This annotated bibliography is reformatted and customized by the Center for Positive Practices. Some of the authors featured on this page include Stephanie Cawthon, Richard A. Walter, Judith Browne Dianis, Mary Beth Sampson, John H. Jackson, Randall S. Vesely, Edgar P. Yoder, Rachel Leppo, Alan R. Dennis, and Brenda Turgeon.
(2013). Motivating Children to Develop Their Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Talent, Parenting for High Potential. Motivation in mathematics and science appears to be more important to STEM occupational choice than ability. Using the expectancy value model, parents may be able to recognize potential barriers to children's selection of a STEM occupation and take actions to help facilitate talent development. These are especially important for parents of elementary school-aged children because the current climate of high-stakes testing discourages the teaching of science in elementary school. The components of the expectancy value model are discussed in this article: self-efficacy; attainment value; utility value; and interest-enjoyment value, while reducing the perception of cost. When expectancy-value is increased, children will be more motivated for science and more likely to plan to pursue those career options. [More] Descriptors: Student Motivation, STEM Education, Science Careers, Elementary School Students
(2013). The Effect of Capstone Cooperative Education Experiences, and Related Factors, on Career and Technical Education Secondary Student Summative Assessment Scores, Career and Technical Education Research. Research has discussed the benefits of cooperative education experiences for secondary career and technical education students. Yet, in this era of high stakes testing and program accountability, the amount of time that students are permitted to participate in cooperative education has diminished, fearing that time spent out of the classroom would result in lower test scores. Unfortunately, there is little empirical evidence to suggest a relationship between cooperative education and performance on summative assessments. This baseline study of secondary career and technical education students in Pennsylvania indicated that students who participated in capstone cooperative education experiences scored significantly higher on summative assessments, as measured by NOCTI scores, than those students who did not participate. Additionally, this study determined that student GPA, IEP status, length of time on co-op or quality of Training Plan could not significantly account for any established mean differences. [More] Descriptors: Cooperative Education, Career Education, Technical Education, Secondary School Students
(2013). Portraits of Promise: Voices of Successful Immigrant Students. Youth Development and Education, Harvard Education Press. By 2040, more than 30 percent of students in the United States will be immigrants or the children of immigrants. What factors can help these young people thrive in school, despite the many obstacles they face? And how can school staff best support immigrant students academic and personal success? In "Portraits of Promise," educators hear from the ultimate experts successful newcomer students. Drawing on the students' own stories, the book highlights the kinds of support and resources that help students engage positively with school culture, establish supportive peer networks, form strong bonds with teachers, manage competing expectations from home and school, and navigate the challenges of high-stakes testing and the college application process. An index is included. [Foreword by Carola Suárez-Orozco.] [More] Descriptors: Immigrants, Students, Student Development, Academic Achievement
(2016). "Permission to Speak": A Postcolonial View on Racialized Bodies and PE in the Current Context of Globalization, Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport. The current neoliberal context of schools presents difficult challenges in addressing persistent issues of social inequalities. In this article, first, I argue that because of today's market-driven education, the rise of fitness testing in school physical education (PE) can be seriously detrimental to young people in general and to ethnic-minority young people's embodied identity in particular. Second, I explain how the racialization process circulated by the body-at-risk discourse, sustained by the media, and reproduced by high-stakes testing in PE forces ethnic-minority young people to construct their identities through White eyes, which alienates them from a consciousness of their own identity. Third, I explore the possible uses and pitfalls of Spivak's theoretical notion of "strategic essentialism" to put forward strategies to build a positive image of the "other" while attempting to avoid the erasure of difference. Fourth, I conclude the article by suggesting how Spivak's notion of strategic essentialism can be useful in rethinking current PE fitness practices. [More] Descriptors: Global Approach, Physical Education, Neoliberalism, Physical Fitness
(2015). High-Stakes Testing Hasn't Brought Education Gains, Phi Delta Kappan. The only thing that more testing will tell us is what we already know: The schools that disadvantaged children attend are not being given the supports necessary to produce achievement gains. Students cannot be tested out of poverty, and while NCLB did take us a step forward by requiring schools to produce evidence that students were learning, it took us several steps backward when that evidence was reduced to how well a student performed on a standardized test. Why not give parents the right to opt out of tests when they realize states have not done the work of guaranteeing their children are being adequately prepared? [More] Descriptors: High Stakes Tests, Achievement Gains, Evidence, Standardized Tests
