GAINESVILLE, Fla. — New research at the University of Florida predicts more public school students in kindergarten through 12th grade will take classes online, have longer school days and more of them in the next decade. Academic performance should improve and schools could save money.

While distance education over the Internet is already widespread at colleges and universities, UF educational technology researchers are offering some of the first hard evidence documenting the potential cost-savings of virtual schooling in K-12 schools.

“Policymakers and educators have proposed expanding learning time in elementary through high school grades as a way to improve students’ academic performance, but online coursework hasn’t been on their radar. This should change as we make school and school district leaders more aware of the potential cost savings that virtual schooling offers,” said Catherine Cavanaugh, associate professor at the University of Florida’s College of Education. “Over the next decade, we expect an explosion in the use of virtual schooling as a seamless synthesis between the traditional classroom and online learning.”

UF researchers considered several key factors to calculate and compare the cost of full-time online learning with regular schools. Cavanaugh reported their findings today at an education reform conference and national podcast sponsored by the Washington D.C.-based Center for American Progress. A monograph of her report will be posted on the center’s Web site at http://www.americanprogress.org/events.

Based on a 2008 survey of 20 virtual schools in 14 states, UF researchers found that the average yearly cost of online learning per full-time pupil was about $4,300. This compared with a national average cost per pupil of more than $9,100 for a traditional public school in 2006 (the most recent year in which such data was available). Their cost estimates covered course development and teaching, and administrative and technical expenses.

“Online programs have little or no cost for instructional facilities, transportation and related staff,” Cavanaugh said. “The value of distance education also increases when considering the broad range of available online courses.”

She said investing in virtual education could allow schools to provide instruction before, during and after school — in essence, lengthening the school day and school year — without sinking millions of dollars into new buildings, additional personnel, professional development and other operating costs. Such school reform measures may not be popular with the kids, but America’s education system is falling behind our competitors abroad. Simply put, students in other developed nations are spending more time in school and learning more than our kids do.

“Time is one of the most valuable resources for learning. Even a few days’ difference in learning time can determine whether a school makes adequate yearly progress,” Cavanaugh said.

In her report, Cavanaugh describes various scenarios whereby school days begin early and end late, with students attending traditional classes on designated weekdays and learning online in a flexibly scheduled computer lab on other days. The longer school day allows time for club and enrichment activities and recreation or athletics for a healthier school experience. The boundaries of time and place are removed through Internet-connected mobile devices such as netbooks and smart phones, letting students access online courses while traveling between home, school, work and athletic events. Most homework is done at school under direct teacher supervision or with after-school online coaching.

With two decades of studies supporting the effectiveness of K-12 virtual schools, researchers are moving beyond the question of whether virtual schooling works as well as face-to-face instruction, focusing instead on when and how distance education works best. Partnerships between school districts and state-run virtual schools — including Florida Virtual School, the nation’s largest virtual school, based in Orlando — are expected to play a major role in the emergence of K-12 distance education.

“Virtual schooling and online learning fit in extremely well with the emerging trend to embrace the same technologies that our young people are using in their everyday lives and apply them in education,” Cavanaugh said. “Schools that don’t embrace online learning soon will be viewed as limiting the learning opportunities of their students.”

The better K-12 online programs, she said, will have experienced online teachers and coaches and on-site facilitators, with tailored lesson plans to suit the learning levels and pace of all students.

“Dr. Cavanaugh’s report provides a vision of what schools could look like in the near future, as online courses and programs are developed that not only expand learning time but help educate students with a wide range of academic and learning needs,” said Susan Lowes, director of research and evaluation at the Institute for Learning Technologies at Teachers College, Columbia University.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Playground bullies may meet their match from where they least expect — in the ranks of kids who are anti-bullies — and most of them are girls, a new University of Florida study finds.

“Boys may be more likely to bully, but girls are more likely to defend those being bullied,” said Jim Porter, who did the research for his doctoral dissertation in counselor education at UF. “While a lot of attention has been devoted to bully prevention programs, very little recognition is given to kids who jump in and try to stop the bullying or comfort the victim.”

These playground defenders merit attention because research shows that a majority of school shootings are committed by students who have been bullied, and victims of bullying are at risk for dropping out of school, suffering from depression and bullying others, Porter said. Thirty percent of students in sixth- through 10th-grade report some experience with bullying, either as a victim or perpetrator, he said.

Schools overlook good Samaritans as they are putting a growing number of bully prevention programs in place, in some cases relying on peer mediation where students resolve the disputes themselves, with mixed results, Porter said.

“What is missing in these programs is they don’t incorporate children who are already known to help victims,” he said. “Understanding kids who defend against bullying may reveal a new avenue toward preventing school-related violence.”

Porter surveyed 168 females and 101 males about how they believed their mother, father, best friends and favorite teachers would expect them to respond if they encountered another student being bullied. The offensive behavior included hitting, shoving, name-calling, teasing and ostracizing. Participants attended four middle schools in North Central Florida and were between the ages of 10 and 15.

Peer pressure can be a good thing, the study found. Students said teachers and parents were more likely than best friends to expect them to try to stop a bully, but they were more likely to actually intervene if the message came from a best friend. And more girls than boys reported feeling pressure from friends to come to a victim’s aid, Porter said.

Eighty-five percent of girls surveyed said their best friend would expect them to defend or help a bullying victim, compared with only 66 percent of boys, Porter said. In contrast to this 19 percentage gap, there was only a 1 to 3 percentage point difference in expectations for boys and girls’ behavior by teachers, mothers and fathers, he said.

Being female or having more feminine traits as measured by a gender identity scale also increased the likelihood that a student would defend a bully, the survey findings showed.

“Gender stereotypes that girls are more nurturing and boys are more aggressive definitely play out in how we expect boys and girls to behave,” he said. “Somehow we communicate these expectations to kids and it can affect their behavior.”

Schools may be the ideal place to try to help change those ideas, said Porter, who is now a counselor at Alachua Integrative Medicine in Alachua. “The news sometimes suggests that violence makes schools a hazardous place to be, but schools also are where we can learn how to get along with others and become adults,” he said.

