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For my year-end post, I’m highlighting my 10 favorite Education By The Numbers stories of the year. Thank you to everyone who has read and commented on my weekly stories about education data and research. I look forward to continuing this conversation with you in 2015. If you would like to receive an email notification when the column comes out each week, please click here and fill out the form.
1. Great English teachers improve students’ math scores (January 24, 2014)
One way to boost math achievement? One Stanford study suggests great English teachers can help.
2. Three lessons from data on children’s reading habits (December 1, 2014)
Mining the data of a popular reading software used in schools reveals a secret to turbo-charging a child’s reading ability.
3. Three lessons from the science of how to teach writing (October 27, 2014)
Put grammar books aside and write on a computer — every day.
4. New research suggests repeating elementary school grades — even kindergarten — is harmful (October 13, 2014)
One study finds that kids who are held back young are less likely to graduate from high school.
5. Homeless students increase by 58 percent in past six years (September 29, 2014)
Interactive data visualization map shows alarming increase in homeless students throughout the United States.
6. Right and wrong methods for teaching first graders who struggle with math (July 21, 2014)
One large study suggests that traditional instruction and rote practice works best for young students who are struggling with math.
7. Education researchers don’t check for errors — dearth of replication studies (September 22, 2014)
The field of education isn’t doing what it should to confirm which teaching approaches work.
8. Researchers give failing marks to national effort to measure good teaching (May 13, 2014)
Value-added teaching models were the lynchpin behind the landmark California court decision that found that low-income minority students had worse teachers than high-income students and struck down teacher tenure rules. But one study shows no association between student test score gains and high quality teaching.
9. High school wasteland: Demographic changes do not explain test-score stagnation among U.S. high school seniors (May 7, 2014)
Results from national reading and math tests show that U.S. high school seniors haven’t improved in more than 20 years. By contrast, scores for fourth and eighth graders have been steadily climbing.
10. Universities with 10 largest endowments raise tuition for low income students more than for high income students (March 14, 2014)
Our data crunching here at The Hechinger Report shows tuition hikes are disproportionately falling on low income students at Harvard, Princeton, Yale and other top universities.
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