Education Week - March 22, 2017 - 5

REPORT ROUNDUP

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TRANSITIONS

NEW TEACHERS

Ken Krehbiel, who has been
serving as the acting
executive director for
the National Council of
Teachers of Mathematics
since October, has
been selected as the
organization's new
executive director.
Krehbiel joined the
NCTM 17 years ago as its
director of communications.
In 2003, he became the
associate executive director
for communications,
heading up all of the
group's public affairs and
publications. He took over
as acting executive director
last fall when Bob Doucette
resigned.

"Impacts of the Retired Mentors for New
Teachers Program"

Snap in 2012, when the company
was just getting started. It had
been invited to do so by one of the
student's parents, a venture-capital investor, the high school president wrote in a letter to the school
community.
The school held on to the investment until early this month, when
Snap shares sold for $17 each in an
IPO. Local media said the Roman
Catholic school sold two-thirds
of its shares at $17 each, to raise
$24 million.
-AP

New Database to Help Link
Educators With Researchers
The Every Student Succeeds
Act's evidence standards are intended to drive more educators
and researchers to work together
to explore problems in education
and find solutions.
That's why the University of Virginia and the nonprofit Jefferson
Education Accelerator are building a networking database to help
connect school district officials and
education entrepreneurs.
The National Education Researcher Database expects to
launch this fall with a searchable
database of profiles for more than
10,000 education researchers, including areas of expertise, contact
information, and tags that will
allow users to "follow" researchers
and get regular updates on their
work.
-SARAH D. SPARKS

Five L.A. Students Injured
During Science Experiment
Five teenage students were injured, and two were taken to the
hospital after an explosion during
an after-school science activity at a
Los Angeles-area middle school.
Glendale police and school district officials say the two hospitalized students had cuts and gashes
to their faces from a broken glass
beaker or bottle that exploded. The
other three had only scratches.
The blast occurred last week at
Eleanor J. Toll Middle School, but
the injured students came from
neighboring Herbert Hoover High
School.
-AP

SUSPENSIONS
CAN COST BILLIONS,
CALIF. STUDY FINDS

Retired teachers who mentored new educators showed promise in improving math
instruction, according to a new randomized
controlled trial.
Researchers from the Regional Educational Laboratory Central tracked nearly
80 teachers in their first three years at
11 high-poverty schools in the Aurora,
Colo., public schools from 2013-2015. Half of
the new teachers were randomly paired with
a recently retired master teacher who acted
as a mentor for two years, including classroom observations and weekly instructional
coaching.
By the end of the first year, the teachers who
participated in the program had students who
scored higher in math, equal to about an additional month of instruction compared with
teachers in the control group. They did not
show better reading performance, however,
and were not more likely to stay in the district
after two years.
-SARAH D. SPARKS
DUAL ENROLLMENT
"Earning College Credits in High School:
Options, Participation, and Outcomes for
Oregon Students"
A new study of dual-enrollment programs
finds that high-achieving white girls from
financially secure homes are more likely to
enroll in those college-credit programs than
minority, male, or low-income students.
The study focused on community college
dual-enrollment programs in Oregon, which
has a particularly large share of its students-29 percent in the graduating class of
2013-participating in programs that enable
high school students to earn simultaneous
high school and college credit.
The study, by the Regional Educational
Laboratory at Education Northwest for
the federal Institute of Education Sciences,
examined dual-enrollment participation
between 2005-06 and 2012-13. Its findings
prompted the study's authors to urge greater
attention to diversifying the programs.
-CATHERINE GEWERTZ

BULLYING
"A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of
Cyber-Victimization and Educational Outcomes
for Adolescents"
Virtual bullying can do real damage to
students' educational and social progress, according to a new meta-analysis of research in
the journal Review of Educational Research.
Across a dozen high-quality studies in different disciplines, researchers at Vanderbilt University found that for adolescents ages 12 to
17, being a victim of cyber-bullying was associated with lower academic achievement and
higher absenteeism. Moreover, cyber-bullying
was associated with significant problems for
students regardless of gender, race, or age.
-S.D.S.

