McRel Rural E-News, May 2008

1. Edge seen for Chicago charter high schools Education Week (Subscription Required)
A new report from the RAND Corporation, Mathematica, and Florida State University finds that Chicago students attending a charter high school were 7 percent more likely to graduate, and 11 percent more likely to attend college than students enrolled in regular public schools. The study is the first in the nation to track high school outcomes for charter school students.

2. Report: Low grad rates in US cities The Boston Globe
Recent research shows that the nation's largest cities tend to have the lowest graduation rates - even below 50 percent. Students in suburban and rural public high school are much more likely to graduate.

3. Girls' gains have not cost boys, report says The New York Times
A new report from The American Association of University Women suggests that, although girls continue to graduate from high school and attend college at a higher rate than boys, the achievement gap between different races, ethnicities, and income levels is far more significant than the disparity between boys and girls.

4. Research shows graduation tests are not helpful Minnesota Public Radio
A new study scheduled to be published in the journals of Educational Policy and Sociology of Education suggests that exit exams do not work the way they are intended. In order to provide any level of benefit to learning or future job prospects, exit exams should be more difficult to provide a more accurate measure of performance. But making the exams more difficult will also result in a much lower graduation rate for students.

5. McREL 2008 Summer Professional Development Translate research into results
Come to McREL this summer for professional development that makes a difference. Choose from among sessions for both teachers and leaders, held in our Denver facilities.

6. Classroom Instruction that Works
June 9-11, 2008
This 3-day workshop describes nine categories of effective instructional strategies and shows how to implement them in the classroom. Workshop content is based on the best-selling Classroom Instruction that Works, one of the most widely-used professional development manuals in education today.

7. McREL Power Walkthrough Seminar & Software
June 12-13, 2008
During this 2-day seminar, you'll gain a practical understanding of the strategies in Classroom Instruction that Works, why they are so powerful in student learning, and how to identify their use in classrooms. Learn how to use McREL's Power Walkthrough software on your hand-held device to observe, evaluate, and record classroom observations and coach your teachers to higher levels of performance.

8. Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works
June 16-18, 2008
This 3-day workshop explores ways to use technology with the nine research-based instructional strategies to enhance student achievement using your existing lesson plans.

9. Designing Effective Science Lessons: Building the Framework
June 23-24, 2008
In this 2-day workshop, science teachers will be introduced to McREL's Designing Effective Science Lessons framework to learn how to make the most out of their science lessons.

10. Balanced Leadership Institutes
Gain knowledge and practical skills from McREL's research, reported in the ASCD publication School Leadership that Works, to guide your school to higher levels of performance and student achievement. Attend one or all four in a series of 2-day institutes.

11. Designing Effective Science Lessons: Five-day Institute
July 7-11, 2008
Science teachers will learn how to focus on the right content, deepen students' understanding of science, engage students, and encourage high-order thinking.

12. Classroom Instruction That Works with English Language Learners Workshops
July 15-16, 2008
Based on our popular book of the same title, this 2-day workshop applies the nine categories of research-based instructional strategies to five stages of language acquisition. Learn how to successfully engage and raise the achievement of English-language learners in mainstream classrooms.

13. Designing a School or District Curriculum Audit in Science
August 4-5, 2008
Develop a step-by-step process for creating an alignment matrix, mapping assessments to standards, identifying gaps in instruction and achievement, and evaluating a school or district curriculum framework for appropriateness.

14. Doing the Right Things Right in Mathematics
August 7-8, 2008
Learn practical, research-based strategies for differentiating instruction, creating classrooms that build on students' prior knowledge, and motivating students to learn.

REPORT ROUNDUP

15. Turning Around Chronically Low-Performing Schools
What Works Clearinghouse
This guide summarizes research on turnaround practices, case studies of seemingly effective schools, and co-relational studies and longitudinal studies of patterns of school improvement. Educators can find practical, research-based advice for implementing reform efforts to dramatically improve student achievement in chronically low-performing schools.

