and the arts are being cut back at schools across the nation (Winner & Hetland, 2008, p. 1). As a result of the current emergence of technological advances and globalization, the need for students\u27 ability to acquire critical thinking skills in order to prepare for success in the workforce is not only observed in the United States but has global implications, as well (Hartman, Bentley, Richards, & Krebs, 2005). Six research questions and three hypotheses were generated for this study about the relationships among student demographic characteristics, curriculum characteristics, academic characteristics, and critical thinking performance. These are based on the key gaps in the literature, the recommendations of this study, and the theoretical framework that was used to guide this study

A Correlation of Technology Implementation and Middle School Academic Achievement in Tennessee\u27s Middle Schools.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship that exists between the reported implementation and integration of computer based technology into the middle schools of Tennessee and the achievement test scores of the middle school students in grades 6, 7, and 8. In January of 2004, 2005, and 2006 the Tennessee Department of Education implemented the EdTech Tennessee Online Technology Evaluation System (E-TOTE) Survey of technology implementation and integration to gather data from public schools. This survey was intended as a means of providing a measure of the status of technology to the federal government required under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation. Annually students in Tennessee take the state mandated Tennessee Comprehensive Achievement Program (TCAP) test. The reports of the test results are aggregated by school and by grade. This study investigated possible correlations between these 2 sets of data. The technology implementation and integration levels of the schools were analyzed to determine if there were any correlations between reported technology levels for the schools and the school-level TCAP achievement scores in reading and language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies. Specific technology indicators that were examined included the level of technology integration, teaching and learning, educator preparation and development, administration and support services and infrastructure for technology, number of computers, network access, and capabilities and percentages of 8th grade technology literacy. The study population consisted of 154 middle schools in Tennessee that were comprised of grades 6, 7, and 8 for which school3 level Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program scores were available and who completed the E-TOTE survey in 2004, 2005, and 2006. The findings include: The correlations identified in this study indicate that there is a very small relationship between the implementation and integration of technology in Tennessee middle schools. The school-level TCAP scores were also found to be increasing for each year from 2004 through 2006 in reading and language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies. Over the same period the number of computers in these schools are increasing, as is the level of technology implementation and integration as measured by the E-TOTE survey system

The Effects of Enrollment In Remedial Classes on Students’ High School Graduation Rates

The purpose of this study is to determine the effects on high school graduation rates of students who are placed in remedial and non-remedial classes while controlling for the students’ attendance rates. The importance of this study is to identify indicators which can positively or negatively affect high school graduation rates. The results may provide information to improve the historical low high school graduation rates. It is a quantitative study using a causal comparative design. Archival data will be retrieved from four public high schools in the panhandle of Florida. 00 students will be sampled, with 00 female students and 00 male students. Two of the schools are rural and two are suburban. The data collection retrieved will identify each student’s attendance rates, placement in remedial courses or not placed in remedial courses, and whether they graduated from high school in four years or did not, and this is from the student’s 9th grade year through their 12th grade year

Narrowing English Leaner (EL) Achievement Gaps: A Multilevel Analysis of an EL-infused Teacher Preparation Model

This non-experimental correlational study assessed the effectiveness of a model of teacher preparation that infuses a focus on teaching English learners, the One-Plus model, by examining pre-service teachers\u27 (PST) effectiveness in narrowing English learner achievement gaps during their final student teaching experience. The study spanned five semesters of internship data, exploring how each semester\u27s PST effectiveness changed over time. This study utilized teacher work sample data that interns collected and submitted to the institutional effectiveness division of the college, with an n of 20,809 K-12 students who attended the 768 One-Plus PSTs\u27 classes during their semester-long internship. The results showed that there remained a statistically significant achievement gap between student groups based on their sociodemographic characteristics, and the biggest gap was between EL and non-EL students. Students had statistically significantly higher posttest scores compared to the pretest scores, and the rate of change in test scores was much steeper in historically low-achieving students than their counterparts. There was an approximately 50% decrease in EL\u27s achievement gap in the posttest model compared to the pretest. Likewise, the gaps between low-SES and high-SES students, students with exceptionalities and students without exceptionalities, Black and White Students, and Hispanic and White students were reduced by approximately 40%, 38%, 48%, and 26%, respectively. Finally, there was a statistically significant linear growth in students\u27 posttest scores over a period of five semesters

Examining the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium Exams, Scholastic Aptitude Test, and High School Grade Point Average as Predictors of College Readiness

