New Releases by Ellen Schwartz

Schools are not static entities--reforms are enacted, curriculums change, new principals and teachers arrive and others leave, and, importantly, students exit and enter the school system. These students may be graduating or reaching a terminal grade, beginning school, entering from local private or parochial schools, moving from another district, or emigrating from another country. This brief focuses on the latter group: the immigrant students in New York City (NYC) public elementary and middle schools over the past decade. As the largest and most diverse school system in the country, it is particularly important that education professionals in NYC have a comprehensive understanding of their students and how they are changing. This report presents a statistical portrait of the demographic characteristics and educational experiences of immigrant students in NYC''s elementary and middle school grades (1st-8th grades) during the 2008-09 academic year. It documents the size and diversity of the immigrant population; compares differences between the native-born and immigrant students across a series of socioeconomic, demographic, and academic performance variables; examines differences within the immigrant population related to time in the U.S. and differences in region of origin; and notes similarities and differences between the foreign-born student population in 2009 compared to 2000. Two appendices are included: (1) Differences in School Performance of Region Groups within Poverty, Racial/Ethnic, and English Proficiency Groups [Tables]; and (2) Countries Included in Regional Groupings.

Gwen lives for dancing. When she has the chance to take an intensive - and expensive - course far from home, she knows her parents will object. She also knows that she can usually convince her father to support her. She raises the subject when they''re together skiing, but the discussion turns into an angry confrontation that is cut short by a sudden dreadful avalanche that almost kills her dad. The avalanche leaves terrible damage in its wake. Gwen is left wracked with guilt and injuries that may end her career as a dancer. Her life is complicated by her best friend, Molly. Molly has her own demons, and may either be a danger to Gwen or part of her salvation. Gwen must find a way to make peace with Molly, with her family, and with her own conscience if she is ever again going to experience the freedom that dancing brought her.

Brendan has it all—captain of the basketball team, good friends, a beautiful girlfriend and a loving family—until he is diagnosed with leukemia. Terrified and convinced that no one understands what he is going through, Brendan faces chemotherapy alone, until he meets Lark. She is also in treatment, although her condition is much worse, and yet she remains positive and hopeful. Brendan is torn between feeling sorry for himself and the love for life that Lark brings to even the simplest thing. Through Lark, he discovers the strength to go on, to fight for survival and to love. This short novel is a high-interest, low-reading level book for teen readers who are building reading skills, want a quick read or say they don’t like to read!

Selected for inclusion in the Best Books for the Teen Age 2004 List by the New York Public Library. Yoga has been practiced for thousands of years, but its surge in popularity among young people is new. I Love Yoga is not a how-to book. It is the book for those who are already hooked, as well as for those who are just curious about this ancient activity. Ellen Schwartz – author of I’m a Vegetarian – presents the history of yoga, different styles, yoga benefits, concerns, cautions, misconceptions, equipment, and basic postures. There is information for those with physical disabilities and tips on yoga as part of a lifestyle – even for those who do not use the poses – especially to de-stress. Fascinating information is offered in a teen-friendly format.

It is 1947 and Yankee fever grips the Bronx. Nine-year-old Joey Sexton joins the neighborhood kids who flock to the park to team up and play. However, Joey is of mixed race and his skin is lighter than the other kids’. He is seldom picked. When Joey’s mother dies, he is sent to live with his mother’s estranged family. Joey is whisked away to Brooklyn. Though it’s just across town, it might as well be a different world. His grandfather, his aunt Frieda, and his ten-year-old cousin Roberta are not only white, they are Jewish. Joey knows nothing about Brooklyn or Judaism. The only thing that’s constant is the baseball madness that grips the community. Only this time, the heroes aren’t Joey’s beloved Yankees. They are the Brooklyn Dodgers, especially Jackie Robinson, a man whose struggle to integrate baseball helped set the stage for black America’s struggle for acceptance and civil rights. Joey’s story takes readers to a time when America’s favorite pastime became a battleground for human rights.

