The improvement of education for disadvantaged students is a formidable task requiring research and development in multiple areas. The Center for Research on Effective Schooling of Disadvantaged Students (CDS) at Johns Hopkins University carried out such research and development from 1989-1995 in three areas: The development of guiding concepts, the development of effective practices and programs in early and elementary education, and the development of effective practices and programs in middle and high school education. This work included literature reviews, survey research, qualitative research, and quantitative field-experimental studies.

 

Center Mission and Programs

The mission of the Center for Research on Effective Schooling for Disadvantaged Students (CDS) was to significantly improve the education of disadvantaged students at each level of schooling through new knowledge and practices produced by thorough scientific study and evaluation. A hallmark of the Center's programs was their use of scientific designs, measures, and methods to provide clear tests of the true impact of new educational approaches and to provide empirical evidence on how to improve the education of disadvantaged students under different school conditions.

The Center conducted its research in four program areas:

1. The Early and Elementary Education Program,
2. The Middle Grades and High Schools Program,
3. The Language Minority Program, and
4. The School, Family, and Community Connections Program.

The Early and Elementary Education Program. This program developed, evaluated, and disseminated instructional programs capable of bringing disadvantaged students to high levels of achievement, particularly in the fundamental areas of reading, writing, and mathematics. The goal was to expand the range of effective alternatives which schools may use under Chapter 1 and other compensatory education funding and to study issues of direct relevance to federal, state, and local policy on education of disadvantaged students.

The Middle Grades and High School Program. This program conducted research syntheses, survey analyses, and field studies in middle and high schools. The three types of projects moved from basic research to useful practice. Syntheses compiled and analyzed existing knowledge about effective education of disadvantaged students. Survey analyses identified and described current programs, practices, and trends in middle and high schools, and allowed studies of their effects. Field studies were conducted in collaboration with school staffs to develop and evaluate effective programs and practices.

The Language Minority Program. This program represented a collaborative effort. The University of California at Santa Barbara focused on the education of language minority students in California and Texas; studies of dropout among children of immigrants were conducted at Johns Hopkins; evaluations of learning strategies in schools serving Navajo Indians were completed by the University of Northern Arizona, and CDS worked collaboratively with the Council of Chief State School Officers on studies of language minority students in the middle grades.

The goal of the program was to identify, develop, and evaluate effective programs for disadvantaged Hispanic, American Indian, Southeast Asian, and other language minority children. The program focused on rigorous evaluations of practical, replicable programs which can increase the language skills of language minority children in their home language and in English and can accelerate their achievement in traditional school subjects.

The School, Family, and Community Connections Program. This program focused on the key connections between schools and families and between schools and communities to build better educational programs for disadvantaged children and youth. Initial work provided a research base concerning the most effective ways for schools to interact with and assist parents of disadvantaged students and interact with the community to produce effective community involvement.

Institutional Activities. The Center also conducted a program of institutional activities to ensure effective governance, efficient relations with the host university, extensive continuing collaboration with other research institutions, practitioners, and policy makers, and an effective program of dissemination. The Center's continuing institutional activities included the functioning of a National Advisory Board, intensive networking with urban schools, collaborative policy projects with the Council of Chief State School Officers, hosting visiting minority scholars, mechanisms of continuing collaboration with education researchers and practitioners, and a strong dissemination program.

 

Who are the disadvantaged?

At the beginning of its work, Center researchers published an important book summarizing much of the critical work in the area of improving schooling for disadvantaged students (Natriello, McDill, and Pallas, 1990).

Based on current and projected data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the researchers showed that, by the year 2020, Hispanics will comprise 25.3 percent of 0­17 year olds, African-Americans will comprise 16.5 percent of 0­17 year olds; the number of children living in poverty will increase to 20.1 million; the number of children not living with both parents will increase from 16.2 to 21.1 million; the number of children living with mothers who have not completed high school will increase to 21.2 million; and the number of children speaking a primary language other than English will increase to almost six million.

Thus, by the year 2020, about half of the students in American schools will, under current definitions, be educationally disadvantaged. Populations of traditionally educationally disadvantaged children ­­ children who are African American or Hispanic, who are poor, who live in single­ or no­parent homes, who live with mothers who have not completed high school, and who have a primary language other than English ­­ will make up an ever-increasing portion of American school­children.

Not all children in these groupings are educationally disadvantaged, but each of these measurable characteristics is associated with low levels of educational achievement. It is these populations of students that the Center's work focused on, with a primary emphasis on how educational and social programs could be designed to address their needs from preschool through secondary school, how new information could be developed to help schools work with them, and how schools themselves could be restructured to meet the needs of disadvantaged students.

 

Developing Guiding Concepts for Improving the Education of Disadvantaged Children

Center researchers provided guidance for and coherence to the study of improving education for disadvantaged students through

1. studies of the concept of resilience in children and its applicability to research and development, and
2. the development of a conceptual framework of learning environments and student motivation that specifies four areas in which protective processes and mechanisms can be established to foster student resilience. These concepts and frameworks are being further expanded into Talent Development models of schooling.

(a) Reducing Risk and Fostering Resilience

The concept of "resilience" can be applied to help redefine research on disadvantaged children to address positive factors rather than negative. Disadvantaged children who are succeeding against the odds illustrate the concept of resilience and move education research toward studying the protective mechanisms operating at key turning points in their lives that help them be resilient. The critical issues in education are not who is at risk or how many of the risk factors one has to have to be at risk. Rather, the critical issues for policy and instruction center around identifying the protective processes and mechanisms that reduce risk and foster resilience.

Defining and Examining the Concept of Resilience

Many students who fit the disadvantaged (at-risk) student description -- poor, minority, single parent -- don't at all fit the disadvantaged student stereotype -- low achiever, dropout, drug abuser, teenage parent. Instead, they're making it in school, they're working in their communities, they're staying out of trouble, they're taking the steps necessary to fulfill realistic career plans. We call them resilient. We say that they are succeeding against the odds.

Winfield (1991) notes that research on the concept of resilience in the fields of health and psychiatry, as delineated primarily by Michael Rutter, "provides an alternative to current educational conceptualizations of risk." Resilience, says Winfield, refers to individual variation in people's responses to risk, stress, and adversity -- some individuals cope successfully, others react negatively. Those who cope are able to overcome their vulnerability -- their risk -- because of protective mechanisms operating at key turning points in their lives that help them be resilient.

"Viewed in this manner," Winfield says, "the critical issues in education are not who is at risk or how many of the [risk] factors one has to have to be at risk. Rather, the critical issues for policy and instruction center around identifying the protective processes and mechanisms that reduce risk and foster resilience."

The protective mechanisms that help disadvantaged students develop resilience come in four categories. Some protective mechanisms reduce negative outcomes by altering either the risk itself or the child's exposure to the risk. For example, preschool can provide experiences that greatly reduce the risk of failure in first grade.

