Education Week - August 24, 2016 - 5

REPORT ROUNDUP

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EDUCATORS' PAY
"The Teacher Pay Gap is Wider Than Ever"

HELPING HANDS
Bayou View Elementary 2nd
grader Ethan Borderon and
classmates load cleaning
supplies at the Gulfport,
Miss., school for flood
victims in Louisiana.
Classes had begun for most
Louisiana schools before
historic flooding forced
them to close.

| OBITUARIES |
Seymour Papert, an education
technology and artificialintelligence research pioneer
whose theories augured both
today's digital learning and
maker-education
movements, died
July 31. He was 88.
Papert was born
in South Africa.
He studied at
the University
of Cambridge in
England and the University
of Geneva with renowned
child psychologist Jean Piaget
before starting a long career
at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology in 1968. He
co-founded the Media Lab,
where he led a movement in
"constructionist" education
theory, which posits children
learn best by making things and
working through problems in the
world around them.
More than 20 years before
smartphones and 1-to-1 laptop
initiatives, Papert advocated
using low-cost personal computers
to teach and connect children
in high-poverty countries and
communities.
-SARAH D. SPARKS
Samuel C. Stringfield, a nationally
known expert on school
improvement and a former
member of the Baltimore school
board, died July 31. He was 67.
The late scholar was passionate
about applying education
research knowledge to practice.
As a Baltimore board member in
the late 1990s and early 2000s,
he helped oversee one of the
most historically troubled urban
districts in the nation. During his
tenure, the district faced down
fiscal insolvency and a possible
state takeover. On his watch, the
89,000-student school system saw
its rock-bottom test scores begin
to rise.
Stringfield also held positions as
a research scientist, distinguished
university scholar, and director
of the school of education at
Johns Hopkins University, the
University of Louisville, and
the University of Cincinnati,
respectively.
-ERIC SUMNER

At a time when regional teacher shortages
and high turnover rates are rife in school systems, a new report by the Economic Policy Institute may offer some explanation: The gap
between U.S. teachers' pay and that of comparable workers is greater than ever before.
The average annual U.S. teacher salary
in 2015 was $57,200 for high school teachers and $54,550 for elementary teachers,
according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Compensation varies by state. But EPI's
long-term analysis shows that teachers earn
lower wages than all other comparable workers (defined as those with the same education
and experience), and the pay gap has grown
significantly over the past few decades.
For all public school teachers, regardless
of experience, age, or gender, the relative
wage gap was at a record minus-17 percent in 2015, according to the study. To put
that in perspective, the gap was less than
minus-2 percent in the early 1990s. The average weekly salary, adjusted for inflation,
also decreased by $30 from 1996 to 2015.
-KATE STOLTZFUS

SOCIAL NETWORKING
"Internet Usage and Educational Outcomes
Among 15-Year-Old Australian Students"
Fifteen-year-olds who play online video
games score above average in math, reading, and science, while those who engage
in social networking tend to score below
average, according to an analysis of international assessment data.
The study, conducted by Albert Posso, an
associate professor at the Royal Melbourne
Institute of Technology in Australia, and
published in the recent issue of the International Journal of Communication, looks
at results for about 12,000 Australian students from the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment.
The study found that a student who uses social networks, such as Facebook, daily scores
20 points lower in math than a student who
never uses social media. (The average math
score in Australia for 2012 was 504 points
based on a scale of 1 to 1,000.)
Playing video games is associated with
higher math, reading, and science scores on
PISA, the study found. But students who
play almost every day do better than those
who play every single day and also better than those who play just once a week.
-LIANA HEITIN

COMPUTER SCIENCE
"Bridging the Computer Science Access Gap"
Just 22 percent of 12th graders say
they've ever taken a computer science
course, according to an analysis of national
data published this month. And more than
half of seniors attend high schools that
don't even offer computer science.
The analysis, by Change the Equation,
a nonprofit group that mobilizes the business community to improve science, technology, engineering, and math learning,
examines data from the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which
was given to 12th graders and included
survey questions for students, teachers,
and schools.
It found that only 44 percent of seniors
have access to any computer science
classes. Less than a quarter of seniors
have access to Advanced Placement computer science courses.