(2013). Reform before NCLB, Phi Delta Kappan. The author compared NCLB-prompted standards-based reforms with earlier reforms and found that earlier manifestations of standards-based reforms may have been more productive and constructive. NCLB, with its emphasis on accountability through high-stakes testing, has produced many perverse results alongside documented achievement gains, the author said. She reasons that the earlier attempts at standards-based reform and accountability were more closely aligned with the theoretical vision of standards-based reform than later manifestations codified under NCLB, which has moved us away from school and teacher discretion, and placed less emphasis on the need for teacher buy-in. Instead, rewards and sanctions have become the primary mechanism for fostering change. [More] Descriptors: Educational Change, Federal Legislation, Educational Legislation, Academic Standards
(2013). Play for Performance: Using Computer Games to Improve Motivation and Test-Taking Performance, Journal of Information Systems Education. The importance of testing, especially certification and high-stakes testing, has increased substantially over the past decade. Building on the "serious gaming" literature and the psychology "priming" literature, we developed a computer game designed to improve test-taking performance using psychological priming. The game primed the concept of achievement to increase an individual's expectation of success and motivation. Our results show that individuals who took a test immediately after playing the game significantly outperformed those who played a placebo computer game designed to have no effect. The effect size was medium (0.63). We believe that these results have important implications for information system education, including improving individual test-taking performance, identifying ways to develop information systems topic-specific games, and the need for more research to better understand how and why such games influence performance. [More] Descriptors: Computer Games, Student Motivation, Test Wiseness, Academic Achievement
(2009). Deconstructing the NCLB Impact on the Instructional Goals and Practices of Urban School Teachers: A Case Study, Journal of Inquiry and Action in Education. With the enactment of the NCLB mandates, emphasis on high-stakes testing became more prevalent than ever. Some argue that high-stakes tests can be a driving force behind fundamental change in schools. Whether or not this type of test-driven change leads to school improvement is an empirical question. What we do know is that high-stake testing can affect teachers' disposition of and their dedication to the teaching profession if what they accomplish at school is measured only in test scores. Drawing on data collected over the course of three academic years, this case study examines the extent to which the institutional pressure resulting from NCLB affected two urban teachers' teaching practices. To this end, this study analyzes various positions and decisions taken by these teachers to determine in what way they succumbed to and/or resisted the institutional pressure of standardized tests, and the implication this has for student learning. [More] Descriptors: Educational Legislation, Federal Legislation, Educational Objectives, Educational Practices
(2013). The Impact of Teasing and Bullying on Schoolwide Academic Performance, Journal of Applied School Psychology. Hierarchical regression analyses conducted at the school level found that the perceived prevalence of teasing and bullying was predictive of schoolwide passing rates on state-mandated achievement testing used to meet No Child Left Behind requirements. These findings could not be attributed to the proportion of minority students in the school, student poverty, school size, or personal victimization, which were statistically controlled for. Measures of the prevalence of teasing and bullying were obtained from a statewide survey of 7,304 ninth-grade students and 2,918 teachers aggregated into school-level scores for 284 Virginia high schools. These results support the need for greater attention to the effect of teasing and bullying on high school student performance on high-stakes testing. [More] Descriptors: Bullying, Academic Achievement, Achievement Tests, Predictive Validity
(2013). Ohio's At-Risk Student Population: A Decade of Rising Risk, Educational Considerations. Educators face increasing demands to raise student achievement, to improve classroom instruction, and to demonstrate accountability in an environment of high stakes testing. However, meeting these demands is challenging in the face of numerous risk factors that jeopardize the academic success of elementary and secondary students. To that end, the identification of risk factors is an important first step in addressing these demands. This study took a longitudinal approach to the analysis, comparing the incidence of at-risk students in Ohio between the 2000-2001 and 2010-2011 school years utilizing a research-based typology of risk factors to ensure consistency over time. The article begins with a brief literature review on the definition and identification of student risk factors. In the second section, research methods and data sources are described while the third presents results of the statistical analysis. The article closes with a summary of findings and conclusions. [More] Descriptors: Academic Achievement, At Risk Students, Risk, Statistical Analysis
