Georgia Schools Research Articles

Evaluation of the Child Safety Matters Curriculum for Improving Knowledge about Victimization among Elementary School Children: A Randomized Trial

ABSTRACT This project employed a randomized-control design to evaluate the effectiveness of the MBF Child Safety Matters® (CSM) curriculum. Six Georgia schools across 3 counties agreed to participate, and 136 K – 5th grade classrooms were randomized to either receive the CSM curriculum or be a wait-list control and to receive the curriculum after the evaluation. In total, 2,414 students participated at pretest (1195 CSM and 1219 control) and 2,260 participated at posttest (1159 CSM and 1101 control). Pre/posttests were collected from all students prior to the delivery of the CSM curriculum and again approximately a month later to measure knowledge gains related to child safety. Intervention students displayed a greater increase in knowledge for the information taught in the CSM program as compared to students who did not receive the intervention (d = .29).

Mohawk Industries donates flooring to refurbish Georgia schools

Mohawk Industries donates flooring to refurbish Georgia schools

Telemedicine in Georgia Schools

No abstract available.

Estimating the Effects of Subsidized School Meals on Child Health: Evidence from the Community Eligibility Provision in Georgia Schools

We estimate the effect of providing universal free school meals through the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) on the percentage of healthy weight students attending a school and average Body Mass Index (BMI) score among the population of K-12 schools in the state of Georgia. Different specifications of school CEP eligibility are used as instruments for CEP participation in our analysis. We find that CEP participation leads to an increase in the percentage of healthy weight students attending a school and a decrease in average student BMI. Furthermore, we find no statistically significant evidence to support a deleterious effect from CEP participation on our aggregate measures of child weight. Subsample analyses suggest that the effect of CEP participation varies by school grade and location type, with smaller overall effects for schools serving older students and schools in suburbs/towns. We also show that our results are generally robust to different modeling specifications and key variable assumptions. Overall, the beneficial aggregate weight effects caused by CEP participation indicate that providing universal free meals in low-income schools may be a valuable tool in the fight against increasing rates of childhood overweight and obesity.

Can the Social Vulnerability Index Be Used for More Than Emergency Preparedness? An Examination Using Youth Physical Fitness Data

The Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), a publicly available dataset, is used in emergency preparedness to identify communities in greatest need of resources. The SVI includes multiple socioeconomic, demographic, and geographic indicators that also are associated with physical fitness and physical activity. This study examined the utility of using the SVI to explain variation in youth fitness, including aerobic capacity and body mass index. FITNESSGRAM data from 2,126 Georgia schools were matched at the census tract level with SVI themes of socioeconomic, household composition, minority status and language, and housing and transportation. Multivariate multiple regression models were used to test whether SVI factors explained fitness outcomes, controlling for grade level (ie, elementary, middle, high school) and stratified by gender. SVI themes explained the most variation in aerobic fitness and body mass index for both boys and girls (R2 values 11.5% to 26.6%). Socioeconomic, Minority Status and Language, and Housing and Transportation themes were salient predictors of fitness outcomes. Youth fitness in Georgia was related to socioeconomic, demographic, and geographic themes. The SVI may be a useful needs assessment tool for health officials and researchers examining multilevel influences on health behaviors or identifying communities for prevention efforts.

An Examination of Bullying in Georgia Schools: Demographic and School Climate Factors Associated with Willingness to Intervene in Bullying Situations

Introduction: Research dedicated to identification of precursors to cases of aggravated bullying in schools has led to enhanced knowledge of risk factors for both victimization and perpetration. However, characteristics among those who are more likely to intervene in such situations are less understood. The purpose of this study is to examine the associations between demographic characteristics, school climate and psychosocial factors, and willingness to intervene in a bullying situation among middle and high school students in Georgia.Methods: We computed analyses using cross-sectional data from the Georgia Student Health Survey II (GSHS 2006) administered to public school students in grades 6, 8, 10, and 12 (n=175,311). We used logistic regression analyses to determine the demographic, school climate and psychosocial factors associated with a willingness to intervene in a bullying situation.Results: Students who were white and who were girls were most likely to report willingness to intervene in bullying situations. Several school-climate factors, such as feeling safe at school, liking school, feeling successful at school and perceiving clear rules at school, were associated with willingness to intervene, while youth who reported binge drinking were less willing to intervene.Conclusion: These findings, while preliminary, indicate that girls, students who are white, and students who experience a relatively positive school climate and adaptive psychosocial factors are more likely to report that they would intervene in bullying situations. These findings may guide how bullying is addressed in schools and underscore the importance of safe school climates.

