CYC 702 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4, 6: Grade Retention, School Choice, Standardized Test
17 Oct 2016
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Chapter 4 – School Issues that Relate to At-Risk Children and Youth
The Value of Education
• Learning is the act of acquiring knowledge or a skill through observation, experience,
instruction, or study
• Low teacher salaries reflect the value society places on education and is one contributor to the
current teacher shortage
• Due to the shortage of teachers, many states are lowering teaching standards, with many new
teachers not meeting licensing requirements
o Certification is not a requirement for teaching in a charter school
• Federal engagement in education
o A society loses by producing non-productive citizens → if schools do not provide a
safety net for children, health and well-being are reduced
▪ Investing in prison instead of education and prevention is an expensive,
wasteful , and failing long-term strategy
o Nation at Risk publication – over three decades of bashing public school education by
placing the source and responsibility of student problems primarily on schools to the
exclusion of other societal factors
o A nation at risk – launched the high-stakes testing phenomena – consequences for not
passing standardized tests include grade retention for individual students and decreased
funding for schools that fail to achieve required pass rates
• Federal legislation: No child left behind; Race to the top
o Redefined the federal role in K-12 education
o Its promise to help close the achievement gap between disadvantaged and minority
students and their peers was only moderately successful
o No child left behind (NCLB) – 4 basic principles
▪ Stronger accountability for results
▪ Increased flexibility and local control
▪ Expanded school choice of options for parents (ex. parents can remove their
children from failing schools)
▪ An emphasis on scientifically supported teaching methods
▪ Concerns
• More funding flowing away from public schools in desperate need
• The diminished attention to both above- and below average students
▪ Negative consequences from focus on standardized test
• Reducing the extent to which the school is engaging and creative
• De-professionalization of teaching
• Diminishing emphases on social studies, music, and the arts
• Greatly reducing attention to the development of values and skills that
contribute to problem solving, reasoning, cooperation, and democratic
participation
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
• State initiatives: Common core
o Common Core Standards have been developed as an education reform
o 2009- state school chiefs and governors launched these standards to ensure all
students, regardless of where they live, are graduating high school prepared for college,
career, and life
o Early 2000s- most stated had developed learning standards that specific what students
in grade 3 to 8 and high school should be able to do
o Common Core provides a template for educating children and adolescents
▪ Most scholars express optimism that at-risk students including those with
special needs can potentially benefit greatly from these new standards,
although the demands from these new standards may require a higher level of
support that those available
o Teachers are expected to do more than ever before in classrooms that some find
increasingly unsafe – fang activity,, school shootings,
o Reforming education must include supporting the human resources
Research on Effective Schools
• Variables in research on school effectiveness
o Several common elements that characterize effective schools
▪ Teachers consistently engage students
▪ The entire staff is dedicated and caring
▪ Both class seize and student populations are small
▪ Clear ground rules set the tone for respectful behaviour
▪ High expectations
▪ Clear consequences are articulated to students frequently
▪ Daily and classroom routines provide stability and direction
o These elements can be classified into general categories;
▪ Leadership behaviours
• Autonomous staff management at the school site
• Administrators, teachers, and counselors make many decisions about
programs and program implementation without the need to seek
approval of the school board or the district
• Effective schools have a clear mission
▪ Academic emphasis
• Provide a rigorous curriculum
▪ Teach and staff factors
• Collegial relationships among the staff, encouragement of collaborative
planning, and low turnover among the faculty
▪ Student involvement
• Sense of community, a feeling of belonging, and a sense of safety at
school
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find more resources at oneclass.com
▪ Community support
• High expectations of the schools and their students
• District support and supportive parental involvement are evident
▪ Social capital
• The network of relationships that surround an individual child
• Improvements in social capital lead to reduced family stress, which
results in improved child behaviour
• Definitional issues in research on school effectiveness
o Most research on effective schools measures effectiveness as studets’ perforae o
standardize achievement tests → this is an extremely narrow view of learning
o Areas including cognitive criteria such as depth analysis, decision making, and critical
thinking are largely ignored
o To judge school effectiveness by the narrow criterion of scores on standardized tests,
pressures teachers and districts to carry out test drive curriculum
o Results of research on school effectiveness must be viewed with caution
▪ Schools with higher dropout rates potentially have higher test score averages
than do schools that retain their lower achieving students longer
o School culture
▪ A culture provides its members with two things
• It establishes a set of rules, expectations, and norms for members
• Culture can enhance self-esteem – or not – through shared values,
beliefs, rituals, and ceremonies
▪ Students, faculty, and staff who take pride in their school culture are likely to do
better than those who do not
▪ Participation and attendance in school activities can greatly enhance school
connectedness and pride
o Student climate
▪ Childre’s eperiee ith their peers proide the ith a opportuit to
learn how to interact with others, develop age-relevant skills and interests,
control their social behaviour, and share their problems and feelings
▪ The hild’s reogitio of elogig to a group is a iportat step i
development, and students with more friends at school feel more connected to
their schools and generally have fewer problems
▪ Many students who are at risk from school failure know early that somehow
they are different from, les acceptable, and less accepted than other students
▪ Students who succeed in school have both high expectations of themselves and
a strong, positive sense of belonging to the school community
▪ Students who are at risk for school failure are often placed in the lowest ability
groups and excluded from the academic success community
• Exclusion limits the potentially positive effects of school culture on
students at risk for failure
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
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