Giving a role in bully prevention programs to bystanders who step in to defend the victims on the playground and in the classroom fits in with the recent trend in educational psychology toward positive reinforcement, Porter said.

“There was a time when people were more likely to think of punishing bad behavior,” he said. “Now there is a push toward finding and rewarding good behavior.”

Porter said he has always been interested in the subject of bullying because he was often beat up as a “new kid” moving from one community to another. “I never understood but always wanted to discover why some students were able to jump in and help others,” he said.

Focusing on defenders illustrates dramatic changes in public attitudes, he said.

“There was a time when bullying was not researched because it was considered normal childhood behavior,” he said. “It was thought of as being part of growing up, this learning to determine a pecking order, and making people stronger and weeding out the weak.”

Bullying expert Drew Nesdale, a psychologist at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, said this research suggests that a little recognized and under-used source of help might be found in the victims’ peers. “Interestingly, the fact that children who help might be responding to the expectations of others is consistent with research that has identified the powerful effect of the norms or expectations of others on their behavior.”

But this isn’t television. In this real-life drama, necropsies, assessment of skeletal remains for abuse and trauma, and crime scene analysis of hair, fibers and bloodstains are used to solve cases of cruelty to animals.

University of Florida officials announced today that they are partnering with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to form the first Veterinary Forensic Sciences Program dedicated to the teaching, research and application of forensic science in the investigation and prosecution of crimes against animals. The program will handle cases from around the country — possibly up to 200 within the first two years — and provide consultancy and training. Additional details will be presented at the North American Veterinary Conference, which opens Saturday in Orlando.

The collaboration between the university and the ASPCA started a year ago, when the two institutions organized a conference on the use of forensic science to investigate animal cruelty. Coordinators expected only a few dozen attendees, but instead were met by nearly 200 people from across the United States and nine other countries.

That unanticipated interest helped fuel the development of the new program.

“This is a newly emerging field,” said forensic toxicologist Bruce Goldberger, director of the William R. Maples Center for Forensic Medicine at UF. “We are translating our knowledge of forensic science to a new field devoted to solving crimes against animals.”

The Veterinary Forensic Sciences Program will dramatically increase the number of professionals trained in forensic investigation of animal cruelty cases — by potentially hundreds each year, Goldberger said. In so doing, it could also help uncover instances where the abusers are also targeting people, experts say.

Housed at the Maples Center, the new program is being established with an initial gift of $150,000 and a commitment of support for the next three years from the ASPCA.

Over the last few years, the number and stringency of laws relating to animal cruelty has increased. Penalties can include extended prison time, such as in the high-profile dog fighting case involving professional football player Michael Vick.

“That means the standards of investigations and of the science used in documenting what has happened to animals are much, much higher than even five years ago,” said Randall Lockwood, ASPCA senior vice president for anti-cruelty field services.

There is no national tracking of animal cruelty cases — the new Veterinary Forensics Sciences Program will allow for better collection of such data. Each year the ASPCA investigates more than 5,000 cruelty cases and arrests or issues summonses to more than 300 people. Scenarios include simple neglect, abandonment, animal hoarding and blood sports such as dog fighting. On the basis of media accounts, the animal advocacy Web site pet-abuse.com reports 1,620 high profile cases in 2008.

Lt. Sherry Schlueter, who calls herself the “original animal cop,” is credited with starting — in the early 1980s — the first animal cruelty investigation unit within a law enforcement agency. Today she is section supervisor of the Special Victims and Family Crimes section of the Broward County (Florida) Sheriff’s Office. She said the new program will help protect not only animals, but also humans who might be harmed by the same assailants. She heads one of the first police units in the country in which officers are “cross-trained” to recognize and investigate links between animal abuse and violence against humans, including child abuse, domestic violence and sexual abuse.

She works to educate fellow officers and others about that link.

“My goal was always to get law enforcement to recognize animal cruelty for the crime it is,” she said. “Victims are victims — and batterers are batterers — and it shouldn’t matter what species, what age, what gender.”

The new program at University of Florida will offer undergraduate and postgraduate courses and continuing education for veterinarians, law enforcement personnel, animal control officers and others. Courses include forensic entomology, buried-remains excavation, bloodstain pattern analysis, bite-mark analysis and animal crime scene processing. Trainings will be done in classroom settings, online and through the just-formed International Veterinary Forensic Sciences Association.

One such course — to be offered next spring through the University of Florida’s College of Veterinary Medicine — will include seminars on various forensics topics, as well as a mock trial in which students will play the defendants in animal-cruelty cases. Real prosecutors and media professionals will take part to enhance the learning experience.

Often, veterinarians presented with cases of animal abuse or neglect are not sure what to look for to establish cause and manner of death, or to prove that a crime was committed.

“Veterinarians are frequently asked to participate in cruelty investigations, yet we don’t receive special training on that in veterinary school,” said Julie Levy, director of Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Florida. “There is a substantial unmet need for that training to be provided to veterinarians.”

That is exactly the sort of information many people share on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. According to a new University of Florida study, many medical students are sharing far too much.

“College has traditionally been a time in life when non-normative behaviors are considered OK,” said Dr. Lindsay Acheson Thompson, an assistant professor of general pediatrics at UF’s College of Medicine. “I’m not sure I would want to have a permanent, public record of everything I did 10 years ago, but many of our students are creating just such a record, and they need to understand the problems this may cause.”

Thompson and several researchers from the UF’s colleges of Education and Medicine did a review of the Facebook sites of 362 UF medical students and residents and found that a significant portion of them were publicizing personal information most physicians would never share with their patients.

The study was published this week in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
The researchers looked up more than 800 medical students by name on Facebook, finding that 44 percent of them (for a total of 362) had profiles on the social networking service. Only 37 percent of those students had made their Facebook entries private — the most obvious safeguard against revealing too much personal information on the Web.

The Facebooking students seemed to be aware of the personal safety issues inherent in social networking: only 6 percent revealed a home address. However, students were looser with lifestyle information including sexual orientation (revealed by more than half of Facebook-using students), relationship status (revealed by 58 percent of students) and political opinions or positions (revealed by half of students).

