Education Commons^™

Assessing Accountability In U.S. Public Education, Anne Kelly, J. Orris

Anne Kelly

Public education accountability rests almost exclusively with schools rather than governments. This paper explores its three dimensions: economy, efficiency, and effectiveness. Performance indicators of these dimensions were developed which facilitated testing of significant differences in means over time using analysis of variance. Only salary and wage expenditures per instruction personnel exhibited greater economy. Instructional equipment per pupil was related to increased efficiency. Several indicators suggested enhanced effectiveness. Student/teacher ratio declined and top performers in public schools improved in achievement. Graduation rate, an indicator of achievement and participation, significantly rose in recent years. In summary, several effectiveness indicators revealed encouraging trends …

Performing Well In Timss And Pisa Mathematics And Science, Ray Philpot

Ray Philpot

Workshops delivered to department heads of participating schools to help schools utilise the released items in TIMSS and PISA by: educating participants about the cognitive skills and processes assessed by TIMSS and PISA in the domains of Mathematics and Science; demonstrating to participants ways that content skills are assessed in TIMSS and PISA items; demonstrating to participants some of the item types and provide recommendations for how teachers can introduce these item types to students; and enabling participants to provide training/orientation to teachers within their schools.

Special Education At The Core: Where Do The Common Core State Standards Leave Our Students With Disabilities?, Lisa Beymer

Lisa Beymer

The oversimplification with which the new Common Core State Standards approach the instruction of students with disabilities leaves much to be desired on the part of the classroom teacher, who is left to determine how the standards will be made accessible for all students. The new standards require increased skill and application across the subject areas. Those students with specific learning needs may require additional support, altered classroom instruction and an increase in staff-to-specialist collaboration. At the same time, the new standards also provide an opportunity for students with disabilities to access higher-level thinking skills that may prove advantageous for …

Perspectives On Commemoration: Schools In 2014, Jenny Wilkinson

Jenny Wilkinson

No abstract provided.

Policy, Schools And The New Health Imperatives, Valerie Harwood, Jan Wright

Valerie Harwood

No abstract provided.

'It Felt Like I Was A Black Dot On White Paper': Examining Young Former Refugees' Experience Of Entering Australian High Schools, Jonnell Uptin, Jan Wright, Valerie Harwood

Valerie Harwood

Schools are often the first point of contact for young refugees resettling in Australia and play a significant role in establishing meaningful connections to Australian society and a sense of belonging in Australia (Olliff in Settling in: How do refugee young people fair within Australia's settlement system? Centre for Multicultural Youth Issues, Melbourne. http://www. cmyi. net. au/ResearchandPolicy. Accessed 21 June 2010, 2007; Gifford et al. in: Good Starts for recently arrived youth with refugee backgrounds: Promoting wellbeing in the first three years of settlement in Melbourne, Australia. Melbourne: La Trobe Refugee Research Centre. http://www. latrobe. edu. au/larrc/documents-larrc/reports/report-good-starts. pdf. Accessed 4 …

The Power To Transform: Leadership That Brings Learning And Schooling To Life, Stephanie Pace Marshall

Stephanie Pace Marshall, Ph.D.

The Power to Transform is a call to re-conceive and re-design schooling. Rather than offer “best practices” or “prescriptive solutions,” it invites leaders of all ages and walks of life to think differently about learning and schooling. It illuminates the “why” and “what” of educational transformation and explores its deepest roots. It offers new language, new design principles, a new framework, and a new map for creating vibrant, imaginative and adaptive learning landscapes that integrate the dynamic properties of living systems with the generative principles of learning. It is from this natural integration that the new story of learning and …

Relationship – The Fourth “R” In Our Schools, Lee Wilkinson

Lee A Wilkinson, PhD

No abstract provided.

Contemporary Literacy Practices Of Early Learners (Preps), D Cohen, Anne-Marie Chase

Dr Anne-Marie Chase

The New Outsiders: Adhd And Disadvantage, Valerie Harwood

Valerie Harwood

Recent research has pointed to the uneven distribution of diagnoses of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, with disproportionately high numbers in areas marked by poverty (Gifford Sawyer et al., 2004; Olfsen et al., 2003). This chapter examines this issue of ADHD and social and economic disadvantage. Drawing on research with youth professionals from some of the most disadvantaged communities in Australia, the chapter puts forward the case that the ADHD phenomenon has highly problematic effects on the lives of children and young people in these communities. The intent is to show how the ADHD phenomenon interacts with disadvantage, and suggest how …

A Comparative Analysis Of Family Structure And The Academic Achievement Level Of African American Students In Selected North Carolina Schools, Mary Ferguson

Mary J. Ferguson, Ed. D.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there was a difference between the family structure and academic achievement of African American students attending rural and urban schools in North Carolina. The purpose was also to analyze how family structure and the academic achievement scores of ninth grade African American male and African American female students who attend a rural and urban high school in North Carolina. Finally, the purpose was to determine whether there was a significant difference between family structure, academic achievement and gender of African American rural and urban high school students.

What Is The Value Of Educational Technologies In Schools?: Initial Findings From The International Research Project ‘Measuring The Value Of Educational Technologies In Schools’, Kathryn Moyle

Professor Kathryn Moyle

Understanding the costs as well as the value of educational technologies in schools is important for school leaders to be able to strategically lead school development processes. This paper outlines some of the findings from the first case studies emerging from the international project, Measuring the value of educational technologies in schools, involving a school in each of USA, UK and Australia. The Measuring the value of educational technologies in schools research project is examining the relationships that exist in schools between educational technologies or ‘tangible information technology (IT) assets’, and ‘intangible assets’ such as the capabilities of teachers and …

The Impact Of Increasing Competition For University On Disadvantaged Government School Students, Daniel Edwards

Dr Daniel Edwards

The influence of socioeconomic status on academic outcomes has been well documented in literature exploring post school pathways. Such accounts of educational disadvantage exist in relation to Melbourne, Australia as they do in other cities across the developed world. However, over the past decade in Melbourne there has been an increased stratification of educational outcomes that cannot necessarily be explained by any parallel increase in social inequality. This differentiation of outcomes has been the result of growing competition for university places – stemming from growth in the school aged population and rising retention rates, but accompanied by no equivalent increase …

Elaborating A Model Of Teacher Professional Growth, David Clarke, Hilary Hollingsworth

Dr Hilary Hollingsworth

This paper details a model of teacher professional growth and relates the model to the research data on which the model is empirically founded. A key feature of the model is its inclusion of four analytic domains in close correspondence to those employed by Guskey (Educational Researcher 15(5), 1986) and others, but the model proposed in this paper identifies the specific mechanisms by which change in one domain is associated with change in another. The interconnected, non-linear structure of the model enabled the identification of particular “change sequences” and “growth networks”, giving recognition to the idiosyncratic and individual nature of …