Nation's Largest School District Research Articles

School-level self-reported versus objective measurements of body mass index in public high school students

Population-level surveillance of student weight status (particularly monitoring students with a body mass index (BMI) ≥95th percentile) remains of public health interest. However, there is mounting concern about objectively measuring student BMI in schools. Using data from the nation's largest school district, we determined how closely students' self-reported BMI approximates objectively-measured BMI, aggregated at the school level, to inform decision-making related to school BMI measurement practices. Using non-matched data from n = 82,543 students with objective height/weight data and n = 7676 with self-reported height/weight from 84 New York City high schools (88% non-white and 75% free or reduced-price meal-eligible enrollment), we compared school-level mean differences in height, weight, BMI, and proportion of students by weight status, between objective and self-reported measures. At the school-level, the self-reported measurement significantly underestimated weight (−1.38 kg; 95% CI: −1.999, −0.758) and BMI (−0.38 kg/m2; 95% CI: −0.574, −0.183) compared to the objective measurement. Based on the objective measurement, 12.1% of students were classified as having obesity and 6.3% as having severe obesity (per CDC definition); the self-report data yielded 2.5 (95% CI: −1.964, −0.174) and 1.4 (95% CI: −2.176, −0.595) percentage point underestimates in students with obesity and severe obesity, respectively. This translates to 13% of students with obesity and 21% of students with severe obesity being misclassified if using self-reported BMI. School-level high school students' self-reported data underestimate the prevalence of students with obesity and severe obesity and is particularly poor at identifying highest-risk students based on BMI percentile.

The dynamic nature of student discipline and discipline disparities

Researchers have long used end-of-year discipline rates to identify punitive schools, explore sources of inequitable treatment, and evaluate interventions designed to stem both discipline and racial disparities in discipline. Yet, this approach leaves us with a "static view"-with no sense of how disciplinary responses fluctuate throughout the year. What if daily discipline rates, and daily discipline disparities, shift over the school year in ways that could inform when and where to intervene? This research takes a "dynamic view" of discipline. It leverages 4 years of atypically detailed data regarding the daily disciplinary experiences of 46,964 students from 61 middle schools in one of the nation's largest school districts. Reviewing these data, we find that discipline rates are indeed dynamic. For all student groups, the daily discipline rate grows from the beginning of the school year to the weeks leading up to the Thanksgiving break, falls before major breaks, and grows following major breaks. During periods of escalation, the daily discipline rate for Black students grows significantly faster than the rate for White students-widening racial disparities. Given this, districts hoping to stem discipline and disparities may benefit from timing interventions to precede these disciplinary spikes. In addition, early-year Black-White disparities can be used to identify the schools in which Black-White disparities are most likely to emerge by the end of the school year. Thus, the results reported here provide insights regarding not only when to intervene, but where to intervene to reduce discipline rates and disparities.

Do Housing Vouchers Improve Academic Performance? Evidence from New York City

AbstractThe Housing Choice Voucher program is currently the largest federally funded housing assistance program. Although the program aims to provide housing assistance, it also could affect children's educational outcomes by stabilizing their families, enabling them to move to better homes, neighborhoods, and schools, and increasing their disposable incomes. Using data from New York City, the nation's largest school district, we examine whether—and to what extent—housing vouchers improve educational outcomes for students whose families receive them. We match over 88,000 school‐age voucher recipients to longitudinal public school records and estimate the impact of vouchers on academic performance through a comparison of students’ performance on standardized tests after voucher receipt to their pre‐voucher performance. We exploit the conditionally random timing of voucher receipt to estimate a causal model. Results indicate that students in voucher households perform 0.05 standard deviations better in both English Language Arts and Mathematics in the years after they receive a voucher. We see significant racial differences in impacts, with small or no gains for black students but significant gains for Hispanic, Asian, and white students. Impacts appear to be driven largely by reduced rent burdens, increased disposable income, or a greater sense of residential security.

A Menu for Health: Changes to New York City School Food, 2001 to 2011*

The high prevalence of obesity puts children at risk for chronic diseases, increases health care costs, and threatens to reduce life expectancy. As part of the response to this epidemic, the New York City (NYC) Department of Education (DOE)--the nation's largest school district--has worked to improve the appeal and nutritional quality of school food. This article highlights some of the structural and policy changes that have improved the school food environment over the past decade, with the aim to share lessons learned and provide recommendations and resources for other districts interested in making similar modifications. This article details changes DOE has implemented over 10 years, including revised nutrition standards for school meals and competitive foods; new school food department staffing; food reformulations, substitutions, and additions; and transitions to healthier beverages. NYC's revised nutrition standards and hiring of expert staff increased availability of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat dairy and decreased sugary beverages, and foods high in saturated fats and added sugars--the major contributors to discretionary calorie intake. DOE also introduced healthier beverages: switching from high-calorie, high-fat whole milk to low-fat milk and increasing access to water. NYC has successfully improved the quality of its school food environment and shown that healthier food service is possible, even under budgetary constraints. Several broad factors facilitated these efforts: fostering community partnerships and inter-agency collaboration, implementing policies and initiatives that target multiple sectors for greater impact, and working to make incremental improvements each year.

