An overwhelming body of research demonstrates the negative short- and long-term consequences of chronic absenteeism on academic achievement. Students who are chronically absent are missing critical instruction time and are at the greatest risk of falling behind and dropping out of school. Chronic absenteeism disproportionately affects low-income students and students with disabilities, as well as students of color and English language learners. Across the country, millions of students are reported chronically absent each school year.
Chronic absenteeism is most commonly defined as missing 10% or more of the school year for any reason, excused or unexcused. As districts and states begin to examine and track chronic absenteeism, comprehensive policy solutions and interventions should be locally determined and characterized by: universal prevention for all students, early intervention strategies for at-risk students, and targeted intensive support for students with the highest need. Punitive interventions should be avoided.
Keywords: education, attendance, absent, chronic absenteeism and academic achievement, high school chronic absenteeism, Delaware chronic absenteeism, ESSA plans and chronic absenteeism
CRESP, Gabriella Mora, Sue Giancola, Danielle Riser
This guide is written for educators. The primary intended audience is state- and district-level educators (e.g., curriculum supervisors, district office personnel, and state-level administrators). Teachers, school administrators, and board members also may find the guide useful. It is intended to help you build evaluation into the programs and projects you use in your classrooms, schools, districts, and state. This guide will also provide a foundation in understanding how to be an informed, active partner with an evaluator to make sure that evaluation provides the information you need to improve the success of your program, as well as to make decisions about whether to continue, expand, or discontinue a program. No previous evaluation knowledge is needed to understand the material presented. However, this guide may also be useful for experienced evaluators who want to learn more about how to incorporate theory-based evaluation methods into their programs and projects.
Keywords: education, evaluation, program planning, educational program design, program evaluation and decision-making, theory-based evaluation methods
Susan P. Giancola, Sue Giancola
Using data from the 2003-04 Schools and Staffing Survey, the authors studied how various aspects of teacher preparation affect the retention of new teachers–specifically mathematics and science teachers. They found that the preparation of new mathematics and science teachers differs from that of other new teachers in various respects, but factors that had to do with pedagogical training (amount of practice teaching, courses in educational methods and child psychology, and so on) were the only ones that positively affected teacher retention. This finding is a concern for mathematics and science education, write the authors, because mathematics and science teachers tend to receive significantly less pedagogical training than other teachers, and their attrition rates after the first year of teaching are higher.
Keywords: Education, teaching, teachers
Richard Ingersoll, Lisa Merrill, Henry May
Researchers have used many angles and perspectives to investigate how principals enact instructional leadership in schools. Most research has emphasized the practices of school leaders, although investigations of leadership styles and leadership processes are also present in the literature. In this study, the authors take a different approach by examining the scope of principal efforts to improve instruction. Scope of principal effort refers to the extent to which principals target or distribute their instructionally oriented work with teachers. Using data from principal web logs and teacher surveys conducted in 51 schools in an urban southeastern district, the authors develop models to examine not only differences in average instructional change at the school level but also variability in instructional change across teachers within schools. The results indicate that the scope of principals’ instructional leadership activities varies from one school to the next, from very broad approaches that target the entire faculty to very targeted approaches that focus on a few teachers, and that the frequency of a principal’s instructional leadership activities with an individual teacher is directly related to the magnitude of instructional changes reported by that teacher. These findings support the notion that principals who focus on the improvement of particular teachers in conjunction with broader approaches can produce greater changes in instructional practice.
Keywords: instructional leadership, multilevel mixed-effects modeling, principal leadership, student achievement, survey research
Henry May, Jonathan A. Supovitz, Jon Supovitz
Over the past two decades, efforts to recruit new minority teachers have been very successful, but retaining them has not.
Keywords: Recruitment, employment, retention, teacher shortage, teaching
Richard M. Ingersoll, Henry May
The study investigated developmental trajectories of internalizing problems from kindergarten to fifth grade in young kindergarteners versus older peers in kindergarten, as well as factors that may be attributed to such differential trajectories. Data on a sample of 9,796 kindergarteners from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study were analyzed using individual growth curve models. Results revealed that the younger kindergarteners displayed more symptoms of internalizing problems than their older peers at school entry and that such elevated levels of problems persisted into fifth grade. Protective factors included higher socioeconomic status and favorable parental perceptions of child’s abilities to pay attention and solve problems. These findings are informative for school-based early intervention efforts.