(2013). Assessment Accommodations on Tests of Academic Achievement for Students Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing: A Qualitative Meta-Analysis of the Research Literature, Grantee Submission. The authors conducted a qualitative meta-analysis of the research on assessment accommodations for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. There were 16 identified studies that analyzed the impact of factors related to student performance on academic assessments across different educational settings, content areas, and types of assessment accommodations. The meta-analysis found that the results of analyses of group effects of accommodated versus unaccommodated test formats are often not significant, test-level factors exist that can affect how students perceive the assessments, and differences exist in how test items function across different conditions. Student-level factors, including educational context and academic proficiency, influence accommodations' role in assessment processes. The results of this analysis highlight the complexity of and intersections between student-level factors, test-level factors, and larger policy contexts. Findings are discussed within the context of larger changes in academic assessment, including computer-based administration and high-stakes testing. [More] [More] Descriptors: Testing Accommodations, Academic Achievement, Deafness, Hearing Impairments
(2013). The Influence of Prior Knowledge, University Coursework, and Field Experience on Primary Preservice Teachers' Use of Reading Comprehension Strategies in a Year-Long, Field-Based Teacher Education Program, Literacy Research and Instruction. This descriptive study employed mixed methods to explore preservice teachers' initial knowledge and subsequent use of explicitly taught reading comprehension strategies in primary grade classrooms during a year-long, field-based teacher preparation program. Self-Knowledge Rating Surveys, Strategy Multiple-Choice Tests, strategy logs, lesson plans, self-evaluations, mentor teacher/university liaison evaluations, and interviews with university liaisons comprised data sources. Research questions addressed what reading comprehension strategies primary preservice teachers self-reported they knew; what they demonstrated they actually knew via testing and implementation; and how the self-reports, test results, and implementation compared. Results indicated that neither knowledge nor prior exposure to research-based comprehension strategies transferred into teaching when strong external influences that did not support strategy use such as scripted programs, district policies, high stakes testing environments, and public school mentor teachers' examples of teaching were present. [More] Descriptors: Prior Learning, Preservice Teachers, Courses, Field Experience Programs
(2013). All Reading Tests Are Not Created Equal: A Comparison of the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) and the Gray Oral Reading Test-4 (GORT-4), Texas Journal of Literacy Education. This exploratory study investigated how reading comprehension was conceptualized on the new high-stakes test, the 2011-2012 State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR). Specifically, comprehension, rate, and accuracy scores on the Gray Oral Reading Test 4 (GORT-4) from a group of struggling, low-SES, Hispanic middle school students (n = 59) were set as predictor variables to examine possible relationships with the STAAR. Initial bivariate correlations showed a weak relationship between GORT-4 predictor variables (comprehension, rate, accuracy) and STAAR ELA scores. Moreover, the overall regression model was not a good fit, with the linear combination of the GORT-4 components of comprehension, rate, and accuracy accounting for only 3.5 % of the variance in STAAR scores. The weak relationship between STAAR test results and the GORT-4 is examined in light of the current research on high-stakes testing, particularly for the at-risk population studied. [More] Descriptors: Reading Tests, Reading Comprehension, High Stakes Tests, Oral Reading
(2013). A District Wellness Policy: The Gap between Policy and Practice, Journal of Education and Learning. This article examines the gap between a federally-mandated wellness policy and its practice in U.S. schools. To address the problem of childhood obesity, the United States government requires school districts to develop a District Wellness Policy (DWP) that promotes a healthy school environment, healthy food choices, nutrition education, and physical education. This cross-sectional study describes the policy interpretation process and the degree to which the policy has been implemented. Teacher survey results show the emphasis of the DWP is on creating a healthy environment but lacks the health, nutrition, and physical education components called for by the policy. Lack of funding, time constraints, high-stakes testing, and No Child Left Behind combined to undermine teachers in the policy's implementation. Policies are only as effective as the funding and support provided; therefore, it is crucial for district and school staff to prioritize wellness allowing students to learn and practice habits that support lifelong health. [More] Descriptors: Obesity, Educational Policy, Educational Legislation, Federal Legislation
(2009). Standards-Based Differentiation: Identifying the Concept of Multiple Intelligence for Use with Students with Disabilities, TEACHING Exceptional Children Plus. With evolving eras in special education, an extreme concentration has been placed on accountability through high-stakes testing. In the past, only test scores of general education students were analyzed in most accountability efforts. Current laws, however, have extended accountability measures not only to include those students served in special education, but also to report their scores alongside their non-disabled peers. With the increased focus on accountability through high-stakes testing, educators are searching for more effective means to educate students who are participating in special education programs. Differentiation has become a means to educate all spectrums of students with disabilities. What is not evident, however, are the various methods used to differentiate lessons. It is proposed that educators consider multiple intelligences when differentiating for their students who require alternative methods of instruction. By incorporating different learning styles into daily plans, it is believed that all students will be reached academically. [More] Descriptors: Multiple Intelligences, Disabilities, High Stakes Tests, Accountability