But the numbers tell only part of the story. The researchers randomly selected 10 Facebook profiles for a more in-depth analysis, looking for hard-to-quantify items that patients or colleagues might find objectionable. Seven of the 10 included photographs in which the subject was drinking alcohol, and some form of excessive or hazardous drinking was implied in as many as half of those photos.

Three of the 10 students in the sample had joined groups that could be interpreted as sexist (“Physicians looking for trophy wives in training”) or racially charged (“I should have gone to a blacker college”).

Facebook is full of bluster and trash talk, and college-age users may feel that these items are not to be taken seriously. Yet patients and future employers, the researchers say, may not have quite so strong a taste for irony.

“Doctors are held to a higher standard,” Thompson said. “There are stated codes of behavior that are pretty straightforward, and those standards encourage the development of a professional persona.”

The medical profession isn’t the only career that requires young people to develop a professional identity. The medical school study was modeled closely on an earlier study that looked at the Facebook use of future elementary-school teachers studying in a college of education. Generally, the education majors’ postings were relatively tame, but the study found that many future teachers shared information to an unsafe degree. For instance, almost half of those with public accounts posted their home address on Facebook.

Associate professor Kara Dawson — one of several College of Education researchers who worked on both studies — says the goal of this line of research is not to discourage Facebook use but to make students aware of the demands of a professional persona. There is some evidence that students do begin to understand the impact of Facebook as they approach graduation. The study found that while 64 percent of medical students had public Facebook accounts, only 12 percent of resident physicians did.

The researchers say they have ample anecdotal evidence to show that medical schools across the nation have a similar problem.

“When we presented this at the Pediatric Academic Societies in May, we were overwhelmed with requests from pediatric program directors who wanted to know how to get their students to be more careful on Facebook,” said co-author Erik Black, a doctoral student and fellow at the College of Education. “This is a global problem, and ours is one of the first studies to address the problem head-on.”

The researchers note that awareness of this problem is rapidly growing, and many UF medical students have cleaned up their online presence significantly in the 12 months since the data for the study were collected. The researchers would like to take this awareness a step further, encouraging students to use social networking sites to enhance their professional identity.

“Social networking is a powerful tool,” Dawson said. “Both teachers and doctors can use networking to their advantage — but they need to create sites that reflect their professional identity.”

But before you write off a nonreligious teen as one not bound for college, take note: Researchers still aren’t sure why “religiosity” and college graduation are connected.

“For most religious communities represented in our study, there is a strong correlation between religiosity and degree attainment,” said Ana Puig, research director and affiliate faculty member in counselor education at UF’s College of Education. “However, correlation does not mean causality.”

Puig and UF counselor education professor Mary Ann Clark joined UF alumnus Sang Min Lee in an analysis of data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study, a massive, federally funded study of student outcomes that began 20 years ago. Lee, who is now a professor at Korea University, was the principal investigator on the project.

The study, which appeared late last year in the journal Counseling and Values, won the Biggs-Pine Award for Writing Excellence this spring from the Association for Spiritual, Ethical and Religious Values in Counseling.

The researchers used data from a survey of 11,551 eighth-grade students in 1988 – a survey that asked a number of lifestyle-related questions, including questions about religious faith – and compared it with information collected from the same students eight years after they graduated from high school.

They found that among most religions or denominations, students who self-identified as “very religious” in eighth grade were far more likely to have, or be on their way to getting, a college degree – when compared with students who said they belonged to a religious faith, but identified as “not religious” or “somewhat religious.”

The effect was most pronounced in the Muslim community, with “very religious” Muslim students nearly four times as likely to attain a degree as “nonreligious” Muslims. All other groups in the study showed a statistically significant increase in degree attainment among “very religious” students.

The effect was negligible or nonexistent in groups with high across-the-board degree attainment, including Jewish students, Episcopalians and students who identified as belonging to the broad group of “Eastern religions.”

When the results were broken down by ethnicity, the researchers found that a high degree of religiosity was related to degree attainment in white, African-American and Hispanic students. Lee noted that religiosity was not a significant factor in degree attainment in the Asian-American population.

The researchers say relationship between religiosity and degree attainment may be due to certain positive behavioral effects related to participation in a religious group. They cite previous studies that link religious participation to reduced delinquent behavior – a factor likely to affect educational outcomes.

They also note that some parents of academically successful children cite religious values as a factor in their success. Clark has been conducting interviews with parents of secondary school students for an unrelated study on gender and school achievement, and she says the topic of religiosity comes up quite often.

“I’ve been surprised at how often parents brought up religion as a factor in their child’s academic performance, even though we weren’t even asking about it,” Clark said. Even so, it is possible that good grades and religious involvement stem from the same root cause, such as a specific parenting style, the researchers said. The researchers also note that the survey suffers the same flaws as any other study using self-reported data, and that the results may reflect a tendency, among high-achieving students, to portray themselves in a positive light.

While the study shows outcomes of students who identify with a religion and still describe themselves as “nonreligious,” it does not reflect the religious outcomes of atheists or agnostics. While the survey allowed students to select “none” as their religion, respondents in that category were too few to be included in the analyses. The same was true for Mormon respondents and those who identified as “other Christian” and for Native American students.

However, the study does offer insights that teachers and counselors can use in improving student performance, Clark said. Because religious differences are often too hot a topic for the classroom, Clark said, educators may feel inclined to steer conversation away from the topic of faith. However, it is important that educators listen to what students are saying, and acknowledge the role religion may play in their school lives.

“Students and parents are saying that religion is an important part of their academic lives, and we need to listen to that,” Clark said.

Until now the revised March reading, along with January’s index, had been consumer confidence’s lowest level since December 1991, said Chris McCarty, director of UF’s Survey Research Center at the Bureau of Economic and Business Research.

“Consumer confidence in Florida is now at the same recessionary levels as it was during the 1990-91 recession,” McCarty said. “Unlike the relatively mild recession of 2001, the recession of 1990-91 resulted in a longer time to recover. This is a likely scenario for the current economy.”

