Oldest EdD program in the country to close

As reported in today's (Mar. 29) Inside Higher Ed, the Harvard Graduate School of Education will be "eliminating the Ed.D. and replacing it with a Ph.D. program. The university's decision will close the first American Ed.D., a program Harvard has offered for 90 years..." GSE Dean Yoshikawa offers this rationale, "This will produce what we think is the first truly universitywide Ph.D. in education, with the primary purpose being to better link the intellectual resources in the university to produce leaders in the field of education."

Jill Perry, co-director of the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate, comments that, "Harvard’s move was a validation of the need to differentiate between the two kinds of doctoral degrees and re-emphasize the role and purpose of each. She said the Carnegie project was doing just that, and had worked with more than 50 schools of education to create frameworks for Ed.D. programs, or professional practice doctorates. The goal, she said, was to equate such a degree with other professional degree programs rather than with a Ph.D."

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/03/29/country%E2%80%99s-oldest-edd-program-will-close-down#.T3SD443fFY8.email#ixzz1qWTMDvmj

The "scoop" on peer-reviewed journal status in ERIC

As many of you know from my teaching sessions in your classes, I have in the past advised caution when using this search limiter (peer reviewed) in ERIC because it was assigned primarily to more recent records. Here is a clear explanation of how they assign the "peer reviewed" designator and the efforts underway to apply this retrospectively to earlier records.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"ERIC is in the process of adding the peer-review status to journal records indexed between 1966
and 2003 to enhance the collection for the research community. To date, more than 30,000 records have been updated with the peer-review status. Updates will continue to be processed throughout the year.

To meet the challenges associated with obtaining peer-review data, we are using a model for information gathering that incorporates current industry practices while increasing precision to the extent possible. During this process, on a title by title basis, the ERIC team:

• Reviews a title in Ulrich’s – if the title is identified as refereed, we accept the Ulrich’s designation; if the field is blank, we then
• Check The Serials Directory – if the title is identified as peer-reviewed, we accept the designation; if the field is blank, we then
• Check the publisher’s Web site – if we determine that the journal is  peer reviewed, not just reviewed by an editor, we accept the identification; we also note the start of the peer-review process for a journal, if available, and apply this information to the ERIC records.
• If we still cannot determine the peer-reviewed status, or if we determine that the journal is not peer reviewed, the field is left blank.
• If we find that the only review performed was by a journal editor, ERIC does not designate the title as peer reviewed.

ERIC does not include historical data about when a journal became peer reviewed in the ERIC record or in the journal list. It can be very difficult to determine the peer-review start date for journals. After
holding discussions with Ulrich’s, a cross section of publishers, and Library Committee advisors, we concluded that historical data is not consistently reliable or available.  However, if we are able to determine the date when peer review began, the ERIC team applies the status across the appropriate date range of records. If we are not able to determine the peer-review start date, we apply the status determined for the journal to all published records, a practice used by other information providers.

I hope this is helpful in explaining how ERIC handles the assignment of peer-review status to journal records. Please feel free to contact us if you have questions at ericfeedback@csc.com."

How many of these emerging technologies do you know about??

I have to admit, I had only heard of 1 of them. This report in the Chronicle's "Wired Campus" highlights
" some of the buzzworthy tools, ideas, and trends at South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive ...

• Big data and data visualization: Visual.ly, Splunk, Show
• Intimate social networking: Highlight, GroupMe, Wendr, GonnaBe, Banjo, Sonar
• Hacktivism: Code for America, hackathons, self-hacking
• Curation: Brain Pickings, Percolate, FeedMagnet
• Retro technology: analog tele-phonographer, Please Shoot Yourself, Motorblade
• 3D printing: MakerBot, RepRat
• Journalism and publishing: Storify (read previous ProfHacker posts), The Atavist, Rhizome, Wowio

New IPEDS data available

Data on --financial aid, retention and graduation rates, etc. for higher ed. "...findings include:

• In fall 2010, Title IV institutions enrolled 19 million undergraduate and 3 million graduate students. Of the 19 million undergraduates, 56 percent were enrolled in 4-year institutions, 42 percent in 2-year institutions, and 2 percent in less-than-2-year institutions.
• Approximately 58 percent of full-time, first-time students attending 4-year institutions in 2004 who were seeking a bachelor’s or equivalent degree completed a bachelor’s or equivalent degree within 6 years at the institution where they began their studies.
• Overall, first-time undergraduate student 1-year retention rates were higher for full-time students (72 percent) than for part-time students (44 percent)."

To view the full report please visit
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2012280

IES invites applicants for grant program

Thought this particular grant opportunity might be of interest to some CoE faculty:
"IES has established the Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships in Education Research grant program (CFDA 84.305H) with the goal of seeking funding partnerships composed of research institutions and State or local education agencies. For the FY 2013 competition, these partnerships will identify an education issue with important implications for improving student achievement that is of high priority for the education agency, carry out initial data analyses regarding the education issue, and develop a plan for further research on the issue culminating in an application to one of the Institute’s research grant programs. For more information on application guidelines, see the IES funding opportunities page: http://ies.ed.gov/funding/"

10 Ways to Improve Student Research

When you ready to revise or create syllabi for upcoming courses, check out this newly created resource.
Based on the data from a large national survey of undergraduate research behavior, the guide offer tips to help you to help your students succeed with research based projects : http://guides.library.unlv.edu/improve_research

NCES post-secondary education data available

To improve postsecondary education data users’ access to data, NCES has released the College and Career Tables Library as part of DataLab – NCES’s postsecondary education data tool suite, which includes PowerStats and QuickStats.