A second category of protective mechanisms reduce the effect of negative chain reactions that follow initial risk exposure. For example, Winfield notes, "the negative outcomes of adolescent pregnancy are diminished for teen-age mothers who receive prenatal care, home support, adequate child care, and additional education."

A third category is the establishment and maintenance of self-esteem and self-efficacy. Providing mentors and advocates to support the efforts of disadvantaged children and providing multicultural curricula are steps that schools could take in this area to develop resilient students.

Finally, a fourth category of protective mechanisms entails the opening up of opportunities during critical periods in children's lives which will allow them and help them attain the skills necessary for school and career success. Access to high quality curriculum, adequate counseling, and extracurricular involvement operate as protective mechanisms in this area.

 

In a special Education and Urban Society journal issue on resilience in African-American youth edited by Winfield (November 1991), these protective mechanisms are examined in tandem with critical intervention points in schools (school-based, classroom-based), and in communities (family-based, peer-based, and policy-based). The emerging conclusion: at all of these intervention points, the strengths and abilities of at-risk students can be built upon and expanded by various programs and practices. There are many resilient children out there now and many others whose resilience can be developed.

The following briefly describes the studies and results included in the special journal issue.

Angela Taylor describes the components of social competence and adaptive behavior that protect students from being at risk of placement in special education classes. Socialization derived from a quality preschool education and from having positive peer relationships at an early age is critical. Also critical is the need to alter teachers' reactions to and beliefs about African-American students.

Sharon Nelson-Le Gall and Elaine Jones describe the importance of help-seeking behavior in African-American families and culture. Implications for practitioners include

1. instrumental help seeking should be promoted as a general learning skill, and
2. the organization of the school should include available "qualified helpers" and norms and procedures that promote help seeking and helping behaviors.

Maxine Clark examines the identity issues that African-American adolescents face. Those who develop a "raceless" or bicultural identity are more likely to succeed academically, but at the cost of sacrificing important peer relationships. The "oppositional" identity carries negative implications for school success but can promote self-efficacy and self-esteem. Clark recommends strengthening in-school support systems for African Americans by using mentorship programs and strengthening their connections to the school environment through extracurricular activities.

Diane Scott-Jones examines the impact of adolescent childbearing. Additional training and education, she finds, are critical to altering the negative chain reaction that can follow pregnancy. Adolescent mothers who are resilient are more likely to have strong social networks and higher educational attainment.

Valerie Lee, Thomas Wilson, and Linda Winfield, noting that schooling and credentials promote resilience by opening up opportunities, identify trends in national survey data of the academic achievement of African-American students. Examining a high achieving sample of African-American eighth-graders, they find the positive use of time on homework and reading to be related to these students' resilience. School practices of positive discipline and the use of enriched curriculum were also strongly related.

Karen Wilson-Sadberry, Deidre Royster, and Linda Winfield examine the resilience and persistence of African-American males in high school and in their transition to college. Comparing students who completed high school and continued their education with students who completed high school only, they found that students who continued were more likely to formulate college plans during their senior year, aspire to a 4-year degree, have positive peers, and be better prepared academically. Fatherhood and unemployment had negative implications for college enrollment.

Antoine Garibaldi explores the role of traditionally Black colleges, which have achieved impressive results with limited financial and human resources, in promoting the resilience of African-American youngsters. The protective mechanisms that promote resilience and reduce risk in these institutions include smaller class size, more personal interaction, regular academic advising, small group tutoring, and exposure to role models.

Jomills Braddock II, Deidre Royster, Randolph Hawkins, and Linda Winfield examine athletic involvement as a mechanism for promoting resilience among young African-American males. They find that participation in public school intramural and/or interscholastic sports is positively associated with the aspirations of eighth-grade African-American males to enroll in academic or college preparatory programs in high school. Athletic participation also enhances self-esteem, promotes positive peer relations, and is also related to plans to complete high school and attend college.

Saundra Murray Nettles analyzes the role of the community in fostering resilience among African-American youth. She finds that community programs that promote resilience by opening up opportunities that are typically denied to African-American students usually provide social support and adult helpers, options for students to experience success on specific tasks, and outlets for students to discover their interests and talents.

Dena Phillips Swanson and Margaret Beale Spencer review the social policies that affect African-American youth and suggest a series of policies which, if implemented, could promote the resilience of African-American and other youth. They emphasize the need to change structural conditions that produce risk in the environment.

Major Owens (U.S. House of Representatives) summarizes in an epilogue the major issues concerning the concept of resilience and the role of the federal government in educational research and improvement. He proposes a model for institutionalizing research on effective practices and interventions designed to ameliorate risk conditions that affect the development of resilience in youth.

Resilience Issues Among African American Students

"After decades of relying primarily on pathology/cultural deviance theories, research on African-American adolescents is now turning to an exploration of the sources and mechanisms that underlie competent and healthy functioning," note CDS researcher Saundra Murray Nettles and her co-author Joseph H. Pleck, in a review of research that has examined the concepts of risk, protective factors, and resilience as they apply to African-American adolescents. (CDS Report No. 44; Nettles & Pleck, 1994).

Nettles and Pleck examine the risks that African-American adolescents face at both the individual and community levels, the incidence of health- and life-compromising outcomes, and how resilience and protective factors play a role in successful interventions. Some of the conclusions of their review contradict some common assumptions about African-American adolescents.

Individual-Level Risk Factors

Self-Esteem. Low self-esteem is often designated as a potent risk-factor leading to self-destructive behavior among adolescents in general, but "the evidence does not suggest that low self-esteem is a risk factor of particular importance for African-American youths,... occurring more frequently among them than among other groups," Nettles and Pleck report. Most studies find that "... African-American adolescents have self-esteem comparable to white adolescents, and this holds true as well for African-American adults and African-American children."

It could be, the researchers note, that low self-esteem might have more severe consequences for African-American adolescents because they have fewer protective factors operating in their community. This has major implications for intervention efforts -- that is, time and funds directed toward improving the self-esteem of African-American adolescents might be better directed toward increasing the availability of protective factors in the community -- providing more recreational facilities and mentoring programs, for example.

Single Parent Families and Poverty. Whether being raised in a single parent family, in itself, puts African-American children at risk is debatable, Nettles and Pleck find. But add poverty and the risk is undeniable, and this situation is more common for African-American children than for white children. And if the single parent is a teen-age mother, the risk of poor school performance is increased, but no moreso for African-American children than for white children.

Problem Behaviors. Research has documented the "problem behavior syndrome" -- that is, adolescents who engage in one problem behavior (e.g., drug use) are likely to engage in other problem behaviors as well (e.g., sexual activity). But this syndrome is less applicable to African-American youth. According to Nettles and Pleck: "One problem behavior appears to be a risk factor for other problem behaviors less often among African-Americans than among other youths." The implications of this finding remain to be drawn.

