News
- May 08, 2014
By Clifton B. Parker
California's school districts should rethink their budget priorities upon receiving new state funding in the years ahead. When voters approved Proposition 30 in 2012, they created an unprecedented opportunity to reinvent the state's troubled K-12 school system, according to a new report from Stanford's Policy Analysis for California Education.
When California school districts decide how to spend new funding now coming their way, they need to think strategically about their goals for 2020, according to a new Stanford report.
- April 28, 2014
- April 25, 2014
- April 24, 2014
The study, published in a recent issue of the journal Economic Inquiry, was conducted by Prof. Thomas Dee of the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Professor Dee gave a group of undergraduates — some athletes and some not — a test made up of questions from the Graduate Record Examination (G.R.E.), the admissions test for graduate school. Just before tackling the questions from the G.R.E., the students completed a questionnaire that asked whether they belonged to a sports team, what sport they played and whether they had experienced scheduling conflicts between athletics and academic activities like course meetings and laboratory sessions. (A control group received no questions about athletics, instead answering questions about the dining services on campus.)
- April 23, 2014
- April 22, 2014
After years of painful budget cuts, new revenues will begin to flow to California school districts in 2014. Thanks to the voters’ approval of Proposition 30 and the adoption of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), nearly all districts can expect budget increases over the next several years. Districts that educate the most challenging students will see the largest gains. When the LCFF is fully implemented many schools and districts will receive 50 to 75 percent more revenue per pupil than they do now.
- April 18, 2014
- April 14, 2014
- April 10, 2014
- April 08, 2014
In a study we conducted that was recently published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, we look at one strategy for addressing the concerns above and increasing persistence in college: individualized student coaching. We present evidence from a randomized experiment conducted in conjunction with InsideTrack, an independent student coaching service. Over the course of two separate school years, InsideTrack provided coaching to randomly assigned students attending public, private, and proprietary universities. Most of the participating students were non-traditional college students enrolled in degree programs.
- April 07, 2014
“I think they have a mixed record, frankly. Race to the Top was a little different because instead of giving everybody a little bit of money, they insisted that individual states tell them what they would do with the money,” said Eric Hanushek, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution who specializes in the economic analysis of educational issues.
- April 03, 2014
- April 03, 2014
- April 03, 2014
Over the last two decades, research on student achievement has pinpointed the central role of teachers. While other factors—families, peers, neighborhoods—are obviously elements in a student’s learning, it is the school and particularly the teachers and administrators that are given the public responsibility for the education of our youth. There is a general consensus that improving the effectiveness of teachers is the key to lifting student achievement, although questions remain about how best to do this.
- March 26, 2014
A Stanford researcher, working with student-athletes at an East Coast college, found that some athletes suffer academically from the "dumb jock" stereotype. Professor Thomas Dee suggests that coaches and advisers talk with student-athletes about the phenomenon.
- March 26, 2014
After delving more deeply into specific practices and behaviors of instructional leadership, however, researchers Susanna Loeb and Ben Master of Stanford University and Jason Grissom of Vanderbilt University, found that classroom "walk-throughs"—the most typical instruction-related activity of principals in Miami-Dade schools—were negatively associated with student performance, especially in high schools.