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
The "Bennett Hypothesis" is the theory that : The availability of federal loans -- particularly subsidized loans offering a below-market interest rate and payment of interest as long as the student is enrolled in school -- provides "cover" for colleges to raise their prices, because students can offset a price increase, or at least a portion of that increase, with federal loans.
This report examines research that attempts to prove or disprove the Bennett Hypothesis, with a focus primarily on the impact of federal grants and loans on college and university tuition price increases. Section two presents a brief overview of federal student financial aid programs, recent trends in tuition prices, and the economic theory behind financial aid and tuition prices. Section three reviews some of the research that has analyzed the veracity of the Bennett Hypothesis over the years.
Section three also describes studies with similar methodologies but contrary findings. The research suffers from limitations in the data used, particularly in the measures of federal aid used as predictors. There are also limitations in the data analysis methodologies employed, including the researchers' inability to fully control for all of the complex factors that go into the decisions that institutions make when determining tuition prices. More details about these issues are presented in this section. The final section summarizes what this body of research tells us about the relationship between federal student aid and tuition prices.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States
After two decades of standards-based reform, a new education paradigm has begun to take hold -- the rise of competency education. This new vision builds on the strong foundation of new college and career ready standards, challenging stakeholders to design an education system that emphasizes mastery of content standards and the transferable skills critical to success in college and today's workforce.
A competency education system puts students at the center, replacing rigid time-based structures with flexible learning environments that ensure students receive the support and extra time they need to succeed. This highly-personalized approach provides clear, individualized pathways to student proficiency that help mobilize stakeholders around the collective goal of college and career readiness for all students.
A growing number of states and districts have begun to embrace this vision for education, leading to an explosion of new policies, pilot initiatives, and tools designed to help schools implement competencybased approaches.The success of the competency movement depends heavily on the federal government's willingness to partner with states and districts as they design education systems that put students at the center.
A true partnership will grant states the flexibility to innovate and develop equally ambitious accountability and assessment policies that better align with student centered education to ensure all students graduate with the knowledge and skills to succeed.
This paper is the first in a series to help policymakers define the appropriate role for the federal government supporting competency education in the nation's K-12 schools.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States
Minnesota public education -- from preschool to college and everything in between -- is poised for a breakthrough. Education requires fundamental and systemic change to meet the needs of an increasingly competitive and global workforce, and growing diverse populations. This is the case particularly for Minnesota where great schools can prepare all kids for thriving futures.
This poll captures the opinions of over 400 teachers and hopes to bring about change that will eliminate the current situation of nation-trailing achievement gaps and high school graduation rates.
Building off of the success of MinnCAN's 2012 statewide public opinion poll, where 1,000 Minnesotans were interviewed on public education, this report takes a similar approach to dig deeper with district school teachers through a 28-question poll. The topics discussed were: effective teaching, educator evaluations, professional development and school staffing decisions.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Midwestern) / Minnesota
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
Analyzing data from over 26,000 U.S. middle and high schools, the report reveals profound disparities in suspension rates when disaggregating data by race/ethnicity, gender, and disability status. The report identifies districts with the largest number of "hotspot" schools (suspending 25 percent or more of their total student body), suggests alternatives that are already in use, and highlights civil rights concerns.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States
Education and Literacy, Poverty
This paper examines whether teachers in schools serving students from high-poverty backgrounds are as effective as teachers in schools with more advantaged students. The question is important. Teachers are recognized as the most important school factor affecting student achievement, and the achievement gap between disadvantaged students and their better off peers is large and persistent.
Using student-level microdata from 2000-2001 to 2004-2005 from Florida and North Carolina, the authors compare the effectiveness of teachers in high-poverty elementary schools (>70% FRL students) with that of teachers in lower-poverty elementary schools (<70% FRL students). The results show that the average effectiveness of teachers in high-poverty schools is in general less than teachers in other schools, but only slightly, and not in all comparisons. The authors also find differences in within-school-type variation in teacher effectiveness in nearly every comparison. These differences are largely driven by the longer tail at the bottom of the teacher effectiveness distribution in high-poverty schools. Teachers at the top of the effectiveness distribution are very similar across school settings.
The observed differences in teacher quality between high-poverty and lower-poverty schools are not due to differences in the observed characteristics of teachers, such as experience, certification status and educational attainment. Rather, they appear to arise from differences in the marginal return or payoff from increases in a characteristic. In particular, the gain in productivity from increased experience is much stronger in lower-poverty schools. The lower return to experience in high-poverty schools does not appear to be a result of differences in the quality of teachers who leave teaching or who switch schools. Rather, it may be the case that the effect of experience on teacher productivity may depend on the setting in which the experience is acquired.
If there are positive spillovers among teachers that depend on teacher quality (ie. teacher "peer effects") or if exposure to challenging student populations lessens the future productivity of teachers (i.e. leads to "burn out"), teachers in schools serving large proportions of low-income students may simply not improve much as time goes by.
These findings suggest that solutions to the achievement gap between high and lower-poverty schools may be complex. Changing the quality of new recruits or importing teachers with good credentials into highpoverty schools may not be sufficient. Rather, the findings suggest that measures that induce highly effective teachers to move to high-poverty schools and which promote an environment in which teachers' skills will improve over time are more likely to be successful.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Southern)-North Carolina, North America-United States (Southern)-Florida
Education and Literacy, Employment and Labor
This paper synthesizes findings from the Research Alliance's investigation of teacher turnover in New York City's public middle schools. These years are widely recognized as a critical turning point for students, and the NYC Department of Education (DOE) is pursuing a range of middle school improvement initiatives. The stability of the middle school teaching force has the potential to facilitate or complicate these efforts, yet there have been few studies of the rates and patterns of teacher turnover in the City's middle schools.
This study provides the most current, comprehensive look at middle school teacher turnover to date. Drawing on a range of data sources -- including DOE human resource records from the last decade, a survey of over 4,000 full-time middle school teachers, and in-depth case studies in four middle schools -- this paper examines how long middle school teachers remain in their schools, how long they intend to stay, and what predicts whether or not they leave. It also explores how various aspects of teachers' work environment may influence these decisions. Among the key findings: Among middle school teachers who entered their school during the last decade, more than half left that school within three years -- significantly higher than the rates seen for elementary and high school teachers. Of the teachers who leave, most exit the NYC public school system altogether, and only about 1 in 10 transition to another grade 6-8 school. The findings point to several strategies that may be useful for increasing middle school teachers' lengths of stay.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States (New York Metropolitan Area)
