The year is ending, and there are plenty of news and studies that rolled into view in 2014 that educators should know about.

An article on EducationDive looks at ten must-read K-12 studies in 2014 that looked at topics "ranging from the school-to-prison pipeline to the arts' decreasing presence in schools," the article said.

One of the studies is that "the number of homeless students hits all-time high," according to the article.

"One in 30 school-age children in the U.S. is homeless, according to 'America's Youngest Outcasts,' a new study issued in November by the National Center on Family Homelessness," said EducationDive. "According to the report, the United States' high poverty rate, a lack of affordable housing, and the effects of domestic violence are to blame for the nation's surging child homelessness rates. ​This news is even sadder when coupled with 2014's 'Don't Call Them Dropouts' from Tufts University's Center for Promise, which found that homeless students are 87 percent more likely to stop going to school. Studies like this make it clear that school choice is not the only way to fix education problems — identifying solutions for poverty must be considered, as well."

Another study for teachers to read is the "bias found in teacher evals," the article said.

"The Brookings Institution's Brown Center on Education Policy analyzed four urban school districts as they attempted to create meaningful teacher evaluation systems using both observation and student academic gains," the article said. "The May report stated that teachers have difficulty receiving top scores if they don't already have high-performing students, that observations by outsiders are more reliable than those by school administrators, that district size unfairly impacts a teacher's 'student gain' scores, and that using academic gains to calculate 'value added' by a teacher hurts good teachers in bad schools and vice-versa. Brookings made a number of suggestions for states attempting to implement evaluations, including adjusting teacher observation scores based on the demographic they are serving, having at least one observation each year performed by a trained outsider, and eliminating the value-added method [VAM] of teacher evaluation."

Read the full story and comment below. 

Article by Kassondra Granata, Education World Contributor