Time to Act: An Agenda for Advancing Adolescent Literacy for College and Career Success

Presents a vision for literacy instruction from fourth through twelfth grade; examines the challenges; outlines the elements of success, including professional development and use of data; and lays out a national agenda for change based on case studies

Effectiveness of Two Keyboarding Instructional Approaches on the Keyboarding Speed, Accuracy, and Technique of Elementary Students

Background: Keyboarding skill development is important for elementary students. Limited research exists to inform practice on effective keyboarding instruction methods. Method: Using a quasi-experimental design, we examined the effectiveness of Keyboarding Without Tears® (n = 786) in the experimental schools compared to the control schools who used the district standard instructional approach of free web-based activities (n = 953) on improving keyboarding skills (speed, accuracy, and technique) in elementary students. Results: The results showed significant improvements in keyboarding speed and accuracy in all schools for all grades favoring the experimental schools compared to the control schools. Significant differences in improvements in keyboarding technique were found with large effect sizes favoring the experimental schools for kindergarten to the second grade and small effect sizes favoring the control schools for the third to fifth grade. Conclusion: Professionals involved in assisting with keyboarding skill development in children are recommended to begin training in these skills in early elementary grades, especially to assist in proper keyboarding technique development. While using free web-based activities are beneficial to improving keyboarding speed and accuracy, as well as keyboarding technique, using a developmentally-based curriculum, such as Keyboarding Without Tears®, may further enhance improvements in the keyboarding skills of elementary students

Effective and Promising Summer Learning Programs and Approaches for Economically-Disadvantaged Children and Youth

Reviews research on summer learning program outcomes for low-income children and identifies the characteristics of effective programs such as experienced teachers, small groups, and fun activities. Finds reading and math achievement gains are possible

ABC, 123: The Impact of a Mobile Phone Literacy Program on Educational Outcomes

CGD non-resident fellow Jenny Aker and co-authors report on the results from a randomized evaluation of a mobile phone education program (Project ABC) in Niger, in which adult students learned how to use mobile phones as part of a literacy and numeracy class. Overall, students demonstrated substantial improvements in literacy and numeracy test scores. There is also evidence of persistent impacts: six months after the end of the first year of classes, students in the program retained what they had learned better than others. The effects do not appear to be driven by differences in teacher quality or in teacher and student attendance. The results suggest that simple and relatively cheap information and communication technology can serve as an effective and sustainable learning tool for rural populations.Education

Expanding Access and Increasing Student Learning in Post-Primary Education in Developing Countries: A Review of the Evidence

Effective, evidence-based policies on post-primary education are of vital importance as many developing countries start to the see a bulge in secondary and postsecondary enrollment, the product of the achievement of near-universal access to primary school. Finding ways to deliver and promote access to high-quality post-primary education, and to ensure that education is relevant to labor market needs, is one of the great challenges of our times. This must be accomplished in countries where governments face severe budget constraints and many, of not most, parents are too poor to cover the costs out of pocket.International reports such as "A Global Compact on Learning", by the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, emphasize providing opportunities for post-primary education as a first-tier policy challenge. In addition, there has been considerably less progress in gender parity at the secondary level. Meeting these challenges will require a combination of using existing resources more effectively -- which requires both understanding which inputs are key and which are not -- and a range of innovations that may fundamentally alter the current methods of instruction. To that end, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) has launched a Post-Primary Education Initiative intended to promote policy-relevant research on secondary and post-secondary education in developing countries, which together will be referred to as post-primary education. This paper is a first step in that process. It reviews the evidence to date on post-primary education and highlight the gaps in the literature, with a focus on identifying policies that should be given the highest priority for future researchDifferent countries define primary and secondary schooling differently, and in many countries students attend middle schools, upper primary schools, or junior secondary schools before attending secondary school. For the purpose of this review, "post-primary education" includes everything from upper primary, middle, or junior secondary school through tertiary education, as defined by the local context in different countries, including vocational school and other alternative tracks for this age group. In practice, this means that in the research reviewed, the majority of children are in 5th grade (i.e. 10-11 years old) and older.The review is organized as follows. Section II provides some background on postprimary education in the developing world. Section III explains how papers were selected for this review. Section IV presents a conceptual framework for thinking about postprimary education (PPE), including a brief discussion of measuring outcomes. Section V reviews the evidence pertaining to the demand for schooling (the impact of policies that attempt to increase the willingness of households to send their children to school), and Section VI reviews the evidence on the supply of schooling (the impact of policies that change school and teacher characteristics, and more generally how schools are organized). A final section summarizes the findings, highlighting several research gaps that should receive high priority in future research