Most economists believe the economy will pick up by late 2008 or early 2009, but the question remains whether it will get worse and follow the pattern of the 1973-75 recession, he said.

“The causes of lower consumer confidence are well-known to Floridians,” McCarty said. “Falling housing prices, stricter guidelines for all forms of credit, and rising gasoline and food prices are hitting consumers all at once. This has raised the possibility of ‘stagflation,’ a circumstance where gross domestic product retracts while inflation rises.”

Four of the five components that make up the index fell this month. The largest decrease was in perceptions of personal finances a year from now, which fell nine points to 79, a record low for that component. Perceptions of U.S. economic conditions over the next year fell six points to 52, perception of personal finances now compared with a year ago fell five points to 59, a record low for that component, and perceptions of U.S. economic conditions over the next five years fell four points to 72. Perceptions as to whether it is a good time to buy big-ticket consumer items rose three points to 67.

Nationally, consumer confidence as measured by the University of Michigan has fallen to a 26-year low, McCarty said. Hardest hit are low-income households that have a far more difficult time with higher energy and food prices, he said.

In Florida, consumer confidence hit a record low of 64 in December of 1991, McCarty said. Last month’s preliminary index was 68 but was revised up to 70 when the final results were in, he said.

“The question on everyone’s mind is how we are going to get out of this slow economy?” McCarty said. “The answer is probably time. Median house prices have been falling here in Florida since late 2006, and we expect prices to bottom out in much of Florida by July.”

Many homeowners have dealt with their adjustable rate mortgages being reset at higher rates by refinancing, making the required higher payments or leaving their home altogether, McCarty said. Most banks that made bad loans have reduced the book value of assets that are overvalued compared to their market value, and investors are adjusting to these write-downs, he said.

The economic stimulus package, though a welcome relief for many households, will probably not do much to change the course of events, he said.

The research center conducts the Florida Consumer Attitude Survey monthly. Respondents are 18 or older and live in households telephoned randomly. The preliminary index for April was conducted from 533 responses.

Consumer confidence is designed to help predict buying patterns by measuring the mood of consumers toward purchasing. Although other economic indicators also predict buying patterns, consumer confidence tends to be available sooner. The index is benchmarked to 1966, so a value of 100 represents the same level of confidence for that year. The value of the index is in comparing changes over time rather than looking at an isolated month.

Now, thanks to a $600,000 donation by Fred and Christine Shewey of Gainesville, the university’s College of Education is creating an endowment to support new research and programs aimed at middle school reform and enhancement. The gift is eligible to receive matching state funds that could raise the total value of the gift to $1 million.

Fred Shewey said their donation was made as a tribute to their daughter-in-law, Kathy Shewey, a longtime Alachua County educator who is married to their son, Robert. Christine Shewey, the family matriarch, died in October at age 88, while the couple’s gift was being finalized, but the endowment creating the Shewey Excellence in Middle School Education Fund has been established in both of their names.

“Christine and I wanted to do something special for middle school teachers and students. I was on the school board of Mingo County, West Virginia, for 18 years and noticed that middle school kids were truly caught in the middle between elementary and high school in so many ways,” said Fred Shewey, 91, who owned several construction and coal companies in his West Virginia home state before retiring to Gainesville. “We watched Kathy work hard for so many years with middle school teachers and this age group. We wanted to do something to support her efforts.”

Yearly interest earned on the Shewey endowment will fund a bevy of activities and programs designed to improve middle-grades instruction and help educators solve the many hurdles they face while teaching young adolescents.

“Middle school teachers must work with young adolescents at a very precarious time in the students’ lives,” said Nancy Dana, director of the college’s Center for School Improvement, who will steer the activities supported by the Shewey fund. “Research and professional development programs generated by this endowment will support middle-grades teachers in their quest to continually improve their instruction and understand the unique issues facing young adolescents. The results will directly impact hundreds of teachers and their students each year.”

Dana heads an advisory group that will plan and oversee the Shewey Fund programs. The group also includes: Kathy Shewey, who is supervisor of staff development for Alachua County public schools; Paul George, a UF distinguished professor emeritus in education who has been identified by Middle School Journal as the nation’s “number-one ranking scholar” in middle grades education; and Diane Yendol-Hoppey, an associate professor of education specializing in teacher leadership and professional development.

Kathy Shewey’s career as a middle school teacher, researcher, team leader and district administrator spans four decades. She has educated Alachua County students for more than 37 years — at Kanapaha Middle School and Lincoln Middle School in Gainesville, Spring Hill Middle School in High Springs, and one year at Santa Fe High School in Alachua. The National Middle School Association (NMSA) in November awarded her its Distinguished Educator Award for her significant contributions to middle school education.

While UF scholars — including Paul George — were among the first, some 40 years ago, to campaign for the creation of separate schools to meet the needs of children in early adolescence, they also are among the first to publicly call for reform and a reexamination of middle schools in today’s school system. George recently headed a panel of Florida educators that produced an assessment of critical issues for middle school reform in Florida.

“Many middle schools are no longer serving their original function,” said George, who retired from teaching last year but continues to conduct research in his specialty field. “Many schools are too large and too focused on standardized testing to meet the special developmental needs of adolescents. We will look at ways to improve instruction that is appropriate for students in their early teens.”

Paul George and Kathy Shewey are no strangers. Shewey studied under George while earning her master’s degree in secondary education at UF in 1977.

“The University of Florida pioneered the original middle school movement, and now we’re leading modern reform efforts to enhance effective middle school practices and reintroduce some of these practices into schools where they may have lost momentum over the years,” Dana said. “The Sheweys’ gift will ultimately benefit thousands of middle school teachers and their students.”

The findings were presented today (Nov. 5) at the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

“What we found was quite concerning, particularly in light of the fact that levels of sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancies continue to rise in Florida and the state ranks second in the nation in terms of annual incident HIV infections,” said lead investigator Brian Dodge, formerly of the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions.

Florida’s rates of gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis have risen from 307 cases per 100,000 residents in 1997 to 399 in 2006, a 23 percent increase, according to the Florida Department of Health.

