The Answer Sheet: Research


Posted at 05:00 AM ET, 02/28/2011

'Brain-based' education: Run from it
By Valerie Strauss
A veteran educator explains why teachers should run from any curriculum that says it is "brain-based."

By Valerie Strauss  |  05:00 AM ET, 02/28/2011 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Guest Bloggers, Larry Cuban, Learning, Research | Tags:  brain research, brain-based education, daniel willingham, education and brain, larry cuban

Posted at 11:01 AM ET, 01/13/2011

New analysis challenges Gates study on value-added measures
By Valerie Strauss
A new analysis challenges a Gates Foundation study said to support the validity of value-added measures to evaluate teachers by using students' standardized test scores.

By Valerie Strauss  |  11:01 AM ET, 01/13/2011 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research, Research | Tags:  bill gates, gates foundation, gates foundation study, gates-funded research, how to evaluate teachers, teacher assessment, value-added, value-added measures

Posted at 01:40 PM ET, 01/10/2011

How colleges can identify depressed students
By Valerie Strauss
One out of every four or five students who visits a university health center for a routine cold or sore throat turns out to be depressed, but most centers miss the opportunity to identify these students because they don’t screen for depression, according to new research.

By Valerie Strauss  |  01:40 PM ET, 01/10/2011 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research, Research, Research | Tags:  depressed students, depression, depression and college, northwestern university, research on depression, screening for depression, students and depression, university health centers

Posted at 12:00 PM ET, 12/18/2010

Will firing 5-10 percent of teachers make us Finland?
By Valerie Strauss
Michelle Rhee and Bill Gates like to say that our public schools would become high-performing if we only fired the bottom 5-10 percent of teachers. Here's an examination of that notion.

By Valerie Strauss  |  12:00 PM ET, 12/18/2010 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research, Research, Research, Research | Tags:  assessing teachers, bill gates, eric hanushek, evaluating teachers, finland, michelle rhee, shankar blog, teachers

Posted at 10:11 AM ET, 12/09/2010

How poverty affected U.S. PISA scores
By Valerie Strauss
How did the effects of poverty affect the latest scores on the Program for International Student Assessment, known as PISA?

By Valerie Strauss  |  10:11 AM ET, 12/09/2010 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research, Research | Tags:  pisa, pisa results, pisa scores, school reform, standardized tests, stephen krashen

Posted at 12:01 AM ET, 11/30/2010

Report: Number of 'dropout factories' declines
By Valerie Strauss
A new report says that the number of high school "dropout factories" declined in the last decade.

By Valerie Strauss  |  12:01 AM ET, 11/30/2010 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research, Research | Tags:  america's promise, bilding a grad nation, dropout factories, dropout factory, graduation rates

Posted at 10:50 AM ET, 11/15/2010

China overtakes India as No. 1 source of foreign students in U.S.
By Valerie Strauss
China zoomed past India as the main source of foreign students coming to the United States to go to school, with a 30 percent jump in Chinese students in a single year, according to a new report released today. It was the first time that China had sent the most students to American schools.

By Valerie Strauss  |  10:50 AM ET, 11/15/2010 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research | Tags:  china overtakes india, china tops india, foreign students, international students, international students increase, open doors

Posted at 02:21 PM ET, 10/08/2010

Poll: Kids say their friends share too much online
By Valerie Strauss
A new poll of teens and parents reveals that 92 percent of parents are concerned that their children share too much personal information online, and 79 percent of kids think their friends do too.

By Valerie Strauss  |  02:21 PM ET, 10/08/2010 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research, Research | Tags:  apps, common sense media, contests on line, facebook, opt out buttons, opt-out, privacy, privacy online, privacy settings, social media

Posted at 12:11 PM ET, 10/05/2010

Report: Schools, teacher ed programs ignore how kids really learn
By Valerie Strauss
James Comer and Robert Pianta write about a new report that says: "Despite big advances in our understanding of how children and adolescents grow and learn, little of that knowledge has found its way into schools or educator preparation programs."

