Forty-Four Percent of Public School Students Began 2023-24 Year Behind Grade Level in at Least One Academic Subject, Principals Say

An item from the folks at IES that may have some interest among readers of this space.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) releases today the latest round of findings from the School Pulse Panel (SPP). These SPP data examine topics on public school staffing vacancies, learning recovery, and tutoring during the 2023-24 school year as reported by school leaders in U.S. public schools. Key Findings Public School Staffing Vacancies As of October 2023, 37 percent of public schools were operating with at least one teaching vacancy, down from the 44 percent that were operating with at least one teaching vacancy as of October 2022. This includes 21 percent of public schools operating with multiple teaching vacancies. Compared to the overall population of schools operating with multiple teaching vacancies (21 percent), higher percentages of these groups of schools were operating with multiple teaching vacancies; schools with 1,000 students or more, 35 percent; schools in high-poverty neighborhoods, 32 percent; and schools with a student body made up of 76 percent or more students of color, 31 percent Nationally, 3 percent of all public school teaching positions were vacant as of October 2023. Some of the teaching positions with the highest percentages of vacant positions were special education (6 percent), career or technical education (5 percent) and ESL or bilingual education (5 percent). As of October 2023, 45 percent of public schools were operating with at least one non-teaching staff vacancy, which was not statistically different from the 40 percent operating this way in October 2022. This includes 29 percent of public schools operating with multiple non-teaching staff vacancies. Compared to the overall population of public schools operating with multiple non-teaching staff vacancies (29 percent), larger percentages of public schools with 1,000 or more students (44 percent) and with a student body made up of 76 percent or more students of color (37 percent) were operating with multiple non-teaching staff vacancies, while smaller percentages of schools with a student body made up of 25 percent or fewer students of color (23 percent) and in rural areas (18 percent) were doing so. Across the country, 6 percent of all public school non-teaching staff positions were vacant as of October 2023. Some of the non-teaching staff positions for which the highest percentages of vacant positions were reported include tutors (11 percent), classroom aides (8 percent), and transportation staff (7 percent). The most commonly reported ways that teaching and non-teaching staff vacancies have impacted public schools during the 2023-24 school year are: Increased need to use non-teaching staff outside of intended duties (42 percent) Increased need to use teachers outside of intended duties (40 percent) Increased class sizes (28 percent) Sharing of teachers and/or staff with other schools (24 percent) Learning Recovery and Tutoring Public school leaders estimated that 44 percent of their students began the 2023-24 school year behind grade level in at least one academic subject. This is a 5 percentage-point decrease in the percentage estimated by principals at the beginning of the 2022-23 school year. For the 2023-24 school year, the following types of public schools reported higher percentages of students behind grade level compared to the national average: Public schools with a student body made up of 76 percent or higher students of color (59 percent behind grade level) Public schools in high-poverty neighborhoods (56 percent behind grade level) Public schools in the western United States (53 percent behind grade level) Public schools in cities (53 percent behind grade level) For the 2023-24 school year, the following types of public schools reported lower percentages of students behind grade level compared to the national average : Public schools in low poverty neighborhoods (41 percent) Public schools with a student body made up of 25 percent or lower students of color (33 percent) Public schools with a student body made up of 26 to 75 percent students of color (41 percent) Public schools in the northeast United States (37 percent) Public schools in rural areas (39 percent) Public schools with 1,000 or more students (36 percent) Among schools that reported having students who began the school year behind grade level in at least one academic subject, smaller percentages of schools in 2023-24 compared to the 2022-23 school year reported students being behind in English or Language Arts (97 versus 99 percent), sciences (74 versus 81 percent), and social studies (54 versus 69 percent). For the 2023-24 school year, 82 percent of public schools are offering some type of tutoring program. Specifically: Fifty-two percent of public schools are offering standard tutoring, a lower percentage than did so last school year (59 percent). Thirty-nine percent of public schools are offering high-dosage tutoring, which was not statistically different from the percentage that did so last school year (37 percent). Fourteen percent of public schools are offering self-paced tutoring, a lower percentage than did so last school year (21 percent). Eight percent of public schools are offering on-demand online tutoring (not asked about during last school year). Ten percent of public schools are offering some type of tutoring other than those that were specifically asked about, a higher percentage than reported doing so last school year (5 percent). Nationally, principals estimated that about 11 percent of all public school students have received standard tutoring, 11 percent have received high-dosage tutoring, 6 percent have received self-paced tutoring, and 1 percent have accessed on-demand tutoring programs offered by public schools during the 2023-24 school year. When asked about the perceived effectiveness of various tutoring programs, the following percentages of public schools that offer each type of tutoring program reported the following as “very” or “extremely” effective for improving student outcomes1: Standard tutoring – 22 percent High-dosage tutoring – 38 percent Self-paced tutoring – 22 percent Seventy percent of public schools offering high-dosage tutoring reported using federal funds (ESSER I, ESSER II, ARP ESSER, or other federal grants or programs) to support this tutoring program; 55 percent offering standard tutoring used federal funds to support it; 42 percent offering self-paced tutoring used federal funds to support it; and 33 percent offering on-demand tutoring used federal funds to support it. Additionally, nearly half of the public schools offering standard (46 percent), high-dosage (49 percent), or self-paced (47 percent) tutoring did so with district or school financial funding. Thirty-two percent used district or school financial funding to support on-demand tutoring programs. The findings released today are part of an experimental data product from the School Pulse Panel, NCES’s innovative approach to delivering timely information regarding the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on public K-12 schools in the U.S. The data, collected between October 10 and October 24 of this year, came from 1,421 participating public K-12 schools from every state and the District of Columbia. Experimental data products are innovative statistical tools created using new data sources or methodologies. Experimental data may not meet all of NCES’s quality standards but are of sufficient benefit to data users in the absence of other relevant products to justify release. NCES clearly identifies experimental data products upon their release. All data released today can be found on the School Pulse Panel dashboard at https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/spp/results.asp. 1 Data did not meet reporting standards for on-demand tutoring. The Institute of Education Sciences, a part of the U.S. Department of Education, is the nation’s leading source for rigorous, independent education research, evaluation, statistics, and assessment.