Keywords: Kindergarteners, Internalizing problems, Externalizing problems, Developmental trajectories, ECLS-K
Guang Zeng, Pingfu Fu, Henry May, Barbara Lopez, Lourdes Suarez-Morales, Manuel C. Voelkle, Chen-Pin Wang, Robert F. Boruch
As test-based educational accountability has moved to the forefront of national and state education policy, so has the desire for better measures of school performance. No Child Left Behind’s (NCLB) status and safe harbor measures have been criticized for being unfair and unreliable, respectively. In response to such criticism, in 2005 the federal government announced the Growth Model Pilot Program, which permits states to use projection models (a type of growth model) in their accountability systems. This article uses historical longitudinal data from a large school district to empirically show the inaccuracy of one state’s projection model, to demonstrate how projection models are very similar to NCLB’s original status measure, and to contrast projection models with value-added models. As policymakers debate the reauthorization of NCLB, this research can provide guidance on ways to improve the current measurement of school performance.
Keywords: Education, Florida, ESEA
Michael J. Weiss, Henry May, Mike Weiss
Although a substantial amount of research on school leadership has focused on what principals may do to improve teaching and learning, little of this research has explored how principals’ time spent on leadership activities may relate to and possibly affect student performance. This article presents results from a 3-year longitudinal study of principal activities and student performance. A 3-level HLM growth model (with test scores nested within students, and students nested within schools) was employed to determine the degree to which principals’ activities were associated with student performance at baseline, and changes in student performance over time. Results suggest that principals’ activities are remarkably variable over time, that specific leadership activities are more prevalent in some school contexts, and that specific changes in leadership activities over time (e.g., increasing time on instructional leadership) do not predict changes in student performance in a consistent manner across schools.
Keywords: principals, achievement, longitudinal
Henry May, Jason Huff, Ellen Goldring
This study examines the magnitude, destinations, and determinants of mathematics and science teacher turnover. The data are from the nationally representative Schools and Staffing Survey and the Teacher Follow-Up Survey. Over the past two decades, rates of mathematics and science teacher turnover have increased but, contrary to conventional wisdom, have not been consistently different than those of other teachers. Also, contrary to conventional wisdom, mathematics and science teachers were also no more likely than other teachers to take noneducation jobs, such as in technological fields or to be working for private business or industry. The data also show there are large school-to-school differences in mathematics and science turnover; high-poverty, high-minority, and urban public schools have among the highest rates. In the case of cross-school migration, the data show there is an annual asymmetric reshuffling of a significant portion of the mathematics and science teaching force from poor to not-poor schools, from high-minority to low-minority schools, and from urban to suburban schools. A number of key organizational characteristics and conditions of schools accounted for these school differences. The strongest factor for mathematics teachers was the degree of individual classroom autonomy held by teachers. Net of other factors such as salaries, schools with less classroom autonomy lose math teachers at a far higher rate than other teachers. In contrast, for science teachers salary was the strongest factor, while classroom autonomy was not strongly related to their turnover.
Keywords: teacher career paths, teacher turnover, math teachers, science teachers
Richard M. Ingersoll, Henry May
An exploration of the opportunity to benefit from the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP): This study explores whether students from low-income families and racial/ethnic minority groups have the opportunity to benefit in what is arguably the most rigorous type of credit-based transition program: the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP). The analyses first describe national longitudinal trends in characteristics of schools offering the IBDP and the characteristics of students within schools who enroll. The analyses draw on data from the International Baccalaureate database, which include individual-level data on more than 400,000 IBDP students from 1995 through 2009, as well as data from the Common Core of Data from the National Center for Education Statistics. The article also draws on data collected from a survey of IBDPs in Florida to document variations in the opportunity to benefit from available IBDPs.
Keywords: equity, college access, curricular tracking
Laura W. Perna, Henry May, April Yee, Tafaya Ransom, Awilda Rodriguez, Rachél Fester
