Reference

Over the years, there have been many attempts to place an economic value on the cost of illiteracy in various nations. There are disputes about the methodologies used to calculate such figures. But the fact remains that illiteracy costs the global economy more than USD $1 trillion dollars each year due to the fact that at least one in five people worldwide struggle with illiteracyi. This is a global tragedy. Behind the numbers are the millions of people who live in poverty due to the simple fact that they are illiterate. However, the problem is anything but simple.

Functional illiteracy means a person may be able to read and write simple words, but cannot apply these skills to tasks such as reading a medicine label, balancing a chequebook, or filling out a job applicationii.

Shockingly, more than 796 million people in the world cannot read and writeiii. About 67 million children do not have access to primary school education and another 72 million miss out on secondary school educationiv v.

The findings of this final report include:
 The cost of illiteracy to the global economy is estimated at USD $1.19 trillion.
 The effects of illiteracy are very similar in developing and developed countries. This includes illiterate people trapped in a cycle of poverty with limited opportunities for employment or income generation and higher chances of poor health, turning to crime and dependence on social welfare or charity (if available).

The proportion of variance in student achievement that is explained by student SES—“poverty’s power rating,” as some call it—tends to be lower among smaller schools than among larger schools. Smaller schools, many claim, are able to somehow disrupt the seemingly axiomatic association between SES and student achievement. Using eighth-grade data for 216 public schools in Maine, I explored the hypothesis that this in part is a statistical artifact of the greater volatility (lower reliability) of school-aggregated student achievement in smaller schools. This hypothesis received no support when reading achievement served as the dependent variable. In contrast, the hypothesis was supported when the dependent variable was mathematics achievement. For reasons considered in the discussion, however, I ultimately concluded that the latter results are insufficient to affirm the statistical-artifact hypothesis here as well. Implications for subsequent research are discussed.

Disruptive behavior in schools has been a source of concern for school systems for several years. Indeed, the single most common request for assistance from teachers is related to behavior and classroom management (Rose & Gallup, 2005). Classrooms with frequent disruptive behaviors have less academic engaged time, and the students in disruptive classrooms tend to have lower grades and do poorer on standardized tests (Shinn, Ramsey, Walker, Stieber, & O‟Neill, 1987). Furthermore, attempts to control disruptive behaviors cost considerable teacher time at the expense of academic instruction.

Effective classroom management focuses on preventive rather than reactive procedures and establishes a positive classroom environment in which the teacher focuses on students who behave appropriately (Lewis & Sugai, 1999). Rules and routines are powerful preventative components to classroom organization and management plans because they establish the behavioral context of the classroom by specifying what is expected, what will be reinforced, and what will be retaught if inappropriate behavior occurs (Colvin, Kame‟enui, & Sugai, 1993). This prevents problem behavior by giving students specific, appropriate behaviors to engage in. Monitoring student behavior allows the teacher to acknowledge students who are engaging in appropriate behavior and prevent misbehavior from escalating (Colvin et al., 1993).

Research on classroom management has typically focused on the identification of individual practices that have some level of evidence to support their adoption within classrooms. These practices are then combined under the assumption that, if individual practices are effective, combining these practices into a package will be equally, if not more, effective. Textbooks are written and policies and guidelines are disseminated to school personnel based on these assumptions. Without research that examines classroom management as an efficient package of effective practices, a significant gap in our current knowledge base still exists. Understanding the components that make up the most effective and efficient classroom management system as well as identifying the effects teachers and administrators can expect from implementing effective classroom management strategies represent some of these gaps. A meta-analysis of classroom management which identifies more and less effective approaches to universal, whole-class, classroom management as a set of practices is needed to provide the field with clear research-based standards.

This review examines the effects of teachers‟ universal classroom management practices in reducing disruptive, aggressive, and inappropriate behaviors. The specific research questions addressed are: Do teacher‟s universal classroom management practices reduce problem behavior in classrooms with students in kindergarten through 12th grade? What components make up the most effective and efficient classroom management programs? Do differences in effectiveness exist between grade levels? Do differences in classroom management components exist between grade levels? Does treatment fidelity affect the outcomes observed? These questions were addressed through a systematic review of the classroom management literature and a meta-analysis of the effects of classroom management on disruptive or aggressive student behavior.