Monday, January 31, 2011

Does accountability reduce quality in scholarship?

This provocative article by Simon Head in the New York Review of Books (Jan. 13, 2011) suggests at least some of the consequences when numbers of publications are linked to state (in this case Britain) financial support for university research...
"Some of the most telling testimony on the damage to British scholarship inflicted by the HEFCE/RAE regime has come not from an academic but from Richard Baggaley, the European publishing director of Princeton University Press...Writing in the Times Higher Education Supplement in May 2007, Baggaley deplored what he saw as “a trend towards short-termism and narrowness of focus in British academe.”12 In the natural and social sciences this took the form of “intense individual and team pressure to publish journal articles,” with the writing of books strongly discouraged, and especially the writing of what he calls “big idea books” that may define their disciplines. Baggaley attributes this bias against books directly to the distorting effects of the RAE. Journal articles are congenial to the RAE because they can be safely completed and peer-reviewed in good time for the RAE deadline. If they are in a prestigious journal, that is the kind of peer approval that will impress the RAE panelists.
The pressure to be published in the top journals, Baggaley wrote, also "increases a tendency to play to what the journal likes, to not threaten the status quo in the discipline, to be risk-averse and less innovative, to concentrate on small incremental steps and to avoid big-picture interdisciplinary work."
In the humanities the RAE bias also works in favor of the 180–200-page monograph, hyperspecialized, cautious and incremental in its findings, with few prospects for sale as a bound book but again with a good chance of being completed and peer-reviewed in time for the RAE deadline."

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Gloomy results persist in science performance



An article in today's edition of EdWeek reports on the continuing dismal performance of K-12 students in science, this time according to the NAEP results. Only 20 percent of 12th graders scored as "proficient" in science, lower than the proficient percentages for 8th graders ( 30% ) or 4th graders ( 34% ). These results confirm the mediocre science and math performance documented by the PISA results at the end of last year. Even more disturbing are the huge discrepancies in performance based on race/ethnicity and SES. Per the article in EdWeek, "At the 4th grade, for example, 47 percent of white students scored proficient or above, compared with 11 percent of African-American and 14 percent of Hispanic students. Meanwhile, only 15 percent of 4th graders eligible for a free lunch and 25 percent for a reduced-price lunch scored proficient or higher on the exam, compared with 48 percent of 8th graders ineligible for either."
Large percentages of students at all levels don't even reach basic levels in science, "The figure was highest at the 12th grade, where 40 percent were below basic, compared with 37 percent of 8th graders and 28 percent of 4th graders." And very few perform at high levels on the NAEP, "Only 1 percent of 4th and 12th graders earned an advanced score, and 2 percent at the 8th grade." Links to the 2009 report are here: http://nationsreportcard.gov/science_2009/

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

US News will start ranking teacher prep programs

Couple of articles describing U.S. News & World Report's intentions to start a survey of 1,000 teacher prep programs, utilizing the National Council on Teacher Quality methodology.

From PR Newswire:
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/us-news--world-report-and-national-council-on-teacher-quality-launch-comprehensive-review-of-nations-teacher-preparation-programs-114163659.html

From Inside Higher Ed:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/19/qt#248429

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Measuring student engagement: K-12

A new report from REL Southeast:  "Measuring Student Engagement in Upper Elementary through High School: A Description of 21 Instruments, presents the results of a literature review of available instruments for measuring student engagement (behavioral, emotional and cognitive) in upper elementary through high school. The study describes 21 instruments that include student self-reports, teacher reports, and observation measures.
The report summarizes what is measured, instrument purposes and uses, and available technical information. In addition, instrument abstracts describe the main features of each instrument, including the developer, population, method, background, administration, constructs measured, scoring and reporting, reliability and validity, and use. References are listed for each instrument. The report is descriptive and is not intended to assess the quality of each instrument or identify strengths or weaknesses."


To view this report, see http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?projectID=268

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Summer Research Training: Single-Case Design

This announcement from IES~

The National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) at the Institute of Education Sciences announces its 2011 Summer Research Training Institute on Single-Case Intervention Research Design and Analysis. The Training Institute is intended to increase the national capacity of education researchers to conduct single-case intervention studies that have scientifically credible methodology and analyses.

When:
June 27th to July 1st, 2011
Where:
University of Wisconsin-Madison; Madison, WI
All applications must be received no later than Friday, March 11, 2011 at 8:00 p.m. EST. For more information about the Training Institute, including the application procedures, please visit: http://ies.ed.gov/whatsnew/conferences/?id=772