166 research outputs found
Empowering Educational Consumers to Analyze Educational Assessment Data: The Educational Impact Calculator (EIC)
49 pagesThe body of this Report provides background to help users of the EIC. The first two sections discuss terminology and describe the structure of the EIC. The following five sections give examples of the use of the EIC to answer the queries listed above. Examples use each of the possible types of input data and different types of groups (e.g. classrooms, schools, and districts). A final section discusses ways in which the EIC could potentially help students and schools and provides cautions regarding its use. An extensive appendix explains the underlying research designs and gives the equations used in the statistical analyses. The techniques are identical to those covered in introductory college level statistics courses. While they are not complex, they are fully sufficient for answering the questions that are generally of most concern to educational consumers
Harmful Effects of Academic Early Education? A Look at the Claims and the Evidence
8 pagesTwo on-line publications released in May, 2015 warned of the dangers of early childhood
education programs that promote academic skills. A group called “Defending the Early
Years” released a short document by Nancy Carlsson-Paige and associates titled Reading
Instruction in Kindergarten: Little to Gain and Much to Lose (Carlsson-Paige, McLaughlin, &
Almon, 2015). Shortly thereafter Peter Gray used this information for a blog post on the
Psychology Today website titled Early Academic Training Produces Long-Term Harm:
Research Reveals Negative Effects of Academic Preschools and Kindergartens (Gray,
2015). Both postings contend that academic preschools and kindergartens have no lasting
effect on students’ later academic success and can even promote long-term harm to
children’s social and psychological development. Given the provocative nature of these
conclusions, the NIFDI Office of Research and Evaluation was asked to examine their basis.
The first section below summarizes misrepresentations in the publications, and the second
section briefly examines theoretical assumptions embodied in the discussions and their
implications
Direct Instruction and First Grade Reading Achievement: The Role of Technical Support and Time of Implementation
20 pagesThe purpose of this study was to
examine the relationship of two implementation
variables (source of technical support
and time of implementation) to first grade
reading achievement across three naturally occurring
conditions over a six-year time
span. Two of the conditions involved implementation
of Direct Instruction (DI) curriculum
programs, one with technical support
from a purveyor associated with the curriculum’s
developer and the other with a group
not associated with the developer. The third
condition involved implementation of
another highly rated reading curriculum program:
Open Court. Increases in the vocabulary
and comprehension achievement scores
of students across all three conditions were
statistically significant. Increases in students’
scores were significantly greater in the DI
implementation conditions relative to the
Open Court condition. Increases in students’
scores were significantly larger in the DI
implementation condition with technical support
from the purveyor associated with the
curriculum developer relative to the group
not associated with the curriculum developer.
Differences in achievement across the implementation
conditions were both statistically
significant and educationally meaningful
Building a More Effective, Equitable, and Compassionate Educational System: The Role of Direct Instruction
21 pagesIn a recent book, Anthony Biglan describes how strong social research can be used to
build a compassionate and more caring society that promotes the well-being of all. This
article asserts that a strong educational system needs to be part of this transformation
and that widespread use of Direct Instruction (DI) could be key in the process. Analysis
of the underlying theory, development, and use of DI describes the way it is based on
careful developmental research. It promotes effective and efficient learning while
embodying respect for students and teachers. The results of a recent large metaanalysis
of research on DI’s effectiveness show it is more effective than other educational
approaches, with effect sizes that surpass the effect associated with the difference
in achievement of students from lower income and other homes. Alternative approaches
to educational change are reviewed and it is suggested that DI is a more
effective and efficient method of improving student success. Powerful actors within the
educational establishment have expressed opposition to DI and have worked to hide
evidence of its effectiveness. This paper identifies other social actors who could work
together to counter the resistance to DI and build an educational system that promotes
the well-being of all
Promoting Early Literacy of Preschool Children: A Study of the Effectiveness of Funnix Beginning Reading
52 pagesThis paper reports the results of a study that employed a pretest-posttest control group
design to examine the relationship of instruction in Funnix Beginning Reading to the
development of beginning reading skills. Thirty-seven four year old Head Start students in a
suburban area of the southern United States were randomly assigned to receive 30 minutes of
daily instruction in Funnix or the same amount of time in additional instruction in their regular
Language Arts program. Students came from six different classrooms. All instruction for
students in the Control group was provided by their classroom teachers and teaching assistants.
Instruction for the Experimental group was provided by high school aged tutors who received six
hours of training before beginning their work with the students and had on-site supervision from
a certified teacher during the tutoring sessions. All students were from low income families.
