News
- March 26, 2012
In theory, teacher turnover could have either a positive or negative impact on students. On one hand, teacher turnover might produce better matches between schools and teachers and result in fresh perspectives. On the other hand, high teacher turnover could decrease student-teacher trust and interrupt institutional knowledge creation.
- March 21, 2012
When teachers leave schools, overall morale appears to suffer enough that student achievement declines—both for those taught by the departed teachers and by students whose teachers stayed put, concludes a study recently presented at a conference held by the Center for Longitudinal Data in Education Research. The impact of teacher turnover is one of the teacher-quality topics that's been hard for researchers to get their arms around. The phenomenon of high rates of teacher turnover has certainly been proven to occur in high-poverty schools more than low-poverty ones. The eminently logical assumption has been that such turnover harms student achievement.
- March 16, 2012
President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to key Administration posts:
- Mark L. Asquino – Ambassador to the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Department of State
- Derek H. Chollet – Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Department of Defense
- Kathleen H. Hicks – Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Department of Defense
- Susanna Loeb - Member, Board of Directors of the National Board for Education Sciences
- February 10, 2012
Education was historically considered a great equalizer in American society, capable of lifting less advantaged children and improving their chances for success as adults. But a body of recently published scholarship suggests that the achievement gap between rich and poor children is widening, a development that threatens to dilute education’s leveling effects.
- February 08, 2012
The Stanford Challenge fundraising campaign raises $6.2 billion for a new model of research and teaching on the environment, human health, international affairs and other issues.
Stanford University today announced the successful conclusion of The Stanford Challenge, having raised $6.2 billion to seek solutions to global problems and educate leaders for a more complex world. - February 08, 2012
“In education, it is the worst of times and the best of times,” said Claude Steele, dean of the Stanford School of Education, at a lunchtime presentation Tuesday that discussed a partnership between Stanford and the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). Steele opened the event by stating that this “partnership is a model for how schools of education can relate to real school districts.”
The panelists said that though school districts are facing budget cuts, changes in technology and educational research can make it possible to get rid of old deadwood methodologies that no longer work. - December 01, 2011
Education has long been the primary pathway to social mobility in the United States. The American Dream—the idea that one’s family origin is no barrier to economic success—is plausible to the extent that we believe that our schools provide all students with equal opportunity to develop skills that will enable them to succeed in our complex society. Without such opportunity, hope for social mobility dims.
So when we ask whether America is becoming more or less equal, we should ask not only whether income and political power are becoming more unequally distributed (they are), but also whether the opportunity for social mobility is declining. We should ask whether children from all backgrounds have equal opportunities to
- November 30, 2011
CEPA unites an array of nationally prominent Stanford scholars with diverse perspectives and methodologies to forge fresh education policy approaches that are both pragmatic and proven. This fall, the center brought together four leading education policy experts from across campus—Susanna Loeb (education), Bill Koski (law), Michael Kirst (education), and Terry Moe (political science and the Hoover Institution)—to engage in a lively discussion on teacher unions at the inaugural CEPA Supper.
- November 18, 2011
Sean Reardon, Associate Professor of Sociology at Stanford University says the growing divide between rich and poor in the U.S. will polarize the political process. He adds the Occupy Wall Street protests are an example of this process.
- November 16, 2011
As overall income inequality grew in the last four decades, high- and low-income families have become increasingly less likely to live near one another. Mixed income neighborhoods have grown rarer, while affluent and poor neighborhoods have grown much more common. In fact, the share of the population in large and moderate-sized metropolitan areas who live in the poorest and most affluent neighborhoods has more than doubled since 1970, while the share of families living in middle-income neighborhoods dropped from 65 percent to 44 percent.
- November 15, 2011
The study, conducted by Stanford University and scheduled for release on Wednesday by the Russell Sage Foundation and Brown University, uses census data to examine family income at the neighborhood level in the country’s 117 biggest metropolitan areas.
- July 08, 2011
Doctoral student Heather Hough (BA ’02), Professor Susanna Loeb, and Professor (Research) David Plank at Stanford’s Center for Education Policy Analysis (CEPA) have been collaborating with the district to document the passage of this policy. Their research has looked at what it took to induce the broader public to open its purse strings, and how the district and the teachers’ union consulted, negotiated, and compromised to determine how those funds were to be used.
- May 13, 2011
Thursday afternoon, the School of Education brought together experts in education to answer the question, “Does teacher education have a future?”
The panel debated nontraditional methods for teacher education emerging from organizations like Teach for America (TFA) and their efficacy compared to the theory-based work of education school. - April 25, 2011
Teachers and principals play the most direct and central role in creating learning opportunities for students in our schools. Indeed, there are striking examples that show the power that exceptional teachers and school leaders have to make a difference for students. This is obvious. This comports with personal experience. We also know this empirically. A weaker math teacher, for example, might get students to learn about a half-year of material; a strong teacher can get the same children to learn a year-and-a-half, or three times as much.
- April 24, 2011
Students who receive one-on-one coaching may be more likely to graduate from college, according to a study released from Stanford University’s School of Education.
The study, published on the Web site of the National Bureau of Economic Research, may be particularly beneficial to colleges struggling to improve graduation and retention rates, says Dr. Eric Bettinger, the Stanford associate professor who co-authored the report with doctoral student Rachel Baker. - April 13, 2011
The widening gaps between Americans of average wealth and well-off Americans, and especially, super-well-off Americans over the last 40 years have now been fully documented and heavily discussed. But it’s not just about money. We are seeing, as well, growing economic, social, geographical, and cultural divisions between Americans of less and more education. Now, Sean Reardon of the Stanford School of Education has described another way that these two developments have increasingly combined to widen social class differences. More and more over the last four decades, affluent parents have leveraged their financial assets into better academic skills for their children. Having those greater skills, in turn, gives their kids an even larger head start in the race for higher education and its financial payoff.