Do Declining Neighborhood Economic Conditions Trump Hoped for School Renovation Renewal Benefit?

The purpose of this study was to determine (a) individual student achievement, (b) teacher mobility rates, (c) perceptions of safety at school, and (d) student enrollment patterns, over time, in two recently renovated, same city, urban, No Child Left Behind compliant, Title I elementary school buildings located in close proximity neighborhoods one with improving the other with declining economic conditions. Achievement results indicated that fifth-grade students (n = 18) who attended a renovated school second-grade through fifth-grade in a neighborhood with improving economic conditions compared to fifth-grade students (n = 15) who attended a renovated school second-grade through fifth-grade in a neighborhood with declining economic conditions had statistically greater high stakes Reading Total and Math Total but not Language Total achievement test score improvement frequencies over time and statistically greater posttest-posttest Normal Curve Equivalent high stakes achievement test score comparisons for Reading Total, Math Total, and Language Total. Differing neighborhood economic conditions had no statistical effect on reported teacher, student, and parent perceptions of school safety or teacher mobility rates, however, enrollment in the renovated school in the neighborhood with declining economic conditions dropped significantly. We conclude that declining neighborhood economic conditions trumped hoped for school renovation renewal benefit. School closing policy and student open enrollment transfer options are discussed

Exceptional accumulation and retention of dimethylsulfoniopropionate by molluscs

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2015. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of CSIRO Publishing for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Environmental Chemistry 13 (2016): 231-238, doi:10.1071/EN14267.Molluscs often play major roles in processing phytoplankton-synthesized dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP) in local ecosystems. We find that some mollusc species retain tissue DMSP exceptionally tightly and exhibit unusually great and statistically nonnormal interindividual variation in DMSP accumulation and retention. Individual mussels (Mytilus, Geukensia) living within a single clump, for example, range 6- to 11-fold in tissue [DMSP] and are often nonnormal in statistical distribution. These properties cannot be explained by the elevation of the substrate on which the mussels are living or by mussel position in a clump. When mussels (M. edulis) are deprived of DMSP for up to 5 weeks in depuration experiments, some individuals retain high tissue [DMSP], whereas others exhibit reduced [DMSP]. Such interindividual divergence helps explain nonnormal distributions of tissue [DMSP] after depuration. We re-analyze published data from which the half-time for tissue DMSP loss during depuration can be calculated. In the only mollusc so studied (Haliotis), the half-time is 13-25 times longer than in similar-size fish. Besides posing a challenge for DMSP mass balance studies, retention and interindividual variation may point to as yet unknown properties of molluscs: Tight retention suggests functional roles for DMSP, and nonnormal statistical distributions suggest discontinuities among individuals in DMSP metabolism

Explicitly Differentiated Eighth-Grade Reading Instruction in a Rural Middle School Seeking to Reestablish Adequate Yearly Progress Benchmarks

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of explicitly differentiated reading instruction on eighth-grade students’ reading comprehension assessment scores and classroom reading grade scores in a rural middle school seeking to reestablish satisfactory No Child Left Behind, Adequate Yearly Progress, benchmarks. After one school year of participation in assessment-based and readiness-focused explicitly differentiated instruction, randomly assigned students across all three reading ability conditions high (n = 25), middle (n = 25), and low (n = 25) had statistically significantly improved pretest-posttest reading comprehension assessment scores and classroom reading grade scores. Furthermore, statistical equipoise was observed for posttest-posttest reading comprehension assessment scores and posttest-posttest reading grade scores where higher improve score frequencies and percents compared to lose score frequencies and percents were consistently observed. While explicitly differentiated reading instruction prepared the majority of the study subjects for reading comprehension assessment improvement and classroom grade score improvement, students whose assessment scores and grade scores declined over time will require renewed initiatives

Principal Led In-Class Positive Behavioral Support Intervention

Results of this one-year study supported the use of an in-class behavioral intervention program that allowed 8th-grade students to reclaim themselves after verbally disruptive behavioral incidences with direct principal led administrator assistance resulting in student return to differentiated individualized instructional classroom activities. Students involved in a second verbally disruptive incident in the classroom were identified for intervention. Academic and behavioral improvement noted for verbally disruptive students with co-occurring below grade level reading test scores (n = 23) and verbally disruptive students with grade level reading scores (n = 12) suggests continued use of this intervention. All participants were in attendance in a large metropolitan, racially and economically diverse, Midwestern school district. Programs that reduce the amount of missed class time due to students’ verbally disruptive behavior merit consideration by educators for implementation.Student disruptive behavior represents one of the greatest barriers to student achievement(Brown, 2007; Dupper & Bosch, 1996; Shanker, 1995). Researchers have documented that as much as one half of classroom instructional time is taken up with non-instructional activities (Cotton, 1991) and discipline problems are responsible for a significant portion of this lost instructional time (Cotton, 1991;Dupper & Bosch, 1996; National Education Goals Report, 1995). Disruptive students are often removed from the class (Hill & Coufal, 2005; Obenchain & Taylor, 2005) and referred to the administrator for further discipline(Blomberg, 2004; Dupper & Bosch, 1996; Kritsonis & Cloud, 2006). Thus begins the unfortunate process of excluding children from classrooms just when they need increased time with a teacher the most (Blomberg, 2004). After many office referrals fail to stop the disruptions, repeated violators are often assigned to in-school suspension programs (Kritsonis & Cloud, 2006; Morrison, Anthony, Storino, & Dillon, 2001). When problems persist, students are suspended from school (Arcia, 2006; Dupper & Bosch, 1996). If repeated uses of these measures do not work, the final phase in this vicious downward cycle is long term out of school suspension or reassignment to an alternative school. Once removed from the classroom, students struggle and most often fail academically thus compounding the problem and increasing risk factors which lead to early school leaving. Furthermore, poor attendance is linked to lower test scores and higher failure rates (Roby, 2004). Predictably, a student is much more likely to drop out of school where there is a history of disruptive behavior resulting in either in or out of school suspension (Suh & Suh, 2007)