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School
and Parent Interaction by Household Language and Poverty Status:
2002-03
Language minority parents may face a number of challenges when
trying to communicate or become involved with their child’s
school. A greater percentage of students in English-speaking
households than in Spanish-speaking households had parents who
reported receiving personal notes or e-mails about the student;
receiving newsletters, memos, or notices addressed to all parents;
opportunities to attend general meetings; opportunities to attend
school events; and chances to volunteer. Differences were still
apparent after taking poverty status into account.
The
Health Literacy of America’s Adults: Results from the
2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy
This report measures health literacy among American adults including their
ability to read, understand, and apply health-related information
in English.
Findings include:
* The majority of American adults (53 percent) had Intermediate health literacy.
Fewer than 15 percent of adults had either Below Basic or Proficient health
literacy.
* Women had higher average health literacy than men.
* Adults who were ages 65 and older had lower average health literacy than younger
adults.
* Hispanic adults had lower average health literacy than adults
in any other racial/ethnic group.
Understanding
Recent Changes in Child Poverty
Over the past 10 years, U.S. child poverty rates took two sharp turns: a major
reduction from 1993 to 2000 followed by a slight hike from 2000 to 2004. Both
shifts have been even more dramatic for black and Hispanic children. Such abrupt
shifts offer an unusual opportunity to tease out what factors contribute to
changes in child poverty. Exploring the driving forces behind trends in child
poverty offers insights on policy, as well as on the well-being of children,
since child poverty is associated with many negative outcomes in later life—low
earnings, reduced educational attainment, teenage childbearing, and physical
and mental health problems.
This brief shows that economic conditions, together with parental
education and work, are the dominant factors behind recent changes
in child poverty. Changes in the share of families headed by
single parents seem to have played almost no role in the recent
changes in child poverty. According to the analysis, the 1993
to 2000 drop in child poverty is largely due to improvements
in the job market, especially for less-educated workers. The
economic downturn beginning in 2000 hit all families, even those
with more education, but the families of black children were
hit hardest.
Ensuring
the Academic Success of English Learners
by Laurie Olsen
Drawing on three decades of research on second language acquisition,
bilingual brain development, effective programs, and “best
practices” in instructional strategies, Dr. Olsen details
nine elements of a comprehensive system of schooling for English
learners. They range from high quality preschool to age-appropriate
English language development, instructional materials, and valid
assessments. She further suggests four policy goals needed to
develop such a system, including investing in a qualified educator
workforce, building a meaningful English Learner accountability
system, and demonstrating new models of successful schools for
English learners.
2006
ACT National and State Scores
This report provides information about the performance of your 2006 graduating
seniors who took the ACT as sophomores, juniors, or seniors. It focuses on :
Performance - student test performance in the context of college readiness
Access - number of your graduates exposed to college entrance testing and the
percent of race/ethnicity participation
Course Selection - percent of students pursuing a core curriculum
Course Rigor - impact of rigorous coursework on achievement
College Readiness - percent of students meeting ACT College Readiness Benchmark
Scores in each content area
Awareness - extent to which student aspirations match performance
Articulation - college and universities to which your students send test results
Racial
Segregation and the Private/Public School Choice
by Robert Fairlie
Using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study
(NELS), I examine ethnic and racial patterns of private school
attendance. I find that at both the 8th and 10th grade levels,
blacks and Hispanics are substantially less likely to attend
private schools than are whites. I also find evidence that racial
sorting between the private and public school systems is partly
due to preferences over the racial composition of schools. In
particular, white and Hispanic students enroll in private schools
in response to large concentrations of black students, although
the underlying causes are unknown. I also examine whether ethnic
and racial income disparities contribute to the large differences
in private school attendance rates. I find that lower levels
of income among black and Hispanic families contribute substantially
to the under-representation of these two groups in the private
school system. My estimates indicate that racial disparities
in income levels explain 34.9 to 56.7 percent of the white/black
gap in the private school attendance rate and 49.7 to 57.5 percent
of the white/Hispanic gap in the private school rate. Finally,
I find that whites attend private schools that are less integrated
than public schools, and blacks and Hispanics attend private
schools that are slightly more integrated than public schools.
State
High School Exit Exams: A Challenging Year
School year 2005-06 was a time of serious challenges to state
exit examinations—tests students must pass to receive
a high school diploma. In California and Arizona—two states
that were withholding diplomas from high school seniors for
the first time based on exam performance—courts weighed
the constitutionality and fairness of exit exams, as thousands
of high school seniors waited to see if they would graduate
with the rest of their class. California students at risk of
not graduating breathed a sigh of relief when a superior court
overturned the exit exam requirement, only to see it reinstated
by the state Supreme Court two weeks later. In several states,
policymakers debated whether to stick to their plans to withhold
diplomas from students who failed exit exams, whether to exempt
students with disabilities or students learning English from
having to pass the exams, or whether to create or expand alternate
paths to graduation for students struggling to pass the exams.
Missing the Mark: States' Teacher-Equity Plans Fall Short
A new Education Trust analysis of teacher-equity plans prepared
by all 50 states and the District of Columbia finds that most
states failed to properly analyze data that would determine
whether poor and minority children get more than their fair
share of unqualified, inexperienced, and out-of-field teachers.
Only two states, Nevada and Ohio, fully complied with the requirements
and offered specific plans to remedy inequities.
Identifying
Potential Dropouts: Key Lessons for Building an Early Warning
Data System
This white paper was prepared for Staying the Course: High
Standards and Improved Graduation Rates, a joint project of
Achieve and JFF funded by the Carnegie Corp. of New York. Its
goal is to provide policymakers with an overview of research
about the dropout problem and the best strategies for building
an early warning data system that can signal which students
and schools are most in need of interventions.
As pressure mounts to do something about the dropout problem, many school systems
will be tempted to skip questions about how to predict which
students are most at risk of dropping out and simply begin with
reforms meant to solve the problem. However, the cost of building
an accurate Early Warning System is relatively small compared
with the cost of providing programmatic interventions or systemwide
reforms meant to increase graduation rates. But the payoff of
basing interventions on accurate data can be huge. A large school
system that invests in better data to support dropout prevention
can obtain much better results for hundreds of thousands or
even millions of dollars less than a similar system whose leaders
decide to skip that step.
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