Previous national studies have consistently shown that most parents want some form of sex education to take place in schools, said Dodge, who is now associate director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University Bloomington.

Although Florida is technically one of 23 states that require schools to teach sex education and HIV prevention classes during the course of the students’ academic careers, it is unclear whether scientifically accurate and comprehensive information regarding the risks and benefits of sexuality is being offered to students, he said. There are no requirements or standards for the course content and, until the study, little was known about what topics are typically covered.

To find out, in 2006 the research team performed the first statewide assessment of sex education in Florida’s public middle and high schools, funded by The Picower Foundation. Data were collected from surveys completed by instructors who are most commonly responsible for sex education — those teaching health, science, physical education or family and consumer sciences.

The survey was developed with input from a six-member scientific advisory committee and a 20-member community advisory committee that included teachers, public health workers, nurses, doctors and school administrators from across the state.

“Given the sensitive nature of this topic, it was essential that the study had guidance from the people who really understood how Florida school systems work, and how state and local policies impact the teachers’ ability to educate their students,” said researcher Ellen Lopez, an assistant professor in UF’s department of behavioral science and community health. “It was also important to gain insight from people who had different views about sex education.”

The results of the study, based on 479 respondents, showed that 87 percent of the teachers surveyed acknowledged that sex education, in some form, took place in their schools in the 2005-06 school year. However, sex education was a requirement for all students in only 16 percent of the respondents’ schools, and most teachers reported that parents or caregivers were able to control whether their children participated in the classes. In a third of the schools, parents need to opt in, rather than opt out, for their child to receive sex education.

The sex education course content overwhelmingly fell in line with the state of Florida’s official “abstinence-only until marriage” policy for sex education and instruction on HIV/AIDS. Nearly every educator who responded to the survey stated they taught abstinence from sexual activity as the only way to avoid unintended pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and other associated health problems.

The researchers found regional differences in program content in Florida’s public schools. Teachers in North Florida were twice as likely as teachers in Central Florida and three times as likely as those in South Florida to teach an abstinence-only curriculum, which typically does not cover the risks and benefits of contraceptives, said research team member Frank Bandiera, a graduate of UF’s Master of Public Health program and a doctoral student in epidemiology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

“Most people are aware that there are major cultural differences between, say, Miami and Tallahassee,” Bandiera said. “What we found in terms of sex education, though, is that these places may as well be on different planets.”

The investigators also discovered many differences in the source of Florida teacher’s sex education curriculum.

“More than half of sex educators used a ‘locally developed curriculum,’” Dodge said. “In reality this could be anything. Respondents to our survey reported using everything from formal state guidelines to random Internet information and outdated county curricula. In short, there appears to be no uniformity in terms of underlying value systems or philosophical foundations for sex education in Florida.”

In addition, the teachers reported that less than one-quarter of overall classroom time was devoted to sex education and that it was most often taught as part of another course, such as family and consumer sciences or health.

“This is an important study,” said Theo Sandfort, a research scientist at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies and an associate professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. “While unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections in young people form a great concern, little seems to be in place to actually promote responsible sexual behavior. Education has a major role to play in promoting young people’s sexual health, but it cannot be effective if supportive policies, skills and resources are lacking. Hopefully this study will not be without consequences.”

The results of the UF study are currently in press and will appear in the peer-reviewed journals “Sex Education” and “American Journal of Sexuality Education.”

In Florida, larger school districts are more likely than smaller ones to have mandatory expulsion policies for students who bring guns to schools and to impose mandatory suspension for the possession of knives and drugs, as well as bullying, said Brian Schoonover, who completed the research for his doctoral dissertation in education at UF.

“Children are increasingly being sent to judges and jails for offenses that traditionally were dealt with in the principal’s office and after-school detentions,” said Schoonover, who is scheduled to present his findings Tuesday at the National Conference for Safe Schools and Communities in Washington, D.C. “Thirty years ago it would have been unusual to see a child handcuffed by a police officer. Today it is part of a growing trend that is commonly referred to as the ‘schoolhouse-to-jailhouse track’ or the ‘school-to-prison pipeline.’”

Perhaps the biggest disparity between the different sized districts is that more than half of the state’s small districts — 53 percent — have no alternative educational setting for students who are expelled, compared to only 3 percent of large districts, Schoonover said.

“These are children who are no longer being given the opportunity to continue their education,” he said. “When these kids get kicked out of school and have nowhere to go, they are at risk for breaking into homes and vandalizing neighborhoods while people are at work.”

A mandatory 365-day expulsion is required under zero tolerance policies that became effective with 1994 passage of the federal Gun-Free Schools Act, Schoonover said. Because Florida school districts respect each other’s expulsions, expelled students have no classroom to attend unless their parents can afford to send them to a private school that will take them, he said.

Parents generally support zero tolerance policies as a way to rid schools of students who bring guns, knives and drugs to class, until the time their child is caught committing an offense, which may be unintentional, he said.

Currently, all 50 states have zero tolerance policies mentioned in their state laws, but Texas is the only state that requires schools to investigate intent before expelling a student from school for a violation, Schoonover said. “Zero tolerance policies, originally meant to keep guns out of schools, have evolved into a series of broad, all-encompassing policies that in extreme cases expel students as young as 5 years old for having temper tantrums or bringing a toy ax to their classroom Halloween party,” he said.

Of the 26,990 school-related referrals to the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice during the 2004-05 school year, 76 percent were for misdemeanor offenses such as disorderly conduct, trespassing or assault and battery, which includes fights, he said.

It raises the question of whether students, some of whom are quite young, are best disciplined by youth resource officers who take them to detention centers or principals and teachers who instruct them how to change their behavior at school, he said.

Schoonover analyzed student conduct codes from Florida’s 67 county public school districts, classifying the 33 districts with more than 15,000 students as large and the 34 with fewer than 15,000 students as small.

He found that all of Florida’s large districts had mandatory expulsion policies for possession of a gun, compared with 85 percent of small districts. Differences were more pronounced for knives, with 88 percent of large districts having mandatory suspension policies, compared with 47 percent of small districts.

