Statement by AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine on Fisher v. University of Texas, Austin The Supreme Court's 4-3 decision in Fisher v. University of Texas, Austin, upholding the institution's admissions policy and affirming the consideration of race as a factor in higher education admissions is a victory for students, colleges, and the country. Read more Media Advisory: After Fisher: What the Supreme Court's Ruling Means for Students, Colleges, and the Country Civil rights education research experts will discuss the impact of the Supreme Court's decision in Fisher v. University of Texas, Austin on Tuesday, June 28, 2016, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Read more Should First-Year College Students Assessed as Needing Remedial Math Take College-Level Quantitative Courses Instead? Policies placing first-year college students assessed as needing remedial math directly into college-level quantitative courses, with additional support, can increase student success, according to a first-of-its-kind study published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Read more Statement by AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine on the Terror Attack in Orlando AERA is aggrieved by the horrific act of bigotry, extremism, and violence in Orlando. Read more Study Snapshot: Inequalities in Parental Spending on Young Children In a new study from AERA Open, the author found that spending on child care and learning enrichment goods for children younger than 6 has grown significantly among the wealthiest U.S. households since the 1970s, while it has stagnated for all other income groups. Read more
AERA Selects Marta Tienda to Deliver 2016 Brown Lecture in Education Research Marta Tienda, a professor of sociology and public affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, has been selected by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) to present the 2016 Brown Lecture in Education Research. Read more
AERA 2016 Annual Meeting Schedule Highlights View a chronological list of selected key sessions at the AERA 2016 Annual Meeting here. AERA to Feature Ed Talks at 2016 Annual Meeting AERA's 2016 Annual Meeting will feature five sessions of Ed Talks presented by leading education scholars. Read more
AERA Announces Additional 2016 Award Winners in Education Research AERA announced four additional winners of its 2016 awards for excellence in education research. Read more AERA to Live-stream Select Annual Meeting Sessions in Education Research AERA has announced that it is live-streaming select sessions at its 2016 Annual Meeting. Read more
Deborah Loewenberg Ball Voted AERA President-Elect Deborah Loewenberg Ball, the William H. Payne Collegiate Professor in education and an Arthur F. Thurnau professor at the University of Michigan, has been voted president-elect of AERA. Read more Media Advisory: Dr. Jill Biden to Address AERA Annual Meeting AERA announced that U.S. Second Lady Dr. Jill Biden will address a session of the AERA Annual Meeting on April 11 in Washington, D.C. Immediately following Dr. Biden’s remarks, researchers will participate in a question and answer session. Read more Study Snapshot: Teen Dating Violence Prevention Programs Fall Short In a new study from Review of Educational Research, the authors found that while teen dating violence prevention programs increased knowledge and changed student attitudes to be less supportive of such behavior, they did not actually reduce dating violence. Read more AERA Announces 2016 Award Winners in Education Research AERA announced the winners of eleven of its fifteen 2016 awards for excellence in education research. AERA will honor the recipients for their outstanding scholarship and service at the fourth annual Awards Luncheon, April 10, at the AERA Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. Read more
Media Advisory: Full Program for AERA Annual Meeting Now Available The full program for the American Educational Research Association's 2016 Annual Meeting is now available online. Read more AERA Announces 2016 Fellows AERA has announced the selection of 22 scholars as 2016 AERA Fellows. Read more Science Achievement Gaps Begin by Kindergarten Large science achievement gaps at the end of eighth grade between white and racial/ethnic minority children and between bhildren from higher- and lower-income families are rooted in large yet modifiable general knowledge gaps already present by the time children enter kindergarten, according to new research published today in Education Researcher. Read more AERA Announces Most Read Education Research Articles of 2015 Research on special education, non-cognitive skills, degree completion, educational inequality and more appeared in the 10 most popular journal articles published by AERA in 2015. Read more
Does Student Race Affect "Gifted" Assignment? Even among elementary school students with high standardized test scores, black students are about half as likely as their white peers to be assigned to gifted programs in math and reading. However, when black students are taught by a black classroom teacher, the racial gap in gifted assignment largely disappears, according to new research published in AERA Open. Read more
Media Advisory: Press Registration Opens for AERA Annual Meeting The 2016 Annual Meeting, held in AERA’s Centennial Year, will provide an important launching point for the second century of the association and the future of education research. Each year, the AERA Annual Meeting is a showcase for ground-breaking, innovative studies in a diverse array of areas, from early education through higher education. Read more
Study Snapshot: Is Kindergarten the New First Grade? In a new study published in AERA Open, the authors compared kindergarten and first grade classrooms between 1998 and 2010. They found that over a 12-year period, kindergarten classes have become increasingly like first grade. Read more
AERA Issues Statement on the Use of Value-Added Models in Evaluation of Educators and Educator Preparation Programs In a statement released today, AERA advises those using or considering use of value-added models about the scientific and technical limitations of these measures for evaluating educators and programs that prepare teachers. Read more
AERA et al. File Amicus Brief in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin On October 30, AERA filed an amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court’s reconsideration of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. Read more