Community-Level Risk Factors

Research on community-level risk factors for African-American adolescents is concentrated on neighborhoods in central cities, Nettles and Pleck note. This ignores a substantial portion of adolescents (30 percent of non-poor African-American adolescents and 18 percent of poor African-American adolescents live in the suburbs; 16 percent and 25 percent, respectively, live in rural areas).

The research which has identified community-level risk factors is definitive about the effects of poverty: living in poor neighborhoods in central cities puts African-American adolescents at risk for multiple negative outcomes -- committing and being victims of crime, having children out of wedlock, being victims of racial discrimination, having lower educational attainment and earnings, having problems with substance abuse.

The researchers also examine studies of how school characteristics, community climate, and racial discrimination may put African-American adolescents at risk.

Risk Outcomes

The risks encountered by African-American adolescents at both the individual and community levels translate into increased life- and health-compromising outcomes in health, education, employment, police involvement, and sexual behavior. The prevalence of these outcomes and thus "the need for solutions to the problems of African-American youths," Nettles and Pleck note, is one motivation for increasing studies of resilience and protective factors.

Elevated poverty leads to increased rates of malnutrition, lead poisoning, and other health problems, which produce higher rates of child and adolescent mortality. African-American males die from AIDS in disproportionate numbers, and young African-American males die from homicide at a rate almost eight times that of young white males. Although African-American male high-school completion has increased in recent years, it still lags significantly behind that of white males, and young African-American male unemployment rates almost triple the rate of white youths.

Arrest rates are much higher for African-American male youths than for any other group. African-American males show higher rates of sexual activity than other males between ages 15 to 19. African-American teens have higher birth rates than white teens.

On the other hand, the researchers note, "African-American adolescents show prevalences of alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and depression at lower rates than White youths." However, in adulthood, African-Americans' use of alcohol and drugs equals or exceeds that of whites, and the rate of completed and attempted suicides among African-American adolescents has increased markedly in the last three decades.

The pattern of alcohol and drug use, according to the researchers, "suggests that the transition from adolescence to adulthood is a period of special risk for African-American youths."

Resilient Outcomes and Protective Factors

Nettles and Pleck note that resilient outcomes in the face of adolescent parenthood include, first, delaying sexual activity and childbearing in the first place, and second, staying in school and completing school despite pregnancy or childbirth. Protective factors that promote delay in sexual activity include having high educational expectations and educational opportunity. Factors found to help keep African-American teenaged mothers in school include a strong sense of personal motivation, family support for achievement, and support for schooling from caring adults in the community.

Protective factors that promote academic achievement as a resilient outcome in the face of multiple risk factors include close friends who value education, exposure to mainstream culture, a bicultural or raceless social identity, perceptions of school as supportive, and active parental support for achievement.

Resilient (high achieving) African-American adolescents from low-income families and neighborhoods, Nettles and Pleck note, had a positive sense of self, a sense of responsibility and the determination to overcome obstacles, a positive racial identity, and could recall at least one teacher who provided time, attention, and nurturance during the elementary or middle grades.

Mechanisms that may be important to building resilience to the street culture in inner-city community settings include, among others, the competency to engage in mutual exchange and collective struggle. In rural areas, research has found that resilience is facilitated by strong family support and social networks of peers and respected elders. Religion has also been identified as a protective factor for African-American adolescents in diverse settings.

Interventions as Protective Mechanisms

How can the concepts of risk, resilience, and protective factors be operationalized as interventions that make a difference in adolescent lives? The major breakthrough may be that these concepts provide an optimistic theory for intervention based on "knowledge about the causal pathways to risky behavior," and provide the rationale for developing and evaluating intervention programs that combine individual-level intervention and community-level intervention.

Nettles and Pleck suggest that intervention programs "may be defined as means whereby protective mechanisms are provided or set in motion." The protective mechanisms include reducing risk impact or exposure to risk, reducing negative chain reactions, increasing self-esteem and self-efficacy, and opening up opportunities. Many current intervention programs provide these mechanisms -- for example, school-based clinics illustrate mechanisms to reduce the impact of risk; the I Have A Future program opens up opportunities for participation in community activities; mentoring programs for at-risk students provide social support to reduce negative chain reactions.

Nettles and Pleck suggest that the development of effective intervention programs could be improved in three ways. First, program designs can identify existing sources of protection in the population to be served and build upon them. Second, interventions for African-American youths "need to be designed with knowledge of African-American culture if they are to be effective...." Finally, program designs must incorporate developmental processes.

(b) A Conceptual Framework on Learning Environments and Student Motivation

Four areas of student motivation are identified in which learning environments can be developed that serve as protective mechanisms that foster student resilience. These four areas are opportunities for success, the relevance of schoolwork to current interests and future goals, the support of students by teachers and administrators, and assistance with personal problems. In each area, changes in school organization, curriculum, and instructional practices can be made to eliminate the negative effects of current practices and to initiate protective mechanisms.

The Center reviewed five kinds of materials, seeking to identify common themes and broad categories that seemed to be most essential in successful programs for at risk students. First, we considered studies of what students who dropped out said were their own reasons for quitting school. Second, we collected all available compendiums of dropout program descriptions to classify common key components. Third, we reviewed what recent educational theorists have offered in analyzing student motivation to learn in school at different stages of human development. Fourth, we examined new curriculum developments that emphasize higher order learning in each major subject area, and scientific evaluations of impressive impacts on student development of specific experiments of classroom instruction or school organization. Fifth, we studied recent scholarly analyses of the risk factors and barriers to success encountered by children from poor families living in big city ghettos.

This work produced a conceptual framework (Braddock and McPartland, 1991) that has been applied to guide much of the Center's research and development of effective practices and programs for disadvantaged schools, especially at the middle and high school levels.

c. Talent Development Models of Schooling for Disadvantaged Students

The work on resilience and the development of the framework on learning environments and student motivation has led to and is being further extended by new work to create, evaluate, and disseminate Talent Development (TD) designs for middle schools and high schools. The Talent Development designs stress the need for schools in which all students can succeed in demanding curricula. The designs share a focus on comprehensive, schoolwide restructuring; high quality professional development; high expectations for all students; and flexible, intensive assistance for students when they need it. This work is being carried out by the new Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed At Risk (CRESPAR), a partnership of Johns Hopkins and Howard Universities.

 

Effective Programs and Practices for Improving Early and Elementary Education for Disadvantaged Students

Natriello, McDill, and Pallas (1990), in their comprehensive review of research on the education of disadvantaged students, noted that Athe practices assembled into specific programs offer a wealth of ideas about the ways to respond to the needs of disadvantaged youth."

This is particularly true in the preschool and elementary areas. First, evidence abounds that promoting the health care of disadvantaged mothers and their children can positively affect a variety of the children's educational outcomes, including IQ, school attendance, and academic performance.

Second, twenty­five years worth of evidence exists that well­designed and carefully implemented preschool programs have measurable short­term effects on cognitive variables and significant long­term effects on affective outcomes such as self­esteem and achievement values.
However, Karweit (1994) concludes that preschool alone is insufficient to produce any strong long-term outcomes.