The data also confirm that low-income students are less likely to have access to computer science courses than higher-income
students. And black and Native American
students were much less likely than Asian
and white students to attend high schools offering the subject.
-L.H.
TEACHER SKILLS
"The Value of Smarter Teachers: International
Evidence of Teacher Cognitive Skills and
Student Performance"
When compared with both their peers internationally and fellow American college
graduates, U.S. teachers have middling math
and literacy skills, finds a group of international researchers.
The researchers found that in terms of
literacy skills, American educators score

The report found that children in the
South, Northeast, and rural America who
rely on school breakfast and lunch programs
for one-third to one-half of their daily meals
are especially susceptible to becoming overweight. Researcher Wen You said the report
shows a need for school meal programs to include food that is nutritious and appetizing
to children.
-JACKIE MADER
SLEEP AND ACHIEVEMENT
"Gender Performance Gaps: QuasiExperimental Evidence on the Role of Gender
Differences in Sleep Cycles"
Do differences in sleep cycles between
boys and girls help explain the gender
performance gap? That's the theory behind a paper released this summer by the
Institute for the Study of Labor, a private,

'Churn' Among Teachers Seen to Affect Learning
"Teacher Churning: Reassignment Rates and Implications for Student Achievement"
Each year, nearly a quarter of all New York City teachers move within their schools
to a new grade-level assignment or a new subject. And those reassignments can depress their students' achievement, concludes a study.
Teacher "churning," as the study characterizes that kind of movement, is little studied, but extremely common.The new study is among the first to provide some preliminary evidence that this churn, on average, isn't doing students any favors.
The research, forthcoming in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, was written by Allison Atteberry of the University of Colorado at Boulder, Susanna Loeb of
Stanford University, and James Wyckoff of the University of Virginia.
The trio looked at records on teachers in New York City from 1974 through 2010. A
subset of those teachers, from 1999-2000, were linked to student-achievement records
in grades 3-8, allowing the researchers to analyze the link between teacher churn and
students' test scores.
Overall, the study found that nearly 42 percent of teachers have new assignments
in some way during a typical school year. And, of that number, more than half-54
percent-are changing assignments in the same school.
Much of that movement seems to be caused by teachers who leave a school or the
profession, thereby requiring administrators to shuffle teachers around and hire new
ones to make sure all classes are covered. But some schools tended to have far more
switches than others, and black, Hispanic, and English-learner students were somewhat more likely to be assigned to a teacher moving to a new grade or subject in his
or her school, but the overall difference was small.
The study estimates that the negative effect on student achievement of getting a
churned teacher is about a quarter of the size of being assigned a brand-new teacher.
-STEPHEN SAWCHUK

just about as well as other American college
graduates and outscore teachers in 13 of
the 23 developed countries analyzed using
data from the Program for the International
Assessment of Adult Competencies, or PIAAC
which tested the cognitive skills of more than
160,000 adults across 23 developed countries.
But when it came to numeracy skills,
American teachers scored below the averages
for both other college-educated Americans
and teachers internationally.
The report also statistically links differences in teachers' cognitive skills to international differences in student performance.
For instance, teachers in Finland and Japan,
which usually rank near the top on other
international tests, performed best in both
numeracy and literacy PIAAC measures.
-EMMANUEL FELTON

SCHOOL NUTRITION
"Students in Government-Funded School Meal
Programs at Higher Risk of Being Overweight"
Children who rely on school lunch programs
have a higher likelihood of becoming overweight, possibly because of the food served
through those federally funded programs, according to a report by researchers at Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University.

independent research institute based in
Germany.
The study is believed to be the first study
to find a connection between later school
start times and improved academic performance by boys relative to girls.
Researchers from the University of California, Davis, studied data from a group of
secondary schools in Eastern Europe where
students alternate school start times each
month. For example, one month middle
school students would start class at 7:30
a.m., and high school classes would begin
at 1:30 p.m. Then the following month they
would switch start times. During each rotation, students had the same teachers and
took their courses in the same order.
The researchers looked at all the students' grades from month to month and
compared their performance in the afternoon versus the morning from 2008 to 2014.
They found that, while girls outperform
boys overall, the gender gap is narrower
during the afternoon classes than it is during the morning classes. The work builds
on previous studies, which found that girls
deal with sleep deprivation more successfully
than boys and are more likely to be early
risers, while boys' circadian rhythms make
them more likely to stay up later and wake
later in the morning.
-MARVA HINTON

EDUCATION WEEK | August 24, 2016 | www.edweek.org | 5

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