Almost half (n=18) of the students were racial-ethnic minorities, and over a quarter (10/37) were
from homes with a language other than English was primarily used
The Search for Community Control: The Attempt of a Native American Community to Participate in the Education of their Children
This entry includes four separate PDF files: "Main article" 57 pages, "Notes (part 1)" 10 pages, "Notes (part 2)" 37 pages, and "Misc and letters" 59 pages.The struggle of a Native American community for the control of the education
of their children is reviewed and analyzed from the theoretical perspective
of internal colonialism. The theory of internal colonialism is briefly
reviewed. Emphasis is given to the place of racial control. It is shown
how the educational system of the Bureau of Indian Affairs is a means of
racial control. This control is both structural and subjective. That is,
it operates both through the institutional structures of the social system
and through the more subjective aspects of everyday lives and the interactions of individuals. The reactions of the colonial oppressors to the
attempts of the Native Americans to gain a voice in the control of their
school illustrates the full extent of this control
Analysis of Pre- and Post-Workshop Questionnaires From 2014 Transformational Resiliency Workshops
14 pagesSurveys given to participants in five Transformational Resilience Leaders Self-Care workshops in
2014 show an extremely positive response from participants especially in terms of how much they
learned and the usefulness of this information from the workshop. Data on participants in these
workshops indicated that they had relatively good self-care and resilience skills and rated
themselves as moderately resilient prior to the workshop. However, at the end of the workshop the
vast majority (87+%) reported that they had learned a great deal, believed they had obtained skills
that will enable them to be much more resilient, and that they would be very likely to use what they
had learned in their work. They also gave very high ratings to the way in which the workshop was
conducted.
In other words, the vast majority of attendees reported that the workshop was very valuable in
enhancing their personal resilience skills and their ability to help other people develop resilience
skills and practices. Interestingly, those who reported the most positive views of the workshop were
those who had higher self-rated skills prior to attendance.
There were some differences in results among the five workshops with those in the Portland
workshop reporting lower levels of resiliency prior to attending and being somewhat less likely to
report that they had learned a great deal or would use what they had learned in their work. However,
none of the attendees at the Portland workshop had negative views. Around half of the Portland
participants noted that work was their reason for attending the workshop, which is a higher
percentage than other workshops and could be part of the reason for these differences. However, it
is impossible to tell from the present data set the source of these admittedly very small differences.
An additional comparison analysis was completed after the first two Leaders Self-
Care Workshops: March 2014 in Eugene, Oregon and June 2014 in Oakland, California. In places
as seemingly dissimilar as Eugene and Oakland, the Transformational Resilience Leaders Self-Care
Workshop had very similar and very positive responses, which strongly suggests that the methods
and skills covered in the workshops are effective in building resilience skills and are applicable to
different populations facing very different traumatic stresses
Throwing the Baby Out With the Bathwater? The What Works Clearinghouse Criteria for Group Equivalence
11 pagesThe What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) provides summary reports of the effectiveness
of educational programs and practices, but only a small proportion of studies considered for
review meet their selection criteria. A common reason for rejecting studies from
consideration regards the WWC’s standard for equivalence of the intervention and
comparison groups. This paper examines the criteria related to these decisions. Calculations
based on the Central Limit Theorem illustrate how the probability of meeting the WWC
criteria declines sharply when studies include multiple measures and/or comparisons
(which is common in more sophisticated studies) and/or when sample sizes are smaller
(which is common in highly controlled experimental designs). Descriptions of two welldesigned
studies rejected for inclusion in recent WWC reports illustrate the nature of the
problem. Implications and recommendations for policy change are discussed
Changing Mathematics and Reading Achievement with Direct Instruction: Kment Elementary School in Roseville, Michigan
13 pagesThis report examines changes in mathematics and reading skills of students in a Michigan
elementary school after instruction with the Direct Instruction programs Connecting Math
Concepts: Comprehensive Edition (CMCCE) and Reading Mastery Signature Edition (RMSE).
Mathematics skills were measured by the AIMSweb curriculum-based measures and the
Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP). Reading skills were measured with
MEAP data. Analyses with all measures and grades indicated that students who were
exposed to the DI programs had significantly higher scores than those without such
exposure. Almost all of the associated effect sizes were substantially larger than the
criterion typically used to denote educationally significant results
Direct Instruction in the Guam Public Schools: An Analysis of Changes in Stanford Achievement Test Scores
25 pagesThis report examines changes in the average Stanford Achievement Test (SAT) scores in
reading of first and fifth grade students in elementary schools in the Guam Public School
System (GPSS) from Spring, 1993, through Spring, 2011. A systematic implementation of
Direct Instruction, involving training and support, began in 24 schools in the fall of 2003,
starting with the lower grades and gradually expanding to the upper grades. In the fall of
2008 15 of these schools ceased using DI, while the remaining schools and two additional
newly created schools, continued to use the program
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