The Stunning Power of Good, Traditional Lessons

ACT reading scores have dropped again--to 1970s' levels. No doubt, a variety of factors account for this. But one of them is how we teach. How much impact would reasonably good, well-structured classroom lessons have on ACT scores or on virtually any test, in any subject? The answer: a helluva lot. No educational innovation, no new teaching tool, method, product, or proven program holds a candle to the effect of traditional, reasonably well-executed lessons. Other than a coherent, literacy-rich curriculum (Schmoker, 2011b), no in-school factor would have more effect on the achievement gap or on preparation for the demands of college, careers, or citizenship. Even so, very few schools consistently implement the most fundamental elements of a good lesson, which were formalized by Hunter and others almost a half century ago (Marzano, 2007). What consequences ensue when we ignore those elements? I was recently invited to study a group of K-12 schools in one of the nation's largest school districts. They had made significant gains on their state exam. And yet, in every classroom at every site, daily lessons violated the most basic principles of good teaching. * There was no attempt to prominently post and then clarify exactly what students would need to know or do by the end of that day's lesson. * Not one lesson was taught in short, carefully calibrated progressions, each one followed immediately by practice--the opportunity for students to process new knowledge or practice with it--alone or in pairs. * There were no all-important checks for understanding during and after each guided practice to see how many students had mastered each small slice of the lesson. Teachers made no ongoing attempts to reach or clarify student misconceptions for each step before moving on to the next step. When lessons lack these indispensable, well-known elements, only a fraction of students learn each day's lesson. After my classroom observations, I asked a representative group of these teachers to estimate how many students succeeded on daily assignments. Their collective response was about 20%. As a result of such teaching, 80% of students were failing on daily lessons! So, you might wonder how these schools made comparatively good test score gains: by all but eliminating social studies, science, and authentic reading and writing. Such high daily failure rates left no time for these fundamental elements of good curriculum. Most students spent hours each day being drilled by tutors on test-preparation exercises. The architects of this program, awash in favorable publicity, couldn't see the lifelong harm they were doing to these children. Our failure to implement the most obvious, effective teaching practices corrupts the entire education enterprise. This is only an extreme variation on what I see in schools in every region of the country. Despite lip service to the importance of these elements of good instruction, they're implemented in most classrooms only intermittently. Sound lessons: The research What would happen if such lessons became the rule rather than the exception? I'm looking at several recent studies on my desk. Each set out to identify the factors common to the highest-achieving teachers in their respective districts or regions. In every case, the predominant factor was their consistent use of these same essential components of good teaching. A report of one of them in a Kappan article describes how the highestperforming teachers in low-performing urban schools made explicit use of Madeline Hunter's sequences. That calls for modeling, guided practice, and multiple checks for understanding punctuated by frequent opportunities for additional instruction, clarification, and then more practice between each step until students master the material. …

Increasing the Ranks of Excellent Teachers? State-Level Policies and the Rate of National Board Certification Among Teachers

Elementary and secondary students in America are increasingly outperformed by their international peers, as evidenced by abysmal graduation rates in some of the nation's largest school districts. Research demonstrates that teacher quality is a significant predictor of student achievement and that students of National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) perform better on standardized tests than students of non-NBCTs. Understanding National Board Certification (NBC) is becoming ever more important as school reforms target teacher quality as a means to improving student performance. This research aims to understand state policies and incentives that aim to increase NBC rates.Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Education Week, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), and Education Week, this research focuses on two research questions: Do NBC rates vary by state? And, if so, what are the determinants of NBC rates? Specifically, the paper investigates the impact of financial and non-financial supports and incentives outlined in state education department regulations and state laws, which influence the rate of NBCTs in states throughout the U.S. In addition to connecting and expanding upon existing research, the results contribute to the ongoing debate about the role of National Board Certification in school reform and our understanding of policy decision-making processes. We conclude with a discussion of the findings and their relevance for education policy.

The Significance of Charter Schools and the Privatization of Standards: Holding the Wolf by the Ears

The dynamics of educational policy discourse in the USA are illustrated by the highly contested positions on charter schools in three arenas: media debates, national policy and local school reform. In media debates, civil society actors – including teachers’ unions, think tanks and print media – engage in polarized exchanges notable for their name-calling and vitriol. In national policy, after two decades of much consensus where charters were viewed as a way of raising standards, policy formation is presently shaped by deep splits on funding and privatization initiatives; charters are increasingly short on the former and seen as potential vehicles for the latter. This manifests itself on the level of local reform, where charters are a component part of numerous school reforms, including a systematic overhaul of the nation's largest school district. There, a corporate model that emphasizes the chief executive officer's role in selecting among productive and unproductive employees has been deployed. The title image (wolf, ears) responds to some of the discourse and is taken from Thomas Jefferson's explanation of the dilemma slavery posed for the USA. As the privatization of standards seems to advance incrementally, the article suggests that a similar dilemma now confronts advocates for public education, especially teachers’ unions, who have previously supported standards-based reform and the use of charters for the purpose of educational innovation.

