education

ISER's Center for Alaska Education Policy Research (CAEPR) Director Dayna DeFeo presented to a national audience of teacher educators, higher education administrators, and policymakers on innovative ways that Network for Excellence in Teaching (NExT) survey data may be used to inform policy, practice, and cross-institutional collaboration. 

Researchers at ISER's Center for Alaska Education Policy Research (CAEPR) have recently published two articles examining issues important to Alaska's teachers.

• It’s more than just dollars: Problematizing salary as the sole mechanism for recruiting and retaining teachers in rural Alaska, by Dayna DeFeo, Diane Hirshberg, and Lexi Hill. This article, published in the Alaska Native Studies Journal, argues that improving teacher retention in Alaska’s rural schools will require both adequate pay and attention to working conditions. Full text available for download.

• Statute and implementation: How phantom policies affect tenure value and support, by Dayna DeFeo, Matt Berman, and Diane Hirshberg.  This article, published in Educational Policy, discusses how teachers and principals understand, inflate, or underestimate tenure protections, and how those interpretations affect the perceived value and effectiveness of the tenure policy itself. Abstract available for download, full text available for purchase.

The Alaska Department of Administration contracted with the Center for Alaska Education Policy Research (CAEPR) at ISER to study teacher salary and tenure issues in Alaska. As part of that broad study, CAEPR and ISER researchers explored attitudes and opinions about teacher tenure in Alaska. Please join us to hear what these researchers learned about how much teachers and principals understand (or misunderstand) about tenure policy in Alaska.

When: Tuesday, December 6, 2016, 12 to 1

For 20 years, Kids Count Alaska has been an ongoing program at ISER. It's part of the nationwide KIDS COUNT program, sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, to assess the welfare of children around the country and provide data to support policies for improving children's lives. ISER researchers have taken a preliminary look at trends in Alaska over the past two decades, and found that children here are doing better in several ways: babies are much more likely to survive, high-school droput rates are lower, and the rate of violent deaths (accident, suicides, and homicides) among teenagers has dropped by nearly half.

Researchers with Kids Count Alaska will be taking a more detailed look at 20-year trends in the well-being of Alaska's children and teenagers in the months to come. If there are specific measures of well-being you'd like us to look at, get in touch with Virgene Hanna, director of Kids Count Alaska, at 907-786-5431 or mhanna7@uaa.alaska.edu.

ISER publications are solely the work of individual authors and should be attributed to them, not to ISER, the University of Alaska Anchorage, or the research sponsors.

The 2013-2014 Kids Count Alaska data book reports that teenagers in the state commit crime at only about half the rate they did 20 years ago, and that Alaska is one of the safest places in the country to be born, with the share of babies born at low birthweight 25% below the national average.

The new data book includes much more information on the health, safety, education, and economic status of Alaska's children and teenagers. Virgene Hanna, a senior researcher at ISER, directs Kids Count Alaska, which is part of the nationwide KIDS COUNT program, funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The foundation sponsors programs in all 50 states, presenting data from many sources on the well-being of American children.

Download the data book (PDF, 2.5MB), or request a printed copy from ISER at 907-786-7710. If you have questions, get in touch with Virgene Hanna at 907-786-5431 or mhanna7@uaa.alaska.edu.

ISER publications are solely the work of individual authors and should be attributed to them, not to ISER, the University of Alaska Anchorage, or the research sponsors.