A study described today in the "Science Daily" blog offers some timely advice for educators on the optimal time for shutting down schools when a flu outbreak strikes.

"You'd want to get a school closed before an epidemic peaks, to prevent transmission of the virus, but you also don't want to close a school unnecessarily," explains John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and study co-author. However, he says, most schools base those decisions on fear, expediency, or politics.

To develop some evidence-based guidance for schools, Brownstein and colleagues from the Children's Hospital Boston Informatics Program and the University of Nigata in Japan analyzed data from 54 Japanese elementary schools over four consecutive flu seasons. They tested dozens of school-closing scenarios and finally decided that the ideal early-warning trigger should be when a school has an absentee rate of 4 percent or more for two days in a row.

And, no, I don't know if this rule of thumb would hold for swine flu, which, from what I read, seems to be more contagious than the garden-variety flu virus.The Centers for Disease Control is advising against closing schools, but that's a switch from advice it gave last spring.

At any rate, you can read the full study for yourself. It appears in the November issue of a journal called Emerging Infectious Disease.

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A study released this month by Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government uses an innovative experimental design method to get an intricate picture of how cultural discrimination plays into the grading decisions that teachers make.

For their study, researchers Rema Hanna and Leigh Linden traveled to India, a country known for its deeply entrenched caste system. The researchers then recruited elementary and middle school-level students from all levels of society to take part in a contest. Students took a battery of tests in mathematics, language, and art and were told that the highest-scoring student in each age group would win 2,500 rupees, or $58, which is about half of their parents' average monthly income. I'd say that's pretty high stakes.

Likewise, 120 teachers from both government and private schools were recruited to grade the test and were paid about $5.80 for their efforts. The tests, however, were randomly assigned different student characteristics. One student, for instance, would be listed on a cover sheet as a member of the Brahmin caste, the highest of India's four social groups, while another might be described as being in the lowest caste, the Shudra. The tests were also graded separately by a research staff member who had no knowledge of any of the students' characteristics.

As might be expected, the results showed that teachers, on average, assigned scores to students from low castes that were 3 percent to 9 percent lower than those of students who were described as being from a high-caste group. What was particularly interesting, though, was that teachers from low-caste groups were driving most of that discrimination; no evidence of bias could be found for teachers from high-caste groups. And they tended to direct it most often toward the lowest-performing students in the low-caste group—the students who presumably best fit the stereotype.

On the other hand, the researchers did not find any evidence that teachers were grading boys' or girls' tests any differently—except in the cases of the highest-performing girls, who were graded slightly more harshly than their high-performing male counterparts. (Incidentally, check out the Web-chat that I moderated on the gender gap at the top in mathematics and science. Could this be another possible explanation?)

Another new wrinkle in this study: Teachers' caste biases seemed to lessen as they got closer to the bottom of the test pile. The researchers hypothesize:
"It appears that when grading students early in the process, when the overall distribution of scores in unknown, teachers may use the caste of a student not as a signal of performance, but rather as a signal of where the child will eventually land in the overall distribution of tests." Hanna and Linden suggest that schools can counteract some of that bias by taking time to familiarize teachers with new tests.

This is all important, of course, because a long line of studies have documented what they call the "Pygmalion effect" in education. That is, children tend to fulfil their teachers' expectations for their performance. That's one strike that disadvantaged children don't need—in any society.

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Back in August, I told you about some early results from a study of a performance-pay program that was being tested in the Lone Star State.

Piloted between the 2005-06 and the 2008-09 school years, the now-defunct Governor's Educator Excellence Grants, or GEEG, program distributed more than $10 million a year in federal grants to 99 Texas schools that managed to turn in high scores on state tests despite enrolling large numbers of students from low-income families. The program differed from some other merit-pay schemes, though, because it required schools to involve teachers in designing the performance-incentive plans for their own schools.

In the earlier study, which was conducted by researchers from the National Center on Performance Incentives, at Vanderbilt University, we learned that, when given a say, teachers tend to be remarkably egalitarian. They favor relatively modest awards and spread them widely.

In the new study, released just this month by the same group of researchers, we learn whether the pay incentives for teachers translated to any improvements in their students' test scores. The answer, in a word, is no. The third-year findings indicate that, overall, the program had a "weakly positive, negative, or negligible effect on student test-score gains."

The relative size of the bonuses did not seem to matter much, either. In this case, the range was somewhat limited because most of the plans called for individual bonuses that were less than the $3,000 minimum recommended by the state. "Perhaps because the incentive structures were so weak," write authors Lori L. Taylor and Matthew G. Springer, "we find no evidence that variations in plan design led to variations in student performance gains."

The experiment wasn't a complete bust, though. The study did turn up evidence that the incentives had an impact on teacher turnover. Teachers who received no bonuses were more likely to leave their schools, while teachers who got an award were more likely to stay. The report concludes:

"If we assume that award recipients were more effective in the classroom than non-recipients—which might be a relatively strong assumption—then the evidence suggests that even weak incentives achieved the objectives of employers."