Facilitating Emotional Self-Regulation in Preschool Children: Efficacy of the Early HeartSmarts Program in Promoting Social, Emotional and Cognitive Development

Developed by the Institute of HeartMath (IHM), the Early HeartSmarts (EHS) program is designed to train teachers to guide and support young children (3 -- 6 years old) in learning emotional self-regulation and key age-appropriate socioemotional competencies, with the goal of facilitating their emotional, social and cognitive development. This work reports the results of an evaluation study conducted to assess the efficacy of the EHS program in a pilot implementation of the program carried out during the 2006 -- 2007 academic year in schools of the Salt Lake City School District. The study was conducted using a quasi-experimental longitudinal field research design with three measurement moments (baseline and pre- and post-intervention panels) using The Creative Curriculum Assessment (TCCA) instrument, a teacher-scored, 50-item instrument measuring student growth in four areas of development -- social/emotional, physical, cognitive and language development. Children in nineteen preschool classrooms were divided into intervention and control group samples (N = 66 and 309, respectively; mean age = 3.6 years), in which classes in the former were specifically selected to target children of lower socioeconomic and ethnic minority family backgrounds. Overall, there is compelling evidence of the efficacy of the EHS program in increasing total psychosocial development and each of the four development areas measured by the TCCA: the results of a series of ANCOVAs found a strong, consistent pattern of significant differences on the development measures favoring preschool children who received the EHS program over those in the control group who did not

More Efficient High Schools in Maine: Emerging Student-Centered Learning Communities

American K-12 public education all across the nation is at a difficult and critical crossroads. We are at a time when keen global competition underscores the need for exceptional performance in our primary and secondary schools. Yet, state and federal governments face unprecedented budget deficits and limited resources for the foreseeable future. Additionally, our schools are being called upon to do an even better job of preparing students for the 21st century. There is growing evidence that success in the 21st Century requires more than what has traditionally been the content of schooling. It requires more and different types of knowledge, skills, and learning. To help students acquire this knowledge base and skills, many educators and leaders are calling for transformative changes in our schools and changes in how we help students learn. This transformative change is called by many names: performance-based learning, standards-based learning, and student-centered learning. The Nellie Mae Education Foundation (NMEF) describes this transformation to more student-centered learning as the need for:... growing a greater variety of higher quality educational opportunities that enable all learners -- especially and essentially underserved learners -- to obtain the skills, knowledge and supports necessary to become civically engaged, economically self-sufficient lifelong learners. (2011) Can our schools be transformed to meet these challenges? More importantly, can they be high performing, efficient, and student-centered at the same time? To explore these questions, the Center for Education Policy, Applied Research, and Evaluation at the University of Southern Maine conducted a study in 2010-2011 of a sample of Maine high schools. Funded in part by the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, the study examined the degree to which these More Efficient high schools were also student-centered. In 2010, NMEF identified some of the key principles and attributes of studentcentered learning. The principles are that: Student-centered education systems provide all students equal access to the skills and knowledge needed for college and career readiness in today's world. Student-centered education systems align with current research on the learning process and motivation. Student-centered education systems focus on mastery of skills and knowledge. Student-centered education systems build student's identities through a positive culture with a foundation of strong relationships and high expectations. Student-centered education systems empower and support parents, teachers, administrators, and other community members to encourage and guide learners through their educational journey. The key attributes are that: Curriculum, instruction and assessment embrace the skills and knowledge needed for success. Community assets are harnessed to support and deepen learning experiences. Time is used flexibly and includes learning opportunities outside the traditional school day and year. Mastery-based strategies are employed to allow for pacing based on proficiency in skills and knowledge. The goal of the study reported here was to determine to what extent these principles and attributes may be found in the high schools. To that end, once a sample of More Efficient high schools was identified, the beliefs, strategies, and practices found in these schools were examined in light of the 2010 NMEF key principles and attributes

New Lessons: The Power of Educating Adolescent Girls

Offers data and analysis on the impact of education on adolescent girls' lives and highlights promising approaches. Calls for evaluating girl-friendly education programs, compiling data on non-formal schools, and improving curricula, access, and supports

Strategies for Improving the Diversity of the Health Professions

Evaluates programs and strategies that were designed to increase the number of underrepresented African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos in the health professions in California. Includes recommendations