Where Does the Money Go? Trends in Supporting California English Learners in District Local Control Accountability Plans

In 2013, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) was enacted to replace the previous California school finance system. The purpose was to stream various funding sources (e.g., basic revenues, categorical funds, block grants) such that districts could engage in comprehensive planning to support all students. Additional monies designated for English Learners, foster youth, and students living in poverty supplement district funding. We analyzed district Local Control Accountability Plans developed for the 2017–18 school year (n = 50) using qualitative document analysis. Seven coding categories emerged: EL status, personnel, curriculum, instruction, monitoring, counseling, and parent involvement. The second stage of our analysis was in identifying goals, supports, programs, and interventions for English Learners that fell within one of four divisions across two planes. The first is general versus specific, meaning that the approach was intended for all designated groups or for EL students alone. The second plane we used is conventional versus innovative approaches. We saw both conventional and innovative elements across each of the seven categories. Collectively, these findings highlight the strategic ways in which districts are committing to goals and actions in allocating LCFF funding to impact their English Learner populations in meaningful ways.     

Literacy practices of primary education children in Andalusia (Spain): A family-based perspective

Primary school children develop literacy practices in various domains and situations in everyday life. This study focused on the analysis of literacy practices of children aged 8–12 years from the perspective of their families. 1,843 families participated in the non-experimental explanatory study. The children in these families speak Spanish as a first language and are schooled in this language. The instrument used was a self-report questionnaire about children's home-literacy practices. The data obtained were analysed using categorical principal components analysis (CATPCA) and analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results show the complex relationship between literacy practices developed by children in the domains of home and school and the limited development of a literacy-promoting ‘third space’. In conclusion, the families in our study had limited awareness of their role as literacy-promoting agents and thought of literacy learning as restricted to formal or academic spaces.     

Technology‐enhanced learning in higher education: How to enhance student engagement through blended learning

Blended learning has risen in popularity in the last two decades as it has been shown to be an effective approach for accommodating an increasingly diverse student population in higher education and enriching the learning environment by incorporating online teaching resources. Blending significant elements of the learning environment such as face‐to‐face, online and self‐paced learning leads to better student experiences and outcomes and more efficient teaching and course management practices if combined appropriately. Hence, an appropriate systematic and dynamic approach of blended learning design is crucial for a positive outcome, starting with planning for integrating blended elements into a course and creating blended activities and implementing them. Evaluating their effectiveness and knowing in which environments they work better and improving the blended activities designed from both the student’s and instructor’s perspective are critical for the next delivery of the course. This article aims to increase awareness of higher education educators about how traditional face‐to‐face learning can be transformed into blended courses so as to develop student engagement with both in‐class and online approaches, whilst being time effective for the instructor.     

Higher education,brain drain and overseas employment in the Philippines: towards a differentiated set of solutions

This paper describes the interlocking conflicts and resulting problems of higher education in the Philippines. The educational system produces first degree graduates for certain professions and fields of specialization while failing to produce enough graduates in unpopular fields of pure science, middle-level technician specializations, and graduate training for research and higher education. The few scientists and graduate degree holders trained abroad migrate to other countries, making the shortage even more acute. For oversubscribed professions, graduates seek overseas employment. In the meantime, the mismatch continues.The author proposes different solutions for each problem; no uniform solution is possible as the nature of the problem is different for each area. For oversubscribed professions, the writer accepts overseas employment as a viable option; it is a source of foreign exchange and a natural way of population control. For undersubscribed professions he proposes a system of incentives tied to a period of mandatory service, after which the beneficiary may exercise his/her options.The writer concludes with some general insights about allowing the invisible hand to regulate the process of manpower demand and supply but supports limited and specific government interventions at the right moment.     

Motivational control after extended instrumental training

Hungry rats were trained to press a lever for food pellets prior to an assessment of the effect of a shift in their motivational state on instrumental performance in extinction. The first study replicated the finding that a reduction in the level of food deprivation has no detectable effect on extinction performance unless the animals receive prior experience with the food pellets in the nondeprived state (Balleine, 1992; Balleine & Dickinson, 1994). When tested in the nondeprived state, only animals that were reexposed to the food pellets in this state between training and testing showed a reduction in the level of pressing during the extinction test relative to animals tested in the deprived state. The magnitude of this reexposure effect depended, however, on the amount of instrumental training. Following more extended instrumental training, extinction performance was unaffected by reexposure to the food pellets in the nondeprived state whether or not the animals were food deprived at the time of testing. A second study demonstrated that the resistance to the reexposure treatment engendered by overtraining was due to the animals’ increased experience of the food pellets in the deprived state during training rather than to the more extensive exposure to the instrumental contingency. In contrast to the results of the first two experiments, however, a reliable reexposure effect was detected after overtraining in a final study, in which the animals were given greater reexposure to the food pellets in the nondeprived state.     

