Alan Ginsburg

The Antecedents of Teenage Fatherhood

The High School and Beyond Survey was used to describe young men who are at risk of becoming teenage fathers and examine the causal process leading to early fathering for young men. Bivariate results show that men who are at risk of fathering children at a young age have unique attitudes and family, school, and dating experiences. Multivariate analyses suggest that the most cogent factors affecting teenage fathering include being black, going steady, and having unorthodox views about parenting outside of marriage.

Gaining Ground: Values and High School Success

In this paper, we use the nationally representative “High School and Beyond” (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 1983) data to examine the relationship between a wide range of values that stress the notion of responsibility and high school students’ achievement test scores, grades, discipline problems, and dropout status. We also examine the extent to which students’ behaviors outside of school (e.g., watching television, doing homework, reading, and working for pay) mediate the relationship between values and high school outcomes. Two structural equation models—one using attainment levels as outcomes and one using change scores as outcomes—are analyzed. Results from both models show that when students, their parents, and their peers believe in values and accompanying behaviors that stress responsibility, students have a better chance of achieving success in high school. Values are found to have both direct effects on school outcomes and indirect effects through out-of-school behaviors. The effect of values as a whole is consistently larger than the effect of socioeconomic status (SES) when predicting both level of student performance and changes in student performance.

The Effect of Language Background on Achievement Level and Learning among Elementary School Students.

The current study used a nationally representative sample of elementary school students to investigate the effect of language and other home background on achievement level and learning for both reading and math. Results show that socioeconomic status and racelethnicity variables were more important than language in explaining low achievement among language-minority students. Spanish-language background was more strongly related to reading than to math achievement deficits. The language effect was also much stronger for pre-existing achievement levels than for learning over the school year. Implications of the study findings for government policy are briefly discussed.

Lessons from the Wall Chart.

In 1984 the wall chart of State Education Statistics broke the historic silence on reporting state-by-state comparisons of student performance. Prior to its release, chief state school officers and the education establishment had been protected from disclosure of poor performance by the states in education. The wall chart, by laying out the facts in straightforward detail, exposed our national shortcomings in education and focused attention on the states where much of education policymaking takes place. This article reports on the history of the wall chart, addresses the criticisms that followed its release, and assesses its impact. It goes on to propose recommendations for improving the usefulness of state-by-state rankings. The insights it offers on designing state education comparisons may be particularly helpful as the nation and states undertake the expansion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress to report on student performance at the state level.

Relevance of the RMC Models for Title I Policy Concerns.

In 1973, when Congress began to hold hearings on renewal of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the program was 8 years old and had cost more than

Local Program Coordination: An Alternative Structure for Federal Aid to Schools.

10 billion. Although the clear purpose of the program was to enhance the educational opportunities of disadvantaged youngsters in high-poverty areas and millions of dollars had been spent in earlier evaluation efforts, there was almost no information available on the characteristics and relative effective-

Assessing National Data on Education.

The Federal role in elementary and secondary education has reached a critical juncture in its development. A paradox confronts Federal policymakers. On the one hand, Federal policies have been far more successful than many ever expected in targeting resources to specific purposes and populations. On the other hand, the goal of significantly improving educational outcomes for participating children has, for the most part, eluded Federal funding programs. Although federally sponsored interventions can apparently produce modest learning gains in the short run, few long-term benefits have been demonstrated. In the debate over the causes for this simultaneous success and failure of Fed-

Revitalizing Program Evaluation

Efforts to improve education may be misdirected without adequate data to monitor developments and elucidate key issues. This assessment evaluates some 35 data bases, federal and privately sponsored, that report national education statistics in terms of their potential for informing policy deliberations. It argues that for all the national data collected, information is largely lacking on several major concerns, often inadequate statistically, and sometimes contradictory. From this evaluation, various improvements are proposed to upgrade the collection of policy-oriented data.

Interpreting change in educational equity

This study explores reform strategies which the Department of Education has introduced to improve the quality and use of its evaluations. These reforms respond to concerns identified in major reports that were extremely critical of the departments methodological and managerial approach to conducting evaluation studies. Four types of reforms are examined: (1) organiza tional changes to improve operations, (2) expanded design approaches to strengthen method ological practices, (3) new standards to ensure evaluation quality, and (4) shifts in fiscal support to promote underfunded evaluation activities. The article also discusses the importance of developing a mutually supportive relationship between evaluators and policymakers.

Evaluation of the National Assessment of Educational Progress: Next Steps

Abstract The effect of changes in state revenue, property wealth, and enrollment from 1969–1970 to 1976–1977 on the equality of total educational revenue was investigated for nineteen states with available data. An exploratory two-stage methodology allowed a simulation of the effects of holding each of these factors at their 1969–1970 values and comparing the result with 1976–1977 predicted values. It was found that changes in state revenue were most equalizing, while changes in property wealth and enrollment were disequalizing. In addition, it was found that the change in the behavioral relationship between state revenue, property wealth, and enrollment, and local revenues from 1969–1970 to 1976–1977 was equalizing in twelve of the states and was larger than the change in the value of the most important of these factors (state revenue) in seven of the states.