Next to guns, policies citing drugs were the most common, with 88 percent of large districts and 74 percent of small districts having mandatory suspension. Bullying was far less common, with only 27 percent of large districts and 15 percent of small districts requiring suspension for students who engage in such behavior, he said.

“As a researcher and a parent, I am anxious for schools to revise their codes of conduct to make them more useful in helping schools to deal with and change inappropriate behavior, rather than abandoning these students to the possibility of even worse behavior in our communities,” said Reece L. Peterson, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln special education professor who directed the “Safe and Responsive Schools” federal violence prevention project.

The center, named after one of the most influential supporters of European integration throughout most of the 20th century, will be entirely dedicated to EU topics and will support an annual visiting scholar program, additional special topic classes and a yearly workshop. It will be housed within the UF Center for European Studies.

The visiting scholars, who will spend a minimum of two weeks in Gainesville working with UF faculty and teaching a special two-week intensive course, can be either academics from European Union universities or current practitioners in the field of European integration, such as EU government officials.

There are currently 107 such centers at universities worldwide, and the vast majority are in EU member or candidate countries. This year, Japan was the only other non-European country to receive a grant from the EU to create a new center, said Amie Kreppel, director of the UF Center for European Studies.

The grant will provide the university with approximately $205,000 over three years and present the possibility of future grants and center renewals.

The Jean Monnet center is proof of the increasing international recognition of the strength of UF’s European studies programs, Kreppel said. Growing student interest, the efforts of the Center for European Studies and the strength of other Europe-focused groups such as the France-Florida Research Institute and the Center for Greek Studies are the driving forces behind the rapid growth of EU scholarship at the university, she said.

The center’s mission of educating non-Europeans about the EU is vital for Americans and Floridians in today’s world, Kreppel said.

“The EU is America’s largest trading partner and our most important political ally,” she said. “And for Florida, the EU is our biggest foreign direct investor. Their investments account for more than 145,000 jobs.”

UF’s successful bid to start a Jean Monnet center has a significance that reaches far beyond Gainesville, Kreppel said.

“For America, it encourages other universities to continue to apply for them,” she said. “I think that a lot of people assume that just because it’s never happened before, Jean Monnet centers are not for America.”

Thanks to UF, that is no longer the case.

You may have been crowded out of that class by a “course shopper” – a student who repeatedly drops and adds classes right up to the last minute. According to a recent University of Florida study, more than one out of every three college-level students qualifies as a course shopper, and they are taking a toll on their colleges and fellow students.

“Administrators have historically considered course shopping a benign behavior,” said Linda Serra Hagedorn, a professor at UF’s College of Education and lead author on the study, which appeared in the July/August issue of The Journal of Higher Education. “We’re finding, however, that leaves empty seats in classrooms and students who can’t enroll in the courses they want.”

Course shoppers are students who try to maximize their academic success by sampling courses prior to settling on a final schedule.

Some students “shop” in a cyclic manner by registering for a normal course load – but dropping any classes that look too tough after the first class session, or swapping those classes for courses that seem less challenging. The swapping process may continue until the end of the drop-add period.

Others, known as bulk shoppers, schedule a far larger course load than they intend to take. They then attend all the classes they’ve registered for, and drop the ones they like the least.

A veteran college administrator, Hagedorn has seen ample anecdotal evidence of the prevalence of course swapping. As the lead investigator of a project called TRUCCS (or Transfer and Retention of Urban Community College Students) Hagedorn and her colleagues found themselves uniquely well-positioned to examine course shopping’s true effects.

TRUCCS is a multiyear, comprehensive study of the college transcripts and educational outcomes of more than 5,000 students within the community college system in Los Angeles. While many studies have examined student transcripts or polled students on their backgrounds, plans, and academic habits, TRUCCS is one of the largest studies to look at transcripts and student questionnaires in tandem.

When investigators looked at course shopping among their sample, they found that 38 percent of students in the study engaged in at least some form of course shopping. Most of those were cyclic shoppers. About 7 percent of the entire study body qualified as bulk shoppers. And some students were “mixed-bag shoppers” who did a little of both.

It’s clear that bulk shopping does the most damage, Hagedorn said, but all kinds of course shoppers do damage to the higher education system by blocking out fellow students, causing needless work for administrators, and throwing a monkey wrench into class schedules.

“The cost is difficult to quantify, but when you have empty seats in a class and students who wish they could have taken that class, it’s clear that there is some waste involved,” Hagedorn said.

Course-shopping appears to hold broad appeal. The study found few variations in shopping behaviors between men and women or people of different ethnic backgrounds. Business majors were more likely than others to add and drop courses in bulk, and English and math courses were the ones most likely to be “shopped.”

The appeal is strongest among struggling students, who see course shopping as a way to make up for academic shortcomings, Hagedorn said. Still, the study suggests that stratagem may not work. The authors found that while occasional course shoppers showed a roughly average rate of course completion, frequent shoppers were more likely to have low grades and to drop out of school entirely.

Hagedorn and her co-authors offer a number of suggestions for reining in course shoppers. Schools could take a relatively hard line, instituting a “three strikes” policy that bans any student from dropping large numbers of classes for more than a few semesters. They could also employ less direct techniques such as requiring teachers to post a syllabus for each class online, which would help occasional shoppers avoid registering for courses they aren’t prepared to take.

“Dropping a course is very easy for a student,” Hagedorn said. “It might benefit the students if colleges made the process more difficult.”

Educators have long believed that a “critical mass” of like students is vital to making minority students feel at home on college campuses – but this study, appearing in the February issue of the journal Research in Higher Education, may be the first to find statistical evidence to confirm that belief.

“These data suggest that if colleges are really serious about reaching out to minority groups, they need to think in terms of clusters, not individuals,” said professor Linda Serra Hagedorn, chairwoman of UF’s Department of Educational Administration and Policy. “If you’re the only Latino or African-American on your college campus, you can certainly succeed academically – but if you’re surrounded by people who share your cultural background, your chances of success improve.”

