A very happy New Year to our Wing Institute Knowledge Network members. We hope that wherever you are, you are warm and comfortable. This month we are offering summaries of seven studies that we hope you will find of interest. The topics include; research on absenteeism, the impact of teaching learning strategies, why evidence-based practices frequently fail, obstacles to executing classroom management practices, national graduation rates, the recently released 2017 Digest of Education Statistics, and the quantity and quality of published education research.
Sincerely,
The Wing Institute
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The Link Between School Attendance and Good Health. The American Academy of Pediatrics just released a policy statement regarding the negative impact that chronic student absenteeism has on children’s health. They cite numerous ways the two are linked. First, evidence clearly documents that chronic absenteeism puts children at a much higher risk of dropping out of school and not graduating. There is a significant amount of research associating poor school performance (resulting in lower education attainment) and poor adult health outcomes, including increased mortality risk and lower life expectancy. The act of missing school itself is also linked to increased risk behaviors, including alcohol consumption, drug use, smoking and risky sexual behavior. Read More
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2017 Federal Data on Graduation Rates. The most recent high school graduation rate data were just released for the 2016-17 school year. The report shows consistent improvement in this critical student and school performance metric. Student graduation increased by 12 percentage points during the fifteen years from 2002 and 2017. While there is still much work to be done to identify and implement graduation standards that translate into meaningful and life long benefits, this type of consistent performance improvement should be acknowledged. Read More
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Digest of Education Statistics 2017 was just released by The Institute for Education Sciences (IES) National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). This annual publication is the definitive compendium of data on virtually every aspects of education from pre-kindergarten through graduate school. Its chapters include: All Levels of Education, Elementary and Secondary Education, Postsecondary Education, Federal Funds for Education and Related Activities, Outcomes of Education, International Comparisons of Education, and Libraries and Use of Technology. It draws from a wide range of government and private sources and applies rigorous review to everything published. Read More
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High-Quality Education Research. A recent article published in Best Evidence in Brief examines the issues of quantity and quality of education research. Robert Slavin highlights the progress made over the past 30 years in delivering the evidence that education practitioners need to make informed decisions. The research found that the number of rigorous randomized or quasi-experimental studies in elementary reading for struggling readers, secondary reading, and elementary math rose significantly over the past 20 years. Read More
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Revisiting the Effect of Teaching of Learning Strategies on Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of the Findings. This study examines the impact of teaching of learning strategies on student academic achievement. Learning strategies are behaviors and processes taught to learners, including cognitive strategies such as memory setting and retrieval, and executive cognitive processes. Learning strategies are also known as study, academic, or research skills. Five categories of learning strategies were assessed: rehearsal, elaboration, organizational, comprehension, and affective. The findings reveal that academic achievement of students can be improved by teaching of learning strategies in the classroom. Read More
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When evidence-based literacy programs fail. This study examines the implementation of an intensive program, Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI),for struggling readers that had been proven to work in early grades. Disappointingly, the results of showedafter an average of 19 weeks of instruction the intervention had no impact on students’ reading comprehension and a negative impact on their mastery of ELA/literacy standards. The LLI impact on Smarter Balanced ELA/literacy scores was roughly equivalent to students losing more than five months of learning, based on the typical annual growth of students in grades 6-8. The findings highlight the importance of considering context and implementation, in addition to evidence of effectiveness, when choosing an intervention program. Read More
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Barriers to implementing classroom management and behavior support plans: An exploratory investigation. Ample evidence supports effective classroom management’s place as essential to maximizing student achievement. Unfortunately, sustained implementation of classroom management strategies too often fail. This study examines barriers encountered by 33 educators along with suggested interventions to overcome impediments to effective delivery of classroom management interventions or behavior support plans. Having the right classroom management plan isn’t enough if you can’t deliver the strategies to the students in the classroom. Read More
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We appreciate your interest in our activities and hope you find this information of interest. Two recent presentations from this past month are Strategies for Maximizing the Effectiveness of Teacher Evaluations and Teacher Coaching; The Missing Link in Teacher Professional Development. Read More
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