By Valerie Strauss  |  12:11 PM ET, 10/05/2010 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research, Research, Research | Tags:  achievement gap, education research, james comer, research, robert pianita, student achievement, teacher education, teacher evaluation, teacher quality

Posted at 06:00 AM ET, 10/04/2010

Book blasts research base for Obama reform plan
By Valerie Strauss
A new book analyzes the research base for President Obama's blueprint for education reform and finds that it is, at best, very weak.

By Valerie Strauss  |  06:00 AM ET, 10/04/2010 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research, Research | Tags:  diane ravitch, education research, esea, no child left behind, obama blueprint, obama schools, reform blueprint, research, research summary, school reform, welner

Posted at 09:00 AM ET, 09/20/2010

What Americans really think about public schools
By Valerie Strauss
In an era of unrelenting bashing of public education by “experts,” a new poll shows that most Americans actually like their neighborhood public schools -- though they don’t seem to like public schools in general -- and they have trust in teachers. And the Obama administration’s education agenda gets mixed reviews in the 2010 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll.

By Valerie Strauss  |  09:00 AM ET, 09/20/2010 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research, Research, Research | Tags:  content standards, failing schools, gallup poll, kappan magazine, obama and education, obama and school reform, pdk poll, phi delta kappa, public schools, school funding, standardized tests, teacher quality, teachers and pay, teachers and respect, what americans think about education

Posted at 04:29 PM ET, 07/14/2010

A weird accountability system in Texas
By Valerie Strauss
In the category of “data will set your school system free, unless, of course, the data In the In the category of “data will set your school system free, unless, of course, the data doesn’t doesn’t tell the literal truth, ” we have the Texas Projection Measure. It’s a tool that awards schools credit for students who have actually failed state-mandated tests but who are expected to pass sometime in the future

By Valerie Strauss  |  04:29 PM ET, 07/14/2010 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research, Research | Tags:  accountability measures and school, data driven reform, gerald bracey, texas accountability measures, texas education agency, texas projection measure

Posted at 06:30 AM ET, 06/15/2010

How homicides affect test scores - study
By Valerie Strauss
School reformers who say that poverty and family circumstance are only excuses for poor student performance might do well to look at a new study which found African-American children in Chicago scoring a lot lower on reading and vocabulary tests within a week of a homicide in their neighborhood--even if they did not directly witness the violence.

By Valerie Strauss  |  06:30 AM ET, 06/15/2010 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research, Research | Tags:  effects of homicide on schoolchildren, effects of poverty on school performance, effects of violence on children, new york university research, school reform

Posted at 09:30 AM ET, 06/11/2010

The subjects college students most heavily research on-line
By Valerie Strauss
What subjects are the most heavily researched on line by college students. Here's a list.

By Valerie Strauss  |  09:30 AM ET, 06/11/2010 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research | Tags:  on-line libraries, online research, questia, research on the web, research topics

Posted at 09:30 AM ET, 06/08/2010

Your kid’s friends matter more than you think, study says
By Valerie Strauss
Kids who have more friends in school than out-of-school tend to have higher grades, a new study concludes.

By Valerie Strauss  |  09:30 AM ET, 06/08/2010 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research, Research | Tags:  adolescent friendships, adolescents and friends, friends made in school, friends made out of school, sciencedaily.com, study on friends, study on friendships

Posted at 10:42 AM ET, 06/03/2010

Sheep deaths in university research lead to probe
By Valerie Strauss
Put this in the category of the perils of research: Nine University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers and officials are being investigated to see if they broke state law by killing or allowing sheep to be killed through decompression as part of an experiment on “the bends.”

By Valerie Strauss  |  10:42 AM ET, 06/03/2010 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research | Tags:  research, sheep deaths, special prosector and sheep, university of wisconsin at madison

Posted at 01:38 PM ET, 06/01/2010

Chicago's teacher performance-based pay didn't work -- new analysis
By Valerie Strauss
A study released today shows no evidence that performance-based compensation for teachers in Chicago improved student math and reading tests when compared with a group of similar schools that did not use the system. Meanwhile, states are rushing to implement this kind of payment system without real evidence that it works.

