Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Background
Much of the work concerning out-of-school influences on students' prospects for academic success stems from James Coleman's 1966 study of racial and ethnic segregation, student and family characteristics, and student achievement. In Equality of Educational Opportunity (1966), prepared for the United States Department of Education, Coleman found that family factors such as household composition, socioeconomic status, and parents' level of education were stronger predictors of students' educational attainment than were direct school-related factors. The Coleman study gave rise to decades of research and writing, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, on so-called family effects on students' academic achievement. These studies generally concluded that the factors Coleman identified do exert enormous influence on students' achievement, though they are not necessarily deterministic of it. Students who come from backgrounds that would seem to doom them to school failure often find a way to beat the odds and achieve at high academic levels. And some students who hail from seemingly ideal life situations never thrive academically. During the 1990s, as the United States education system was focused intensely on raising academic achievement across the board under the banner "All Students Can Learn," many educators, researchers, and policymakers began to adopt the no excuses philosophy. Regardless of a child's life circumstances, they asserted, an effective education environment can overcome other challenges and enable all children to achieve at high levels. As is the case with most complicated issues, both points of view have considerable merit. All (or nearly all) students can learn. But the circumstances of a child's life, the social indicators that paint a cumulative picture of a child's total environment, are important signposts pinpointing conditions that either make learning possible or present challenges that must be overcome to pave the way for learning.
Parental Influence
A commonly used phrase, but one that has the ring of substantial truth, is that parents are their children's first teachers. The home environment shapes a child's initial views of learning. Parents' beliefs, expectations, and attitudes about education and their children's achievement have a profound early impact on students' conceptions of the place of education in their lives. What parents think about the importance (or unimportance) of doing well in school is often mirrored in student results. A study by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company found that nearly all students (97%) who earned mostly A's and B's on their report cards reported that their parents encouraged them to do well in school. Among students who earned mostly C's, nearly half (49%) said they received little parental encouragement. Some families clearly have more resources to devote to their children and can more easily find time to spend nurturing and encouraging them. When both parents work (an increasingly common phenomenon) or when a child is being raised by a single parent, finding time to read to the child, to encourage the completion of homework, or to participate in school functionsall
known to have a salutary effect on student success in schoolbecome more difficult. The problem is often compounded for parents who speak limited or no English. However, regardless of family composition or circumstance, the research is clear. Children whose families provide supervision and support, and who have aspirations for their children, tend to multiply those children's chances of being successful students.
The nature of quality of early care has been shown to have lasting impacts. Children in highquality care environments are less likely than children in low-quality care circumstances to repeat a grade, require special education services, drop out of school, or find themselves in future trouble with the law. For many families, the childcare issue revolves around two central concerns: cost and access. Even if quality care is available, many families cannot afford to pay for it. And for many families, quality care is simply not available.
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Youth organizations. Research suggests that participation in various kinds of youth organizations contributes to better behavior in school, improved social skills, more selfconfidence, and higher academic expectations. Organizations such as the YMCA and YWCA, Boys and Girls Clubs, 4-H, and Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts often provide academic support as a complement to activities designed to foster social and emotional development. Athletic programs, such as Little League and those organized by local recreation and parks departments, offer healthy outlets for children's and adolescents' energy, while also building skills such as personal responsibility and teamwork. Mentoring relationships can ensure that a caring adult is part of a child's life, and they have been shown to offer important benefits. Research has shown that programs such as the Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America contribute to lower rates of drug and alcohol use, reduced violence, and better school attendance, performance, and attitudes. Youth employment. As many as 76 percent of youth in the United States are working, or have worked, in paid employment by age sixteen. Researchers differ regarding the impact of work on adolescents' academic achievement. Some studies conclude that work provides students with useful skills and attributes, among them instilling a sense of responsibility and heightening students' sense of self-efficacy, and that these have a positive spillover effect in school. However, other research concludes that work is just a distraction for most students, in that it competes with school for students' time and attention. Of course, students work for different reasons. Some students are significant breadwinners for their families. Their earnings represent an important part of the families' income. Some students work specifically to save money for college. Most studies, however, show that the vast majority of students who work do so to earn spending money for things they want to buy. Research has shown that the amount of time a student works is a factor in determining employment's impact on educational performance. For students working twenty or fewer hours per week, few problems seem to arise. But for students working more than twenty hours per week, work can present education-related problems where the job takes precedence over school.
health care, income support, English language acquisition, and job trainingwith schools as a way of increasing families' access to these services. Located either on school grounds (schoolbased) or nearby in the surrounding neighborhood (school-linked), these efforts foster partnerships between schools and social services agencies, ideally giving each a chance to do what it does best. Despite the promise of such programs, they have not been problem-free. Difficulties arise around allocation of resources, turf (who is in charge of what?), and misunderstandings about the roles and responsibilities of various involved professionals. Research has shown that for school-based or school-linked programs to produce the desired results, social services need not just to be linked to schools, but must be integrated into schools' activities and functions, creating new pressures for schools regarding what they are expected to do and under what circumstances. Whatever kind of program is employed, what is important is for services to reach students and their families so that education can be a student's primary responsibility.
