Breast-feeding leads to better test scores

While it's widely known that breast-feeding has many health benefits, a new study has reinforced earlier research to indicate that breast-feeding can boost your test scores!

A study from Australia in the journal "Pediatrics" found that babies, especially boys, who were breast-fed for the first six months of life or longer, scored higher academically, including in standardized tests when they were older, than children who were not breast-fed.

The research found that breast-fed boys scored 30% better in writing and 20% better in math at 10 years old than their formula-fed peers.

Early Findings from Gates Foundation on How to Measure a Teacher's Impact on their Students Learning Outcomes

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are researching the widely disputed issue of how to measure a teacher's efficacy through their Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) initiative. The more effective the teacher, the better the student outcomes.

The foundation is trying to uncover "a more complete indicator of a teacher’s impact on student achievement" and how such an indicator relates to how teachers are recruited, developed, rewarded, and retained.

The initiative just published their initial findings.

In getting to the answer to the massive question concerning teacher efficacy, the MET initiative captured 13,000 classroom lessons on video, student vs teacher perceptions of these lessons, and consider standardized tests and their relationships to students and their teachers. Based on this raw data, here are some early findings from the researchers:

1. In every grade and subject we studied, a teacher's past success in raising student achievement on state tests (that is, his or her value-added) is one of the strongest predictors of his or her ability to do so again.

2. The teachers with the highest value-added scores on state tests also tend to help students understand math concepts or demonstrate reading comprehension through writing.

3. The average student knows effective teaching when he or she experiences it.

4. Valid feedback need not be limited to test scores alone. By combining different sources of data, it is possible to provide diagnostic, targeted feedback to teachers who are eager to improve.

Exciting stuff! Again, these are early findings so more findings are coming.

Thanks Bill & Melinda for your awesomeness.