Dr. Cheryl M. Ackerman, Senior Associate for Evaluation of the University of Delaware Education Research & Development Center, and Ms. Truus van der Kaiij of the Education Management Industry, presented a preliminary inquiry into the appropriateness of Waldorf Education for gifted and talented learners in a poster Waldorf education’s potential for educating gifted students at the 56^th Annual Convention of National Association for Gifted Children on November 7, in St Louis, MO.

Their presentation provided an introduction to Waldorf education, a unique pedagogy that educates children’s “hearts, hands, and minds”— with the goal of developing free thinking, socially responsible, moral individuals.

Key elements of Waldorf’s educational philosophy, curriculum, and environment include integrating the arts into all subjects, an emphasis on pre-literacy that focuses on story-telling and poems in the oral tradition and delaying formal literacy instruction far longer than is typical in public education.  Strong connections to the cycles of nature are also part of the curriculum and all students participate in artistic activities and learn hand-work (eg. knitting, woodworking).  In Waldorf schools, students have the same teacher for core subject areas from grade 1 to grade 8. 

The presenters strove to display the poster content in a manner representative of the aesthetics of Waldorf education.  In doing so, it provided more than just descriptions of the Waldorf school curriculum and values, but also a sense of the environment in which Waldorf education takes place.

With these and other elements in mind, the presenters suggested conditions under which Waldorf education may or may not be appropriate for gifted students as a private education alternative. 

NAGC Poster- Waldorf education’s potential for educating gifted students

On Wednesday, November 18, the College of Education and Public Policy is hosting an Expo to provides prospective undergraduate and graduate students an opportunity to meet faculty, students, and staff and to learn more about degree programs that the college offers.

Information will be available about the new interdisciplinary M. S. degree program in Evaluation. The program, headed by Leslie Cooksy, is a collaboration between the School of Education, the Department of Human Development & Family Studies, and the School of Urban Affairs & Public Policy.

Refreshments, door prizes and other giveaways will be provided.  More information about the Expo is avaliable from the CEPP website.

For more information about UD’s master’s degree in Evaluation, contact Leslie Cooksy at ljcooksy@udel.edu.

When: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 from 1:30 p.m.- 4:30 p.m.

Where: The Rodney Room in the Perkins Student Center

Wednesday, November 18, 1:30 to 4:30 in Perkins Student Center

DERDC Associate Policy Scientist Steve Fifield has coauthored a paper on faculty-to-faculty mentoring in higher education with Pamela Lottero-Perdue, assistant professor in the Department of Physics, Astronomy & Geosciences at Towson University. Lottero-Perdue is a former DERDC staff member and a graduate of UD.

 Their paper, “A Conceptual Framework for Higher Education Faculty Mentoring,” appears in the 2010 edition of To Improve the Academy: Resources of Faculty, Instructional, and Organizational Development. It synthesizes conceptions of faculty mentoring in recent research and practitioner reports and develops a framework that gives administrators, mentoring participants, and evaluators a variety of perspectives on mentoring to adapt to different situations.

 This work is based on the DERDC evaluation of the Delaware IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence project funded by the US National Institutes of Health.

Cheryl Ackerman, DERDC Senior Associate for Evaluation, was recently elected to the board of directors of the   Eastern Evaluation Research Society, a local affiliate of the American Evaluation Association.  The organization’s membership includes representatives of public and private evaluation organizations, academia, as well as independent consultants from areas including health care, education, and non-profit organizations.  Dr. Ackerman will serve a two year term on the board and is currently working on the conference site selection and programming committees for the organization.

Joan Buttram, director, and Jonathon Rubright, graduate research assistant, of the DE Education Research and Development Center (DERDC) presented findings of their study, Policies and Practices of Successful Delaware High Schools, at the July 16, 2009 meeting of the Delaware State Board of Education at the Townsend Building in Dover, Delaware.

