Project Lead The Way Students More Prepared For Higher Education

Project Lead the Way (PLTW) is a hands-on, project-based engineering curriculum for high school and middle school students, which has quadrupled annual enrollment in Texas in five years to over 23,000 students. The diversity of students participating has also increased dramatically. Using six years of longitudinally-linked student data, the academic outcomes of cohorts of PLTW students were compared to matched cohorts of non-PLTW students. Matching was based on Grade 8 state math assessment scores and demographic and program participation variables. Findings show that PLTW students scored significantly higher on the state’s Grade 11 mathematics assessment, a higher percentage met the college-ready criterion, a higher percentage enrolled in Texas higher education institutions, and the non-college-bound PLTW students earned higher wages.

U.S. Every Student Succeeds Act: Negative Impacts on Teaching Out-of-Field

Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires states to ensure the equitable distribution of out-of-field teachers. Using over 180 million student-course-teacher records from Texas between 2011-12 and 2017-18, we found out-of-field teaching rates have increased dramatically since ESSA became law. We also found vast inequities in which teachers are assigned to teach out-of-field and dramatic differences in student out-of-field course-taking rates across demographic characteristics.  The strongest predictors of teachers teaching out-of-field is that they work in a charter school or completed alternative certification programs. Black teachers and students are most likely to teach and take courses out-of-field, and Latinx teachers and students are least likely. Policy implications are considered given negative impacts of out-of-field teaching on student academic achievement

Problematizing the taken-for-granted: talking across differences in teacher education

[Excerpt] Teacher education, as a profession, advances when a set of “taken-for-granted” ideas that shape the field are crystallized and enacted. These ideas are communicated as truths and frame the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of effective P-12 teaching. It is important, however, we do not become too comfortable with the familiar ways of operationalizing the field, but as policymakers, practitioners, and researchers, we continue to problematize the taken-for-granted teacher education dogmas so discussions across differences (i.e., terminology, language, sensemaking, etc.) can occur. This needs to happen because “ . . . education is a conversation aimed at truth . . . The object is not agreement but communication . . . ” (Schwab, 1953, p. 9).This work was financially supported by Portuguese national funds through the FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology) within the framework of the CIEC (Research Center for Child Studies of the University of Minho) projects under the references UIDB/00317/2020 and UIDP/00317/2020