ARIES: Exploring Motion and Forces

ARIES: Exploring Motion and Forces was found to have no discernible effects on general science achievement for middle school students.

ARIES: Exploring Motion and Forces is a physical science curriculum for students in grades 5–8 that employs 18 inquiry-centered, hands-on lessons called “explorations.”

One study of ARIES: Exploring Motion and Forces that falls within the scope of the Science review protocol meets What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards. This study included approximately 6,000 sixth-grade students from 20 schools in Maryland. Based on this study, the WWC considers the extent of evidence for ARIES: Exploring Motion and Forces on middle school students to be small for the general science achievement domain, the only domain identified by the review protocol.

Full Report

Technology Enhanced Elem. & Middle School Science (TEEMSS)

TEEMSS was found to have potentially positive effects on general science achievement for elementary school students in grades 3–4.

Technology Enhanced Elementary and Middle School Science (TEEMSS) is a physical science curriculum for grades 3–8 that utilizes computers, sensors, and interactive models to support investigations of real-world phenomena. Through 15 inquiry-based instructional units, students interact with computers, gather and analyze data, and formulate ideas for further exploration. This information is managed by software in a handheld computer and transmitted to other students and to the teacher. All classroom units use handheld computers to avoid the expense of networked desktop computers. The program includes a web-based teacher-reporting tool that allows teachers to review student portfolios and gather student responses for assessment and class discussion.

Full Report

Peak risk about 16 years old for teens misusing prescription drugs

The peak risk for misusing prescription pain relievers occurs in mid-adolescence, specifically about 16 years old and earlier than many experts thought, according to a new study by Michigan State University researchers.

The results, based on recent nationwide surveys of nearly 120,000 U.S. adolescents, suggest prevention programs may need to be introduced earlier, in childhood and early adolescence, said James C. Anthony of MSU's Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

Recent trends show clinicians and public health professionals are prescribing more pain relievers, and research suggests an increased misuse of these drugs and increased rates of overdose deaths, said Anthony, who supervised the research of postdoctoral fellow Elizabeth Meier and graduate student Jonathan Troost.

"While much of the previous thinking was that misuse of these drugs emerged in the final year of high school and during the college-age years, we found that for adolescents the peak risk of starting to misuse these painkillers generally occurs earlier, not during the postsecondary school years," Anthony said. "We suspect many physicians, other prescribing clinicians and public health professionals, will share our surprise in this finding."

The study, supported by grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and MSU, was published today in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a network publication of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The team of researchers analyzed data from the 2004 through 2008 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health to identify when young people are most likely to start using prescription pain relievers to get high or for other unapproved uses. The results show about 1 in 60 young people between 12 and 21 years old starts using prescription pain relievers each year, outside the boundaries of what a prescriber has intended.

Peak risk is concentrated at about 16 years, when roughly 1 in 30 to 40 youth start to use painkillers to get high, or for other reasons not intended by the prescriber.

"Getting a firm grasp of when the first onset occurs is very important when we try to take public health action to prevent first occurrence," Anthony said. "With the peak risk at age 16 years and a notable acceleration in risk between ages 13 and 14 years, any strict focus on college students or 12th graders might be an example of too little too late."

The results reveal a need to strengthen prescribing guidelines for clinicians and introduce early school-based prevention programs such as effective school-based alcohol and tobacco initiatives, he said.

Other types of prevention programs include peer-resistance programs such as the popular "Just Say No" campaigns. There also is an opportunity to work with pharmaceutical specialists who sometimes can reformulate these drugs so their effects are blunted when misused.

As for clinicians with a public health perspective, Anthony said that non-opioid pain relievers such as ibuprofen can be quite effective, and that when opioid pain killers are prescribed for adolescents or in reach of teens, the number of tablets can be limited or kept under lock and key.

"Patients in transient pain are often given a larger opioid prescription than is needed. It can end up stacked in the medicine cabinet, available to anyone in or visiting the household," he said.

Common Core Math Standards Implementation May Lead to Improved Student Achievement

According to a new study, Common Core State Standards Math: The Relationship Between High Standards, Systemic Implementation and Student Achievement, the CCSS for mathematics strongly resemble the standards of the highest-achieving nations. They have more focus, coherence and rigor than most of the state standards they replaced. The study also found states with standards most like the CCSS for mathematics have higher scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), demonstrating that standards – and implementing them well – matter. According to Dr. William Schmidt’s research, 33% of all eighth grade students in the United States are performing below proficiency in mathematics compared to only 13% of the world’s top five performing countries.

Schmidt used existing research on international mathematics standards that identified the key characteristics possessed by the world's top performing "A+" countries. Research on the standards of the "A+" countries, whose eighth graders performed at the top of the international distribution, indicated three key features of strong mathematics standards: focus, coherence, and rigor. A statistical analysis of the CCSS for mathematics found a 90% overlap between the CCSS and the "A+" standards.

Furthermore, Schmidt's research reviewed all 50 states' previous math standards and compared them to the focus and coherence found in the CCSS for mathematics. The statistical comparison reveals that most state standards were less coherent or less focused than the CCSS, and in some cases, much less so. On average, states required 3-6 additional mathematics topics in earlier grades over that suggested by the CCSS for mathematics, leading to the often referred to "mile wide, inch deep" character of mathematics education prior to 2009.

Unlike previous research, Schmidt analyzed the link between states with standards that were similar to the CCSS and their NAEP math scores. He used cut scores aligned to NAEP as a proxy to determine if states were serious about high expectations and implementation of standards. The preliminary results showed states with standards in line with CCSS combined with higher cut scores also had higher NAEP scores.

Dr. Schmidt's PowerPoint can be viewed at http://www.achieve.org/CCSS-schmidt-research. Related article