Improving Early Literacy in PreK-3: Lessons Learned

In 2011, The McKnight Foundation partnered with a set of districts and schools in the Twin Cities area, all serving high-needs students, on a PreK–3 literacy initiative. The Pathway Schools Initiative aims to dramatically increase the number of students who reach the critical milestone of third-grade reading proficiency, an indicator predictive of later academic outcomes and high school graduation. This report focuses on findings from Phase I of the Pathway Schools Initiative (2011–2015).The McKnight Foundation selected the Urban Education Institute (UEI) at the University of Chicago to serve as the initiative's intermediary. UEI was tasked with providing the intellectual, conceptual, and managerial leadership for the initiative as well as professional development and technical assistance focused on literacy and leadership to the Pathway districts and schools. UEI anchored this support on two, validated diagnostic tools developed at the University of Chicago: the Strategic Teaching and Evaluation of Progress (STEP) developmental literacy assessment and the 5Essentials Survey.Participating Pathway schools and districts carried out the day-to-day work of the initiative. They used grant funds to expand or refine their PreK programs; hire additional staff such as program managers, literacy coaches, classroom aides, and family engagement liaisons; and purchase high-quality instructional materials, such as classroom libraries or tablets.An advisory group, the Education and Learning National Advisory Committee (ELNAC), was established in 2010 to help inform decisions about the initiative. SRI International has served as the initiative's evaluator since 2010

“Annexation or Reunification?” Linguistic Appraisal of German and Russian news reporting on Crimea

“Fake News” has reached new heights of contestation within recent times around the globe. Appraisal Theory provides a framework through which instances of news platforms’ positive and negative judgments can be identified, including their stances toward what counts as truthful reporting. Previously, researchers have identified the stances of news agencies by conducting linguistic analyses on news articles, showing how new agencies are able to assert their views through textual constructions. However, the expression of stance in German and Russian news articles showing different sides to the same conflict involving the Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula has remained largely unexplored. To address this gap, I selected articles reporting on Russian involvement in Crimea from a liberal German news source, a conservative German news source, and a Russian-state sponsored news source based in Germany. Using a manual linguistic coder, I identified each instance of positive and negative attitude towards Russian involvement in Crimea within each news article. The analysis reveals that German and Russian news sources use different linguistic constructions to moralize Russian actions in Ukraine, with each side reporting information to support a German or Russian worldview respectively. The study shows how news agencies attempt to align readers with a particular worldview and that even if news sources appear to provide information from multiple sources or perspectives, they can still constitute bias

Hegemonic masculinity and emphasised femininity: A comparative analysis of fitness bloggers Instagram accounts from May 2017

The purpose of this investigation is to compare and contrast the way fitness bloggers present themselves on Instagram, with particular reference to masculinity and femininity. The research design is based on a review of previous literature and a content analysis of male and female bloggers Instagram accounts from May 1 2017 through May 31 2017. The method of investigation involved a “points system” model, in which the presence of themes and image elements are awarded a point. This was then used as a percentage of the month’s posts in order to indicate the presence volume of particular themes and traits for May 2017. This involved the analysis of 316 Instagram posts accumulated by three male and three female fitness bloggers considered to be of significant influential power. Prior to the official content analysis, initial study was undertaken, during which a thematic and trait code system was constructed. This was used to highlight themes and traits that were necessary for inclusion in the study. For example, during the initial study, the topic of food featured prominently across both genders of fitness bloggers. Therefore, it was added to the thematic categories in terms of images and of captions. The “points system” that followed, allowed for a quantitative angle on themes presence and therefore allowing the presence volume to be contrasted and compared across both genders. My results indicate that masculine and feminine traits are exhibited by both genders. These results have been itemised by research questions in the following chapter. The results indicate that objectification is as common among male bloggers as female bloggers. It also indicated that women offer audiences journey based narratives that centre on a positive relationship with food, whereas male bloggers offer themselves as objects and present themselves as the centre of their life narrative. A number of tables throughout the study highlight areas where male and female bloggers differ and areas where they share traits. These are expressed through statistics. One of the most interesting results shows differences in the way male and female bloggers present themselves. Male bloggers turned out to present themselves as more revealing throughout the month and were less likely to present themselves in an unrevealing manner. This is interesting given part theories regarding women in the media, and in particular, sports women in the media. However, male bloggers have more influential power than female bloggers given they have a larger followership and accumulate more total engagement. This may support theories that are developed from the phrase “sex sells”. However, this might be the purpose of their Instagram. Product promotion was the most prominent theme across both genders, each selling either their own and name brand products. However, differences in promotional tactics arose between the two sexes for the most part of the study. Feminine traits were displayed in male bloggers at a ratio of 2:1 while female bloggers displayed masculine traits at a ratio of 2:1 also. This highlights a meshing of hegemonic masculinity and female apologetic across both genders