Third, a growing body of research indicates that effective practices and programs are available at the elementary level in many categories: continuous progress, cooperative learning, individualized instruction, tutoring, diagnostic­prescriptive, and computer­assisted instruction.

In short, from pre­natal care through elementary school, the research base exists for providing effective education to disadvantaged students.

The work of CDS in early and elementary education proceeded along three lines: research and identification of effective practices and programs; the research, development, evaluation, and dissemination of a total elementary school restructuring program, Success for All; and the research, development, and evaluation of school, family, and community partnerships.

 

Effective Practices and Programs

Numerous studies were conducted to identify practices and programs for use in early and elementary education that provided real evidence of effectiveness in improving the learning and development of disadvantaged students. Many of these studies employed a methodology called "best-evidence" synthesis, which reviews only those studies of a practice or program that meet rigorous scientific criteria. Many of the Center studies identified effective practices and programs; but many others found that the practices and programs being studied did not provide good evidence of effectiveness in promoting the learning and development of disadvantaged students.

The results of these studies were used in many cases to support the development of components of the Success for All program.

One-to-One Tutoring To Prevent Early Reading Failure

A best-evidence synthesis of research on programs that use one-to-one tutoring delivered by adults to students in the primary grades who are learning to read found that five programs (Reading Recovery, Success for All, Prevention of Learning Disabilities, the Wallach Tutorial Program, and Programmed Tutorial Reading) showed substantial positive effects on student reading achievement. Two studies found cumulative effects of one-to-one tutoring and one study found lasting, but diminishing effects. The five programs showed substantially more positive effects on student reading than other practices of similar or greater costs -- reduction of class size and provision of aides in the classroom.

This synthesis (CDS Report No. 6; Wasik & Slavin, 1993) reviews the evidence on five one-to-one tutoring programs whose evaluations meet stringent criteria. First, the programs had to include one­to­one instruction delivered by adults (certified teachers, para-professionals, or volunteers) to students in the primary grades who are learning to read for the first time. Second, the evaluations had to compare the program to traditional instruction in elementary schools over periods of at least four weeks on measures of objectives pursued equally in the experimental and control conditions.

In short, the evaluations had to be methodologically strong, so their results could be believed with few reservations.

Five programs met the criteria. Wasik and Slavin found and reviewed ten separate studies of Reading Recovery, Success for All, Prevention of Learning Disabilities, the Wallach Tutoring Program, and Programmed Tutorial Reading. The five programs not only met the criteria, their evaluations were unanimously positive. "Across ten separate studies of cohorts involving five different tutoring methods, effect sizes were substantially positive in every case," the researchers note. The bottom line is clear, they add: "One­to­one tutoring of low­achieving primary grade students is without doubt one of the most effective instructional innovations available."

Wasik and Slavin also compared the effects of one-to-one tutoring to the effects of other interventions that have similar costs -- reductions in class size, using instructional aides, and extending the school year. They found that the most successful of the reduced­class size experiments found a cumulative effect of substantially reducing class size from kindergarten to third grade that is less than that found for any of the tutoring models ­­ and often much less.

Also, studies of the effects of using teacher aides show little evidence of effectiveness. The aides could be used as tutors in one­to­one tutoring models, or be replaced by teachers for greater effect. Along the same lines, many states are looking toward an extended school year, which is a very costly proposition, as an intervention that might improve achievement. One­on­one tutoring offers an alternative to this in the primary grades ­­ an alternative that comes complete with convincing evidence that it can prevent reading failure and provide every child with a basis for further success in school.

"Writing to Read"

An evaluation of 21 studies of IBM's "Writing to Read" program found that the program shows modest effects at the kindergarten level, but many of the comparisons were to nonacademic programs. Across 13 first-grade studies, the median effect size was .00. Two-year (K-1) implementations and one-year follow-up studies found no consistent achievement effects (Slavin, 1991).

Retention Vs. Social Promotion

A review of the literature on grade repetition vs. social promotion indicates that both are unsatisfactory responses to the need to provide appropriate instruction for students of different abilities and competencies. Longitudinal studies show that whatever positive effects of retention occur fade out after two to three years.

Karweit (CDS Report No. 16; 1992) reviewed the retention vs. social promotion literature, looking only at comprehensive studies that measured the progress of retained students against similar promoted students and took into account some of the "sticky" issues of research on retention. She specifically examined three issues that cloud the conclusions drawn from research on the effects of retention compared to social promotion. Are the studies comparing the retained/promoted children on the same basis? Do the studies specify what kind of program was provided for the retained/promoted students? And, do the studies cover an extended period of time so that long­term effects can be measured?

Retention and social promotion, Karweit notes, are responses to the question: How do you provide appropriate instruction for low-performing students? Neither response is good. In most studies, even when either retained or socially promoted students achieved better compared to each other, they still remained at a low level of performance compared to the school population at large.

"Neither social promotion nor retention per se are effective at solving the problem of providing appropriate instruction for low performing students ­­ both policies are failures," Karweit sums up. "Future research should devote attention to locating, developing, and evaluating effective organizational responses to differences in students' abilities and competencies."

Extra Year To Prepare for First Grade

Three educational practices that provide children with an extra year in kindergarten are no more effective in the long run than simply promoting the children into first grade in the first place. The three educational practices are retention in kindergarten, placement in developmental kindergarten, and placement in transitional first grade. The first holds students back to repeat the kindergarten year, the second provides students with a year of development kindergarten before they go into a year of "real" kindergarten, and the third provides a year of transitional first grade after kindergarten but before entering a "real" first grade.

Karweit and Wasik (CDS Report No. 41; 1994) examined the results of three educational practices -- retention in kindergarten, placement in developmental kindergarten, and placement in transitional first grade. The first holds students back to repeat the kindergarten year, the second provides students with a year of developmental kindergarten before they go into a year of "real" kindergarten, and the third provides a year of transitional first grade after kindergarten but before entering a "real" first grade. Karweit and Wasik took a "best evidence" approach to the review -- they included studies that used a control group for comparison and that provided information to indicate who was being compared, when the comparison was being made, and what tests were used.

Across the board, the findings were stable: All three of these practices -- each costing children a year of their lives -- produced at best initial gains in achievement compared to other children, but those gains disappeared within one or two years. Thus the main effect found in second or third grade -- the children who were given an extra year through these practices were achieving no better than comparable children who had been simply promoted into first grade -- but they were a year older than their classmates.

Kindergarten Retention

The question has been asked: How can a child flunk kindergarten? But Karweit and Wasik cite sources that show that one southern state reported retaining 8.6 percent of kindergarten students in 1989, and kindergarten retention rates in schools in a western state ranged from 0 to 50 percent. Whether children are able to actually flunk kindergarten is a moot question -- they are retained.

