Gender Differences in Reading Achievement:  Policy Implications and Best Practices

This piece is a compilation of the field’s most relevant research related to the learning differences between boys and girls. It addresses the psychological strengths and challenges of males and females and what we, as advocates, can do to better understand different learning styles and utilize different instructional strategies to best serve our students’ needs. Gender Differences discusses such ideas as single-sex classrooms and varied reading opportunities for boys.
 

File size is 127 kb.

Gender Differences in Reading Achievement:  Policy Implications and Best Practices

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Through Different Lenses:  West Virginia School Staff and Students React to School Climate

This school climate study sampled 2,931 West Virginia students and 371 staff persons from 19 middle and high schools. Researchers found that impoverished and African-American students rated their schools significantly lower than teachers and school officials on measures of academic expectations, instruction, course-taking, counseling about education options, respect, mentoring and fairness.

Students attending high-poverty schools were more likely to report poor relationships with peers, while students in rural schools perceived their schools most positively.
 

The Education Alliance issued two major recommendations in conjunction with this research report.  The recommendations include placing greater focus on equity amongst students as part of future school reform efforts, and investigating the characteristics of schools that generate positive student experiences in order to replicate practices within lower-performing West Virginia schools.

The Education Alliance further recommended that schools and school systems address equity within their formalized plans and professional development in order to improve school climate. Forums and study groups on race, achievement and poverty were also recommended to help education officials, communities, and students better recognize and address the issue.

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Through Different Lenses:  West Virginia School Staff and Students React to School Climate

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Closing the Achievement Gap:  Best Practices in Teaching Mathematics

Recent national test results provide continuing documentation of the need to increase the focus on improving student achievement in mathematics. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) recently released the 2005 math scores, which reflected student achievement in the areas of measurement, geometry, data analysis, probability and algebra. Nationally, only 30% of eighth graders were deemed proficient. Although this reflected an increase from previous assessments, only 69% of the eighth graders nationally demonstrated a basic skills level on the NAEP assessment (Olson, 2005).

File size is 129 kb.

Closing the Achievement Gap:  Best Practices in Teaching Mathematics

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Closing the Achievement Gap:  Providing High-Quality Teachers for Low-Performing and At-Risk Schools

The impact of a highly qualified, caring teacher in every classroom has become the focal point of the continuing evolution and implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The emerging research, coupled with the legislative mandate, has made providing a highly qualified and caring teacher in each classroom a national, state and local imperative.

File size is 96 kb.

Closing the Achievement Gap:  Providing High-Quality Teachers for Low-Performing and At-Risk Schools

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Integrating Technology in the K-12 Classroom: Implications for Public Policy

West Virginia has been a leader in providing computers in the classroom and recognizing that computers can provide specialized tutoring, create group learning environments and provide enriched learning experiences for students. A survey of over 1,300 high school teachers, conducted by The Education Alliance in 2004, revealed that over 72% of the teachers felt they had adequate technology resources.

Clearly, the inclusion of technology in K-12 classrooms is important to our commitment to participate in a global economy. Having access to technology is only the first step. Many other supports must be in place to maximize the integration of computers and related technologies into student learning experiences.

File size is 97 kb.

Integrating Technology in the K-12 Classroom: Implications for Public Policy

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Bridging the Achievement Gap: The Role of Professional Development for Teachers

Improving student achievement has always been at the forefront of major educational reform movements (Dilworth & Imig, 1995; Goals 2000, 2001). The academic success of students can be significantly affected by teachers’ access and participation in quality professional development activities (Darling-Hammond, 1990; Gurskey, 2002).  This summary provides an overview of the importance of  professional development.

File size is 100 kb.

Bridging the Achievement Gap: The Role of Professional Development for Teachers

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State-Level Policy Implications for Secondary Schools

The current education climate with its focus on reform offers yet a new opportunity to transform secondary education. States must assume a major role for this transformation effort to be successful. Preliminary results from initiatives in several states suggest that states can make a difference. This summary provides an overview of these challenges and lists some policy implications.
 

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A Summary of Research on Using Student Voice in School Improvement Planning

Who are the most important people left out of the education process? Students! We are not talking about students’ involvement in helping select lunch menu items or to determine what should be sold in the school’s bookstore. Instead, we are looking at how the voice of students’ can help educators, legislators, parents and communities understand the complexities of our education system and help explain, in the student’s view, why we have achievement gaps. This is a precursor research summary to The Education Alliance’s proactive initiative in the student voice pilot research project to illustrate why the Alliance’s student voice research project is so critical and important to West Virginia.

File size is 75 kb.

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A Focus on Rural Schools

Despite the national attention on improving student achievement emerging from the No Child Left Behind Act, many rural schools continue to face a host of challenges. Poverty, insufficient financing, isolation, an inadequate pool of qualified teachers, and high turnover among teachers and administrators continue to be major issues (Arnold 2000). Given this context, Beeson and Strange (2003) rank West Virginia’s status on rural education issues as being crucially important to its children’s education.

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Policy Implications for Teacher Quality, Curriculum and Teacher Expectations

A day rarely passes without media exposure to some aspect of what is generally referred to as the “achievement gap,” a loosely-used term referring to differences in achievement among different racial, ethnic and socioeconomic student subgroups. The passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation and the rise to prominence of the standards-based reform movement, with their inherent accountability and testing requirements, have raised the public discussion and concern about achievement gap issues to a new high. In reality, concern for the achievement gap has a long history. Today, policy leaders have access to more than 30 years of data that can be used to educate and inform themselves, as well as education’s stakeholders, about the issue.

File size is 75 kb.

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