Ethnic identity and civic attitudes in Latino and Caucasian youth

Understanding youth's perceptions of their civic skills is important for enriching the lives of youth as well as society. This study explored the relationship between civic attitudes, leadership skills, and ethnic identity in Northwest Georgia schools using two measures, the Civic Attitudes and Skills Questionnaire (CASQ) and the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM). In sharp contrast with Georgia school demographics, these schools are predominately Latino/a. Within our sample population (N=1000), we expected that Latino/a students would score higher on both measures compared with Caucasian students based on research, which suggests that a strong ethnic identity is related to social justice concerns. On the contrary, Caucasian students scored higher on 4/6 domains of the CASQ. On the MEIM, Latino/a students scored lower than Caucasian students on both subscales. However, Latino/a students scored significantly higher than Caucasian students on items relating to participation in cultural activities. Our results suggest that Caucasian students perceived community-wide action and leadership as their civic strengths, whereas Latino/a students reported civic action limited to their cultural group and expressed less confidence in leadership skills. This has implications for designing programs to promote civic engagement in youth. There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to engendering civic learning and action.

Response to 2009 pandemic influenza A H1N1 among public schools of Georgia, United States—fall 2009

Little is known about the extent of implementation or the effectiveness of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) recommended non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in schools to control the spread of 2009 pandemic influenza A H1N1 (pH1N1). A web-based, cross-sectional survey of all public K-12 schools in Georgia, USA was conducted about preparedness and response to pH1N1, and absenteeism and respiratory illness. Schools that reported ≥10% absenteeism and at least two times the normal level of respiratory illness in the same week were designated as having experienced significant respiratory illness and absenteeism (SRIA) during that week. Of 2248 schools surveyed, 704 (31.3%) provided sufficient data to include in our analysis. Participating schools were spread throughout Georgia, USA and were similar to non-participating schools. Of 704 schools, 160 (22.7%) reported at least 1 week of SRIA. Most schools reported implementing the CDC recommendations for the control of pH1N1, and only two schools reported canceling or postponing activities. Schools that communicated with parents about influenza in the summer, had shorter school days, and were located in urban areas were less likely to experience SRIA. Most Georgia schools in the United States adopted the CDC recommendations for pH1N1 mitigation and few disruptions of school activities were reported. Early and timely communication with parents, as well as shorter school days, may have been effective in limiting the effect of pH1N1 on schools.

Engineering and technology students’ perceptions of courses

As cultural, social, political and economic changes take place, the secondary or high school curriculum should reflect and respond to changing needs and aspirations of students. Technology Education has been proactive in this arena as it has transformed over the decades to meet ever-changing societal needs. The most recent change to the discipline has been to add engineering and, as a result, adopting a new name and curriculum-Engineering and Technology Education. The added component and name change in Technology Education is causing discussions about what the new direction means, what professional preparation changes will be incurred, and what work graduating students will be prepared to do. In light of these changes, this study investigated perceptions of high school students in the United States of America about engineering and technology courses they take. To investigate whether students’ perceptions are in accord with current changes in Engineering and Technology Education, 316 students enrolled in engineering and technology courses in Georgia schools that have an affiliation with the Georgia Engineering and Technology Education Association (GETEA) were surveyed. According to data analyses, students’ perceptions can be divided into two factors. Educational Valueof Course (factor 1) was extracted from statements measuring the degree to which the courses prepare students for employment and provide them with information regarding future employment. Personal Relevance of Course (factor 2) was derived from statements measuring students’ perceptions about links between engineering and technology education and their personal lives. Such findings suggest these students valued their engineering and technology courses, planned to continue their education, made good grades, and had varied types of career expectations for jobs such as design engineers and architects.

Using Explanatory Item Response Theory Modeling to Investigate Context Effects of Differential Item Functioning for Students With Disabilities

To address whether or not modifications in test administration influence item functioning for students with disabilities on a high-stakes statewide problem-solving assessment, a sample of 868 students (with and without disabilities) from 74 Georgia schools were randomly assigned to one of three testing conditions (resource guide, calculator, or standard administration). The authors describe a conceptual framework for investigating measurement invariance, specifically differential item functioning within the context of assessing students with disabilities. Specifically, we illustrate how the hierarchical generalized linear model, an explanatory model that incorporates item response models into hierarchical models in multilevel settings, can be used to explore issues of measurement invariance traditionally addressed using descriptive item response models, that is, the many-facet Rasch model. Results obtained from the two approaches are reported and discussed.