Karweit and Wasik found three adequately controlled studies which contrasted students who had been retained in kindergarten with those who had been recommended for retention but whose parents refused retention. In all three studies, students were compared at the end of first grade -- thus the nonretained students were younger than the retained students.

One of the studies also compared the students' reading and math achievement at the same age -- that is, comparing the achievement of the retained kindergarten children at the end of their retention year to the achievement of the nonretained children at the end of their year of first grade.

All three of these studies found a favorable result for kindergarten retention on academic achievement in the year of retention. And all three found that the effects did not persist into the next year or the year after.

Developmental Kindergarten

Developmental kindergarten, according to Karweit and Wasik, refers to the practice of screening entering kindergarten students in specific developmental areas (e.g., visual, motor, language, behavior, social, emotional) and placing students in differentiated kindergartens on the basis of this assessment. The placement typically puts developmentally immature children into a two-year route to first grade.

The first year in kindergarten, often called young kindergarten or junior kindergarten, may be similar in organization and emphasis to nursery schools or other pre-kindergarten programs. In the second year, before first grade, these "young kindergartners" (who are now actually "old kindergartners") may join a regular kindergarten class of younger students or attend a second year of alternative kindergarten.

Karweit and Wasik found only two studies of developmental kindergarten that used a clearly identifiable control group. Both studies compared students placed in developmental kindergarten with students recommended for placement but whose parents said no. Both studies compared children's achievement at the end of the same grade, when the developmental kindergarten students were a year older than the comparison children. The largest study (223 students) also compared the developmental kindergarten students' achievement to that of children not recommended for placement. In this study, no achievement effects were found, neither initially nor long-term. In the second study, examining 34 pairs of matched students, large positive effects on achievement were found for the developmental kindergarten children compared to their control group in both same-age and same-class comparisons, but none of these effects persisted into the second and third grade.

Transitional First Grade

Children are often placed in transitional first grades, Karweit and Wasik note, because they are developmentally immature or because they are judged to not be academically ready for first grade. Transitional first grade classrooms are often small in size and may use alternative curricula, in some cases focusing on remediation and in others being an intervention program.

The researchers reviewed seven studies which used control groups. These groups were usually comprised of children for whom transition had been recommended but whose parents had refused placement, but in some cases were comprised of children who were deemed eligible for placement but for whom no program was available.

Karweit and Wasik summarize the results of the seven studies: "In most studies which used same-grade comparisons, ... the students in transitional programs had higher achievement than their younger classmates in the first grade, but these effects faded after the first grade. In studies which used same-age comparisons, ... the effects were either zero or favored the promoted children."

Karweit and Wasik conclude: "These studies do not support the long-term effectiveness of transitional first grade as an educational intervention."

Overall, Karweit and Wasik conclude that: "There is no evidence that kindergarten retention, developmental kindergarten, or transitional first-grade programs are more effective than simply promoting the children." This conclusion echoes the conclusion drawn by researchers about retention in grade throughout the elementary years -- long-term effects are simply not there.

But this conclusion does not suggest, Karweit and Wasik stress, that our initially low-achieving and/or developmentally immature children should simply be promoted in hopes that their problems will go away. "They do not outgrow their academic problems by buying a year," the researchers say, "and they do not circumvent their academic problems by being promoted anyway. These children continue to lag behind their peers. They need long-term, continued intervention and supportive help as it's required to progress regularly through their schooling; they do not benefit from an additional year waiting to mature or a frustrating extra year in the same grade."

Schoolwide Chapter 1 Programs

A study of the implementation of schoolwide projects in 40 urban elementary schools that had large proportions of Chapter 1 students finds tentative evidence of long-term effects on achievement of the most disadvantaged children, but the findings are mixed with respect to grade level. No effects were found for first grade; significant positive effects were found at second grade; negative effects were found at third grade, and the effects in grades four and five were positive but not significant. These findings suffer from the lack of strong information about the quality and quantity of services provided to individual students under the schoolwide projects. Case studies of six schools, which detailed the quality and quantity of the schoolwide programs, found stronger evidence of improved student attendance and improved achievement in reading and math.

Previous evaluations of Chapter 1 (formerly Title I) programs have usually not found any substantial long-term achievement effects for the students who receive services. The most recent large-scale evaluation found that Chapter 1 students made some progress compared to similar students not receiving Chapter 1 services, but their gains still left them far behind the achievement of more advantaged students. From all indications, Chapter 1 succeeded in helping disadvantaged students tread water, so they didn't drown, but never taught them to swim in the same leagues as more advantaged students.

The focus on remediating subpopulations rather than improving the effectiveness of the entire school has kept Chapter 1 from achieving its full potential, especially in schools that serve large numbers of disadvantaged students, according to CDS researchers Linda Winfield, Randolph Hawkins, and Sam Stringfield. The typical mode of delivery of Chapter 1 services has been to pull Chapter 1 students out of their regular classrooms for separate instruction. This disrupts the learning of the children in their regular classrooms, wastes materials and time, and limits the use of effective programs.

Thus recent legislation that allows disadvantaged schools to spend Chapter 1 funds on programs that seek to improve the entire school, instead of confining the spending to Chapter 1 students only, has been applauded by many educators. But the question still remains -- does this use of Chapter 1 funds make a difference in student achievement? The results of CDS studies of Success for All -- which is a schoolwide program -- indicate that the answer is yes, but that yes answer applies only for this specific program. Is the schoolwide thrust as effective in general?

Winfield, Hawkins, and Stringfield (CDS Report No. 37) and Winfield (1991) examined the implementation and results of six elementary schoolwide programs in a large Eastern city. They found that the schoolwide Chapter 1 programs implemented in these schools increased students' reading and math achievement. In one of the schools, students' reading scores rose six percent and their math scores rose ten percent after the schoolwide program's first year.

The researchers found that these six schools used their Chapter 1 funds in various ways. They lowered their teacher-student ratio in math and reading by adding another teaching position, eliminated split-grade classes, and cut out pull-out classes by providing all instruction within the regular classroom.

Winfield and Hawkins (CDS Report No. 46) followed up their case studies of these six schools with longitudinal evaluations of 40 elementary schoolwide programs compared to 20 elementary schools that were comparable in level of poverty but were not schoolwide program sites. Here the picture gets a lot more tenuous; achievement results fluctuate by grade level, and age, gender, and race/ethnicity influence achievement in various ways.

First-graders in schoolwide program sites performed the same as first-graders in non-schoolwide sites. Older first-graders performed less well than younger first-graders. African-American children performed slightly higher than white students.

Second-graders in schoolwide program sites performed better than second-graders in non-schoolwide. Again, older second-graders scored less well than younger. Girls did better than boys. African American and Hispanic students performed less well than white students.

Third-graders in schoolwide program sites performed lower than third-graders in non-schoolwide. Again, older students, boys, African American, and Hispanic students scored lower than their respective counterparts.

