Join The Education Conversation With Tell Me More

Tell Me More will host a live radio broadcast and Twitter Education Forum on October 10th. Host Michel Martin will discuss the roles of teachers, parents, government, business —- and of course, social media. To do that, Martin wants to start the conversation now with listeners via Twitter. Join Tell Me More on Twitter today by using #npredchat.

Copyright © 2012 National Public Radio. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

And now, a programming note. On Wednesday, October 10th, NPR’s TELL ME MORE will host a live radio broadcast and Twitter education forum focusing on issues facing our nation’s schools. Leading up to the forum, we’re having a dialog with you on Twitter. We’ve invited educators, parents, reporters and everybody else to join in via Twitter using hash tag #NPREdChat. That’s hash tag #NPREdChat and we’re asking what role teachers, parents, the government and private sectors should be playing in education reform. Tweet your thoughts. TELL ME MORE’s Twitter education forum is being produced in partnership with State Impact Florida at member station WLRN in Miami.

To learn more, go to NPR.org, click on the Program guide and go to TELL ME MORE.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MARTIN: Up next, you might know singer/songwriter, Nelly Furtado, for her hip-hop inspired danceable tracks, but her new album takes things a little deeper.

NELLY FURTADO: There’s a lot of fun on the record. There’s a lot of big beats, a lot of adrenaline, but at the same time, there’s this – yes. There is a spiritual thread running through the record more than any of my albums.

MARTIN: The Grammy winner talks about her new album, “The Spirit Indestructible.” That’s ahead on TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I’m Michel Martin.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MARTIN: After taking a hard line on issues like immigration during the Republican primaries, nominee Mitt Romney has spent the week reaching out to Hispanic voters.

MITT ROMNEY: We’re not going to round up 12 million people – that includes the kids and the parents – and have everyone deported.

MARTIN: Persuasive or not so much? The Barber Shop guys weigh in on this and other news of the week next time on TELL ME MORE.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Copyright © 2012 National Public Radio. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR’s prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio.

View the original article here

via WordPress http://collegeinfocus.com/join-the-education-conversation-with-tell-me-more/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=join-the-education-conversation-with-tell-me-more

Do Scores Go Up When Teachers Return Bonuses?

David Franklin/iStockphoto.com

An incentive system that gave bonuses to teachers upfront, with the threat of having to give the money back if student performance didn’t improve, proved effective in one study.

In Chicago, parents were fuming over a weeklong strike by teachers. Around the rest of the country, in the face of growing evidence that many U.S. students are falling behind, administrators have tried to devise different ways to motivate teachers.

Among the contentious issues is whether teachers should be held accountable for their students’ performance on standardized tests. Such efforts have produced enormous conflicts between school districts and teachers. In many parts of the country, administrators and teachers have fought one another to a standstill.

That’s where a novel social science study may have the potential to shift the conversation.

Economist John List at the University of Chicago recently conducted an unusual field experiment in Chicago Heights, a school district near Chicago. List and his colleagues found a struggling school district: Only 64 percent of students met minimum state requirements on achievement tests. Nearly all the kids qualified for free or reduced-price school lunches, a measure of straitened socio-economic conditions.

List and his colleagues, Roland G. Fryer, Steven Levitt and Sally Sadoff, divided 150 teachers into three groups. One group got no incentive; they just went about their school year as usual. A second group was promised a bonus if their students did well at math.

The third group is where the psychology came in: The teachers were given a bonus of $4,000 upfront — but it had a catch. If student math performance didn’t improve, teachers had to sign a contract promising to return some or all of the money.

Other U.S. studies have found limited evidence that traditional bonuses do much to shift student scores.

List said the idea of giving some teachers money upfront — with the threat of taking it away later — builds on a well-known psychological principle: “What we tried to capitalize on in this particular study was a concept called loss aversion,” he said. “Once we have something in our possession, we feel it would be really, really painful to have to give it up.”

Loss aversion has been shown to be a powerful motivator in many business settings, but List said this was the first rigorous test of the principle in an educational setting. The idea, he said, was that by giving teachers the money upfront, they might work harder to keep the money at the end of the year than they would if the money had been promised as a traditional bonus.

In line with earlier work, List and his colleagues found that students of teachers who received the traditional bonus performed no better than students of teachers who received no incentive at all. But List found that students of teachers who were given the bonus upfront showed significant improvement in math test scores.