IMMIGRANT STUDENTS
"Speech or Silence: Undocumented Students'
Decision to Disclose or Disguise Their
Citizenship Status in School"
Elementary school students are often
acutely aware of their immigration status-
and it affects how and when they participate
in school activities, finds a study in the American Educational Research Journal.

83%
60%

Students who were suspended in
high school are much less likely
to graduate, which, in turn, leads
to lower tax revenue and higher
taxpayer costs years later.

Suspended

Non-suspended

"The Hidden Cost of California's Harsh School Discipline"
A growing cadre of public policy researchers and lawmakers agree that school discipline
rates remain high for black and Hispanic students, and those with disabilities, but a
study from the University of California takes it a step further by connecting suspension
rates to major economic impacts.
Researchers found that suspensions lead to lower graduation rates, which in turn lead
to lower tax revenue and higher taxpayer costs for criminal justice and social services.
The authors followed a single cohort of California 10th grade students through high
school and found that those who were suspended had a 60 percent graduation rate-compared to an 83 percent graduation rate for students who were not.
The result: An economic loss of $2.7 billion over the lifetime of that single cohort of
dropouts who left school because they were suspended, researchers found.
The study calculates the financial consequences of suspending students in each California school district with more than 100 students, and for the state as a whole. The study
was done by Russell W. Rumberger, the director of the California Dropout Research Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Daniel J. Losen, the director of the
Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
In the cohort of 10th graders they analyzed-and after controlling for other predictors
of dropping out-the researchers found that 4,621 students dropped out of school because
they were suspended. Just one of those nongraduates generates $579,820 in economic
losses over their lifetime, Rumberger and Losen found.
-FRANCISCO VARA-ORTA

In the small-scale study, Rutgers University researcher Ariana Mangual Figueroa
analyzed transcripts of classroom interactions and reviews of writing samples by 5th
grade students at a New York City school
where more than 90 percent of students
are Latino and nearly half are classified as
English-language learners. She also observed
students from January through June 2014 in
classrooms where social studies and socialemotional learning were taught.
Figueroa found immigrant students who
had received their green cards were more
likely to discuss their immigration experiences in class, even to the extent of telling
the story of a border crossing. Students who
remained-or whose family remained-undocumented were reluctant to discuss immigration in class, even if they were generally
outspoken.
-COREY MITCHELL
SUBSTITUTE TEACHERS
"Budget Options for New York City"
Instead of hiring substitutes when
teachers are absent, New York City could
save $9 million a year by sending students online to complete assignments independently, according to a budget office
report.
The substitute-teacher option is among
more than 90 cost-cutting and revenue-raising ideas in the yearly report issued by the
city's Independent Budget Office this month.
The e-learning plan could be put in place in
high schools for teachers who are absent fewer
than three days in a row, according to the report. In the 2015 school year, city high school
teachers with three or fewer absences missed
a total of 96,000 days. These short-term absences make up more than 97 percent of all

classroom teacher absences.
Under current requirements, the city's department of education must assign a human
substitute to lead an absent teacher's class at
a daily rate of $155. Providing students with
online lessons in place of substitutes would require collective bargaining with the teachers'
union, according to the report. -BRENDA IASEVOLI
SCIENCE EDUCATION
"Utility-Value Intervention With Parents
Increases Students' STEM Preparation and
Career Pursuit"
When parents of high school students are
given guidance on how to talk about the importance of science and math, their children
are more likely to score well on a STEM
standardized test and, years later, pursue a
STEM career, finds a study from the University of Virginia and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In the study, published in the January
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, parents of 180 11th and 12th graders in Wisconsin were randomly assigned
to either no intervention, or to receive two
brochures and a link to a website explaining
how math and science are useful in everyday life and careers and encouraging them
to share the information with their children.
Five years later, researchers found that
students-now on average 20 years old-
whose parents received the STEM brochures
scored a statistically significant 12 percentile
points higher on the math and science portions of the ACT than their peers in the control group. They also reported taking more
STEM courses in college and were more
likely to have career aspirations in STEM.
-LIANA LOEWUS

EDUCATION WEEK | March 22, 2017 | www.edweek.org | 5

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Education Week - March 22, 2017

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