EdNews - Spring 2008

A Publication of the College of Education at Florida State University

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Iatarola Named Outstanding Mentor, Continues Study on Course Offerings

by Nash McCutchen & Connie Harris

Patrice Iatarola, assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, was recently awarded a 2007 William R. Jones Outstanding Mentor Award by the Florida Education Fund (FEF) in conjunction with the McKnight Doctoral Fellowship Program. The award was announced during the annual McKnight Doctoral Fellows Conference in Tampa in November 2007.

The William R. Jones Awards Committee accepts nominations for the award and selects recipients who have made outstanding contributions to the McKnight Doctoral Fellowship Program, designed to address the under-representation of African American and Hispanic faculty at colleges and universities in the state of Florida by increasing the pool of citizens qualified with Ph.D. degrees to teach at the college and university levels. As a by-product, it is expected that employment opportunities in industry will also be expanded.

“The McKnight Fellowships are a lifeline for African-American and Hispanic doctoral students,” Iatarola said. “The fellows, themselves, are a lifeline for our programs, insuring that graduate studies and, ultimately, graduate faculties will better reflect the diversity of our world. We cannot hope that our teaching and research will make a difference, if it doesn't truly reflect such diversity.”

The FEF's mission is to strengthen the larger community by creating and implementing programs and services that lead to institutional enhancement and greater educational advancement for historically under-represented groups.

Current Study Supported by IES

An active researcher, Iatarola currently is leading a study to determine whether course offerings and taking in high school make a difference for public school students' high school outcomes (tenth grade FCAT and graduation), post-secondary enrollment and readiness for college-level coursework. The research is funded by a two-year, $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Educational Sciences. FSU is host institution for the grant, and Iatarola, as project director and co-principal investigator, will coordinate the collaborative research efforts of fellow co-principal investigators Mark Long of the University of Washington and Dylan Conger of George Washington University.

Using quasi-experimental methods, Iatarola, Long and Conger will examine the determinants of high school course offerings and student course taking and, ultimately, estimate the effects of course taking on student outcomes –- tenth grade achievement, graduation within four years of entering high school and enrollment in a Florida public post-secondary institution.

The researchers will be using longitudinal student-level data from the Florida Department of Education's Education Data Warehouse to examine the impact of high school coursework on students’ outcomes during high school and beyond. These data include information from students' high school transcripts and information on their prior academic achievement, socio-demographics and educational needs.

The project is intended to inform Florida's policymakers and high school educators, as well as those across the country, who are faced with the challenge of improving the educational outcomes of the nation’s most disadvantaged students. To that end, we seek to provide specific information about which courses matter most and to whom in order to assist educators in designing and implementing high school curriculum that reduces socioeconomic and demographic disparities in achievement.

Iatorola, Conger and Long, assistant professors at their respective institutions will work on all aspects of the project including the data management, analysis and writing. The team has extensive research experience in the fields of educational policy and analysis. Dr. Iatarola’s work focuses on accountability, high schools, school finance, and resource allocation with an emphasis on urban public schools and districts. Dr. Conger’s work has focused primarily on equity issues in education, including segregation between racial groups across classrooms and the achievement of immigrant students in New York City public schools. Long’s research focuses on the effects of affirmative action (and alternative) college admissions policies on college entry; the effects of college financial aid on household savings; and his recent work examines the effect of school and college quality on test scores, educational attainment, labor market outcomes, family formation, and other behaviors.

IES was established by the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 and brings rigorous and relevant research, evaluation and statistics to our nation's education system.