Tag: Teacher diversity

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Latest Edu-Reads

“the decline [in unionization] remains virtually unchanged through Republican and Democratic presidential administrations, dramatic alterations in the composition of Congress and statehouses, and amid the working lives of an entire generation of Americans.” That’s Mike Antonucci on the long-term decline of unionism.

A new research paper from Dongwoo Kim, Cory Koedel, and P. Brett Xiang finds that, “a 1% (of salaries) increase in the annual required pension contribution corresponds to a decrease in total teacher salary expenditures of 0.24%.”

A new Rand study finds that NYC’s Community Schools program boosted student attendance, credit accumulation, graduation rates, and math achievement. However, the program costs roughly $200 million a year, prompting Jennifer Jennings, a professor of sociology at Princeton University, to ask, “The question is really: Did it work better than other things that cost similar amounts of money or with fewer public dollars?”

Are district accountability systems duplicative of state efforts, or are they providing a unique contribution? Denver is about to find out.

LaVonia Abavana, a Camden parent, talks about navigating her school choice options with a special-needs child.

A study by Elaine M. Allensworth and Kallie Clark on graduates of Chicago public high schools found that high school GPAs were much more predictive than ACT scores of the students’ probability of graduating from college.

Three community colleges in Ohio were able to double their three-year graduation rates and increase their transfers to four-year colleges by 50 percent, thanks to an effort to replicate the successful CUNY ASAP program.

How can the NFL diversify its head coaching ranks?

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman 

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Latest Edu-Reads

The 13th annual CALDER conference is coming up in February. The agenda is here. It’s open to all who can make it in D.C. (plus free breakfast and lunch!), or there’s a webinar option for those who prefer to follow along remotely.

EdTrust has an important report looking at what’s driving inequities in access to advanced courses. They find that Black and Hispanic students perform well when given opportunities, but a lack of seats, and inequitable distribution in those seats, deny them equal opportunities. The report also comes with a nifty data tool to see how your state is doing.

Rachel Canter talks to Jennifer Schiess on the educational progress in Mississippi.

Mike Antonucci looks at how California school districts, “are approaching financial crisis even as California increased education expenditures by extraordinary amounts — about 50 percent in the last five years.”

“One of the most consistent findings in education research” is that Master’s degrees don’t make people better teachers. And yet we continue to reward teachers for earning Master’s degrees. Grace Gedye asks why, and Ben Miller looks at implications for the debt burdens we’re placing on teachers. And remember, these same useless Master’s degrees are also distorting the teacher “wage gap” data that get tossed around ad nauseam.

Taylor Swaak dives into a new report showing that 41 percent of New York City schools don’t represent their neighboring district’s student demographics.

A new policy brief by Melanie Rucinski and Joshua Goodman finds, “the lack of diversity in Massachusetts’ teacher workforce largely stems from early stages of the teacher development pipeline. Licensure exam takers and passers are substantially less diverse than the college-enrolled population, but among those who pass the exam there are few racial differences in rates of initial teaching employment or retention.” Listen to Rucinski talk about the paper on the latest Education Next podcast.

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman 

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Latest Edu-Reads

I’m biased, but I enjoyed Greg Richmond’s interview with Andy Rotherham. It’s short, but there are lots of good nuggets in there, including this one:

My friends who are doctors and nurses, nobody is attacking them for indifference to housing or education policy. Only in education policy is focusing on a single issue as one lever for change considered a problem.

Kate Rabinowitz and Laura Meckler take a look at teacher diversity for The Washington Post. The article also includes interactive graphics that allow you to look up how teacher diversity compares to student diversity in your local school district.

“Instructions to suppress stereotypes often have the opposite effect, and prejudice reduction programs are much more effective when people are already open-minded, altruistic, and concerned about their prejudices to begin with.” That’s from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic reviewing the academic literature on implicit bias training.

Katrina Boone on how and why, “Native parents and activists saw school choice as a way to pursue justice and cultural revitalization.”

Which states have the best (and worst) teacher retirement plans? I take a look at one simple way to answer that question.

Washington schools chief Chris Reykdal is trying to address disparities in access to college-level coursework by pushing for a bill that would require school districts, colleges, and universities to cover the cost of dual credit for high school students.

Gentrification is a growing problem in all of our urban cities, right? Well, no. Here’s Will Stancil correcting the record:

Research has also tended to show that no matter how you measure gentrification in the urban core, it’s almost always more common to find neighborhoods afflicted by intensifying poverty. Out of the fifty biggest American regions, forty-four have core cities where the population in poverty has grown faster than the overall population since 2000. The only exceptions are New York City, Los Angeles, D.C., New Orleans, Atlanta, and Providence.

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman

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Eduwonk Is Fishing… Plus Teacher Turnover, Diversity, Benefits, TEACH Grants, and the Peter Principle

Andy Rotherham has gone fishin’ for the summer, but in the meantime he’s given me the keys to the blog. I can’t match his wit or his knowledge of fishing, but I’ll try to keep it lively around here. Here’s what I’ve been reading lately:

New JOLTS data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show, once again, that public education has some of the lowest turnover rates of any sector in our economy.

Kudos to NPR for sticking with this story on TEACH Grants.

Max Marchitello and Dr. Liso Grillo on how Howard University identifies diverse teacher candidates.

Cass Sunstein argues high school students applying to college are subject to excessive or unnecessary “sludge.”

Paul Bruno with data on health care costs in California schools. Short version: They’re rising much faster than other types of education spending, especially teacher salaries. Read the full report here or EdSource op-ed here.

Speaking of benefits, PDK published a good piece recently from James Shuls, Colin Hitt, and Robert Costrell on how teacher pension plans can exacerbate school finance inequities.

As we head into campaign season, Conor Williams asks what’s the best way to spend billions of dollars of new money to improve outcomes for low-income students. Is it teacher salary increases, or something else?

Alex Tabarrok on a new study on the “Peter Principle,” the idea that people keep getting promoted up the ladder until they’re no longer good at their job. There are implications here for the education field, particularly in how to think about keeping great teachers in the classroom.

Mocktail bars?

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman