Suchergebnisse

Abstract
This paper shows that austerity spending cuts harmed student performance in standardised national tests. To identify this relationship, we use cross-municipality variation in the timing of eligibility for the Italian Domestic Stability Pact as an exogenous shifter of local public spending. We then compare test scores for students that were from the same municipality, but who were exposed to different levels of austerity cuts based on their birth year. Combining administrative data on public spending and test scores with an instrumental variable model, we show that the test score impact from austerity spending cuts is around 5.1% of a standard deviation in math and 4.6% in reading. These effects are more pronounced for children with limited resources at home. We provide suggestive evidence that school budget cuts account for most of the observed test score impact.

The majority of a school system's budget is spent on personnel. In order to use this tremendous amount of money efficiently it is important educators understand the impact different spending priorities, specifically total per-pupil expenditures, teacher salary, principal salary, pupil/teacher ratio, and pupil/support personnel ratio have on student achievement and how these inputs are moderated by a district's population density and wealth. Spending data from all the school divisions in Virginia were examined using public spending data from the Virginia Department of Education, and population density and wealth statistics from the Office of Budget Management, US Census Bureau, and Commonwealth of Virginia Commission on Local Government. Bivariate correlations and linear regression slopes were examined to determine the impact of the main effects and multiple linear regression model building was used to examine how a district's wealth and population density moderate the effects of per-pupil expenditures, teacher salary, principal salary, pupil/teacher ratio and pupil/support personnel ratio. Teacher salary proved significant for both math and reading scores while principal salary was significant for math scores only. None of the other main effects had a significant impact on student achievement. A division's status as "rural" by itself proved to be correlated with both reading and math scores. Additionally, wealth by itself was a statistically and practically significant predictor of student achievement regardless of the measurement used highlighting the problems posed for education by economic inequality. When wealth was measured using either median household income or fiscal stress the correlation with student achievement was twice that of composite index indicating composite index may not be the best wealth measurement for the state to use to allocate funding in order to level the playing field. Further research is needed to determine how spending effects overall school climate, how the adverse impact of wealth can be overcome, and if making changes to the wealth measurement used will help to overcome the impact of wealth on student achievement.

"The International Guide to Student Achievement brings together and critically examines the major influences shaping student achievement today. There are many, often competing, claims about how to enhance student achievement, raising the questions of "What works?" and "What works best?" World-renowned bestselling authors, John Hattie and Eric M. Anderman have invited an international group of scholars to write brief, empirically-supported articles that examine predictors of academic achievement across a variety of topics and domains. Rather than telling people what to do in their schools and classrooms, this guide simply provides the first-ever compendium of research that summarizes what is known about the major influences shaping students academic achievement around the world. Readers can apply this knowledge base to their own school and classroom settings. The 150+ entries serve as intellectual building blocks to creatively mix into new or existing educational arrangements and aim for quick, easy reference. Chapter authors follow a common format that allows readers to more seamlessly compare and contrast information across entries, guiding readers to apply this knowledge to their own classrooms, their curriculums and teaching strategies, and their teacher training programs"--

1 Engagement, motivation, and students' achievement -- 2 Increasing students' engagement in the classroom -- 3 Models of inclusive classrooms in promoting motivation and performance -- 4 Cultural identities in the classroom and engagement -- 5 Students' personalities and their impact on academic achievement -- 6 The role of intelligence and its impact on academic achievement -- 7 Social and cultural factors and their influences on engagement in the classroom -- 8 The impact of social learning on students' motivation and performance -- 9 Engagement in collaborative groups in the classroom and improved academic achievement -- 10 Teachers' role in promoting engagement, motivation, and students' achievement.

TEACHER QUALITY AND STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT -- TEACHER QUALITY AND STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- Chapter 1 ASSESSMENT IN ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION: A PRIMER -- SUMMARY -- OVERVIEW -- ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK -- Purposes of Educational Assessment -- Instructional -- Predictive -- Diagnostic (Identification) -- Evaluative -- Comprehensive Assessment System: Formative and Summative Assessments -- Formative Assessment -- Summative Assessment -- Relationships between Formative and Summative Assessment -- Scores: How are Assessment Results Reported? -- Norm-Referenced Tests

"This paper uses a new administrative dataset of students at a large university matched to courses and instructors to analyze the importance of teacher quality at the postsecondary level. Instructors are matched to both objective and subjective characteristics of teacher quality to estimate the impact of rank, salary, and perceived effectiveness on grade, dropout and subject interest outcomes. Student fixed effects, time of day and week controls, and the fact that first year students have little information about instructors when choosing courses helps minimize selection biases. We also estimate each instructor's value added and the variance of these effects to determine the extent to which any teacher difference matters to short-term academic outcomes. The findings suggest that subjective teacher evaluations perform well in reflecting an instructor's influence on students while objective characteristics such as rank and salary do not. Whether an instructor teaches full-time or part-time, does research, has tenure, or is highly paid has no influence on a college student's grade, likelihood of dropping a course or taking more subsequent courses in the same subject. However, replacing one instructor with another ranked one standard deviation higher in perceived effectiveness increases average grades by 0.5 percentage points, decreases the likelihood of dropping a class by 1.3 percentage points and increases in the number of same-subject courses taken in second and third year by about 4 percent. The overall importance of instructor differences at the university level is smaller than that implied in earlier research at the elementary and secondary school level, but important outliers exist"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site