Venessa Keesler

Scaling-Up Exemplary Interventions:

Scale-up is the practice of introducing proven interventions into new settings with the goal of producing similarly positive effects in larger, more diverse populations. Scale-up research examines factors that influence the effectiveness of interventions as they are brought to scale across settings. This article has three objectives. First, it defines the goals of scale-up research with respect to broader efforts to enhance the quality of educational research and promote evidence-based education. Second, it clarifies the importance of context, conceptually and methodologically, in conducting scale-up research. Finally, it suggests practical guidelines that can assist researchers in developing designs that can be implemented in field settings to produce robust, generalizable findings.

What Research Do State Education Agencies Really Need? The Promise and Limitations of State Longitudinal Data Systems.

State longitudinal data systems (SLDSs) have created more opportunities than ever before for rigorous research to influence education policy decisions. As state practitioners who play central roles in building and using our states’ longitudinal data systems, we are excited about their promise for supporting policymaking and research. Yet, we also recognize that the data in SLDSs will not answer many of our most pressing research questions, nor will the presence of these systems create the meaningful collaboration between researchers and practitioners that we feel is needed to inform our states’ policy landscapes. The barriers to the kinds of research we need are mostly unrelated to the promises of SLDSs. We outline the challenges we have experienced in developing research agendas, building our internal capacity for research, and working with external partners, and we identify the research questions we need to answer that are not easily addressed with SLDS data.

Assessing an Advanced Level Introductory Sociology Course

American Sociological Association (ASA) appointed Professor Caroline Persell of New York University to launch a task force with the goal of creating an advanced high school sociology curriculum that would also be a model for introductory sociology courses in colleges and universities (Persell 2003). The principle goal of the task force was to design a college-level sociology course that would motivate students’ interest and help them to acquire scientific knowledge that would better prepare them for college and pursuits in all scientific disciplines, increase their interest in postsecondary education, and help them in their future studies and work experiences, with the long-term goal of creating individual and societal benefits. Since 2003, this curriculum has been offered to high school students and undergraduates in a small number of colleges and universities. This study examines the learning outcomes of a class of undergraduate students at Michigan State University who took this course in spring 2006. NOTES

The Impact of Being Labeled as a Persistently Lowest Achieving School: Regression Discontinuity Evidence on Consequential School Labeling

Since the No Child Left Behind Act was enacted, grading and labeling of schools as low performing have been increasingly used as means to incentivize failing schools to raise student achievement. Using statewide high school data from Michigan, our regression discontinuity analyses show that the bottom 5% of schools identified as persistently lowest achieving (PLA), which is publicly announced and has consequential accountability, increased their student performance in writing and to a lesser extent in mathematics and social studies. The PLA effect in writing is quite robust, based on various sensitivity analyses. We find no improvement in student achievement for the bottom 6% to 20% of schools labeled as “watch list” that received no actual penalties and little public attention. Our findings suggest that schools respond differently to varying forms of labeling as low performing, depending on the levels of accountability pressure and social stigmatization.

Les influences familiales sur l'apprentissage et la socialisation des enfants

Barbara Schneider, Venessa Keesler et Larissa Morlock examinent (a) la nature de l’influence familiale sur l’apprentissage des enfants, (b) l’objet de cette influence et (c) le moment auquel elle s’exerce. Le statut socio-economique influe profondement sur les apprentissages des eleves ; pourtant, il n’est pas parfaitement deterministe car les familles jouent un role decisif, peut-etre plus important que l’ecole, dans la formation des attentes educatives et des aspirations professionnelles et dans la reussite scolaire. Les recherches montrent que l’implication du pere et de la mere a une influence sur le bien-etre et le developpement des enfants. De maniere generale, l’enfant apprend mieux lorsqu’il grandit dans un foyer structure, ou les attentes concernant l’apprentissage sont claires, mais adaptees a ses besoins et a sa personnalite. La socialisation recue a la maison a une influence critique sur le developpement de l’ambition et du sentiment d’efficacite personnelle. Les activites extrascolaires et l’implication parentale dans la scolarite ont des resultats positifs, mais elles sont particulierement benefiques lorsqu’elles sont en coherence avec les objectifs et les activites de l’ecole.