The McKnight Foundation Education and Learning Program PreK-Third Grade Literacy and Alignment: Formative Evaluation Findings

The goals of The McKnight Foundation's Education and Learning (E&L) Program are "to increase the percentage of students reading at grade level by the end of third grade and to increase access to high quality learning beyond the classroom so that all Minnesota's youth thrive." For this work, McKnight formed strategic partnerships with seven grantee schools in the Twin Cities: * Andersen United Community School, Minneapolis Public Schools * Jefferson Community School , Minneapolis Public Schools * Saint Paul Music Academy, Saint Paul Public Schools * Wellstone Elementary School, Saint Paul Public Schools * Earle Brown Elementary School, Brooklyn Center Community Schools * Academia Cesar Chavez, independent charter school * Community of Peace Academy, independent charter school Each school is focused on dramatically improving results for readers across the PreK-3 continuum. The schools first received a one-year planning grant before submitting a three-year proposal to implement their plans to improve PreK -- 3 literacy outcomes. All seven schools are now in the implementation phase. The McKnight Foundation hired SRI International (SRI) and the Center for Applied Research and Education Improvement (CAREI) at the University of Minnesota to evaluate the E&L Program in the grantee schools. The evaluation included only the grantee schools from Minneapolis Public Schools, Saint Paul Public Schools, and Brooklyn Center Community Schools. The charter school grantees are not included in the evaluation. The key purposes of the evaluation are (1) to inform internal stakeholders of the successes and challenges of the work as it is under way so that adjustments can be made and (2) to share lessons learned from implementation with others working to improve the PreK -- 3 continuum and literacy outcomes for students. The evaluation team is collecting and analyzing data on teacher practice and on children's early literacy skills and third-grade reading achievement to assess improvements associated with the initiative

Charter School Funding: Support for Students with Disabilities

The subject of public charter schools and students with disabilities is both important and sensitive. These students have the potential to benefit greatly from the smaller size and specialized focus of many public charter schools, but questions persist regarding whether all or even most charters are as receptive to enrolling students with disabilities as they are to serving students who do not have disabilities. Furthermore, do differences in enrollment of students with disabilities explain differences in funding between the two sectors? To shine a brighter light on this vital question, we have conducted a careful study of the funding surrounding the education of students with disabilities in public charter schools using data from fiscal year 2018 in 18 cities where charters hold a substantial share of K-12 education enrollment. This report provides a summary of our findings. Additional details regarding how special education services are provided to students with disabilities in each of our 18 cities are provided in a separate Appendix of City Snapshots. As public schools, charter schools must adhere to the same federal legal requirements as their traditional public school (TPS) counterparts. When charters are their own local education agency (LEA), the charters themselves ultimately are responsible for ensuring that students with disabilities receive the special education and related services and supports to which they are entitled under the law. When charters are part of another LEA, through their home district or state, the other entity is ultimately responsible for providing services to students who have disabilities. These key realities are part of the context of how funding for special education flows to public charter schools across the country

The Farm at St. Joe's: Growing Healthy and Resilient Communities

The purpose of this project was to assess awareness of programs and explore opportunities for program development for The Farm at St. Joe’s (The Farm), part of The St. Joseph Mercy Health System. For this assessment, we surveyed community members in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti to understand current awareness of The Farm and its offerings, interest in proposed future programming, and barriers impeding access to fresh produce and Farm offerings. We discovered a general lack of awareness of The Farm and its current programs and revealed a five category framework of program classification for ongoing exploration and development. We also facilitated two meetings to engage stakeholders in St. Joseph Mercy Health System and the broader community in proposing suggestions for creating greater visibility, providing direction for program expansion, and guiding strategic partnership development for The Farm. Based on this research, we have developed a set of recommendations intended to guide The Farm in growing its reach and impact as part of a large anchor institution in the Washtenaw County community.Master of ScienceNatural Resources and EnvironmentUniversity of Michiganhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136560/1/Dellorto-Blackwell_Highleyman_Fam at St. Joe's.pd