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Your Latest Readership Report from Touro Scholar

An item from one of my open scholarship networks.

From: Touro Scholar Dear Author, You had 9 new downloads in November 2023 across your 17 papers in Touro Scholar. Your current readership: 21 Total Downloads VISIT MY DASHBOARD These monthly reports are provided to you by bepress on behalf of Touro Scholar. For questions, comments, or to add more content and increase your readership and visibility as an author, please contact your repository administrator: touro.scholar@touro.edu

2100 Milvia Street, Suite 300, Berkeley, CA. 94704
Technical assistance: dc-support@bepress.com

The dashboard revealed:

14 Institutions

Name	Type	Downloads
University of Nebraska	Education	2
Lawrence University	Education	2
University of Notre Dame	Education	1
University at Albany State University of New York	Education	1
Southern Methodist University	Education	1
University of Winnipeg	Education	1
Touro University – California	Education	1
Wayne County Regional EducationalService Agency	Education	1
SKATTV	Commercial	1
Internet Technologies Namibia	Commercial	1

25 Countries

Regions	Downloads
United States	159
Canada	8
Singapore	7
United Kingdom	5
Philippines	3
India	2
Iran, Islamic Republic Of	2
Bulgaria	1
Côte d’Ivoire	1
China	1

13 Referrers

Referrer	Downloads
touroscholar.touro.edu/cehs_pubs/111/	22
www.google.com/	18
scholar.google.com/	6
touroscholar.touro.edu/tucse-pubs/	3
touroscholar.touro.edu/cehs_pubs/	3
scholar.google.ca/	2
https%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fstart%3D50%26q%3DJournal%2Bof%2BCatholic%2BHIgher%2Beducation%26hl%3Den%26as_sdt%3D0%2C28%26as_ylo%3D2016	2
https%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fhl%3Den%26as_sdt%3D0%252C5%26q%3DThrough%2Ba%2BCatholic%2BLens%26btnG%3D	1
scholar.google.com.hk/	1
touroscholar.touro.edu/	1

17 Works

Title	Downloads
Schism or communion? A discussion of the morality of Online Learning through a Christian/Catholic lens	211
Cases of Quality: Case Studies of the Approval and Evaluation of K-12 Online and Blended Providers	0
K-12 Online Learning Journal Articles: Trends from Two Decades of Scholarship	0
A Newcomer’s Lens: A Look at K-12 Online and Blended Learning in the Journal of Online Learning Research	n/a
“I Promise to See You”: Recognizing Shared Commitments to K-12 Online Learning and Teaching.	n/a
Online language learning in New Zealand’s primary schools: Exploring the impact of one initiative.	n/a
Toggling between lockdowns: Canadian responses for continuity of learning in the 2020-21 school year.	n/a
Pandemic pedagogy in Canada: Lessons from the first 18 months.	n/a
Assessing learning during emergency remote education	n/a
Where do they go? An investigation of K-12 online learning process for obtaining support.	n/a