Hagedorn is the lead investigator and director of the Transfer and Retention of Urban Community College Students (or TRUCCS) project, a multiyear, comprehensive study of the educational outcomes of 5,000 community college students at the nine community college campuses in the Los Angeles area. Investigators queried the students on their backgrounds, attitudes and experiences, and compared that data to the students’ transcript records.

When they looked at students who self-identified as Hispanic, the researchers found that students at largely Hispanic community colleges had better educational outcomes than students at colleges where Hispanic students were rare. The differences were small but statistically significant. Age, involvement in campus activities and even ability to speak English were less predictive of Hispanic students’ success.

Researchers have long suspected that the size of a school’s minority population plays a key role in the academic experience of minority students. The education field has even borrowed a term from nuclear physics – “critical mass” – to describe the point at which minority students become plentiful enough to change the campus climate and give a school a more welcoming feel.

The study produced some surprising findings. For instance, while students at colleges with large Hispanic colleges were more likely to stay in school and succeed academically, they were also less likely to enroll in remedial English or math classes.

In schools where Spanish speakers are few, teachers may be more likely to refer students to remedial classes, Hagedorn said. And a large community of bilingual students may help struggling English speakers learn the language without formal intervention.

The researchers also found that first-generation immigrants – students born in Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries – tended to do better in school than students born in the U.S. to immigrant parents.

“One might expect students who grew up in the U.S. to perform better because they understand the social climate better,” Hagedorn said. “But in fact, many immigrant students were in very good schools in Mexico before they moved here – while many students who were born in the U.S. live in impoverished urban communities with substandard school systems.”

Alberto Cabrera, a University of Maryland education professor, co-authored an earlier large-scale study which found that parental involvement was one of the best indicators of academic success among Latino students. Cabrera said Hagedorn’s study sheds new light on his findings.

“Latino students often rely on their families for social support in school because they do not feel represented among the faculty or students,” Cabrera said. “In light of Linda Hagedorn’s findings, I would hypothesize that a critical mass of Latino students can create a support system that mimics the effect of support from one’s family.”

The study reinforces the benefits of the community college system. Hagedorn notes that among the colleges in the study, every institution with a large Hispanic population was located in a largely Hispanic neighborhood – providing additional social support for students.

“They’re called ‘community’ colleges for a reason,” Hagedorn said. “They’re supposed to serve the community in which they reside, and create a comfortable learning environment for students in that community.”

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A carrot for teachers helps students stick to the books, according to a new University of Florida study that finds merit pay for instructors equates to better test scores for their pupils.

Pay incentives for teachers had more positive effects on student test scores than such school improvement methods as smaller class sizes or stricter requirements for classroom attendance, said David Figlio, a UF economics professor. The study, by Figlio and UF economics professor Lawrence Kenny, has been accepted for publication in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Public Economics.

“This research provides the first systematic evidence of a relationship between individual teacher performance incentives and student achievement in the United States,” Figlio said. “We demonstrate that students learn more when teachers are given financial incentives to do a better job.”

Students at schools with teacher pay-for-performance programs scored an average of one to two percentage points higher on standardized tests than their peers at schools where no bonuses were offered, Figlio said.

“While many explanations have been offered for the disappointing performance of primary and secondary schools, one untested hypothesis lays the blame on there being little or no incentive for teachers to do a good job,” he said. “Good teachers make no more than uninspired, mediocre teachers.”

The UF study found the effects of these pay incentives were strongest in schools with students from the poorest families, perhaps because those schools have the most to gain from the incentive plan, Figlio said.

“Many teachers complain that poor parents often are uninvolved in their children’s education,” he said. “Since there appears to be less parental monitoring in schools serving poorer families, these schools stand to have a greater potential for improvement.”

Figlio and Kenny collected surveys from 534 schools that were among 1,319 public and private schools participating in a national study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education beginning in 1988. They also collected data on the frequency and magnitude of school salary incentives, analyzing it in relation to student achievement. That achievement was measured in the earlier U.S. Department of Education study on eighth-graders, with follow-up surveys done in 10th and 12th grades.

About 16 percent of American schools have teacher pay-for-performance programs in place, Figlio said. Such financial incentives were the rule rather than the exception early in the 20th century, but they gradually became less prevalent starting in the 1960s, probably because of the rising strength of teachers’ unions, he said.

Many teachers criticize these bonus plans, saying they raise questions about fairness and they destroy cooperation among teachers.

”It’s important to note that the form of performance pay we’re looking at is linked to student outcomes rather than principal assessments,” Figlio said. “One reason why performance pay based on principal assessments is not very effective is that principals are under a huge amount of pressure to say that everybody is excellent.”

One proposal that links teachers’ bonuses to student performance is a Florida plan that awards the top 10 percent of teachers in each school district a 5 percent bonus based on student gains on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. Figlio believes such an approach, using standardized tests, recognizes individual teacher accomplishments without destroying the incentive of teachers within a school to work together.

“This is important because one of the major criticisms of performance pay systems is that teaching is a collaborative enterprise,” he said. “If a principal has to identify a single excellent teacher, it could end up pitting one colleague against another.”

The study also found that merit pay proposals that targeted only a few teachers for bonuses were more effective than programs in which large numbers of instructors received some kind of reward, Figlio said. “Doling out merit pay to most teachers seems to provide them with little incentive to do a better job,” he said.

Figlio said he believes the ideal merit pay system would reward both individual teachers as well as teams of teachers.

“Parents need to be able to talk to a counselor about their child’s progress,” said Professor Harry Daniels, chairman of the counselor education department at UF’s College of Education and a co-author of the study. “They need a place in the school system where they feel safe, where they feel their child’s needs are understood.

“These things may seem small, but they have a huge effect on academic success.”

Daniels and co-author Sondra Smith-Adcock, an associate professor of counselor education at UF, led a team that surveyed school services administrators in school districts across Florida on the counseling provided to Hispanic students. The researchers published their results in this month’s issue of the journal Professional School Counseling.

Fifty-nine percent of the administrators said their Hispanic students were at risk of not receiving needed counseling. Eighty-four percent said their district needed more Spanish-speaking bilingual counselors to address the personal needs of students, and 80 percent agreed that their district needed more Spanish-speaking counselors to guide students in making career decisions.