Study Snapshot: Does College Teach Critical Thinking? In a new study published in Review of Educational Research, the authors analyzed 71 research reports published over the past 48 years, to determine how successful four-year colleges are at teaching students critical thinking. Read more Media Advisory: 12th Annual Brown Lecture Teresa McCarty, leading scholar on Indigenous education will give 12th Annual Brown Lecture on October 22 in Washington, D.C. Read more Joint Statement by AERA and ASHE on the Shooting at Umpqua Community College The American Educational Research Association and the Association for the Study of Higher Education issue a joint statement on the shooting at Umpqua Community College. Read more
Are American Schools Making Inequality Worse? The answer appears to be yes. Schooling plays a surprisingly large role in short-changing the nation’s most economically disadvantaged students of critical math skills, according to a study published today in Educational Researcher, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association. Read more
Study Finds Causal Connection between Genotypes Related to Educational Attainment and Years of Education Achieved A first-of-its-kind, nationally representative study of siblings finds that, within families, an adolescent with a higher “polygenic score”—which summarizes previously identified genome-wide associations for educational attainment—than her or his sibling tended to go on to complete more years of schooling. Read more
AERA Statement on the Charleston Shootings and Racism in America The horrific deaths in Charleston, South Carolina, last week bear further witness to the troubling state of race relations and racism in the United States. Read more
AERA and ASHE Joint Resolution on Tenure and Academic Freedom in Wisconsin The American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), as the two national scholarly associations devoted to the study of all education and higher education, respectively, affirm the principle that academic freedom, grounded in the tenure process, is essential for high-quality research and teaching. Read more
Study Finds Minority Students Are Underrepresented in Special Education A new federally funded study finds that racial, ethnic, and language minority elementary- and middle-school students are less likely than otherwise similar white, English-speaking children to be identified as having disabilities and, as a result, are disproportionately underrepresented in special education. Read more
Researchers Urge Caution in Using Measures of Students’ "Non-Cognitive" Skills for Teacher Evaluation, School Accountability, or Student Diagnosis Selects Policymakers and practitioners have grown increasingly interested in measures of personal qualities other than cognitive ability—including self-control, grit, growth mindset, gratitude, purpose, emotional intelligence, and other beneficial personal qualities—that lead to student success. Read more
AERA Selects Teresa McCarty to Deliver 2015 Brown Lecture in Education Research Teresa L. McCarty, a professor of education and anthropology at the University of California–Los Angeles and professor emerita at Arizona State University, has been selected by AERA to present the 2015 Brown Lecture in Education Research. Read more
Vivian L. Gadsden Voted AERA President-Elect; Other Key Members Elected to AERA Council Vivian L. Gadsden, William T. Carter Professor of Child Development and Education at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, has been voted president-elect of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Read more AERA Announces Palmer O. Johnson Award Recipients The American Educational Research Association (AERA) today announced the recipients of its Palmer O. Johnson Memorial Award. Read more AERA Announces 2015 Award Winners in Education Research The American Educational Research Association (AERA) today announced the winners of eleven of its twelve 2015 awards for excellence in education research. AERA will honor the recipients for their outstanding scholarship and service at an awards ceremony on April 18, at the AERA Annual Meeting in Chicago. One additional AERA award will be announced in mid-March. Read more Special Issue of Educational Researcher Examines Value-Added Measures The American Educational Research Association has published a special edition of its peer-reviewed journal Educational Researcher (ER) devoted to examining value-added measures (VAM). Since 2009, President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top initiative has brought on a wave of value-added-based accountability measures, with value-added now embedded in policy in more than 30 states. Read more Study: Little Evidence That Executive Function Interventions Boost Student Achievement Despite growing enthusiasm about the potential of school-based executive function interventions to significantly increase student achievement, a federally funded meta-analysis finds no conclusive evidence that developing students’ executive function skills leads to better academic performance, according to a new study published in Review of Educational Research. Read more
AERA Announces 2015 Fellows AERA has announced the selection of 23 scholars as 2015 AERA Fellows. AERA Fellows are selected on the basis of their notable and sustained research achievements. Read more Early Childhood Programs Found to Significantly Lower Likelihood of Special Education Placements in Third Grade Access to state-supported early childhood programs significantly reduces the likelihood that children will be placed in special education in the third grade, academically benefiting students and resulting in considerable cost savings to school districts, according to new research published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Read more
State Performance Funding Falling Short in Student Retention and Degree Completion State higher education performance funding is falling short of its intended goals of raising student retention and degree completion rates at community colleges, according to new research published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Read more
Study Finds Steep Decline in Students Repeating Grades Grade retention—the controversial practice of requiring a student to repeat a grade in school due to a lack of academic progress—steadily declined from 2005 through 2010, according to new research published in Educational Researcher. Read more
Increasingly Popular Short-Term Community College Certificate Programs Offer Limited Labor-Market Returns, Study Finds Short-term certificate programs at community colleges offer limited labor-market returns, on average, in most fields of study, according to new research published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Read more