A Tutorial in Bayesian Potential Outcomes Mediation Analysis

Statistical mediation analysis is used to investigate intermediate variables in the relation between independent and dependent variables. Causal interpretation of mediation analyses is challenging because randomization of subjects to levels of the independent variable does not rule out the possibility of unmeasured confounders of the mediator to outcome relation. Furthermore, commonly used frequentist methods for mediation analysis compute the probability of the data given the null hypothesis, which is not the probability of a hypothesis given the data as in Bayesian analysis. Under certain assumptions, applying the potential outcomes framework to mediation analysis allows for the computation of causal effects, and statistical mediation in the Bayesian framework gives indirect effects probabilistic interpretations. This tutorial combines causal inference and Bayesian methods for mediation analysis so the indirect and direct effects have both causal and probabilistic interpretations. Steps in Bayesian causal mediation analysis are shown in the application to an empirical example.     

How Far Have We Moved Toward the Integration of Theory and Practice in Self-Regulation?

In this article, we address four main questions, including: What is self-regulated learning for? What key strategies do students need to guide and direct their own learning process? What cues in the learning environment trigger self-regulation strategies? What can teachers do to help student to self-regulate their learning, motivation, and effort in the classroom? We illustrate that answers to these questions have changed over time and that changing conceptualizations of the self-regulation process have influenced the assessment tools that were used. We also point to changing classroom conditions as a factor that has affected the assessment of self-regulation. Finally, we formulate some questions that need to be tackled in research on self-regulation and introduce the articles and commentaries in the special issue that provide some cutting-edge work on the use of assessment to register self-regulation over time.     

Exploring the underlying factor structure of the home literacy environment (HLE) in the English and Spanish versions of the Familia Inventory: A cautionary tale

Few research-based measures of the family literacy environment are commercially available, especially in Spanish. One exception is the Familia Inventory (Taylor, 1995). The present study investigated the 10 subscales of this instrument and the factor structure they imply, using data from a low-socioeconomic (SES), largely Hispanic population. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to test the structure of the instrument as well as whether it is invariant across English and Spanish language versions. The scale was administered to 232 parents of preschoolers. Results of the CFA revealed that the a priori dimensions of the Familia Inventory were not supported for this sample. Follow-up analyses suggested poor fit both within and between subscales. The scale fit poorly within both English and Spanish, precluding testing of invariance across language. Supplemental analyses using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on a subset of the items that had adequate variance suggested that a four-factor solution accounting for 53% of the variance best represented the English data and that a two-factor solution accounting for 43% of the variance best represented the Spanish data. Implications are discussed.     

Gender ratio and cognitive profiles in dyslexia: a cross-national study

The purpose of this study was to analyze possible gender-related differences in the prevalence of dyslexia. A cross-national comparison of Spain and Guatemala was conducted. Both countries speak the same language but have a different standard of living and educational level. A second purpose of this study was to analyze the cognitive profile of Guatemalan and Spanish males and females children with dyslexia. The log-linear analysis indicated that the number of dyslexics detected was different across the countries but there were no differences as a function of gender. Similarly, there were no significant or meaningful differences between dyslexic males and females in the cognitive processes involved in reading. Therefore, gender differences do not appear to be characteristic of developmental dyslexia.     

An evaluation of Early Reading First (ERF) preschool enrichment on language and literacy skills

Early Reading First (ERF) was created to address problems related to language and development among economically disadvantaged and language-minority preschool children through quality classroom processes, professional development, and instruction. More than any previous initiative, ERF specifies what early literacy instruction should look like in preschool classrooms; however, to date, scant research has examined the effectiveness of the program. In this quasi-experimental study, the effectiveness of ERF preschool enrichment was evaluated through comparison with the performance of demographically similar children from the same school district who received practice-as-usual instruction. As in previous research, ERF-enriched instruction was found to enhance acquisition of alphabet knowledge and print concepts. Unlike previous studies, however, it was also found to promote vocabulary development. Multilevel models were chosen to take into account the non-independence of students in the same classroom in testing the effects of ERF.