News from WCER

Value-Added Models: Next Steps

October 11, 2010

One of the Value-Added Research Center’s research priorities is to develop and refine a new value-added model that combines the best features of models with random and fixed individual effects.


Measuring Student Gains in Metagenomics

October 4, 2010

Undergraduates are learning how new antibiotics can be developed in cultured and uncultured bacteria.


The Learning Sciences: Brand or Big Tent?

September 27, 2010

The aims of the Learning Sciences (LS) are to understand the nature of learning from a broad range of perspectives, and to shape the ways that learning environments and resources are designed and used.


Virtual Mentoring and Assessment for STEM Learning

September 20, 2010

How can all students be assured the opportunity to learn significant math and science content?


ELL Students Benefit from Formative Assessments

September 15, 2010

Classrooms across the country are welcoming an ever-growing number of students whose native language is not English.


Building Education Partnerships

September 13, 2010

Education partnerships are central to most education reform initiatives.


The Effects of Time on Student Success

September 7, 2010

Catherine Compton-Lilly offers a new case study that explores time as a context in which a low-income, African American boy defines himself as a particular type of student and literate person and was ultimately relegated to a particular school trajectory.


Enhancing Middle School Students’ Representational Fluency

August 30, 2010

A newly published study examines middle algebra school students’ representational fluency, or their ability to reason with and between multiple representations, using tabular, graphical, verbal, and symbolic representations of linear and nonlinear relations.


The Complex Mechanisms of Developing Journalistic Expertise

August 23, 2010

As bloggers and mobile phone eyewitnesses increasingly supplement the “news,” understanding how professional journalists develop their expertise is more important than ever.


Culturally Relevant Teaching for Pre-K Mathematics

August 16, 2010

Students from non-White, non–middle class homes typically face school norms and expectations that don’t align with their experiences outside school.


How Does Desegregation Help Reduce the Achievement Gap?

August 15, 2010

Desegregating schools has long been considered a matter of equity, justice, and improved student achievement.


VARC Partners with Milwaukee Literacy Project

August 8, 2010

WCER’s Value-Added Research Center will serve as external evaluator for the newly funded Milwaukee Community Literacy Project,


New Directions in Value-Added Research

July 26, 2010

WCER’s Value-Added Research Center (VARC) is working with Hillsborough County (Fla.) Public Schools to support and promote effective teaching


Doctoral Research Training Evolves

July 19, 2010

John Rudolph, department of Curriculum & Instruction, is beginning duties as as WCER’s Director of Graduate Training and the Doctoral Research Program.


Careers in Computing for African American Students

July 12, 2010

The U.S. is producing record numbers of Ph.D.s in computing; however, the number of African Americans receiving advanced degrees in computing at the master’s level still lags behind those of other ethnic/racial groups.