The results, researchers say, were worrisome but not surprising. Studies in the mid-1990s showed that while Hispanics made up one-eighth of Florida’s student population at the time, only 2 percent of school counselors were Hispanic. In the past decade, Smith-Adcock said, every single county has seen its Hispanic population increase by at least 30 percent – but there is no evidence of a similar increase in the number of Hispanic counselors.
“When school administrators think of the needs of Hispanic students, they tend to think in terms of language acquisition for new immigrants,” Smith-Adcock said. “There’s a whole stratum of services that is being missed.”

Hispanic students who face mental health issues may find it difficult to trust or open up to non-Hispanic counselors, and often need someone who speaks their first language, Smith-Adcock said.

However, mental health counseling is just one responsibility for counselors, Smith-Adcock said. They also help students define their career goals and navigate the increasingly complex academic world in a way that will help them achieve their goals. These services are particularly difficult to provide students who are new arrivals to the country, or whose parents are first-generation immigrants with limited English skills.

“Simply choosing electives is a new experience for many people in the Latino community,” said Jennifer Gonzales Young, a district-level bilingual counselor for Hillsborough County Public Schools. “In many Spanish-speaking countries, students take a prescribed schedule of courses, and don’t get to choose their classes. Some parents are overwhelmed by the system, and if it isn’t explained to them properly, their children can miss some important opportunities.”

Similar problems can arise when students apply to college, apply for financial aid or try to interpret the results of standardized tests, Young said.

Hillsborough County has one of the fastest-growing Hispanic populations in the state. Young said there are an estimated 51,000 Hispanic children in Hillsborough County’s school system, and more than 36,000 speak Spanish as their first language. Until recently, Young was one of only a few Hispanic counselors serving that population.

“There seems to be a shortage of bilingual counselors everywhere in the state, and Hillsborough is just one example,” UF’s Daniels said. “At the elementary level, for instance, the ideal ratio is one counselor per 300 students. I don’t know of a single place in Florida that comes close to that ratio for Spanish-speaking students.”

UF is attempting to relieve the shortage. The College of Education recently completed a three-year, grant-funded program that brought 17 bilingual Hillsborough County teachers to UF to study for the educational specialist degree in counselor education. All of those teachers were Spanish-speaking and most were either of Hispanic origin or had prior experience living in a Spanish-speaking country.

Daniels said the project, titled “Consejeros: Levantando El Pueblo” (or “Counselors Lifting the Community”) was more than simply a degree program. Students followed a culturally relevant course of study designed to give equal focus to the three major influences in the life of Hispanic families: the school, the family and the community.

Based on the success of that project, Daniels and Smith-Adcock are considering the creation of a permanent distance education program that would allow bilingual teachers to study for a counselor education degree in the county where they work.

“Many bilingual teachers are already serving as a contact point between the school system and the families of their Hispanic students,” he said. “By becoming full-time counselors, they can fill that role more effectively, for more people.”

Fall semester marks the official launch of a science-based organic agriculture undergraduate degree program at UF, making it one of the first three U.S. institutions to offer this major. Colorado State University and Washington State University debut similar programs this fall.

UF has offered a minor in organic agriculture for the past year. Both the major and minor programs are administered by the horticultural sciences department, part of UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

Florida has a growing organic food industry, but producers must look beyond the state to find highly trained personnel to manage their operations, said Dan Cantliffe, chairman of the horticultural sciences department.

“This (program) is something that’s been long overdue, especially for UF and the United States,” Cantliffe said. “There’s a big industry, a big demand and a lack of people who are qualified to do the work employers need.”

Organic agriculture is an approach to food production that involves little or no synthetic chemical fertilizer and pesticide. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has established strict guidelines for certifying organic farmers.

In 2005, organic foods accounted for $13.8 billion in U.S. consumer sales, about 2.5 percent of total U.S. food sales, according to a manufacturers’ survey commissioned by the Organic Trade Association, a leading industry organization. Since 1998, revenues from U.S. consumer sales of organic foods have risen by an average of more than 18 percent per year.

And it’s not just consumers who are interested in organic food, Cantliffe said. The UF major and minor programs were developed partly in response to ongoing student demand.

“Another big factor was that we have faculty and facilities that are suitable for teaching this material,” he said. “As the demand and the curriculum develop, we may expand the program.”

Three students have enrolled in the undergraduate degree program, and many others have expressed interest, said Melissa Webb, academic support services coordinator for the horticultural sciences department.

“We think a lot more (students) will come out of the woodwork,” Webb said. “There’s no set cap on enrollment, so the more, the merrier.”

About one dozen students are enrolled in the minor program, she said.

The undergraduate degree program will focus on training students to manage an organic farming unit, said Mickie Swisher, director of UF’s Center for Organic Agriculture.

“This gives you the skills and technical knowledge where if you needed to put 2,000 acres of organic crops into production, you could do it,” said Swisher, a UF associate professor of family, youth and community sciences.

The program requires 120 credit hours, most of them in science courses, including chemistry, botany, genetics, entomology and soil science, capped off by several production-agriculture classes.

One required class, Principles of Organic and Sustainable Production, was devised specifically for the program; another, Alternative Cropping Systems, was modified to put greater emphasis on organic agriculture.

The minor program requires the sustainable production and alternative cropping classes, plus at least three credits of electives on each of three subjects – crop production, pest management and resource management.

Swisher helped organize a committee that developed the minor program over a six-month period in 2004. Launched in fall 2005, the minor is considered interdisciplinary and is also headquartered in the horticultural sciences department.

While the minor program was being proposed, a committee in the horticultural sciences department developed the proposal for the organic agriculture major. Webb and Rebecca Darnell, a professor of horticultural sciences and undergraduate coordinator for the department, chaired the committee. Darnell also helped secure approval from the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and the UF Curriculum Committee for both the minor and major.

The new undergraduate degree program will enhance the prestige of both UF and the department, Darnell said.

“The development of this program is addressing a critical need in educating students in science-based information required for successful organic production,” she said. “These students would then be in an excellent position to aid in the success of the organic industry in Florida and elsewhere.”