Conclusion
Schools do not exist in a vacuum. A host of factors contribute to students' prospects for academic success. Some students come to school with all they need: stable and supportive families, adequate financial resources, and good health. For students who do not enjoy these advantages, making provision to help them meet outside-of-school challenges can provide just the boost they need to succeed in school. See also: COLEMAN, JAMES S.; FAMILY COMPOSITION AND CIRCUMSTANCE; FAMILY, SCHOOL, and COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS; HEALTH AND EDUCATION; PARENTING; VIOLENCE, CHILDREN'S EXPOSURE TO.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BROOKS-GUNN, JEANNE; DUNCAN, GREG G.; KLEBANOV, PAMELA K.; and SEALAND, NAOMI.1993. "Do Neighborhoods Influence Child and Adolescent Development?" American Journal of Sociology 99:353395. COLEMAN, JAMES S., et al. 1966. Equality of Educational Opportunity. Washington, DC: U.S. Office of Education. MCLANAHAN, SARA, and SANDEFUR, GARY. 1994. Growing Up with a Single Parent. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. MCLAUGHLIN, MILBREY W., et al. 1994. Urban Sanctuaries. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. METROPOLITAN INSURANCE COMPANY. 1998. The Metropolitan Life American Teacher Survey of 1998. New York: Metropolitan Insurance Company. MIHALIC, SHARON W., and ELLIOTT, DELBERT S. 1997. "Short and Long-term Consequences of Adolescent Work." Youth and Society 28 (4):464498.
QUALITY COUNTS. 2002. "Building Blocks for Success: State Efforts in Early Childhood Education." Bethesda, MD: Education Week. TIERNEY, JOSEPH P.; GROSSMAN, J. BALDWIN; and RESCH, NANCY L. 1995. Making a Difference: An Impact Study of Big Brothers/Big Sisters. Philadelphia: Public/Private Ventures. UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS. 2000. The 2000Green Book. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accounting Office. WEHLAGE, GARY; SMITH, GREGORY; and LIPMAN, PAULINE. 1992. "Restructuring Urban Schools: The New Futures Experience." American Educational Research Journal 29 (1):5193.
INTERNET RESOURCE
SCHWARTZ, WENDY. 1996. "An Overview of Strategies to Reduce School Violence." ERIC Identifier ED 410321. New York: Eric Clearinghouse on Urban Education. <www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed410321.html>. JULIA E. KOPPICH
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Socioeconomic status is a powerful agent in creating the cultural environment in which individuals are reared. According to Gollnick and Chinn (1998), the cultural environment provides processes through which expectations are learned about such roles as mother, husband, student, teacher, banker, plumber, or politician. Culturally bound experiences become the lens through which others' performances, behaviors, beliefs, and appearance are judged. They are guidelines used to formulate values, perceptions, and beliefs about concepts such as family, loyalty, honesty, pride, love of country, what is moral or immoral, prestige, and status. Cumulative experiences in a cultural environment guide the way individuals think, feel, and act. Ultimately, an individual's experience repertoire is an anchor to new social, emotional, and cognitive learning episodes and the basis for the degree of effort applied in learning new tasks. Weinger (2000) found that by age five, low- and middle-income children's assessments and prejudices about wealth were firmly fixed. Furthermore, Brantlinger (1991) found that lowincome adolescents' perception about wealth resulted in more negative descriptions of lowincome groups than of high-income groups. Low-income adolescents were also reluctant to identify with low-status groups. In a related study (Tarrant (2002) found that adolescents assigned higher ratings to members of the "in-group" than to members of the "out-group" regardless of circumstance. Lott (2002) found that the main response toward poor people by those who are not poor is one of distancing. Distancing is suggested as one of several factors in
operationally defining discrimination. In sum, the results of these studies show the influence of socioeconomic background on an individual's perceptions of others and the role it plays in determining the degree of interaction desired with individuals from differing income groups.