By Valerie Strauss  |  01:38 PM ET, 06/01/2010 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research, Research, Research | Tags:  analysis on performance-based pay, chicago tap, chicago tap and report, chicago tap program, duncan and chicago, education secretary arne duncan, performance-based pay, race to the top, report on performanced-based pay, tap

Posted at 10:00 AM ET, 05/20/2010

Michael Jackson’s unexpected place in academia
By Valerie Strauss
It seems that there are no limits to the influence the late Michael Jackson had on our world. Not only did he dominate pop music for years. But, according to a new bibliographic guide to academic literature, he has been referenced in journals of law, psychology, medicine, chemistry, mass communications and even engineering.

By Valerie Strauss  |  10:00 AM ET, 05/20/2010 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research | Tags:  influence of michael jackson, michael jackson, michael jackson in academia

Posted at 12:00 PM ET, 04/28/2010

Social media addiction: Worse than you think
By Valerie Strauss
So 200 University of Maryland students agreed to go without social media for 24 hours--no cell phones or computers--and their reaction was akin to drug withdrawal. I don’t know if these students are clinically addicted or not, but anybody who remembers enjoying life before the cell phone was invented may find some of the student's blog posts disturbing because they reveal thinking that is markedly narrow, unimaginative and too often historically obtuse.

By Valerie Strauss  |  12:00 PM ET, 04/28/2010 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research, Research, Research, Research | Tags:  University of Maryland, kids addicted to technology, kids addicted to video, research, social media, social media experiment, technology

Posted at 02:20 PM ET, 04/25/2010

New strategy to teach vocabulary -- Viadero
By Valerie Strauss
A Harvard researcher develops and tests a new strategy for directly teaching all-purpose academic words to middle school students.

By Valerie Strauss  |  02:20 PM ET, 04/25/2010 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research, Research | Tags:  Catherine Snow, Harvard research, research, teaching vocabulary, vocabulary

Posted at 12:15 PM ET, 03/30/2010

Researchers take new look at teenage brain
By Valerie Strauss
It has become commonplace these days to hear that teens are victims of their own immature brains and raging hormones. But University of Virginia researchers Joseph P. Allen and Claudia Worrell Allen say that while the prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed in teens, it’s far from missing, and we still have little evidence that this affects teens’ real-life behavior.

By Valerie Strauss  |  12:15 PM ET, 03/30/2010 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research, Research | Tags:  brain research, guest bloggers, teenage brain

Posted at 10:30 AM ET, 03/10/2010

“Eyeballs in the Fridge”--New data on what drives males, females into science
By Valerie Strauss
What drives males and females to become scientists? A new study finds differences, and suggests that more science should be taught earlier.

By Valerie Strauss  |  10:30 AM ET, 03/10/2010 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research, Research, Research | Tags:  education research, science

Posted at 01:17 PM ET, 02/09/2010

New study looks at segregation in charter schools
By Valerie Strauss
The Washington Post published an article last Wednesday about a study from UCLA’s Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles [11 mb pdf], which analyzed charter schools across the country and found them to be substantially more racially isolated than traditional public schools. The study has received quite a bit of attention as well as pushback from charter school advocates. Today, the University of Colorado at Boulder's education policy center, along with its partner policy center at Arizona State University, is releasing a study that, coincidentally, asks some of the same questions as did the UCLA study. Our study provides a comprehensive examination of enrollment patterns in schools operated by private corporations and finds these schools to be segregated by race, family income, disabilities, and English language learner status. As compared with their local public school districts, these schools operated by Education Management Organizations, or EMOs, are substantially more segregated, and the strong segregative pattern found in 2001 is virtually unchanged through 2007.

By Valerie Strauss  |  01:17 PM ET, 02/09/2010 |  Permalink  |  Comments ( 0)
Categories:  Research, Research, Research | Tags:  charter schools