The less-than-stellar results don't mean that merit-pay programs will disappear from Texas schools anytime soon. According to the Associated Press, the state legislature, at Gov. Rick Perry's urging, has rolled several of the state's performance-incentive programs into one. The newly consolidated District Awards for Teacher Excellence, or DATE, is being funded to the tune of $200 million a year.

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Cornell University researchers Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams open their new book, The Mathematics of Sex, with a description of the infamously difficult Honors Math 55 course at Harvard University. They write:

"It is legendary among high school math prodigies, who hear terrifying stories about it at their computer camps and Math Olympiads. Some go to Harvard just to have the opportunity to enroll in honors Math 55 ... Each year as many as 50 students sign up but at least half drop out within a few weeks ...The final class roster, according to The Crimson, is 45 percent Jewish, 18 percent Asian, 100 percent male."

It's a compelling anecdote for a book that explores the reasons why males are overrepresented in mathematics and mathematically intensive scientific professions such as physics, computer science, chemistry, operations research, mathematics, and engineering—even after all the strides women and girls have made in those fields in recent years. They note, for instance, that on math aptitude tests taken in high school, boys outnumber girls in the top 1 percent by a factor of 2 to 1. The ranks of females continue to thin, the book points up, the farther they go up the professional ladder. Anywhere from 64 percent to 93 percent of the professors on the tenure track in math-intensive fields, these authors say, are men and the number of women who intend to have a research career in those fields declines by 30 percent over the course of their doctoral training.

To figure out why, Ceci and Williams spent three years reading and synthesizing more than 400 studies on gender differences from seven different fields of study. They explored whether the lopsided distribution of math and science talent was due to innate or biological differences in skills such as spatial ability. They considered whether social and cultural biases erected barriers that kept women from reaching the top in those fields and debated whether women were simply less interested in math-intensive careers. In the end, they conclude that all three explanations contribute to the gender asymmetry in these fields. But a particularly important reason may be the choices that women themselves make about the kinds of lives they want to lead.

Interested in hearing more? You're in luck. Ceci and Williams are the featured guests today for a Web-chat that I'll be moderating on gender differences at the top in mathematics and the mathematically oriented sciences. The chat is scheduled to take place from 3-4 p.m. Eastern time. Tune in and read what they have to say.

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The report out last week on the results of a study looking at Chicago's efforts to close down failing schools got me thinking. In its study, the Consortium on Chicago School Research examined the impact on students of shutting down 18 chronically low-performing elementary schools in the Windy City. (Check out my colleague Dakarai Aarons' article on the study, if you haven't already.) The bottom line, according to this study, was that the students who were displaced by the closings just ended up at other low-performing schools in the district. Their achievement, as measured by test scores, did not improve all that much, compared to that of students who continued to attend similarly low-performing schools.

The findings are important because Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who presided over the turnaround efforts in Chicago, is pushing a similar effort at the national level. Districts won't be required to close down schools to qualify for the new federal turnaround grants, but it's clear from the draft guidelines issued so far that the federal government really likes that approach.

That means school superintendents faced with failing schools have a difficult choice to make: Transform the schools or shut them down and start from scratch? Over at the Institute for Research and Reform in Education, founder Jim Connell has developed a simulation tool to help school superintendents chip away at that question.

First off, you should know that the nonprofit institute has a little skin in this game. It developed the First Things First program for improving high schools—a strategy that has historically tended to focus on converting existing high schools.

For argument's sake, though, let's play along. Imagine that you're a superintendent of a 14,300-student district and you want to boost the on-time graduation rates in your five lowest-performing high schools by 20 percent within five years. Would it be better to replace the schools or convert them? You could get some idea by plugging data about your schools into the spreadsheet that Connell developed based on his experience with First Things First schools. If the replacement schools enrolled 200 students a year, the calculator would tell you, it would take 11 new schools to match the success rate that you could get from transforming the existing schools instead.

That figure is based on lots of assumptions, of course, some of which may not apply in every district. Connell explains the thinking behind his analytic tool in a paper soon to be posted on the IRRE Web site. Contact him directly to try the calculator out for free.

UPDATE: I now have a link for Connell's paper, if you're looking for it. You can find it here. Also, just to clarify, the example above is hypothetical. It wasn't actually computed with the calculator but it gives you some idea of the kind of information the new tool might yield.

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The next time you find yourself thinking, "kids will be kids," think again. Survey results released yesterday by the Josephson Institute on Ethics suggest that kids who cheat in high school are far more likely than non-cheaters to lie to their spouses, bosses, and employees when they grow up.

The results are based on a 2008 survey of nearly 7,000 people in five age groups: 17 and under, 18-24, 25-40, 41-50, and over 50. The study found, first of all, that younger generations are far more likely to behave dishonestly than older generations—or at least to admit it to researchers. Among high schoolers, 64% said they had cheated on an exam in 2008, 42% admitted lying to save money, and 30% copped to having stolen something from a store.