PlumX Metrics

Works	Usage	Citations	Mentions	Captures	Social Media
“I Promise to See You”: Recognizing Shared Commitments to K-12 Online Learning and Teaching.	2	0	0	0	0
A Newcomer’s Lens: A Look at K-12 Online and Blended Learning in the Journal of Online Learning Research	13	0	0	0	30
Assessing learning during emergency remote education	2	0	0	0	0
Cases of Quality: Case Studies of the Approval and Evaluation of K-12 Online and Blended Providers	10	0	0	0	0
In-service teachers’ perceptions of K-12 online learning curriculum in a graduate course: An action research project.	1	0	0	0	0
Irrelevant, overlooked, or lost? Trends in 20 years of uncited and low-cited K-12 online learning articles	4	0	0	0	0
K-12 Online Learning Journal Articles: Trends from Two Decades of Scholarship	32	41	3	142	45
L’état de l’apprentissage électronique de la maternelle à la 12e année au.	1	0	0	0	0
Online language learning in New Zealand’s primary schools: Exploring the impact of one initiative.	2	2	0	1	0
Pandemic pedagogy in Canada: Lessons from the first 18 months.	9	0	0	0	0

FM Update – All about AI

An item for my Kiwi readers.

FutureMakers Update, 22 Feb 2023 – AI special What have you been doing to find out about ChatGPT? Do you know how your students are using it? What does the future hold for education if artificial intelligence becomes more prevalent? If these questions resonate for you then this edition of the FutureMakers update is for you! Read on to find out more… In this newsletter… What’s up with AI? What is ChatGPT? The role of AI in education AI in the Classroom Responsible use of AI Exploring the ethics of AI in Education What are you waiting for? What’s up with AI? The release of ChatGPT in November last year has started a groundswell of interest in the role and use of artificial intelligence in education. In January I published a blog post on Hybrid Learning which received quite a bit of positive feedback.Two days later I published a followup post on hybrid learning and ChatGPT in which I confessed that the contents of the first post had been created entirely using ChatGPT. It was an experiment on my part to test how convincing the results produced could be, and to make the point that we need to be devoting some time to apply our future focused minds to imagining what an appropriate response might be, and to avoid getting on the ‘fear carousel’. Starting with the not-so-flattering AI created image of myself above using DALL-E I’ve assembled a few resources and links here that educators may find useful as we confront a future where AI becomes far more common. What is ChatGPT? What is ChatGPT? Who made it? What’s the big deal? How can you access it? This recent ZNet article provides really helpful and easily accessible responses to these an other questions. It may provide you with the prompts you need to pursue your questions further in your own search. The Role of AI in Education I came across this recent article from GettingSmarter that summarises a number of key ways in which AI is likely to impact education into the future. To illustrate, it includes links to number of educational applications that harness the power of AI to improve learning in students of all ages. AI in the classroom AI In The Classroom is a new section on the Digital Technologies Hub from Education Services Australia. It provides free professional learning opportunities for teachers introducing the fundamentals of AI, as well as lesson ideas and other resources to engage your students. Responsible Use of AI “We’re entering a new era. We need to learn together.” That’s the concluding message in this paper from Microsoft titled Meeting the AI moment: advancing the future through responsible AI. The author argues that we need to have wide-ranging and deep conversations and commit to joint action to define the guardrails for the future, and offers three key areas of focus. Exploring the Ethics of AI in Education Significant ethical concerns are emerging around the use of AI in society, from it affects gender or cultural bias, to its impact on equity or social cohesion. We cannot embrace and use these new technologies without examining these issues. There are numerous articles appearing now on the ethics of AI use in education – but I’ve included here a link to a set of ethical guidelines published recently by the European Union as start point for conversations you might have with your colleagues or community on this topic. What are you waiting for? The items and links referenced in this newsletter are simply examples of an ever expanding amount of information available about AI in education. While the use of AI isn’t new in the world of digital technology, the emergence of ChatGPT has certainly thrust it into the limelight, making it something that educators can no longer ignore. In this newsletter I’ve tried to combine some information that will arouse interest, inform and help focus attention on things that need to be a part of our educational discourse in the coming year. what conversations are you having with colleagues about AI in education? what conversations are you having with your students or their parents/whānau about this? on what are you basing your perspectives? Have you tried using ChatGPT? What are you reading to help inform your opinions? where might you go next, or who might you connect with to find out more? But wait, there’s more… At FutureMakers we use a range of forums to curate good ideas and resources. Check out the following… Derek’s Blog – regular posts available on the FutureMakers website Previous newsletters – access all of the previous editions of the FutureMakers newsletter from this one place Resilient Schools Online Community – brought to you in partnership with Transcend My slideshows from recent presentations curated on SlideShare Modern Learning Practice – a curated set of links on Scoop.It Hybrid Learning – a collection of resources on the FutureMakers website Learner Agency – another collection of resources on the FutureMakers website If you’ve enjoyed reading this newsletter please feel free to forward it to others to read, or better yet, ask them to become a FutureMakers subscriber so they will receive their own updates delivered to their mailbox. I’m always interested to hear your feedback or ideas about what you’d like to see included in future newsletters – please use the link below to email me with your suggestions. Email Derek