Teaching Media Studies as High School Social Science

Although the media have become virtually ubiquitous in our information society, American high schools generally devote little attention to systematic study of the media. The United States lags behind several other countries in this regard. France has experimented with a form of media studies for more than 20 years (LaBorderie, 1984). In a reform of the British school curriculum, media studies occupies a prominent place on the agenda (Fuller, 1987). In addition, Australia is recognized as a world leader in its media literacy programs; Canada is seen as being close behind (Tyner, 1988). For example, Ontario requires media studies in all schools for grades 7-12. Other countries have made significant inroads in the area of media literacy, including Scotland, Chile, India, and Jordan (Silverblatt, 1995). Except for programs in New Mexico, North Carolina, and a few scattered school districts, media education is not required in the United States. Nearly a fifth of U.S. high school students participate in scholastic journalism programs (Digest, 1997), and universities support scholastic journalism through workshops, judging services, and sponsoring state press associations (Jorio and Garner, 1988). However, courses in such programs are sometimes seen by administrators as frill electives that are not part of the core curriculum (Dvorak, 1992). Scholastic journalism faces many of the same problems faced by schools of journalism and mass communication regarding their place in the central academic mission of their institutions (Tuggle and Sneed, 1998). That perception arises, in part, because journalism courses are often taught with a focus on applied skills with few contributions to a broader media studies perspective (King, 1997). We define media literacy as an effort to produce informed media consumers rather than helping a relatively few students learn to be media practitioners. Kubey (1998) maintains that obstacles block the development of general media education in the United States. Among the obstacles are geographic barriers, a lack of autonomy for teachers, and an already burgeoning curriculum that can include drug education, AIDS prevention, and anti-bullying classes. Megee (1997) wrote: Unlike other developed nations, the United States has not yet established media education as a priority for everyday schooling. She argues cogently that although television has played a major role in American life for almost half a century, and residents of the United States produce and consume more TV than people in any other country, we teach less about who is communicating, for what purpose, with what effect, and on behalf of which individuals than do many other countries. Similar concerns have been voiced for more than a decade. Considine (1987) noted that young people are given no guidance as to how to read, interpret, and critically evaluate the images and information they are exposed to, even though they are exposed to more media messages than ever before, thus leaving students visually vulnerable and potential victims of a language that can influence and manipulate them. The 50 states are spread across 3.6 million square miles, all have different educational authorities, and each has scores of local school boards. This is in contrast to smaller countries; thus making it difficult for the United States to embrace any national educational policies. The purpose of this study was to ascertain the opinions of social science teachers in two of the nation's largest school districts regarding whether they sense a need for systematic study of the media at the high school level. A second concern was determining whether the social science curriculum is the most appropriate place for such study. The researchers also attempted to determine which elements or topics the surveyed teachers think would be most useful to include in a study of the media. In their study, Sneed, Wulfemeyer, Van Ommeren, and Riffe (1990) concluded that American high schools, like many of their counterparts around the world, need to ensure that literacy is achieved in three areas: print, computer, and media. …

Consequential Validity: A Practitioner's Perspective

What happens when philosophical and theoretical propositions meet the harsh realities of the nation's largest school district? How does consequential validity play out in the Big Apple?

Schoolchildren with HIV Infection: A Survey of the Nation's Largest School Districts

Schoolchildren with HIV Infection: A Survey of the Nation's Largest School Districts

Controlled choice assignments: A new and more effective approach to school desegregation

The authors argue that conventional mandatory and voluntary school desegregation techniques have failed to provide minority students with maximum feasible relief from invidious discrimination because they do not redress the root causes of segregation. They demonstrate that residential-based student assignment plans as well as plans that give students limited access to a few educationally enriched magnet schools are not asymmetrical remedies to wrongful segregation and thus work to perpetuate the racial and social inequities that they purport to correct. The authors offer an alternative approach to school desegregation—controlled choice—that operates independently from residential housing patterns and which explicitly seeks to maximize personal choice within a racially unitary, equitable, and educationally enhanced system of public schooling. Controlled choice was originally pioneered in Cambridge, Mass. during the early 1980s and has recently been adopted in Little Rock, Ark., and Fall River, Mass. The policy is also being actively reviewed by several of the nation's largest school districts including Seattle, Memphis, and Boston.