Early College, Early Success: Early College High School Initiative Impact Study

In 2002, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the ECHSI with the primary goal of increasing the opportunity for underserved students to earn a postsecondary credential. To achieve this goal, Early Colleges provide underserved students with exposure to, and support in, college while they are in high school. Early Colleges partner with colleges and universities to offer all students an opportunity to earn an associate's degree or up to two years of college credits toward a bachelor's degree during high school at no or low cost to the students. The underlying assumption is that engaging underrepresented students in a rigorous high school curriculum tied to the incentive of earning college credit will motivate them and increase their access to additional postsecondary education and credentials after high school. Since 2002, more than 240 Early Colleges have opened nationwideThis study focused on the impact of Early Colleges. It addressed two questions:1. Do Early College students have better outcomes than they would have had at other high schools?2. Does the impact of Early Colleges vary by student background characteristics (e.g., gender and family income)? To answer these questions, we conducted a lottery-based randomized experiment, taking advantage of the fact that some Early Colleges used lotteries in their admissions processes. By comparing the outcomes for students who participated in admissions lotteries and were offered enrollment with the outcomes for students who participated in the lotteries but were not offered enrollment, we can draw causal conclusions about the impact of Early Colleges.The primary student outcomes for this study were high school graduation, college enrollment, and college degree attainment. We also examined students' high school and college experiences. Data on student background characteristics and high school outcomes came from administrative records from schools, districts, and states; data on collegeoutcomes came from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC); and data on high school and college experiences and intermediate outcomes such as college credit accrual camefrom a student surveyWe assessed the impact of Early Colleges on these outcomes for a sample of 10 Early Colleges that did the following:-Enrolled students in grades 9 -- 12 and had high school graduates in the study years (2005 -- 2011)-Used lotteries as part of the admission processes in at least one of the study cohorts (students who entered ninth grade in 2005 -- 06, 2006 -- 07, or 2007 -- 08)-Retained the lottery recordsEight of the 10 Early Colleges in the study were included in the student survey. The overall study sample included 2,458 students and the survey sample included 1,294 students. The study extended through three years past high school

Tapadoir: developing a statistical machine translation engine and associated resources for Irish

Tapadoir (from the Irish ´ tapa ‘fast’ and the nominal suffix -oir ´ ) is a statistical machine translation (SMT) project, funded by the Irish government. This work was commissioned to help government translators meet the translation demands which have arisen from the Irish language’s status as an official EU and national language. The development of this system, which translates English into Irish (a morphologically rich, low-resourced minority language), has produced an interesting set of challenges. These challenges have inspired a creative response to the lack of data and NLP tools available for the Irish language and have also resulted in the development of new resources for the Irish linguistic and NLP community. We show that our SMT system out-performs Google TranslateTM (a widely used general-domain SMT system) as a result of steps we have taken to tailor translation output to the user’s specific needs

TwittIrish: a universal dependencies treebank of Tweets in modern Irish

Modern Irish is a minority language lacking sufficient computational resources for the task of accurate automatic syntactic parsing of user-generated content such as tweets. Although language technology for the Irish language has been developing in recent years, these tools tend to perform poorly on user-generated content. As with other languages, the linguistic style observed in Irish tweets differs, in terms of orthography, lexicon, and syntax, from that of standard texts more commonly used for the development of language models and parsers. We release the first Universal Dependencies treebank of Irish tweets, facilitating natural language processing of user-generated content in Irish. In this paper, we explore the differences between Irish tweets and standard Irish text, and the challenges associated with dependency parsing of Irish tweets. We describe our bootstrapping method of treebank development and report on preliminary parsing experiments

Refining an Ecological Momentary Assessment Study of Binge Eating Among Sexual Minority and Heterosexual Young Women: A Mixed Methods Pilot Study

Background: Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is used to capture daily lived experiences, states, and environments. Although EMA is commonly used in behavioral health research, there remains a dearth of literature on how researchers account for design considerations of EMA techniques when designing studies. The goal of this formative mixed methods study was to elicit feedback on EMA study procedures and materials from the target populations for a larger study about binge eating among sexual minority and heterosexual young women, in which data are collected entirely remotely. Methods: Sexual minority (n=12) and heterosexual (n=9) women ages 18–30 who binge ate took part in a pilot EMA study and exit interview and survey. As part of the consent and orientation process, participants reviewed video and written materials describing the study purpose and procedures. Using a smartphone app, for seven consecutive days they completed a survey each morning, 5 random surveys per day, and self-initiated a survey each time they binge ate. Participants then provided feedback on the study via a 1-hour virtual interview and online survey. Interviews were transcribed and reviewed by two coders to identify themes on the acceptability and feasibility of the EMA procedures with a focus on: (I) the training and study description materials; (II) general smartphone app and survey preferences; and (III) specific EMA survey question content and wording. Results: The qualitative and quantitative data converged to suggest participants were able to easily download and use the app to complete surveys and report on binge eating events. Participants provided feedback that was incorporated into revisions on general study procedures, the training video content, and EMA question content for binge eating, identity-related stressors, and appearance-related pressures. No systematic themes in the quantitative or qualitative data emerged to suggest questions were perceived differently by sexual minority and heterosexual young women. Conclusions: These findings provide evidence for the feasibility of conducting a remote EMA study to assess young women’s experiences around binge eating. This formative study provides an example of how a mixed methods approach can be used to refine EMA study methods and questions to improve study design