“What we found is strong evidence in favor of loss aversion,” he said. “Teachers who were paid in advance and [were] asked to give the money back if their students did not perform — their [students'] test scores were actually out of the roof: two to three times higher than the gains of the teachers in the traditional bonus group.”

The difference in test scores produced by the incentive system was about the same as that detected in earlier studies that measured differences in student performance when kids were taught by great teachers rather than average teachers. Effectively, List said, the way the incentive was constructed turned average teachers into great teachers.

List said he thinks that the incentive system motivated teachers to be extra vigilant with underperforming students. If Johnny didn’t get a concept, a teacher stuck with Johnny — and the concept — until the kid got it.

There are several caveats to keep in mind before anyone can talk about implementing the bonus structure widely, List said. Among them: The study needs replication. It remains to be seen whether the gains in student performance are long-lasting, and whether the same increases in student performance can be found in subjects other than math.

List said future studies might also tweak the incentive system: Teachers may be asked to return the money for underperformance periodically, rather than all at once at the end of the year. Prior studies involving loss aversion have found that the technique is more effective when people feel the threat of periodic and regular losses.

But there’s another catch: List warned that the bonus system needed buy-in from teachers. Teaching isn’t like making widgets; it requires motivation and passion. If teachers feel they are being manipulated rather than encouraged to improve their performance, they could end up looking for other lines of work.

View the original article here

via WordPress http://collegeinfocus.com/do-scores-go-up-when-teachers-return-bonuses/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=do-scores-go-up-when-teachers-return-bonuses

Colleges Offer Incoming Freshmen a Summer ‘Bridge’

On a placement test in his senior year of high school, Ruben Ortiz found out he was not ready for college-level math. His counselor suggested a summer “bridge” program at El Paso Community College to get up to speed.

The five-week program helped Mr. Ortiz move up a level in math and avoid a remedial course in the fall. It also sold him on the college. Two years later, the 21-year-old, first-generation college student is about to complete his associate degree in computer engineering and transfer to the University of Texas at El Paso.

“It helped with the transition from high school to college—getting to know the college, the admissions process, financial aid,” said Mr. Ortiz, who later became a mentor in the program, offering the same kind of advice that he received as an incoming student. Without the summer bridge program, he said, he might have felt more…

Already have an account? Please login.

View the original article here

via WordPress http://collegeinfocus.com/colleges-offer-incoming-freshmen-a-summer-bridge/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=colleges-offer-incoming-freshmen-a-summer-bridge

Colostomy Pouch One-Piece System 11-1/4 Inch 3/4 to 1-3/4 Inch Stoma Drainable Convex, Trim To Fit

Math Commentary Doesn’t Add Up

William Schmidt claims his research “found an overlap of roughly 90 percent between the common math standards and the A+ [TIMSS high achievers] standards” ( “Seizing the Moment for Mathematics,” July 18, 2012). Unfortunately, his own data, which can be found in a PowerPoint presentation at…

Already have an account? Please login.

View the original article here

via WordPress http://collegeinfocus.com/math-commentary-doesnt-add-up/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=math-commentary-doesnt-add-up

High Achievers

Even among high schools with a demographic mix that suggests students are likely to succeed in mathematics, there is striking school-to-school variation in the share of top-achieving math students, according to a study .

Already have an account? Please login.

View the original article here

via WordPress http://collegeinfocus.com/high-achievers/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=high-achievers

ACT Finds Most Students Still Not Ready for College

Student performance on the ACT essentially held steady this year, with slight improvement shown in the math and science parts of the college-entrance exam.

Still, 60 percent of the class of 2012 that took the test failed to meet benchmarks in two of the four subjects tested, putting them in jeopardy of failing in their pursuit of a college degree and careers.

The Condition of College and Career Readiness 2012 , released today by the Iowa City, Iowa-based nonprofit testing organization ACT Inc., includes performance information from students in the spring graduating class who took the ACT as sophomores, juniors, or seniors. This year, 1.67 million seniors or 52 percent of the U.S. graduating…

Already have an account? Please login.

View the original article here

via WordPress http://collegeinfocus.com/act-finds-most-students-still-not-ready-for-college/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=act-finds-most-students-still-not-ready-for-college