Fourth- and fifth-graders in schoolwide program sites scored higher than fourth- and fifth-graders in non-schoolwide sites, but the results were not statistically significant. The prevailing patterns for age, gender, and race/ethnicity continued, but the race/ethnicity fifth-grade results were not significant.

Summing up, Winfield and Hawkins note that the findings provide "some tentative evidence of the long-term effects of being in a schoolwide project." It is encouraging that both the fourth- and fifth-grade achievement effects were positive even though not significant, indicating long-term effectiveness. Also encouraging is that race effects, although still negative in fifth grade, are no longer significant. But the negative effects for third-grade schoolwide program students are puzzling, and the strong age, gender, and race-ethnicity effects that run throughout the grades are discouraging.

Winfield and Hawkins also examined how the implementation of specific components of schoolwide programs affected student achievement in grades one through five in a single year. They examined survey data, received from principals at 40 sites, which described the major components that each site had implemented, and constructed scales to reflect the components.

No clear-cut effects on student achievement emerge from the various components. As with longitudinal achievement comparisons, different patterns of effects appear at each grade level (one through five).

The effects of the parent involvement component are typical of the overall findings in their complexity. At second and fourth grade, parent involvement is positively related to student achievement, but no effect is seen for third grade. In fifth grade, the percentage of parents involved in school programs is negatively related to student achievement outcomes; however, the percentage of parents attending school conferences is positively related.

One aspect of site-based management -- teachers' involvement in decision making about how human resources are used -- comes close to having reasonably clear effects. This component includes teacher input in decisions about how they (and students) are assigned to classes, how and what new teachers or aides are hired, and so on. This component had a positive impact on student achievement at all grade levels except the fourth.

"The results of our studies," Winfield and Hawkins emphasize, "indicate the complexity and interaction of organizational variables in changing how schools deliver services to students in Chapter 1 programs. ...the studies present some modest evidence of potential long-term achievement effects of schoolwide projects for serving disadvantaged students."

Nongraded Elementary Schools

Nongraded elementary schools have worked well in simplified form, but worked much less well as they became more complex. A review of the research on the achievement effects of nongraded organization finds that there are consistent positive achievement effects of simple forms of nongrading [cross-grade grouping for one subject and cross-grade grouping for many subjects]. But forms of nongrading that used individualization extensively were less consistently successful. Nongraded organization can have a positive impact on student achievement if cross-age grouping is used to allow teachers to provide more direct instruction to students, but not if it is used as a framework for individualized instruction.

The nongraded elementary school was a popular idea in the 50's, 60's, and early 70's. In the 90's, it's popular again. A review of the research on the effects of nongrading programs by Center researchers Roberto Gutierrez and Robert Slavin provides some suggestions for, this time around, using resources in ways that make the nongraded program most effective in improving student achievement (CDS Report No. 33; Gutierrez & Slavin, 1992).

The research review tells how a popular innovation worked well in simplified form, but worked much less well as it became more complex. Reviewing the research on the achievement effects of nongraded organization, Gutierrez and Slavin found that the results "... indicated consistent positive achievement effects of simple forms of nongrading [cross-grade grouping for one subject and cross-grade grouping for many subjects]. But: "Forms of nongrading making extensive use of individualization were less consistently successful..." and "Studies of Individually Guided Education, which used nongrading and individualization, also produced inconsistent effects."

The bottom-line findings: "...nongraded organization can have a positive impact on student achievement if cross-age grouping is used to allow teachers to provide more direct instruction to students, but not if it is used as a framework for individualized instruction."

What is a Nongraded School?

Gutierrez and Slavin note that the nongraded program frequently applies only to the primary grades (1-3 or K-3), and this is the main form that is re-emerging today.

The nongraded school eliminates grade level designations -- there is no first grade, second grade, and so on. Instead, students are grouped according to their level of academic performance. For example, a nongraded reading or math class might contain six-, seven-, and eight-year old students, all reading or learning math at what would ordinarily be considered the second-grade level.

Students are allowed to proceed through the curriculum at their own rates. Thus, in the elementary nongraded school, some students may take longer than usual to complete the elementary grades; others may complete elementary school in less time than usual. "Because the school has classes at many levels," Gutierrez and Slavin note, "a child who spurts ahead or falls behind can easily be moved to another class appropriate to his or her level. As a result, no child is ever retained or skipped a whole grade at once."

No retention in grade, and no accompanying stigma. Every child ready by the end of the nongraded program to continue a successful school career. This is the current bright promise of the nongraded primary school. It is the same bright promise espoused in the 50s, 60s, and early 70s. What happened in the nongraded school's first go-around to interrupt the keeping of that promise?

 

Four Types of Nongraded Programs

Gutierrez and Slavin identify four types of nongraded elementary programs in their review of the research. The programs progressed from early comparatively simple "vertical" models (changes in grouping patterns) to later more complex "vertical and horizontal" models (changes in grouping patterns and instructional methods). Gutierrez and Slavin found the following results for each.

Nongraded programs involving only one subject. In this arrangement, students are grouped across grade lines in one subject only, almost always reading.

Findings. Summarizing nine studies, all reported in the 50s and 60s, Gutierrez and Slavin find that all studies of high methodological quality found substantial positive results in favor of the nongraded program. The median effect size for the four best-quality studies is +.50; for all studies from which effect sizes could be estimated, it is +.46.

"Two features are important in [these] successful nongraded programs," the researchers note. "One is flexibility in pupil grouping, with frequent assessment of mastery at each level. The second is increased amounts of teaching time for the homogeneous instructional groups."

Nongraded programs involving multiple subjects. This arrangement includes flexible multi-age grouping for several academic subjects, mostly with continuous progress curricula for reading and mathematics. (In a continuous progress curriculum structure, the skills to be learned in such subjects as reading and math are organized into a hierarchical series of levels covering all the grades involved in the plan. Students pick up each year where they left off the previous year.)

Findings. Summarizing fourteen studies, all reported from the late 50s and 60s to the early 80s, Gutierrez and Slavin found consistent significant positive results favoring the nongraded programs. The median effect size for the most methodologically sound studies was +.34. Some common characteristics of these successful nongraded plans included subjects organized by levels, text written in accordance with those levels, and regrouping of students that allowed teachers to reduce the heterogeneity of their instructional groups.

Nongraded programs incorporating individualized instruction. Starting in the late 60s, nongraded programs often began to include individualized instruction -- the extensive use of learning stations, learning activity packets, programmed instruction, tutoring, and other methods carried out independently of teacher instruction. In many cases these activities were combined with small-group tasks and team teaching, in which two-to-six teachers would work with a large group of students, flexibly grouping and regrouping them throughout the day.

Programs of this kind were increasingly implemented in schools that did not separate classrooms with walls. Many came to be called "open" schools rather than nongraded schools.

Findings. Summarizing 11 studies, all but one reported in the brief period of 1969-1973, Gutierrez and Slavin find "remarkably consistent" results: "no significant differences appear in most studies," resulting in a median effect size of essentially zero (+.02).

