The First Year at School: A Quantitative Investigation of the Attainment and Progress of Pupils∗

In England children must start school after their fifth birthday, but it is common for children to start when they are four in what is known as the Reception class. The Performance Indicators in Primary Schools (PIPS) project collected data on 1700 pupils’ early mathematics and pre/early reading levels at the start and end of their Reception year. The on‐entry assessment proved to be a good predictor of performance in reading and mathematics at the end of reception and the progress which each child made was estimated. This progress was found to vary considerably between schools and the variation was much greater than that typically found in school effectiveness studies. The data provided a unique opportunity to compare the progress of children who had, and had not, been to school. The Reception year was found to have had a major impact on the literacy and numeracy of children. Multi‐level models were employed for the analysis and from the models Effect Sizes were computed to assist in comparing the importance of variables in the study. This approach provides a mechanism for comparing the findings of school effectiveness studies with experimental studies and meta‐analyses.     

A Review of: “Student Success in College: Creating Conditions that Matter”

Scholarship matters. It allows faculty to fulfill the responsibilities of their three academic citizenships--in their institutions, in their disciplines, and in higher education in general. Current standards for community college faculty scholarship, however, have excluded faculty from exercising academic citizenship outside of their institutions. The sector claim to a unique teaching mission has been used to exempt or exclude community college faculty from the scholarly obligations and responsibilities understood elsewhere in higher education. The absence of generally accepted norms for scholarly production and validation at most community colleges continues to set them apart from other institutions, including those also serving non-traditional open admissions students. By discouraging externally validated scholarship, community colleges deny their faculty an appropriate voice in higher education and deny the rest of higher education the important voice of community college faculty. By encouraging scholarship that meets the tests of external scrutiny, community colleges can provide their faculty with legitimate higher education citizenship beyond the institution.     

The Impact of Learning Communities on First Year Students’ Growth and Development in College

This study investigated the direct and indirect relationships between participating in a learning community, student engagement, and self-reported learning outcomes. Using a sample of 241 freshmen at a single urban research university who took the College Student Experiences Questionnaire, the results indicate that after controlling for demographic characteristics and entering composite ACT score, the relationship between learning community participation and learning outcomes are mediated by students’ levels of engagement. Learning community participation was not directly related to educational gains but was indirectly related to educational gains through student engagement. Student engagement in turn was strongly related to educational gains.