Major increases in immigration and the shift in immigrant origins over the past three decades have substantially changed the composition of New York City''s public schools. Unlike their primarily European predecessors, today''s immigrant students come from countries all over the world, speak a wide variety of languages, and present a range of educational needs and prior schooling experiences. Where do immigrant students come from? How many are new arrivals to the school system? How do their experiences and backgrounds differ from the native-born? This report answers these and other important questions through a statistical portrait of the demographic characteristics and educational experiences of immigrant students in New York City''s elementary and middle schools.

Since its inception as part of the 1965 "Elementary and Secondary Education Act" (ESEA), Title I has provided the largest amount of federal funding aimed at improving the academic achievement of poor children. In this paper, we examine the impact of Title I on school spending and school performance, using New York City public school data. Based on a regression discontinuity design (RD) with panel data, and including separate analyses for elementary/middle and high schools, we estimate local average treatment effects of Title I. Title I provides additional funding for schools serving high concentrations of poor children, but there are few curricular or programmatic constraints. Unfortunately it is possible that Title I funds supplant state or local funds, resulting in muted net impacts on spending and student outcomes. At the same time, the success of Title I in improving test scores offers important insight into the effectiveness of school-based compensatory funding in general, such as weighted student funding within districts or state compensatory aid across districts. Overall, the results indicate that Title I changes the mix of spending, enabling high schools to significantly increase the amount of money they spend on direct services to students and to improve their pupil-teacher ratios (while reducing experienced teachers). Elementary and middle schools do not increase spending as much, which is consistent with our finding that state compensatory education funds may be supplanting some Title I funding in schools. Since schools just below the Title I cutoff are similar to those just above the cutoff, this finding may be an equitable, albeit unintended result. Finally, additional Title I spending does not improve the achievement of students and may even reduce school-wide average test scores in elementary and middle schools. These effects for both spending and scores seem to increase with the length of time schools are Title I eligible and to be stronger for ones that are always Title I eligible compared to those that go in and out of eligibility.

In the United States, public housing developments are predominantly located in neighborhoods with low median incomes, high rates of poverty and disproportionately high concentrations of minorities. While research consistently shows that public housing developments are located in economically and socially disadvantaged neighborhoods, we know little about the characteristics of the schools serving students in these neighborhoods. In this paper, we examine the characteristics of elementary and middle schools attended by students living in public housing developments in New York City. Using the proportion of public housing students attending each elementary and middle school as our weight, we calculate the weighted average of school characteristics to describe the "typical" school attended by students living in public housing. We then compare these characteristics to those of the typical school attended by other students throughout the city in an effort to assess whether public schools systematically disadvantage students in public housing in New York City. Our results are decidedly mixed. On one hand, we find no large differences between the resources of the schools attended by students living in public housing and the schools attended by their peers living elsewhere in the city; on the other hand, we find significant differences in student characteristics and outcomes. The typical school attended by public housing students has higher poverty rates and lower average performance on standardized exams than the schools attended by others. These school differences, however, fail to fully explain the performance disparities: we find that students living in public housing score lower, on average, on standardized tests than their schoolmates living elsewhere- even though they attend the same school. These results point to a need for more nuanced analyses of policies and practices in schools, as well as the outside-of-school factors that shape educational success, to identify and address the needs of students in public housing.

Housing and education share strong ties in the United States. This relationship is shaped, in large part, by mobility. Students move to new schools, homes and neighborhoods as a result of planned and unplanned family relocations. Taxpayers move from one school district to another in a nation where school quality is closely tied to the district in which a family resides. Teachers weigh factors such as location, pay, and long-term career opportunities as they decide where to work and when to move within or between school districts. Despite the strong relationship between housing and education, policies that recognize and support this relationship are relatively rare. In this paper, we explore the mechanisms by which housing and education are related. We focus particular attention on disadvantaged students in urban areas, as these students often face a unique set of challenges that set them apart from their more advantaged and/or non-urban counterparts. First, we explore the ways in which a child''s housing unit, his neighborhood, and the political economy of public schools might shape his educational outcome. We then turn to a discussion of the implications of these mechanisms for education and housing policy. Herein, we highlight recent efforts to strengthen the ties between education and housing policy and discuss how the lessons learned from these efforts might be brought to bear as policymakers consider new education and housing initiatives.

One of the more prominent features of the federal No Child Left Behind Act is the requirement that schools and districts track the performance of subgroups of students. While the law identifies several subgroups, including low-income and English-language learners, the low performance of black and Hispanic students should be of particular concern.