16. Implementation Study of Smaller Learning Communities
U.S. Department of Education
This final report from the U.S. Department of Education evaluates the implementation of the law that provides funding for the Smaller Learning Communities (SLC) program. Although implementation of SLCs took a variety of forms, the primary goal of each of the SLCs studied was to make high school more personalized for all students. Of the SLCs studied, most were successful in involving community members, but most failed to provide adequate professional development for teachers to implement the programs.

17. School Funding's Tragic Flaw
Center on Reinventing Public Education
This report finds that, despite the best of intentions, federal, state, and local funding formulas tend to provide more money to affluent students and schools than to their struggling neighbors. The report suggests strategies to help fix this disparity in funding.

18. A Mission of The Heart: Leaders in High-Needs Districts Talk about What It Takes to Transform a School
Public Agenda
This report evaluates feedback from focus groups with principals in high-needs school districts and interviews with superintendents and other education officials. The report finds that principals can often be classified as "Transformers" or "Copers." Transformers have a can-do attitude and a clear vision for what their school might be. Copers deal with the day-to-day challenges of running a school, without a vision for the future.

19. Attrition of Public School Mathematics and Science Teachers
National Center for Education Statistics
This report measured trends in the attrition of public school mathematics and science teachers over 16 years. The report found that the attrition rate for mathematics and science teachers has not changed substantially, even though teacher attrition in other fields did increase. When asked about reasons for leaving the teaching profession, mathematics and science teachers placed more emphasis on salary and benefits than did other teachers leaving the profession.

20. Reading First Impact Study: Interim Report
National Center for Education Statistics
This interim report provides preliminary findings from an evaluation of the Reading First program. The analysis shows that Reading First has had a positive impact on class time spent on reading instruction. Unfortunately, Reading First did not have a significant impact on reading comprehension for students.

21. Waiting to Be Won Over
Education Sector
A recent survey asked teachers what they do and about reform proposals they are experiencing. Some of the key findings of this report are: 75 percent of teachers report that burned-out teachers stay in the profession, rather than finding a new career; only 26 percent say that their evaluations are useful and effective; fewer teachers support pay-for-performance plans than did five years ago; and teachers are more supportive of unions now than five years ago.

22. Report: Asian American Students Don't Benefit From No Child Left Behind Act-Major Reforms Needed
Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF)
A new report suggests that the NCLB classification of Asian students might be masking the struggle of certain groups of Asian Americans. One of the recommendations made in the report is to use more local measurements of minority students when determining the need for English-language learner support, rather than statewide averages.

NEW FROM McREL

23. McREL Quarterly Trend Tracker Catalog (Spring 2008, Quarterly Summary)
The future is not predictable, but it is possible to plan and take action today to respond to whatever lies ahead. We make decisions every day based on our perceptions of what will happen tomorrow, next month, or years from now-and our decisions are made stronger by better imagining the possibilities of the future. In 2003, McREL initiated a scenario planning process in order to prepare for the uncertain future of education. This summary points out recent news and events and how they track with the scenarios McREL developed.

24. Noteworthy Perspectives: School Improvement
Over the past five years, McREL staff members have published more than 100 articles describing what we know from four decades of research on effective schools as well as years of practical experience working to help educators raise student performance: that improving schools is both a "science" and an "art." This idea is the common thread running through this unique issue of Noteworthy Perspectives, which brings together several previously published articles on school improvement from McREL.

25. CITW Desktop Background/Wallpaper
This high-quality image is an attractive reminder of the nine categories of instruction that McREL's research has shown to improve student achievement. Use this free wallpaper to quickly access the Classroom Instruction That Works strategies!

26. Changing Schools, Winter 2008-Creating Purposeful Communities
This issue of McREL's magazine Changing Schools examines the importance of creating purposeful communities. Read about the role of principal autonomy in a purposeful community, an example of a purposeful community in action at a middle school, a lesson plan to improve writing at any grade level, characteristics of purposeful communities, and how technology is changing our sense of community.