The investigation examined three Delaware high schools which outperformed other high schools with similar student demographic profiles. Buttram, Rubright, and Leslie Cooksy, also of DERDC, sought to find the policies and practices that these Delaware high schools use to promote achievement and improve graduation rates. This research was similar to earlier DERDC reports by Dr. Buttram which identified successful elementary schools in Delaware and determined what actions they were taking that contributed to their success.

The researchers focused on policies and practices aimed primarily, but not exclusively, at high school freshmen. This focus was selected because previous studies have shown that ninth grade is a critical turning point for adolescent students, and because almost half of Delaware students drop out if they do not successfully complete ninth grade.

They found that the high schools employed different combinations of policies and practices, including transition programs to orient incoming ninth grade students, academies to organize ninth grade students into smaller groups, extra instructional time to support students not making satisfactory academic progress, afterschool instructional help for all students needing extra help, mentoring, and twilight programs for students missing a small number of credits to graduate.

The study was supported by funding from the Delaware State Board of Education.

For more information:

Full report: Policies and Practices of Successful Delaware High Schools

July 27, 2009 DE News Journal report

DERDC digital reports collection

State Rep. Michael A. Barbieri (New Castle) sponsored House Resolution 22, which creates a Zero Tolerance Task Force to study and recommend changes to Delaware’s school discipline policies. It passed the chamber last month. In a June 11, 2009 letter to the editor of the Delaware News Journal, he wrote, “It is our hope to make those proceedings and any sanctions imposed more uniform and consistent and, as a January University of Delaware education policy brief stated, more ‘common sense’.”

Barbieri further cites the policy brief, Zero Tolerance Policies and School Discipline, written by Dariel Janerette, graduate student in UD’s School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy, which states that “research suggests the harmful effects of zero tolerance policies on students and their families may outweigh the benefits of deterring student misbehavior.” The Task Force is charged to report its findings and recommendations by next January.

In addition, State Rep. Teresa Schooley introduced House Bill 120 in April to give school boards more discretion when implementing zero tolerance school policies. The bill, which is working its way through the legislative process, has 23 additional sponsors and co-sponsors in both house and senate.

Janerette, a former graduate research assistant in Delaware Education R&D Center, has also written policy briefs about school violence and No Child Left Behind.

Follow up- On June 26, 2009, Gov. Markell signed House Bill 120 into law.  See UDaily’s interview with Janerette about the impact of her work.

For more information

 Zero Tolerance policy brief January news release.

A pdf of Barbieri’s letter to the editor.

Information on Delaware Education R&D Center Policy Brief Series

 The results of the 2009 Statewide Public Poll on Education in Delaware were released May 8 by the Delaware Education R&D Center. The poll is conducted annually to provide feedback on public opinion about the status of education in Delaware. This year’s poll examines public opinion on school quality, finance, education policy, and Vision 2015. Some findings include

•  Fifty-six percent of DE residents gave elementary schools an A or B, and 41% gave middle and high schools an A or B.
•  About 80% of those polled were concerned that the state’s budget gap will cause significant spending cuts in K-12 public education. Recommendations were made to protect teacher salaries, instructional resources, and tutoring for low-performing students.

 Additional findings are presented in the full report.  Please contact Dr. Joan Buttram at the Delaware Education R&D Center for more information.

To read or download the report in pdf form click here.

2009 Statewide Poll on Education in Delaware

Cheryl Ackerman, Senior Associate for Evaluation at the Delaware Education Research and Development Center, will lead the internal evaluation of the multi-site initiative Delaware IdeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE), a collaborative effort to expand biomedical research in Delaware. The National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently awarded $17.4 million to the program. Six academic and clinical institutions are partners in DE INBRE– Christiana Care Health System, Delaware State University, Delaware Technical and Community College, Nemours/AI duPont Hospital for Children, the University of Delaware, and Wesley College.

