Research & Grants - Reading Today Online

SAT Reading Scores Drop to Lowest Point in Decades

Sep 20, 2011

The College Board reported that SAT reading scores for graduating high school seniors this year reached the lowest point in nearly four decades.

Nationally, the reading score for the Class of 2011, including public- and private-school students, was 497, down three points from the previous year and 33 points from 1972, the earliest year for which comparisons are possible. The average math score was 514, down one point from last year but up five from 1972. The College Board points out that it is common for mean scores to decline slightly when the number of students taking an exam increases because more students of varied academic backgrounds are represented in the test-taking pool.

The College Board also said that, for the first time, more than half of all high school graduates (or 1.65 million students) took the exam. That was up from 47 percent in 2010.

Test takers were also more diverse than ever. 44 percent were minorities, 36 percent were the first in their family to go to college, and 27 percent did not speak English exclusively.

For the results and more information, including the impact of core curriculum and advanced placement (AP) coursework, see http://press.collegeboard.org/releases/2011/43-percent-2011-college-bound-seniors-met-sat-college-and-career-readiness-benchmark.

U.S. Status Changes in 2011 OECD Education at a Glance Report

NCES Releases PISA 2009 U.S. School Data Files

IRA Research Resources

Karen Bromley Mentors ALER Writers

Sep 15, 2011

If you need help or tips for writing, a session is scheduled at the Richmond ALER Conference called "Mentoring ALER Writers."

If you submit a draft of a paper, research project, or grant proposal at least six weeks before the conference (by September 23), you will receive feedback on the manuscript at the conference, and be paired with a panel member to discuss the feedback.

Please send a draft of the manuscript on which you wish to receive feedback to: Karen Bromley, kbromley@binghamton.edu, by September 23, 2011.

Then, attend the session "Mentoring ALER Writers" in Richmond to hear tips from each panel member and meet your mentor to discuss your manuscript. ALER’s 2011 Conference will be held at the Omni Richmond Hotel in Richmond, VA, from November 3 to 6. Visit http://www.aleronline.org/conference.html for more information.

Upcoming IRA/NCATE Workshop at ALER

Research

The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE)

IRA Awards and Grants

IRA Convention

U.S. Status Changes in 2011 OECD Education at a Glance Report

Sep 14, 2011

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released their 2011 Education at a Glance report with surprising results. The United States still leads the world in having a college-educated workforce, but it is the only country among the G-20 (Group of Twenty) member countries whose incoming workers are less educated than those retiring. Report charts show how these countries share the over 39 million postsecondary degrees awarded to people ages 55 to 64 years old and the 81 million degrees awarded to those ages 25 to 34 years old. Because of its older workers, America still ranks in the top five most-educated countries among the G-20, but it drops to 15th among those ages 25 to 34. Read more about the effects of this phenomenon on Education Week. The OECD report also addresses the questions “Are students who enjoy reading better readers?” and “How much is spent per student?” among others regarding gender, background, and more.

Research

IRA Position Statements

NCES Releases PISA Data Files

NCES Releases PISA 2009 U.S. School Data Files

Sep 13, 2011

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) assesses 15-year-old students in mathematics, reading, and science literacy. It also surveys students about educational experiences and interests and school principals about school contexts. PISA 2009 results were released in December 2010. The U.S. data files, now available on the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) website, contain U.S.-specific variables, such as student race/ethnicity, that are not available in the international data files.

The Technical Report and User's Guide for PISA 2009 describes how PISA 2009 was conducted in the United States, as well as how to use the U.S. data files to conduct statistical analyses.

The PISA 2009 U.S. public-use data files include U.S.-specific variables.

The U.S. restricted-use data file, available through a restricted-use data license, allows users to link U.S. PISA schools with other school data collected by NCES.

The Restricted-Use Data Supplement describes the variables in the restricted-use data file and how to merge them with the public-use data files.

PISA public-use data are also available in the International Data Explorer (IDE), an on-line analysis tool on the NCES website. The public- and restricted-use data files are intended for experienced researchers who cannot meet their complex analytical needs with the IDE.

For more information about PISA, go to http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa.

The data and documentation are products of the National Center for Education Statistics at the Institute of Education Sciences, part of the U.S. Department of Education. Visit http://nces.ed.gov for more information about NCES.