The study also found that, regardless of how old they are now, people who cheated in high school were three times more likely to lie to a customer (20% vs. 6%) or inflate an insurance claim (6% vs. 2%) and more than twice as likely to inflate an expense claim (10% vs. 4%) than people who never cheated in high school. The high school cheaters were also twice as likely to lie to or deceive their boss (20% vs. 10%) or lie about their address to get a child into a better school (29% vs. 15%) and one-and-a-half times more likely to lie to spouse or significant other (35% vs. 22%) or cheat on taxes (18% vs. 13%).

If that's not reason enough to boost character education efforts in schools, here's another: A growing number of studies are beginning to suggest that some character education programs can improve kids' academic achievement, too.

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From guest blogger Dakarai I. Aarons:

A new study released today raises concerns that states are collecting more information than needed in a quest to build education-data warehouses and are not doing enough to protect students' personal information, including Social Security and health data.

The study's author told The Washington Post that he's concerned about the future implications for students.

"Ten, 15 years later, these kids are adults, and information from their elementary, middle, and high school years will easily be exposed by hackers and others who put it to misuse," said Fordham University law professor Joel R. Reidenberg, who oversaw the study. States, he said, "are trampling the privacy interests of those students."

Some states, the Fordham University Center on Law and Information Policy's study found, are regularly passing information from local to state agencies without following federal privacy laws. Others are outsourcing the data-warehouse development without any explicit privacy restrictions put on the vendors.

Most states began building data warehouses as a way to keep track of the disaggregated student-achievement data they are required to report annually under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which was enacted in 2002. In the intervening years, states have begun to look at more uses for the data, including measuring college-readiness outcomes. The economic-stimulus law provides $250 million in competitive grant funding to help states build better data systems.

State education departments in states such as Tennessee plan to collaborate with other state agencies to develop better understandings of populations of young people who end up in the juvenile justice system or need some sort of social-service assistance.

Florida, as I wrote in our Diplomas Count 2009 report, is seen as a leader among states in data use. Like other states, it has moved from using Social Security numbers as a primary identifier.

According to Jeff Sellers, Florida's deputy education commissioner for accountability, research, and measurement, 17 "identifiers" are used to confirm a student's identity before he or she is assigned a random, alphanumeric identification for use in the data warehouse. This allows state officials to use the data to run analyses of student performance without running afoul of student-privacy laws.

"It gives us a lot more flexibility as we do our analysis," Sellers told me this spring. "We can look at programs and policies and impacts on education while we have another layer of protection as far as confidentiality goes."

The study recommends that states hire a chief privacy officer to manage privacy issues and collect data only that is being used for a clearly articulated purpose.

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Teachers are 32 times more likely to experience voice problems than are other professionals, Science Daily writes today, and the risk may be even higher for female teachers than it is for males.

The blog reports on results from a study by the National Center for Voice and Speech, the findings of which were scheduled to be presented this month in San Antonio at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America.

As part of the study, Eric Hunter, the center's deputy director, and his colleagues equipped teachers for 14 days with a voice dosimeter, a device that captures voicing characteristics such as pitch and loudness rather than actual speech.

The authiors found that female teachers used their voices about 10 percent more than males—and talked louder—when teaching.

Making matters worse, the female teachers were also less likely to give their overworked. voices a rest a home. They talked 7 percent more than the male teachers at home.

My guess? Most of these teachers were probably busy mothers as well.

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Someone once called the National Academy of Education the "old walruses" of the field. That's because it's an invitation-only group whose 174 members and 17 foreign associates are selected on the basis of their scholarly contributions to the field.

As of last week, the "walruses" have a new president. It's Susan Fuhrman, the president of Teachers College, Columbia University, and an expert on education policy research and international studies. She succeeds Lorrie A. Shepard, the dean of the education school at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who has been at the helm of the group for the last four years.

Besides being an honorary society, the academy has the job of advancing high-quality research. Its members, for instance, have mentored the young scholars lucky enough to win fellowships from the Chicago-based Spencer Foundation. And, over the past year, the group has been producing a series of six white papers that is intended to provide advice for federal policymakers on what research has to say on key education issues. Take a look at the group's latest white paper on math and science education, released just this month. Look for a new white paper on improving teacher quality in the next day or two.

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First we learned of Gerry Bracey's death and then came the news of Ted Sizer's passing. The world of education reform has, unfortunately, lost two of its most passionate advocates this week. If you haven't seen it already, please read my story on Ted Sizer on our Web page today. A story on Gerry Bracey is scheduled to appear in the print edition of Education Week next week.

In the meantime, some of Bracey's friends in academia have announced plans to create a fellowship in his name. If organizers can collect $25,000, they plan to give it " to a doctoral student with a research-based, hard-nosed commitment to further truth, equity, and social justice." It seems a fitting tribute.

Details are available at the Web site for the Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC) at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

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