The lack of college readiness in the United States is a critical issue that jeopardizes our economy. The demographic inequality of the crisis, particularly for low-income as well as Black and Latinx students, emerges from systemic problems of race and class in American education and society which suppress students’ educational and economic mobility. As part of the national reform efforts, state-based standardized tests such as the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) were designed to be better aligned with K-12 Common Core standards and provide a more efficient and equitable measure of academic performance and college readiness in middle and high school when compared to traditional measures such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and grade point average (GPA). Although the SBAC test is being used across the nation, there is a large research gap regarding how the SBAC compares with GPA and the SAT for prediction of college readiness and the degree to which it is unbiased by demographic or school variables. Therefore, the research problem of this study was to investigate the predictive power of the 8th-grade and 11th-grade SBAC tests, as compared to GPA, the SAT, curricular intensity, and college aspirations, for college readiness as measured by college enrollment and persistence, and how such predictability may be biased by nonacademic factors of poverty, race, and school size. The purpose of this quantitative, ex post facto study, which was conducted on archived data from a large, urban, and demographically diverse school district in southern California, was to investigate the problem using rigorous statistical analyses of path analysis, discriminant function analysis, and logistic regressions. There were several important findings. Both middle and high school SBAC tests were not reliable predictors of college readiness, despite their intended design, in contrast to high school GPA, SAT, curricular intensity, and college aspirations which tended to strongly and reliably predict college readiness either directly or indirectly via their positive effects on other predictors. However, the middle school SBAC tests reliably and positively predicted the high school SBAC tests, even when controlling for middle school GPA. Moreover, middle school SBAC scores were strongly related to middle school GPA, and high school SBAC scores were strongly related to high school GPA. These various results provide evidence of high internal consistency within SBAC assessments and suggests that these tests can accurately and reliably track students’ academic progress between middle and high school. In addition, there was evidence of demographic or school bias in the scores of all academic indicators based on the findings of significant direct effects from those demographic and school variables towards the academic variables. There was also evidence of bias in the predictive validity of the academic indicators for college enrollment and persistence based on the findings of reduced predictive effects when controlling for the demographic and school variables or different predictive effects for different demographic groups. Importantly, the degree of theses biases in SBAC was less than the degree of biases in SAT but similar to GPA. Based on these results, the overall conclusion and recommendation for educational policy is that the SBAC tests seem ideal for monitoring students’ academic progress, instruction, and needs throughout middle and high school but less ideal for predicting college enrollment and persistence

Entrepreneurship Education Relation to Mathematical Proficiency Amongst Secondary Youth

Mathematical aptitude in the United States has been a concern over the past few decades, not only from an international perspective but from a student proficiency perspective. This phenomenon is also further negatively impacted due to COVID-19 associated learning loss. Correspondingly, there are calls for students to develop entrepreneurial skills to thrive in the 21st century economy. The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to examine whether participation in an entrepreneurship class was related to mathematical proficiency (Algebra II) in high school. Data on students from two school districts were used, consisting of 2,741 and 1,172 Algebra II students in each school district, respectively. The data on each school district were disaggregated as each school district provided a differing dependent variable. School District One provided standardized assessment data from a state assessment in Algebra II as the dependent variable, while School District Two was only able to provide Algebra II grades instead. Data on student, classroom, and school characteristics were collected for this analysis. Multiple regression analyses and propensity score matching were used to explain relationships between individual variables and math proficiency in Algebra II. Conclusions from this study add to the existing literature surrounding math proficiency and contextualized learning. The average treatment effect (ATE) was significant for School District One, indicating that had Algebra II students taken entrepreneurship, their Algebra II post-test score was estimated to increase by 13-15 points. The average treatment effect on the treated (ATET) was not significant, indicating that students who actually took an entrepreneurship course did not see gains due to this course enrollment. However, the ATE significance depicts the positive relationship that entrepreneurship could have on the math outcomes of students who do not typically enroll in classes such as entrepreneurship. Numerous variables were evaluated to determine individual relationships, of which the following were significant with relation to Algebra II: the Algebra I post-test score, Asian race variable, number of Advanced Placement (AP) and/or honors classes taken, math teacher years of experience, teacher staffing ratio within the school, entrepreneurship class enrollment, free and reduced lunch variable, Algebra I grade, and the gender variable

The Influence of Selected Factors on the Science Achievement of Eighth Grade Students in Louisiana

The primary purpose of this study is to determine the influence of selected demographic and academic factors on the science achievement among middle school students in Louisiana. The dependent variable for this study was Science achievement as measured by the Eighth Grade LEAP Test. The independent variables consisted of selected demographic characteristics and student scores on the ELA, Reading, Mathematics, and Social Studies sections of the Eighth Grade LEAP Test and their subtests. The target population of this study was Eighth Grade students in the public schools of Louisiana who were required to successfully complete the LEAP test in order to reach the Ninth Grade. The sample for the study was made up of all Eighth Grade students in the public schools of Louisiana who complete the LEAP test during the Spring testing period in 2009. Data was received from the Louisiana State Department of Education and transferred into an Excel file and then into a SPSS file. The data did not identify the students. All students were described in the first research objective, but for the remaining objectives students who were categorized as Special Education, 504, or Limited English Proficiency were removed from the study. The major findings of the study were that there was a significant difference between the different races in the study on their Science achievement. A relationship was found between socioeconomic status and Science scores as well. Those who received their lunch for free tended to score lower than those who paid full price or a reduced price for lunch. Lunch Status-Free explained 13.5% of the variance in Science scores. The total Social Studies Score explained an additional 55.3%. Student raw score percentages in Math and Reading explained an additional 4.9% and 1.0% respectively. This researcher concluded that there was a connection between Science scores and the scores in other academic subjects. He recommended that teachers in Science develop strong relationships with teachers in Math, ELA, Reading, and Social Studies in order to develop uniform techniques which students can use to raise test scores