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You’re Invited—2022 Brown Lecture Featuring John B. Diamond with Discussion Forum!

Note this upcoming event.

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You are invited to the 19th Annual Brown Lecture in Education Research

The AERA Brown Lecture, now in its 19th year, is free and open to the public. This year, esteemed scholar John Diamond will address how white supremacy is deeply embedded in educational organizations and the ways that opportunity hoarding helps sustain it. He will be joined by a leading education journalist and two policy experts for a moderated forum immediately after his talk.

Register here

ASL and captioning provided. Free Livestream Event. #AERABrownLecture

About the 2022 Lecture

Building on W. E. B. Du Bois’s concept of the color line, Diamond’s lecture will highlight how white supremacy is deeply embedded in U.S. educational organizations and the ways that opportunity hoarding helps sustain it. In doing so, he will shift the intellectual gaze from the aspirational progress narratives often associated with Brown to the racial hierarchies and various forms of harm that schools (even integrated ones) continue to reproduce. Taking the recent attacks against critical race theory as a backdrop, Diamond will argue that schools not only contribute to educational inequity but are race-making institutions that socialize people into relations of racial domination and subordination through institutional practices and individual actions.

Learn more here

Copyright (C) 2022 World Education Research Association. All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website. Our mailing address is: World Education Research Association 1430 K. Street, NW Suite 1200 Washington, Washington DC 20008

REL Report: How Nebraska Teachers Use and Perceive Data

I always find these issues interesting, and have very definite opinions on the topic.

Teachers have access to more data than ever before, including summative (state-level), interim (benchmark-level), and formative (classroom-level) assessment data. Yet research on how often and why teachers use each type of data is scarce. A new report from REL Central provides information about Nebraska teachers’ use and perceptions of summative, interim, and formative data. The report also describes teachers’ perceptions of their competence in using data, their attitudes toward data, and their perceptions of organizational supports for using data, including professional learning, principal leadership, and computer systems. The report details how teachers’ perceptions are associated with using data to inform instruction, and how data use varied by teacher characteristics such as academic degree and years of experience in education. Key findings include: Not all Nebraska teachers used summative, interim, and formative data to inform instruction, but teachers who did use data used formative data more often than interim and summative data. Principals had more positive perceptions of and attitudes toward data than teachers did. Teachers’ self-reported use of data was positively associated with their perceived competence in using data, their attitudes toward data, and their perceptions of organizational supports for using data. Teachers’ highest degree earned was positively associated with their perceived competence in using data and their attitudes toward data. Teachers with fewer years of experience in education reported using formative data more often than teachers with more experience did. Read the report at: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?projectID=5683 ***** The Regional Educational Laboratories (RELs) build the capacity of educators to use data and research to improve student outcomes. Each REL responds to needs identified in its region and makes learning opportunities and other resources available to educators throughout the United States. The REL program is a part of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) in the U.S. Department of Education. To receive regular updates on REL work, including events and reports, follow IES on Facebook and Twitter. To provide feedback on this or other REL work, email Contact.IES@ed.gov. The Institute of Education Sciences, a part of the U.S. Department of Education, is the nation’s leading source for rigorous, independent education research, evaluation and statistics.

By visiting Newsflash you may also sign up to receive information from IES and its four Centers NCES, NCER, NCEE, & NCSER to stay abreast of all activities within the Institute of Education Sciences (IES).