2010 Condition of Education available

"The National Center for Education Statistics today released The Condition of Education, a Congressionally mandated report to the nation on education in America today. It covers all aspects of education, with 49 indicators that include findings on enrollment trends, demographics, and outcomes.

The report projects that public school enrollment will rise from 49 million in 2008 to 52 million by 2019, with the largest increase expected in the South. Over the past decade, more students attended both charter schools and high-poverty schools (those in which more than 75 percent of the students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch). One in six U.S. students attends a high-poverty school; and the number of charter school students has tripled since 1999."

The report is also linked under the Statistics and Demographics tab on the Education subject guide.

Evaluating education journals

I'm providing a link to a site created by the Education librarian at Michigan State which pulls together both resources and commentary on the evaluation of education journals. This is a question that librarians in all disciplines regularly receive when faculty are trying to document their scholarship impact for promotion and tenure.
http://libguides.lib.msu.edu/content.php?pid=57490&sid=421433

The CML has a new website!

Check out the lovely new website for the UNLV Curriculum Materials Library. The site uses Drupal to facilitate keeping content current. Links to this blog, the Education subject guide, and my main research project are at the bottom of the page.

NAEP: Reading 2009 Trial Urban District Assessment

Comparative data on reading performance of 4th and 8th graders in 18 selected large urban areas (Las Vegas is not one of these). Comparisons are made across time for those cities that have previously participated, and also between the TUDA's and large cities (over 250K population) generally and national scores. Highlights and links to the full report are here:
http://nationsreportcard.gov/reading_2009/

New report on public school revenues and expenditures: 2007-2008

"This brief publication contains basic revenue and expenditure data, by state, for public elementary and secondary education for school year 2007-08. It contains state-level data on revenues by source and expenditures by function, including expenditures per pupil."
The full report is linked here: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2010326

Tips for discussing controversial issues in the classroom

Great little advice piece from the Professor Hacker blog today on how to effectively lead classroom discussions on controversial issues. He suggested using other people's words, i.e., bringing in quotes from people representing various perspectives and asking students to respond. Or asking students to take the view of various vested interests / groups and generate reasons for their positions. If only I could make this work in faculty meetings. The article is here.

Literacy Collaborative shows significant improvements in reading

A longitudinal (4 year) study funded by IES found substantial (32%) gains in reading skills as a result of implementing the Literacy Collaborative program. Differences were notable between schools and between teachers at studied schools, and the amount of coaching teachers received seemed to play a determining role. Highlights of the research findings include:

• Students’ average rates of learning increased by 16% in the first implementation year, 28% in the second implementation year, and 32% in the third implementation year.

• Teacher expertise increased substantially, and the rate of improvement was predicted by the amount of coaching a teacher received.

• Professional communication amongst teachers in the schools increased over the three years of implementation, and the literacy coordinators became more central in the schools’ communication networks.

A summary of the report is available here; the study will be published in an upcoming issue of The Elementary School Journal.