The Tables Library lets you
• Browse 5,000+ tables from NCES’s postsecondary publications
• Search for tables by keywords; narrow search results by data source and publication year; and browse for tables by topic using explore topics

The tables also include link back to the original publications and you can download the files used to create the tables within PowerStats (for those based on datasets that are within PowerStats).

To access the Tables Library, please visit http://nces.ed.gov/datalab.

Diane Ravitch gives Arne Duncan an "F"

This recent article in the NYRBlog (Mar 7, 2012), "Flunking Arne Duncan" provides her rationale for giving the following grades:

Report Card: Arne Duncan

Fidelity to the Constitution: F
Doing what’s right for children: F
Doing what’s right for public education: F
Respecting the limits of federalism: F
Doing what’s right for teachers: F
Doing what’s right for education: F

(Image from ABC News)

IES grant funding competitions announced for FY 2013

IES has released FY2013 funding announcements for grant competitions in education research, special education research, and research training. The competitions are:

• Education Research Grants (84.305A);
• Special Education Research Grants (84.324A);
• Research Training Programs in the Education Sciences (84.305B);
• Research Training Program in Special Education: Early Career Development and Mentoring (84.324B);
• Statistical and Research Methodology in Education (84.305D);
• Accelerating the Academic Achievement of Students with Learning Disabilities Research Initiative (84.324D); and
• Evaluation of State and Local Education Programs and Policies (84.305E).

The Request for Applications for each competition is available at:
http://ies.ed.gov/funding/.

Great news about the ERIC database!

From the Communications team at ERIC...
"The ERIC team is pleased to announce that, in response to librarian requests, we are adding the peer-reviewed status to records indexed in ERIC from 1966-2003 to bring the backfile in line with currently indexed records. To determine whether a journal title is peer-reviewed, ERIC staff librarians are consulting three sources: Ulrichsweb, The Serials Directory, and publisher-provided information. The peer-review information gathered from these sources is being updated in the digital library on a journal by journal basis. Enhanced records have already begun to appear on the ERIC Web site at www.eric.ed.gov. Vendors will receive the changes on a monthly basis.
We expect that the updates to the ERIC backfile, consisting of more than
680,000 journal records, will be completed within this calendar year.
For more information, visit the ERIC Web site and see the new policy on the Peer-Reviewed Designation.  If you have comments or questions, please feel free to contact us at ericfeedback@csc.com."

TED launches new educationation channel

This report from the Chronicle today (March 12, 2012)
"The nonprofit group called TED, known for streaming 18-minute video lectures about big ideas, today opened a new YouTube channel designed for teachers and professors, with videos that are even shorter.
The new channel, called TED-Ed, was announced a year ago, but its leaders are only now unveiling the project’s first videos. There are only 11 as of today, but the goal is to add new ones regularly. Within three months from now, a new video could appear each day...
To produce the new videos, the group is connecting content experts with professional animators to create highly illustrated productions. The average length of these videos is about five minutes..
Among the first video topics are “How many universes are there?,” “Why don’t we see evidence of alien life?,” and “How pandemics spread (through history and across the world).”

Modern children's books help families explore diversity

As a diehard advocate of bibliotherapy (the therapeutic use of books), I can't resist passing along this nice article from CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/08/living/kid-books/index.html?hpt=hp_bn8

Income level gaps exceed racial ones in educational achievement

This article from today's (3/6/12) Education Week, "Growing Gaps Bring Focus on Poverty's Role in Schooling," had this quote which summarized findings from several studies,
"But upward mobility through the mechanism of a good education, which is a widely held value in this country that cuts across the political spectrum, is in serious jeopardy."
Based on standardized test scores in reading and math from 1960-2007, one expert found that, "The achievement gap between poor children and rich children has grown significantly over the past three decades and is now nearly twice as large as the black-white gap."
A new book, Whither opportunity: Rising inequality, schools, and children's life chances  (currently on order but also available through LINK+), summarizes similar research.

New IES research and training grants awarded

Successful grant applications offer ideas and models for future grant proposals, so am passing this along.
Through the National Center for Education Research, IES recently awarded 26 new research grants under the Education Research Grants Program (CFDA 84.305A). These applications were considered under the June 2011 deadline and total spending for these grants is $49.8 million.
Descriptions and structured abstracts for each new grant are available at:
http://ies.ed.gov/ncer/projects/12awards.asp

Through the National Center for Special Education Research, IES recently awarded 26 new research grants under the Special Education Research Grants Program (CFDA 84.324A) and two new grants under the Postdoctoral Research Training in Special Education Program (CFDA 84.324B). All applications were considered under the June 2011 deadline and total spending for these grants is $48 million.
Descriptions and structured abstracts for each new grant are available at:
http://ies.ed.gov/ncser/projects/12awards.asp