Poem: Teaching Poetry in Georgia Schools

Poem: Teaching Poetry in Georgia Schools

Distance and intrastate college student migration

Most studies of student migration focus on interstate migration of college students, largely because the aggregate data typically used are limited in geographic specificity to states. However, interstate migration is only a small part of the total student migration. Public institutions generally get most of their students from within their state; for example, 88 percent of first-time freshmen who enrolled in University System of Georgia institutions in 2002 graduated from Georgia schools. Such intrastate migration is seldom considered. This paper examines intrastate college student migration, using data for Georgia. Aside from such traditional measures of benefits and costs like tuition, financial aid, and school quality, a crucial explanatory variable in our analysis is the distance from a student's home to the different Georgia state institutions. Our empirical results indicate that student intrastate migration is strongly discouraged by greater distance, but with effects that differ across types of higher education institutions.

Teaching Democracy Before Brown: Civic Education in Georgia's African American Schools, 1930–1954

Research on the history of civic education in United States has rarely reflected the perspectives of African American teachers and students. Through analysis of archival data, I document how African American educators in one Southern state reported teaching civic values to students in a racially segregated society before the modern Civil Rights era. These efforts occurred in spite of the inherent contradiction of teaching citizenship beliefs and practices in a society that denied African Americans their constitutional rights. In this empirical study, I explain the ways in which Georgia's African American educators crafted new curricula for their segregated public schools that included the study of African American life and culture, and describe how some African American students participated in specific social studies and civic–related classroom activities. In the process, civic education in Georgia's schools before 1954 may have shaped African American students' perspectives of agency, democracy, and equality.

Developing Population Health Competencies Among Public Health Nurses in Georgia

As part of a new vision for public health in Georgia, the role of the public health nurse (PHN) is shifting from a predominantly individual and clinic-based care model to a population health practice model. Based on focus groups conducted with management and frontline PHNs in 2001, nurses in Georgia were unprepared for this transition and lacked a strong understanding of population health concepts and competencies. To prepare nurses for their new and expanded responsibilities, an online population health course was developed specifically for currently employed PHNs. The Quad Council PHN Competencies (2003) provided the roadmap in identifying the population health online course and continuing education training program priority competencies for PHNs in Georgia. Along with incorporating the competencies into case studies and didactic learning, the required projects served as evidence of competency application. The population health online course was offered from fall 2000 to spring 2005 in collaboration with Georgia schools of nursing and has enabled a cohort of nurses to lead the way as Georgia transitions into a new public health model. Nurses who completed the course reported greater experience with and an understanding of population health competencies.

The Enrollment Effects of Merit-Based Financial Aid: Evidence from Georgia's HOPE Scholarship

This paper examines the effects of Georgia's merit-based HOPE Scholarship on college enrollments. Until the late 1980s, only a small fraction of total student aid was allocated on the basis of merit, but in the last decade state governments have stepped in,distributing billions of dollars in HOPE-style merit aid. Introduced in 1993, the HOPE Scholarship covers tuition, fees and book expenses for students attending Georgia public colleges, and provides a subsidy of comparable value to students attending in-state private colleges, without any income restrictions. Treating HOPE as a natural experiment, we contrast enrollment rates in Georgia with those in the other member states of the Southern Regional Educational Board using IPEDS data for the period 1988-97. We estimate that the scholarship increased the overall freshmen enrollment rate by 6.9 percentage points, with the gains concentrated in 4-year schools. We also find that HOPE raised the enrollment rates of both blacks and whites in Georgia schools, with the state's historically-black institutions playing an imprtant role. Finally, our results suggest that the total HOPE-induced increase represents about 12 percent of high-school graduates who qualified for the scholarship and 21 percent of those who took the award. However, because the overall HOPE effect involves enrollees at 2-year schools who are more likely recipients of the non-merit-based HOPE Grant, the total program enrollment response amounts to less than 10 percent of all freshmen program beneficiaries.

A Discipline-Based Professional Development Faculty: A Case for Multiple-Site Collaborative Reform in the Disciplines