Developed in 1999, the Cornerstone Literacy Initiative is a school-based reform initiative for low performing, high-poverty elementary schools. The reform aims to improve student literacy by providing intensive professional development to teachers over the course of the four-year implementation period. The goal is to change instructional practice, school leadership, and school culture using literacy as the vehicle. This paper draws on lessons from Cornerstone''s experiences over the past eight years. It describes the Cornerstone reform model and the population it serves and explores the ways in which the Cornerstone model has shifted to accommodate lessons from its work. To provide a national context for the Cornerstone Initiative, the report considers the evolution of literacy instruction in the United States and the literature about comprehensive school reform. The report concludes by describing how Cornerstone''s experience contributes to what we know about improving literacy, student performance and school reform.

This report continues to track the implementation and impact among schools participating in the Cornerstone National Literacy Initiative reform, now in its sixth year of operation. The results confirm previous findings that Cornerstone schools become better at implementing the reform with time. As acceptance of and enthusiasm for the reform increases, changes in teaching practices become more institutionalized, and the skills of both teachers and students improve. While there is variation at each site, analysis of test score outcomes indicates that given time, Cornerstone schools will see improvement in student achievement. Cornerstone is successful at improving the achievement of students overall in some districts and at raising the performance of students who are typically considered most at-risk in other districts. Regression results indicate that it may take, at the very least, two to three years of implementation to begin to see even a small impact on test scores.

The purpose of this report is threefold: First to develop measures of alternative types of student mobility; second to document the magnitudes of each type of mobility in aggregate and by student income, race/ethnicity, and immigrant status; and third to analyze how mobility of different types affects student academic performance. Although mobility is an oft discussed phenomenon, inadequate attention has been paid to the alternative ways that it can be defined, how the alternatives differ and which alternatives appear to be of sufficient size to be of consequence to policy and practice. Previous research on mobility often focuses on the impact of changing schools on an individual''s academic achievement. As an example, Hanushek, Kain and Rivkin (2004) find that switching schools is harmful to student growth in performance in the year following a switch, even when switching is required because students reach the top grade offered at their school. Other researchers find that academic performance is lower among students who have changed schools in previous years, whatever the reason, (Alexander et al, 1996; Rumberger and Larson, 1998; Swanson and Schneider, 1999). Relatively little attention has been paid in the existing quantitative analyses to distinguishing between different types of mobility i.e., midyear vs. between year; annual vs. cumulative. By providing district level statistics on alternative types of student mobility, this report may help policymakers decide which types of student mobility are important for districts to report regularly. Defining alternative measures may help both policymakers and researchers identify the types of mobility that are the most harmful to student performance and effectively design and target interventions. The main findings of this study are that there is considerable mobility into grades 2 through 8 from outside the New York City school district, across schools, across years for students staying in the district, and some mobility even across schools within academic years. Furthermore, over time, between 6% and 7% enter into each grade of a cohort, and students move several times over their schooling history in the city district. In addition, the entrants and frequent movers have characteristics that are generally associated with harder to educate children. Finally, student mobility has a consistently negative effect, ceteris paribus, on 8th grade reading scores, although the statistical significance of the effect is sensitive to the specification used in the analysis. The report is organized as follows. In the second section, we describe the sources of data. In this section, as throughout the report, we present more detailed information in a separate box in the text. The third section introduces alternative measures of student performance, the fourth section presents magnitudes of annual mobility, and the fifth section does a cumulative mobility analysis. The sixth section analyzes moves in terms of the characteristics of new schools and moves coincident with significant moves in student residence, as measured by zip code changes. The seventh section analyzes the effects of alternative measures of mobility on student performance for New York City (NYC) elementary and middle school (hereafter primary schools) students and the last section concludes.