"As the nongraded plans became more complicated in their grouping arrangements," the researchers state, "they apparently lost the comparative advantage that [nongraded programs involving one subject] or comprehensive nongraded programs had."

Individually Guided Education (IGE). This arrangement was an ambitious, comprehensive restructuring of elementary education that used nongrading, but heavily incorporated individualized instruction, small-group activities, comprehensive instructional models, teacher teams, and a school-level Instructional Improvement Committee.

Findings. Summarizing ten studies that appeared from 1972 through 1985, Gutierrez and Slavin find that the research findings on IGE schools are similar to the findings on nongraded schools that incorporate individualized instruction. The median effect size across six studies from which effect sizes could be computed was near zero (+.11).

Will Nongraded Schools Apply Lessons Learned?

The re-emergence of nongraded programs, Gutierrez and Slavin note, is a response to problems still unsolved in our schools -- especially the tension between retention and social promotion and the rejection of traditional forms of ability grouping. The main lesson learned from earlier research on nongraded schools, the researchers suggest, is that "the effects of nongraded organization are strongest when ... nongrading is used as a grouping strategy but not as a framework for individualized instruction."

Research conducted separately on both individualized instruction and open education (as well as this review) has consistently found that these methods fail to improve student achievement, making it "unlikely that the nongraded elementary schools of the 1990s will, like those of the early 1970s, embrace these methods. As a result, it is more likely that the nongraded programs of the 1990s will resemble the simpler forms found in this review to be instructionally effective."

 

Cooperative Learning with Navajo Students

A three-year field study finds that the use of cooperative learning instructional practices significantly improved the performance of third- and fourth-grade Navajo Indian students in learning math concepts, problem solving, and computation. In the implementation of effective programs to improve Indian students' education, the study emphasizes the importance of administrator and teacher orientation, the availability of continuous training and materials, and the development of an internal and external support system for teachers. (Staskey, 1992)

Cooperative Learning for Language Minority Students

Cooperative learning in bilingual education can strengthen the bilingual reading comprehension and writing skills of at-risk elementary school students from bilingual reading backgrounds. In research studies in two districts, Limited English Proficient students increased their reading achievement in Spanish and English using a cooperative learning method called Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC), compared to control students. Staff development was found to be a central aspect of successful development and use of CIRC. Analyses indicated significantly better test scores among students who were in CIRC two or more years at the 4th grade level as compared to comparison non­CIRC 4th grade classrooms. Significant results were also found for students at the d. grade level who had been in CIRC for one year, as well as two years. No significant results were found for 2nd grade students. (CDS Report No. 3; Calderon, Tinajero, & Hertz-Lazarwitz, n.d.; Calderon & Duran, 1994; Calderon & Hertz-Lazarowitz, 1993,1994; Calderon, 1994; Calderon, Hertz-Lazarowitz, & Tinajero, 1992; Duran, 1994).

Cooperative learning has often been proposed for use with language minority students. CDS researchers at the University of Santa Barbara in California and at the University of Texas in El Paso put that proposal to the test as part of their work in the Language Minority Program of CDS.

The Santa Barbara and El Paso researchers, working with the Ysleta Independent School District in El Paso, developed and implemented Bilingual CIRC (Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition). The original CIRC program has been shown to increase student reading and writing achievement in grade levels two to six.

Bilingual CIRC, according to researcher Margarita Calderon, is based on principles of first and second language acquisition, literacy development for language minority students, and staff development programs for bilingual settings. The Bilingual CIRC program consists of three main elements: basal­related or literature­related activities, direct instruction in reading comprehension, and integrated language arts/reading/writing. Students work in heterogeneous learning teams in all these activities, and all activities follow a regular cycle of teacher presentation, team practice, independent practice, peer pre­assessment, additional practice, and testing.

The CIRC process allows teachers to "keep track of their English, Spanish, and transitional readers in an efficient and effective manner," says Calderon. "Students are engaged in meaningful and challenging activities at all times, and time on reading increases [greatly]."

Calderon notes that "curriculum and instructional adaptation have been the biggest drawbacks for teachers of language minority students" in using cooperative learning strategies. The Ysleta project has adapted the CIRC process to the Macmillan Transitional Reading Series by merging the basal reader's activities with CIRC strategies and by developing "treasure hunts" ­­ question and answer activities ­­ for each of the stories contained in the basal. Treasure hunts are also being developed for the most widely used children's literature in Spanish and English at each grade level.

To promote instructional adaptation, the project conducted extensive staff development and training and monitoring the use of cooperative learning through five stages of implementation ­­ the progression of teachers and students through student social skill development, teaching strategies, monitoring and feedback, grading and evaluating, and quality of interaction.

The CIRC development has been very successful in adapting this cooperative learning process to meet the needs of language minority students. Analyses indicated significantly better test scores among students who were in CIRC two or more years at the 4th grade level as compared to comparison non­CIRC 4th grade classrooms. Significant results were also found for students at the 3rd grade level who had been in CIRC for one year, as well as two years. No significant results were found for 2nd grade students.

Cooperative Learning and Language Minority Students' Construction of Knowledge

Cooperative learning processes can provide an interactive and supportive setting in which learning can be "a constructive process wherein students actively develop new knowledge through manipulation and questioning of their existing knowledge," report Richard P. Duran and Margaret H. Szymanski at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Duran and Szymanski (CDS Report No. 45; Duran & Szymanski, in press) analyze how interactions are constructed moment-by-moment among language minority children in a Spanish-English bilingual third-grade classroom. The interactions occur as four native Spanish-speaking third-graders work together on a story-related writing activity during the Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) process.

The four students, after working with the CIRC curriculum in Spanish for seven months, have just transitioned to reading in English in the CIRC curriculum; this is their sixth day of CIRC instruction in English. They have read a story and answered questions based on the story, and are now beginning their story-related writing activity in which they will write in response to a theme. This activity begins with a shared discussion among the students that requires them to relate an experience of their own to that of the story's protagonist.

The researchers analyze four aspects of the story structuring in detail: the initial structuring of a story world; the assessing and correcting of language forms; the assessing of the story world's content; and extending the context of the story world.

The children's interaction, the researchers conclude from their analyses, reveals "... that under supportive social circumstances, children are very active in probing and questioning their own knowledge and that they rely on their shared expertise in attaining a teacher's instructional goals." In addition, the researchers note, they attain "... supplemental goals that make sense to the children given their own expertise and concerns."

Restructuring At the District Level

A large urban district in the South initiated and conducted a district-wide restructuring effort. CDS Report #10 and various progress reports describe the process of restructuring, discuss the issues that must be tackled to produce major changes in a school system's operations, illustrate how a program development method can be used to address these issues and promote restructuring, and summarize progress in district implementation and evaluation of programs and practices.