PDS work occurs in far more elementary than high school settings (Berry & Catoe, 1994; Whitford, 1994). Admirable as the interdisciplinary work of Sizer and the Coalition of Essential Schools and teacher educators collaborating with coalition high schools is (Miller & Silvernail, 1994; Whitford, 1994), many teacher educators work in content-based departments or teach content area methods in Arts and Sciences departments. The first attempt of the University of Georgia at a secondary school PDS collaboration failed, as have many others (Cohen, 1994). We floundered for local and personal as well as institutional and generic reasons (Clifford & Guthrie, 1988; Goodlad, 1990). However, a variety of collaborations emerged from that work. In this article, I describe a partnership among two English Education faculty members and 25 English teachers in six local high schools. I argue that a multiple-site, discipline-based professional development faculty provides another model for PDS principles-in-action when geography, resources, student numbers, and institutional realities force individual faculty members to move outside a whole school-college PDS concept at the secondary level. In this context, we can examine issues of university and school reform, the departmentalization of both high school and college programs, and changing goals and concomitant roles for all participants to build a powerful local network for ongoing collaborative inquiry. To provide some context for the professional development faculty model, I first describe the school-university conditions that led to its design. An Aborted PDS Collaboration The College of Education at the University of Georgia chose not to participate in the Holmes Group in the 1980s, citing a commitment to undergraduate teacher education in a state that expected its flagship university and largest college of education to produce annually a significant number of teachers for Georgia schools and enable them to complete degree requirements in 4 years. Secondary preservice teacher education in the College of Education is based in the departments of Language (English/ language arts and foreign language), Mathematics, Reading, Science, and Social Science. Each department includes faculty members specializing in elementary or secondary programs. Elementary faculty members in each department support the Elementary Education department's preservice methods program; secondary faculty members run department-based preservice teacher education programs grounded in strong arts and sciences majors. Although these departments are organized as a School of Teacher Education, preservice teacher preparation is not the major element of most faculty members' research agendas. Instead, departments and faculty members have established reputations and careers in content-based research on teaching and learning. The national reform movement affected the University of Georgia in indirect ways including a collegewide forum in 1990-1991 to discuss recent research in teacher education, participation in Goodlad's study of teacher education programs (1990), a Georgia Professional Standards Commission shift from centralized to programmatic sign-off for teacher certification, growth of the League of Professional Schools initiated at the University of Georgia (Allen & Glickman, in press; Lunsford, 1995), and a dean from a teacher education department, All these events encouraged anew focus on teacher education as a process of coreform with schools. However, the sheer number of faculty--200 in the college and 70 in teacher education--made collaboration across departments rare and difficult. Supported by funding from the Coca-Cola Foundation in the late 1980s, faculty members in the Elementary Education department and colleagues in the content departments established PDS collaborations with four local schools (Allexsaht-Snider, Deegan, & White, 1995). …

Comparison of School Social Workers' and Attendance Workers' Contributions to Academic Excellence

In Georgia schools, social workers gradually are being replaced by attendance workers. Some educators claim that noncertified attendance workers perform similar functions at lower cost than certified social workers. A survey compared the two groups on 10 service areas and revealed that master's-level, certified school social workers attach significantly greater importance to most service areas and more frequently perform tasks in most of those areas than do noncertified attendance workers. Furthermore, most attendance workers' salaries equal those of school social workers, so in most cases no economic advantage exists in hiring attendance workers instead of social workers. Various factors concerning contributions to academic excellence are presented.

History in Georgia Schools

History in Georgia Schools

Robert Lloyd Smith: A Black Lawmaker in the Shadow of Booker T. Washington

WWy hen Robert Lloyd Smith became a Texas legislator in 1895, the South was undergoing the transition from a broad egalitarian approach of the Reconstruction period to the narrower emphasis upon wealth and frugal virtues. This was also a time during which the political outlook of blacks was changing and took a number of different forms. Many individuals argued that if the Republican party was indifferent to blacks, then blacks should support, or form, other parties. Some argued that if black political avenues were closed, then economic and social development should be pursued, while others said that if whites believed blacks to be inferior, then blacks must prove themselves equal to whites. As a result of living in a Southern environment, these views helped to forge Smith's philosophy of race relations. He believed in the philosophy of economic self-sufficiency; that the highest moral traits attainable were thrift, industry, and economy. As a conservative orthodox Christian, he stressed the values of piety, abstinence and grace. Although he embraced the philosophy of Booker T. Washington, Smith went a step further than his mentor in that he combined politics with his philosophy of self-help and became a two-term legislator in the Texas House of Representatives. Smith was an anomaly among his fellow blacks when he arrived in Oakland, Texas in 1885. He was literate, educated and had never been a slave. He was born January 6, 1861 in Charleston, South Carolina to free parents. Smith's first formal education came in the public schools of Charleston, where his mother was a teacher. Afterward, he continued his education at Avery Normal Institute, a black private secondary school. In the fall of 1875, he entered the University of South Carolina and majored in mathematics and English. When the legislature closed the University to blacks in 1877, he transferred to Atlanta University where he was trained as a teacher by Horace Bumstead, and graduated in 1879. The acquisition of the bachelor's degree was followed by five years of teaching in Georgia and South Carolina public schools. In 1885, Smith moved to Oakland, Texas, a cotton farming community.' According to an interview with William McDonald, a black Republican leader, Smith left South Carolina because of social pressure placed upon him for marrying a dark-complexioned lady.2

Jazz in Georgia Schools: Twin Residencies

Jazz in Georgia Schools: Twin Residencies