The Impact of a 2021 Summer School Program on Student Achievement

In summer 2021, a metro-Atlanta school district offered a voluntary summer school program that provided opportunities for credit recovery and acceleration to address the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on student achievement growth. Students who met any one of a set of eligibility criteria were invited to participate, but others could opt in to the program—even if they were not specifically invited. We analyze the impact of inviting students to participate in this program on student achievement and provide descriptive evidence on which students chose to participate in the program. In this report, Sarah S. Barry and Tim R. Sass used administrative records from the 2020–21 school year and the beginning of the 2021–22 school year for a school district in metro Atlanta. From these data, we know student formative assessment scores, student course grades, and demographic information. In addition, we used data regarding student eligibility for and attendance at the program. Our outcomes of interest were math and reading scores on the i-Ready formative assessment in the fall of the 2021–22 school year. We find that receiving an invitation to attend summer school had no impact on student achievement growth in either math or reading. Among invitees, attendance was associated with a lessening of economic- and language-based achievement gaps. However, the observed correlation could be due to unobserved differences between attendees and non-attendees and does not necessarily imply that summer school attendance caused a reduction in achievement gaps. The lack of impact on achievement is likely due to the low participation rate: Overall, only 18% of students who were invited to participate in the program attended. Participation rates were higher for students from families experiencing low income (22%) and for English learners (28%). Our findings have several policy implications. Given the low participation rate, districts should consider mechanisms to promote attendance in summer programs, such as requiring students to attend with an “opt out” provision rather than having to “opt in.” School leaders may also want to consider additional strategies for accelerating learning growth, such as after school programs and high-intensity tutoring.https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/gpl_reports/1039/thumbnail.jp

Teacher Labor Markets in Metro Atlanta During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic affected teachers in myriad, unprecedented ways. In spring 2020, most schools in the United States shut their doors and were forced to switch to remote learning. Changes in instructional mode, coupled with general health and economic concerns brought on by the pandemic, negatively impacted teachers and led to increases in levels of stress and burnout. In this report, Sarah S. Barry and Tim R. Sass use administrative data covering SY 2016–17 through fall of SY 2021–22 from two metro-Atlanta school districts (DeKalb County School District and Gwinnett County Public Schools) to analyze trends in teacher hiring and retention. The data include information on teacher employment status as well as information on teacher experience, certification, subject area taught, school assignment, and teacher demographic characteristics. We aim to provide a better understanding of teacher labor markets in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and determine appropriate policy interventions in response to changes in teacher mobility and retention. We find that, while there have been changes in attrition and teacher hiring over time, most post-pandemic observations appear to have reverted to pre-pandemic trends. Attrition in both districts initially decreased after the onset of the pandemic. Attrition in Gwinnett remains lower than the pre-pandemic trend, while attrition in DeKalb is slightly higher than before the pandemic. In both districts, the proportion of teachers with 30 or more years of experience who left their respective districts has been on an upward trend since at least SY 2016–17. It does not appear that the pandemic has led to a worsening of teacher attrition in hard-to-staff subject areas. In addition, the proportion of new hires in both districts initially dropped soon after the start of the pandemic. The proportion of new teachers in Gwinnett has since increased relative to the pre-pandemic period. In Dekalb, the proportion of new teachers is well below pre-pandemic levels, though changes have not impacted average student-teacher ratios. Pre-pandemic challenges to recruiting and retaining teachers remain, particularly in “high-need” areas like math and science and special education, and warrant careful analysis of pandemic-era financial incentives (such as those used by the two districts in this study) to determine if these policies could help address teacher shortages in specific subject areas. Further, districts should carefully consider pre-pandemic conditions as they look to better understand any attrition and hiring issues they face.https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/gpl_reports/1041/thumbnail.jp

Heat flow in southernmost California and the origin of the Salton Trough

Heat flow in the Imperial Valley and adjacent crystalline rocks is very high (∼140 mW m−2). Gravity and seismic studies suggest the crust is about 23.5 km thick with the lower half composed of gabbro and the upper fourth composed of low-density sediments. Conduction through such a crust resting directly on asthenosphere would give the observed heat flow if there were no extension or sedimentation. However, both processes must have been active, as the Imperial Valley is part of the Salton Trough, a pull-apart sedimentary basin that evolved over the past 4 or 5 m.y. To investigate the interrelations of these factors, we consider a one-dimensional model of basin formation in which the lower crustal gabbro and upper crustal sediments accumulated simultaneously as the crust extended and sedimentation kept pace with isostatic subsidence. For parameters appropriate for the Salton Trough, increasing the extension rate has little effect on surface heat flow because it increases effects of heating by intrusion and cooling by sedimentation in a compensating manner; it does, however, result in progressively increasing lower crustal temperatures. Analytical results suggest that the average extensional strain rate during formation of the trough was ∼20–50%/m.y. (∼1014 s−1); slower rates are inadequate to account for the present composition of the crust, and faster rates would probably cause massive crustal melting. To achieve the differential velocities of the Pacific plate at one end of the trough and North American plate at the other with this strain rate, extension must have, on the average, been distributed (or shifted about) over a spreading region ∼150 km wide. This is about 10 times wider than the present zone of active seismicity, suggesting that the seismic pattern is ephemeral on the time scale for the trough's formation. Narrow spreading zones are typical where sustained spreading is compensated by basaltic intrusion to form the thin oceanic crust, but where such spreading occurs in thicker continental crust, broader zones of distributed extension (with smaller strain rates) may be required for heat balance. The Salton Trough model suggests that distributed extension can be associated with substantial magmatic additions to the crust; their effect on crustal buoyancy has important implications for the relation between crustal extension and subsidence

SCH9, a gene of Saccharomyces cerevisiae that encodes a protein distinct from, but functionally and structurally related to, cAMP-dependent protein kinase catalytic subunits

A new gene, SCH9, was isolated from Saccharomyces cerevisiae by its ability to complement a cdc25ts mutation. Sequence analysis indicates that it encodes a 90,000-dalton protein with a carboxy-terminal domain homologous to yeast and mammalian cAMP-dependent protein kinase catalytic subunits. In addition to suppressing loss of CDC25 function, multicopy plasmids containing SCH9 suppress the growth defects of strains lacking the RAS genes, the CYR1 gene, which encodes adenylyl cyclase, and the TPK genes, which encode the cAMP-dependent protein kinase catalytic subunits. Cells lacking SCH9 grow slowly and have a prolonged G1 phase of the cell cycle. This defect is suppressed by activation of the cAMP effector pathway. We propose that SCH9 encodes a protein kinase that is part of a growth control pathway which is at least partially redundant with the cAMP pathway