New AERA Open Access Journal Now Accepting Article Submissions AERA Open, a new scholarly journal from AERA, is now accepting article submissions. It is among the first open access journals to be launched by a major scholarly social science society. Read more James D. Anderson, Noted American Education History and Desegregation Expert, to Give 2014 Brown Lecture in Educational Research—October 23 The title of this year’s public lecture, which features speaker Dr. James D. Anderson, is “A Long Shadow: The American Pursuit of Political Justice and Education Equality.” Read more
AERA Names Juliane Baron Director of Government Relations The American Educational Research Association (AERA) has named Juliane Baron as its new Director of Government Relations. She begins her position on October 1. Read more
New Revision of Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing Just Released The new revision of the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing has just been released jointly by the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the American Psychological Association (APA), and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME). Read more Study Details Shortage of Replication in Education Research Although replicating important findings is essential for helping education research improve its usefulness to policymakers and practitioners, less than one percent of the articles published in the top education research journals are replication studies, according to new research published today in Educational Researcher. Read more Study: Attending a More Selective College Doesn’t Mean a Better Chance of Graduating Attending a more selective college, as measured by average SAT score, does not make much of a difference for a student’s chance of graduating with a bachelor’s degreeonce individual and other institutional factors are taken into account, according to research published today in the American Educational Research Journal. Read more
Study Finds Unintended Consequences of Raising State Math and Science Graduation Requirements Raising state-mandated math and science course graduation requirements may increase high school dropout rates without a meaningful effect on college enrollment or degree attainment, according to new research published in Educational Researcher. Read more
Study: Teachers More Likely to Use Ineffective Instruction When Teaching Students with Mathematics Difficulties First-grade teachers in the United States may need to change their instructional practices if they are to raise the mathematics achievement of students with mathematics difficulties, according to new research published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Read more Study: Little Evidence That No Child Left Behind Has Hurt Teacher Job Satisfaction The conventional wisdom that No Child Left Behind has eroded teacher job satisfaction and commitment is off the mark, according to new research published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, a peer-reviewed journal of AERA. Read more AERA Announces New Editors for Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics AERA has named Daniel McCaffrey and Li Cai as the new editors for the Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics (JEBS). McCaffrey and Cai will begin reviewing manuscripts on July 1, 2014, and will become editors of record for a three-year term beginning in January 2015. Read more
Study: Addressing “Mischievous Responders” Would Increase Validity of Adolescent Research “Mischievous responders” play the game of intentionally providing inaccurate answers on anonymous surveys, a widespread problem that can mislead research findings. However, new data analysis procedures may help minimize the impact of these “jokester youths,” according to research published in Educational Researcher, a peer-reviewed journal of AERA. Read more Study: State Value-Added Performance Measures Do Not Reflect the Content or Quality of Teachers’ Instruction New research published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis (EEPA), a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association, finds weak to nonexistent relationships between state-administered value-added model (VAM) measures of teacher performance and the content or quality of teachers’ instruction. Read more
October 2013 Educational Researcher Examines Gender Gap in College Enrollment Included in this issue is an unprecedented look at the role of sorting between boys and girls across public U.S. high schools in explaining the gender gap of college enrollment among black and Hispanic students. Read more Want to Increase College Students’ Graduation Rates? Coach Them, Researchers Find Individualized coaching of college students boosts student persistence and completion, while being less costly to implement than targeted financial aid programs and other intervention methods. Read more
Education Policy and Civil Rights Expert Gary Orfield to Give 10th Annual Brown Lecture on October 24 in Washington, D.C. R.S.V.P. today for the 2013 Brown Lecture: A New Civil Rights Agenda for American Education. Read more AERA Executive Director Comments on the U.S. Department of Education’s New Guidance on the Voluntary Use of Race to Support Diversity in Higher Education Felice J. Levine, executive director of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), issued the following statement on the U.S. Department of Education’s release of new guidance to colleges and universities on the voluntary use of race to support diversity in postsecondary education. Read more
Social and Behavioral Science Organizations to Hold Congressional Briefing on “What's Ailing America? Shorter Lives, Poorer Health” At a Capitol Hill briefing, four distinguished experts in the areas of health, behavioral, and social sciences will discuss the findings and research recommendations of the report "U.S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health." Read more
AERA Appoints New Editors for American Educational Research Journal AERA announced the appointment of new editors for the Social and Institutional Analysis (SIA) and Teaching, Learning, and Human Development (TLHD) sections of the American Educational Research Journal. Read more
Congressional Briefing Underscores Necessity of IES Research in STEM Education An AERA co-sponsored Capitol Hill briefing last week spoke to the vital role of STEM education research funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) in advancing math and science teaching, in the United States, from pre-school through secondary education. Learn more AERA to Launch Open Access Journal May 21—The American Educational Research Association announced today that it will launch AERA Open, an online, peer-reviewed journal that will be freely available to all readers on the web. AERA Open is expected to start publishing articles in early 2014. Read more