News

  • | Annenberg Institute
  • | NBC 10

    "I do think this is a national problem," Loeb said. "It's hard for the school, but then it's very hard for the parents and the kids to get what they really deserve from the education system, and I think this is an issue particularly for small districts, where a few high-cost kids really impact their budget."

    Loeb said a big part of the problem is a critical shortage of certified special ed teachers. Nationwide, 98 percent of school districts report they can't find the special ed teachers they need, according to SpecialEdShortages.org.

  • | Phi Delta Happan
    National survey data suggest that teachers of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) devote significant amounts of their professional learning time to studying state standards, analyzing instructional materials, deepening their understanding of content and student thinking about content, learning about assessment, and studying student data (Banilower et al., 2018). But do such activities actually lead to improved student academic outcomes?
  • | Education Week
    As an academic who primarily focuses on education policy, I'm mainly concerned with keeping up to date on research in that realm. Today's fast-paced environment makes it challenging to stay on top of all the latest developments in the field. Over time, I've devised a number of strategies to help make sure that relevant research papers, think tank reports, and Capitol Hill hearings cross my radar. Keeping apprised of developments on these fronts allows me to usefully contribute to the research and policy discussions of the day and ensures that I can provide my students with up-to-date information.
  • | Education Week

    Susanna Loeb, Matthew Kraft, and John Papay are named to 2020 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings.

    The metrics recognize university-based scholars in the U.S. who are doing the most to influence educational policy and practice. The rubric reflects both a scholar's larger body of work and their impact on the public discourse last year.

    For the full list and to learn more about the rankings, visit Rick Hess Straight Up in Education Week.

  • | Brown Alumni Magazine
    “I think the University’s purpose has been and should be trying to solve some of the biggest problems that we’re facing in the world,” says Collins, a political scientist. Understanding those problems well enough to solve them, however, requires, among other things, that we continue to increase the diversity of the student body, he believes. “Who knows better what’s happening in communities than the kids who spent 18 years there?” -- Jonathan Collins, Assistant Professor, Brown University Department of Education
  • | The Seattle Times
    In the new study, lead researcher Min Sun and her colleagues looked at several types of data, such as student academic performance and graduation rates, at 25 schools in Washington as well as 74 schools in North Carolina, San Francisco and another urban school district that isn’t named. The data spans 2007 to 2017, which includes years before and after the grants were available. The researchers looked at how student performance and graduation rates changed when the grants arrived, and after they ended, at individual schools. They compared this to trends at comparable schools that didn’t receive grants.
  • | The Westerly Sun

    Chariho High School has partnered with Providence’s Hope High School in an effort to provide students with shared experiences that allow them to visit two college campuses, observe different high school learning environments, and develop a service-learning project.

    So far, this pilot initiative between the two schools has been split across two days with a focus on visiting the University of Rhode Island and Brown University campuses and observing different learning environments at the respective schools. This program is a byproduct of collaborative workshops between the Chariho and Hope administrative teams as part of their work with the XQ+RI Grant, a grant focused on reimagining the high school experience.

  • | Williams Economics
  • | Curry School of Educaiton and Human Development, UVA
    Today, a research team from the University of Virginia, Brown University, and Stanford University make public results from two new studies based on data from recent years (2013-2017). In the first study, Thomas Dee, professor at Stanford University, Jessalynn James, a post-doctoral fellow at Brown University, and Jim Wyckoff, professor at the University of Virginia, find that the incentives created by IMPACT continue to encourage some low-performing teachers to voluntarily exit and to instigate improvement among those who remain. In a second paper, James and Wyckoff find that what might first appear to be relatively high turnover among DCPS teachers is largely driven by the turnover of low-performing teachers, whose exit improves student achievement.