“In addition to the three research programs, core administrative, bioinformatics, and research instrumentation programs will be enhanced to support them, and 150 undergraduate research stipends will be established, providing opportunities for future scientists from across the state,” said Karl Steiner, associate provost for interdisciplinary research initiatives at the University of Delaware.

The internal evaluation of INBRE is a joint effort of the Delaware INBRE leadership team and the Delaware Education Research and Development Center. It supports adaptable management of the project, furthers sustainability through evaluation capacity building, and documents the merits of the project and its value to NIH, Delaware, and the nation.

 For more information about the award, see

•  UDAILY.
•  Delaware News Journal

Dr. Cheryl Ackerman served as guest co- editor for the April 2009 special issue of Roeper Review, a journal concentrating on the field of gifted studies. Ackerman is an educational psychologist, a quantitative methodologist, and Senior Associate for Evaluation at the Delaware Education Research and Development Center.

The issue, which Ackerman co-edited with Vicky Frankfourth Moyle of the Daimon Institute for the Highly Gifted and Bellingham Technical College, focused on Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration, a developmental personality theory that provides a framework for understanding the development of gifted and high ability individuals.

In introducing the journal, Don Ambrose, editor of Roeper Review, wrote, “There will be much food for thought in this special issue on Dabrowski’s theory. Cheryl Ackerman and Vicky Frankfourth Moyle exhibited exceptional leadership in their efforts to recruit and encourage authors who can provide unique and salient perspectives on Dabrowski’s seminal work and the insights it can provide to the field.”

Ackerman states that, fundamentally, Dabrowski’s theory is concerned with the human condition. It contributes to understanding individuals and groups, gifted or not, because “emotion serves as a determining element in any human activity with inhibitive as well as transformative power, and disintegrative experiences are essential for growth to occur.” She adds that researchers and practitioners far beyond the field of gifted studies will find that the depth and breadth of Dabrowski’s theory can expand and reframe their understanding of human development, motivation, behavior, and mental illness.

In addition to her work in program evaluation, Dr. Ackerman is very active in the field of gifted education and served as president of a national non-profit organization, Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted, and as chair of the National Association for Gifted Children’s Conceptual Foundations network.

To learn more

Members of the University of Delaware community can access this special issue online through the University’s library system at http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t792156624~db=all. 

For more information on Dabrowski’s work and on the interdisciplinary community of scholars and practitioners working with his Theory of Positive Development, go to http://positivedisintegration.com/

Because of the number of articles submitted and accepted for this special issue, three additional articles will appear in a future issue of the Roeper Review.

On April 20, three College of Education & Public Policy doctoral students participated in a panel at the recent annual conference of the Eastern Evaluation Research Society held in Absecon, New Jersey.  The panel was titled Data Quality in the Digital Age in response to the conference theme of Evaluation in the Digital Age. 

Two of the students drew on experiences in their research assistantships for their presentations.  Jonathan Rubright, a first year doctoral student in the School of Education and a research assistant in the Delaware Education R&D Center, presented “Quantifying Data Entry as a Source of Measurement Error in Survey Research”.  Erin Knight, a doctoral student in the School of Urban Affairs & Public Policy and research assistant in the Health Services Policy Research Group, presented “A Comparison of Medical Chart Data in Electronic and Paper Forms”.  In addition, Gregory Benjamin, a part-time doctoral student in SUAPP, described the “Pros and Cons of Internet Surveys Compared to Traditional  Survey Methods”, based on his experience as an Evaluation Scientist at Nemours Health & Prevention Services.

Dr. Leslie Cooksy, Director of the University’s new interdisciplinary MS in Evaluation, was the organizer and discussant for the panel.

Additional information is available below:

Quantifying data entry as a source of error in survey research (powerpoint- Rubright)

A comparison of medical chart data in electronic and paper forms (powerpoint- Knight)

Pros and cons of internet surveys compared to traditional survey methods (powerpoint- Benjamin)