These reports, supported by the non-profit education innovation organization NewSchools Venture Fund, focus on the retention, discipline, academic growth and achievement of all students and moves the District closer to having a complete and transparent view, using the same metrics, of how different public schools serve a range of students. This is part two of two.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Southern)-District of Columbia-Washington
Arts and Culture, Education and Literacy
In the early 2000s, there was considerable discussion about the role of the arts in public education, but little data about the status of arts education in all schools in Minnesota. To answer this need, the Perpich Center for Arts Education launched The Minnesota Arts Education Research Project during the 2010/2011 school year with funding provided by the Minnesota State Legislature through its Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund of the Clean Water, Land, and Legacy Amendment.
The purpose of this project was to gather, evaluate and disseminate quantitative data regarding arts education in the state. The Research Project was designed to document arts education in every school through a statewide voluntary survey, and combine the survey findings with other information to create a 360-degree view of arts education in the state.
This report is a summary of the status of arts education, education policy and delivery. The intent is to provide decision makers and the public with a clear picture of the status of arts education in Minnesota.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Midwestern)-Minnesota
Arts and Culture, Education and Literacy
This report examines the academic and civic behavior outcomes of teenagers and young adults who have engaged deeply with the arts in or out of school.
In several small-group studies, children and teenagers who participated in arts education programs have shown more positive academic and social outcomes in comparison to students who did not participate in those programs. Such studies have proved essential to the current research literature on the types of instrumental benefits associated with an arts education.
A standard weakness of the literature, however, has been a dearth of large-scale, longitudinal studies following the same populations over time, tracking the outcomes of students who received intensive arts exposure or arts learning compared with students who did not. This report is a partial attempt to fill this knowledge gap. The report's authors, James Catterall et al., use four large national databases to analyze the relationship between arts involvement and academic and social achievements.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States
Arts and Culture;Education and Literacy
As we enter the 21st century -- the global information age -- we must ensure our students are equipped to thrive in an environment that will require them to be able to shift their thinking and remain open to learning throughout their lives. Flexibility, innovation, improvisation and the ability to communicate across diverse cultures are skills crucial to future success. The arts are the most efficient way to teach those skills. By working to include and sustain the arts as part of a comprehensive K-12 curriculum, we allow students to cultivate the crucial skills they will need to function in a 21st century world.
Arts for All is a dynamic, county-wide collaboration working to create vibrant classrooms, schools, communities and economies through the restoration of all arts disciplines into the core curriculum for each of our 1.7 million public K-12 students. One of the key strategies to ensure high quality arts education is to improve the quality of teaching and learning. We believe that when we help build the skills, knowledge, and confidence of the people who provide arts instruction to students, they are able to translate district policies and plans into high quality student learning. Practical tools and partnership opportunities promote the collective responsibility of classroom teachers, arts teachers, and artists to deliver high quality arts education. The on-going development of teachers and artists increases their ability to raise the quality of arts education.
On Friday, May 7, 2010, Arts for All in partnership with California State University at Northridge, hosted the Arts for All Higher Education Think Tank. This event brought together decision makers throughout the education community to begin to discuss how to strategically address quality arts education in teacher preparation programs in order to impact teacher practice and student learning. Over 60 people attended representing 13 institutions of higher education, 3 foundations, 6 school districts and partners from the Los Angeles County Office of Education, Orange County Office of Education and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
This report is a transcript of those proceedings.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Western) / California / Los Angeles County
Since the 1970s, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has monitored the academic performance of 9-, 13-, and 17-year-old students with what have become known as the long-term trend assessments. Four decades of results ofer an extended view of student achievement in reading and mathematics. Results in this report are based on the most recent performance of more than 50,000 public and private school students who, by their participation, have contributed to our understanding of the nation's academic achievement.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States
The analysis here focuses on Boston's charter high schools. For the purpose of this report, an analysis of high schools is both a necessity and a virtue. It is necessary to study high schools because most students applying to charters in earlier grades are not yet old enough to generate data on postsecondary outcomes. Charter high schools are also of substantial policy interest: a growing body of research argues that high school may be too late for cost-effective human capital interventions. Indeed, impact analyses of interventions for urban youth have mostly generated disappointing results.
This report is interested in ascertaining whether charter schools, which in Massachusetts are largely budget-neutral, can have a substantial impact on the life course of affected students. The set of schools studied here comes from an earlier investigation of the effects of charter attendance in Boston on test scores.
The high schools from the earlier study, which enroll the bulk of charter high school students in Boston, generate statistically and socially significant gains on state assessments in the 10th grade. This report questions whether these gains are sustained.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Northeastern) / Massachusetts / Suffolk County / Boston
Children and Youth, Crime and Safety, Education and Literacy
The primary mission of North Carolina schools is to provide students an excellent education. To fully achieve this mission, schools must not only be safe, but also developmentally appropriate, fair, and just.
Unfortunately, many so-called "school safety" proposals in the wake of the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut have been shortsighted measures inspired by political expediency but unsupported by data. We aim to provide a more thoughtful approach informed by decades of research and centered on the mission of public schools.
This issue brief responds to the newly established N.C. Center for Safer Schools, which has requested public input on "local concerns and challenges related to school safety" and has made available the opportunity to submit written comments.
The first section of the brief debunks common myths and provides essential facts that must provide the backdrop for the school safety debate. The second section offers proven methods of striving for safe, developmentally appropriate, fair, and just public schools. It also provides examples of reforms from other cities and states. The third section makes note of resources that we encourage Center staff to study carefully.
This brief rests on several key premises. First, "school safety" includes both physical security of students as well as their emotional and psychological well-being. Many of the proposals following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School have had an overly narrow focus on physical security at the expense of this broader picture of holistic student well-being. Second, public education in this state needs more funding in order for schools to even have a chance of achieving their core mission. North Carolina consistently ranks among the worst states in the country for funding of public education.
Schools need more resources to implement measures that can truly ensure student safety. Third, student well-being depends on a coordinated effort by all the systems that serve youth. For example, school safety will be helped by laws that keep guns off school property and by full funding of the child welfare, mental health, and juvenile justice systems. Finally, this issue brief is not intended to be a comprehensive set of suggestions.
Instead, our focus is on providing the Center important context that we view as missing from the current debate.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Southern)-North Carolina
Children and Youth;Education and Literacy
School choice policies, a fixture of efforts to improve public education in many cities. aim to enable families to choose a school that they believe will best meet their child's needs. In New York City, choice and the development of a diverse portfolio of options have played central roles in the Department of Education's high school reform efforts. This report examines the choices and placements of New York City's lowest-achieving students: those scoring among the bottom 20 percent on standardized state tests in middle school. Focusing on data from 2007 to 2011, the report looks at who these low-achieving students are, including how their demographics compare to other students in NYC, the educational challenges they face, and where they live. The bulk of the report reviews low-achieving students' most preferred schools and the ones to which they were ultimately assigned, assessing how these schools compare to those of their higher-achieving peers. The findings show that low-achieving students attended schools that were lower performing, on average, than those of all other students. This was driven by differences in students' initial choices: low-achieving students' first-choice schools were less selective, lower-performing, and more disadvantaged. Overall, lower-achievingand higher-achieving students were matched to their top choices at the same rate. Importantly, both low- and higher-achieving students appear to prefer schools that are close to home, suggesting that differences in students' choices likely reflect, at least in part, the fact that lower-achieving students are highly concentrated in poor neighborhoods, where options may be more limited.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Northeastern) / New York / New York County / New York City