CDS researchers examined how a large urban school district containing many disadvantaged students could institute a structured approach to planned change that calls for careful assessment of existing practices and outcomes to determine what must be done, identification of interventions to achieve the needed outcomes when applied, and the design of strategies to overcome actual and perceived obstacles to radical rearrangement of priorities and resource allocations to do what is needed. (CDS Report No. 10; Gottfredson, D., 1990; Gottfredson, G. & Gottfredson, D, 1991). The structured approach is an organizational development program called program development evaluation (PDE) (Gottfredson, G., Nettles, & McHugh, 1994).

Much of the restructuring involved schools identifying goals and objectives and seeking to implement components -- programs and practices -- that would achieve those goals and objectives.
The findings of component evaluations found that in all cases, components that were implemented well had positive effects, and those that weren't did not.

The evaluation of a component to improve adolescent conduct found that the strength and fidelity of the implementation varied considerably across schools and was tied to the level of administrator support for the program. In schools where the program was well implemented, student conduct improved significantly and substantially (Gottfredson, D. & Gottfredson, G., 1993).

An evaluation of the TESA program (CDS Report No. 25) found a small positive outcome when the comparison of effects was made within schools, and negative effects when the comparison was made across schools. The results did not produce the large effects that will be required to ameliorate the retention and achievement disparities that characterize the district.

Evaluation of the Success for All program in one district school (Gottfredson, G., Hybl, & Eadon, 1991) found strong positive effects for the kindergarten program and mixed evidence for the first grade. No consistent pattern of effects was found for the higher grades. The program sharply curtailed grade retention in the first grade.

An evaluation found that participation in the DARE program reduced student alcohol consumption, increased students= belief in conventional rules, led to less association with drug-using peers, and helped students develop attitudes unfavorable toward drug use. In some schools, the positive results were clear and large; in other schools, there was little evidence of effectiveness.

 

Success for All

Success for All, a research-based experimental program based on the premise that all children should get whatever help they need to acquire basic skills in the early grades, shows strong positive effects on most individually administered reading measures in most schools, especially for students who have been in the program since first grade (CDS Reports 2, 18, 28, 43). Particularly large effects were found on students who were in the lowest 25% of their grades on pretests. Retentions in grade and special education placements were reduced in high-resource schools. The program also shows positive effects for Limited English Proficient (LEP) students, particularly Asian students (Cambodians), through grade 2 (CDS Reports 5, 14, 29).

 

School/Family/Community Partnerships -- Family and Community Involvement

CDS researchers worked in collaboration with school administrators, teachers, parents, and community leaders in a large urban district to carry out a three-year program to increase parent involvement in ways that would children's learning. The program was guided by the use of a typology of school-family-community partnerships (Epstein, 1992).

Typology of School-Family-Community Partnerships

Although family-community-school collaboration is readily accepted as important for improving our schools and student outcomes, it's important to distinguish among types of collaboration and the results that might be expected from different types. The six types are:

School Help for Families. This refers to schools providing assistance to families in relation to their basic obligations -- their responsibilities for their children's healthy and safety; supervision, discipline, and guidance for children at each age level; and positive home conditions that support school learning and behavior appropriate for each grade level.

School-Home Communication. This refers to the basic obligations of schools to communicate from school to home about school programs and children's progress, including the use of letters, memos, report cards, newsletters, conferences, and other mechanisms.

Family Help for Schools. This refers to the involvement in school of parent and community volunteers who assist teachers, administrators, and children in classrooms and other areas of the school. It also refers to parents and others who come to the school to support and watch student performances, sports, and other events.

Involvement in Learning Activities at Home. This refers to parent-initiated or child-initiated requests for help and, particularly, to ideas from teachers for parents to monitor or assist their own children at home in learning activities that can be coordinated with the children's classroom instruction.

Involvement in Governance, Decision Making, and Advocacy. Refers to parents and other community residents in advisory, decision-making, or advocacy roles in parent associations, advisory committees, and school improvement or school site councils. It also refers to parent and community activists in independent advocacy groups that monitor the schools or work for school improvement.

Collaboration and Exchanges with the Community. This refers to involvement of any of the institutions that share some responsibility for children's development and success. This includes programs that provide access to and coordinate community and support services for children and their families, and other arrangements that draw on community resources to support children's learning.

Practices in Urban Elementary Schools

Two specific practices of parent involvement in elementary schools have been found to increase the involvement of parents of disadvantaged children at school and their involvement in monitoring and working with their children on homework assignments. These activities include the use of reading activity packets that are worked on at home and the distribution of a student/parent newsletter (CDS Report No. 19)..

Reading Activity Packets. One elementary school introduced parents of first- and second-graders to a set of reading activity packets designed to help them help their children practice important reading skills throughout the school year. Toward the end of the school year, both parents and teachers were surveyed to see how well the project was implemented, how the students, parents, and the teachers reacted to the packets, and how the packets and the process could be improved. Some of the findings include:

The packets increased parents= involvement in their children's homework.

Children who worked with a parent (mainly their mothers) at home completed more activities than those who worked alone.

Whether the parent worked outside the home or was home full-time did not make a difference in the number of home learning activities completed.

In first grade, poor, fair, and average students completed as many activities with their parents as did good students; in second grade, average and less successful children did significantly fewer activities with their parents.

Based on these findings, the school has improved the packets and their implementation processes.

I Care Parent Newsletter. Another urban elementary school developed a newsletter issued every two months to make parents feel welcome at the school and inform them about the curriculum and their children's progress. The newsletter included articles about and by the students, reports on classroom activities and school programs, and social and cultural articles for parents.

The impact of the newsletter was evaluated through questionnaires included in each issue, a survey of parents conducted at mid-year, and a comprehensive random telephone survey conducted at the end of the year. Findings included:

Parents reported that their children's favorite articles were those written by students and those that recognized students' achievements; parents themselves favored articles that provided ways to improve their children's academic skills.

About half of the parents read aloud to their children from the newsletter on a regular basis and about one-third of the children read aloud regularly to their parents.

Empowerment of Language Minority Parents

Qualitative studies (CDS Report No. 49; Delgado-Gaitan, 1994) find that parent involvement in their language minority children's literacy instruction both at home and in school can increase significantly when parents are empowered to make decisions.

The studies examined parents' and children's shared reading and questioning at home and teachers' and parents' joint meetings to plan literacy instruction for children. Qualitative analyses indicated positive outcomes for both children and parents.

Some findings of further examinations include: Teacher communication most often consisted of taking the extra time to send home weekly letters or notes and to make positive or negative phone calls; assigning homework that involved members of the family was a common activity mentioned by both bilingual and non­bilingual teachers; parents' volunteering in class was only popular with non­bilingual teachers; parents were more likely to be involved as volunteers in the classroom in the primary grades; and all but three teachers believed it was important to incorporate the home­culture in the curriculum as a way of establishing stronger home­school relations.

CSOS Home Page

 

Copyright © 1996 CSOS
Web Development provided by Renee L. Kling
E-mail:atrisk@csos.jhu.edu