With the financial support of several large foundations and the federal government, creating small schools has become a prominent high school reform strategy in many large American cities. While some research supports this strategy, little research assesses the relative costs of these smaller schools. Data on over 200 New York City high schools, from 1996 through 2003, is used to estimate school cost functions relating per pupil expenditures to school size, controlling for school output and quality, student characteristics, and school organization. The authors find that the structure of costs differs across schools depending upon mission--comprehensive or themed. At their current levels of outputs, themed schools minimize per pupil costs at smaller enrollments than comprehensive schools, but these optimally-sized themed schools also cost more per pupil than optimally-sized comprehensive schools. The authors also find that both themed and comprehensive high schools at actual sizes are smaller than their optimal sizes. (Contains 5 tables and 2 figures.).

Yossi Mendelsohn works hard to help his family survive after they flee Russia to find a better life in Montreal. He sells newspapers and carries bundles from the garment factory. Yossi longs to play "le hockey" with the French boys, but he has no skates. When his father falls ill and his sister and her fiancé organize a walkout at the factory, Yossi''s dream of lacing on skates seems farther away than ever.

The authors show how our advertising-driven culture causes material desires to grow with no corresponding increase in personal time or energy to pursue them.

Jesse''s project about his immigrant ancestors is due tomorrow and he hasn''t started. In a last-ditch effort to find some information about his great-great grandfather, Yossi, Jesse rummages through the mess in the attic until he finds a little battered travel case, full of pictures, and something else—a Star of David. At first it looks plain and unimportant, but as he holds it in his hand, the star begins to glow. Jesse is in for the surprise, and adventure, of his life as he finds himself becoming the star''s first owner, his own great-great grandfather.

Taxation of cigarettes and alcohol can raise revenue and reduce consumption of goods with negative external effects. Despite medical and psychological evidence linking their consumption, little previous work has investigated the significance of cross-price effects in cigarette and alcohol consumption. We use individual-level data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to investigate cigarette and alcohol consumption in the US, estimating both own and cross-price elasticities. Results suggest significant cross-price effects. Specifically, we find that higher alcohol prices decrease both alcohol consumption and smoking participation (suggesting a complementarity in consumption), while higher cigarette prices tend to decrease smoking participation but increase drinking. The significance of these findings suggests that further work is warranted to better understand the social and economic relationship between cigarette and alcohol consumption.

Twelve-year-old Starshine Shapiro is crazy for spiders, and the spider she loves most is the rare Fanged Vampire Spider (araneus vampiricus). When Starshine learns that her home province of British Columbia is lacking an official Provincial Arachnid, she vows to make sure the Fanged Vampire Spider receives this title. All she has to do is convince 3,000 people to sign her petition. Luckily, Starshine has lots of friends she can ask for help-especially her best friend, Julie Wong. But a huge fight between Starshine and Julie leaves Starshine wondering how she will ever get the help she needs to make araneus vampiricus the most famous spider in the province?

Illustrated by Stefan Czernecki Mr Belinsky makes the best bagels in town and his loyal customers come in every day for their favourite kind. But when a fancy new bakery opens across the street, Mr Belinsky decides he must make other things to keep up. The new cakes and pies he makes bring him great success but amid it all something is missing, and Mr Belinsky''s flour-covered hands hold the secret to what it is, and to his happiness. Full colour illustrations throughout. Ages 3 - 7.

Starshine''s fascination with spiders is as keen as ever, and once again she uses her arachnological interest to get herself into and out of some unique situations. This time, Starshine is working on a research project for her friends at the American Association of Arachnology. Along the way, of course, she has many adventures, including a television audition, an encounter with a burglar, and her usual frustrations with her off-the-wall parents and precocious little sister.

The impact of public infrastructure investment on the productive performance of firms has been an important focus of the recent literature on productivity growth. The size of this impact has important implications for policymakers'' decisions to invest in public capital, and productivity analysts'' evaluation of productivity growth fluctuations and declines. However, detailed evaluation of the infrastructure impact is difficult using existing studies which rely on restricted models of firms'' technology and behavior. In this paper we construct a more complete production theory model of firms'' production and input decisions. We then apply our framework to state-level data on the output production and input (capital, nonproduction and production labor and energy) use of manufacturing firms to evaluate the contribution of infrastructure to firms'' costs and productivity growth. We find that infrastructure investment does provide a significant direct benefit to manufacturing firms and thus augments productivity growth. We also show, however, that this evidence should be interpreted taking into account the social cost of such capital (which is not reflected in firms'' costs), and the indirect impact resulting from scale effects.