Policy & Reform

Matthew Lynch published in Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform

Year-Round Schooling: Should We Add on Extra Time, Too?

In this series, I’ve advocated for K-12 schools to shift from the traditional summers-off school calendar to  year-round schooling. Consistency, less time spent relearning material, and the implications that year-round schooling has for closing the achievement gap are just a few of my reasons for feeling so strongly that this shift take place. There’s another piece to this argument though, and one that deserves a closer look. Along with more evenly splitting up time off, should schools be adding more time to their school days or more total days in the classroom?

Where We Stand

Let’s look at where American schools rank right now when it comes to days in school versus time off. Thirty states require schools to have a 180-day calendar, two ask for more than 181 school days and the rest ask for between 171 and 179 days on the official school calendar each year. Minnesota is the only state in the nation that has no minimum requirement for number of days students are in the classroom (though the state averages 175 school days). This means that in states with the lowest day requirements, students are out of school for more days than they are in it (as many as 194 days per year), a number that contrasts greatly with other developed nations.
Korea has the highest required number of school days, at 225, followed by Japan at 223 and China at 221. Canadian requirements are close to the U.S., at 188 days, and England is at 190 days. When all developed nations are considered, the international average for days in school is 193 – a full two weeks+ higher than most of the U.S.
But are all these days considered equal?

How long are the school days in places like Korea, China and England? It varies, but it is not uncommon for Korean high school students to spend 16 hours each school day in classrooms. That is more than twice the amount of time that American students spend at school, and perhaps a bit too extreme. Korean students consistently rank at the top of developed nations when it comes to subjects like math and science, though, vastly outpacing U.S. student. By contrast, in England school-aged children spend 6.5 to 7 hours at school – the equivalent of American students (but they spend more days in the classroom).

A Call for More Time in Classrooms

When comparing the amount of time dedicated to educational settings in the U.S. and competing economies, it becomes glaringly obvious that our standards of what is acceptable in terms of days in school varies greatly from the rest of the world. Even President Obama has been vocal about the need for American schools to add more time in the classroom – either through longer school days or more days on the school calendar.

“Today, it puts us at a competitive disadvantage. Our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea. That is no way to prepare them for a 21st century economy,” said President Obama in 2009.

Predictably those comments have received some pushback in the years since, both from parents who believe their children are already under too much pressure at school and need every single day off they are allotted, and from teachers unions who want to know how educators will be properly accommodated for the extra time spent in classroom instruction. The idea of adding more time to student school calendars is an unpopular one – but I’m not sure that is reason enough to rule it out.
Is it time to turn the U.S. K-12 school calendar completely on its head by abolishing summers-off schedules and adding time in the classroom? Would such actions make a significant positive impact on student performance, particularly in STEM topics?

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

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Matthew Lynch published in Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform

Lessons from Educators on the Big Screen: Part III

It may be true that Hollywood tends to glamorous things and turn true stories into not-so-true ones for the screen, but there are also a lot of impactful films that serve a purpose. In the case of teachers, Hollywood has produced some great examples of lessons that are integral to strong educators. Last week I mentioned six of my favorites that fall into this category, and today I want to add my final three.

Won’t Back Down (2012): Teachers unions panned this one because of its implications that organizations like theirs were to blame for school underperformance. At the heart of the movie, though, is a teacher (played by Viola Davis) partnering with parents to make a difference in the lives of the people who mattered: students. The movie is set in Pittsburgh which I think is important because it tells an urban, inner-city story. I think this is the type of film that makes people uncomfortable, but in all the right ways. I also appreciate that in this film parents are part of the solution – I think that in and of itself is a powerful message to teachers.

Remember the Titans (2000): There are teachers in the classroom, and there are teachers outside it. This Denzel Washington classic shows that character and belief, despite all odds, can overcome a lot. The racial tensions in the movie demonstrated through a high school football team also show how schools are at often at the front lines of social change. Important changes do not just happen overnight, either. They take dedication, especially when the stakes are high. Washington’s character isn’t easy on his students either. He pushes them to point of being uncomfortable but brings them past their barriers in the process.

Stand and Deliver (1988): It’s not easy to teach students who are not willing to learn, particularly if the subject is calculus. In this Edward James Olmos classic, he takes control of a class of dropout prone students and not only keeps them in school, but teaches them some of the toughest topics. The students featured are not surprisingly urban and low-income (but some of the strongest teachers are needed in these very schools, even today). Where this movie was ahead of its time was in its depiction of Hispanic students. Other movies with students in need of saving had maybe one or two Hispanic characters, but the high school in this one is predominantly full of this demographic. Since 1988, the Hispanic K-12 population has exploded, making this movie even more relevant and impactful to the educators of today.

All 10 of the movies I put on my list are ones that made me stop and think about my career when I first saw them. Scenes from them still pop in my head and in some cases, inspire me. It can be so easy to get caught up in the monotony and paper-pushing of the education industry and in the process, lose sight of the truly important parts of teaching. Taking a few moments to watch these movies for the first time, or rewatch them, can restore your faith in the profession. After all, no one ever got into teaching to fill out reports correctly, or pass through as many students as possible. We all have our deep-seeded reasons for becoming educators and the characteristics we see on the screen in these movies remind us of our own ideals.

In reading through my list, are there any movies that you think I missed? What films about teachers have made the biggest impact on your career?

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Matthew Lynch published in Physical Fitness, Policy & Reform

Cut Sports, Advance Academics

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

A guest post by Edgar Wilson

We need to get sports out of schools.

As an extra-curricular, sports should already be distinct from academics, but that hasn’t remotely stopped athletic programs from asserting dominance in and out of the classroom. The problem is most pronounced in tertiary education, where university budgets—and, by extension, student fees and tuition—are being coopted to support legacy athletic programs, most notably football.

Football programs—at least in the current conception—are a losing investment for most schools. Maintaining a diversity of athletic options is expensive, and is clearly not supported by the broadcast and viewership patterns of American sports fans. In the US, we want our football, and we want our basketball, and we want it for free.

These same consumer forces upsetting other pillars of the entertainment industry—music, movies, television—are beginning to cripple cable: streaming services.

Disney has been making headlines since the release of its new Star Wars sequel not only because of the record-breaking box office numbers the film is generating, but because the company is still managing to bleed money due to decreasing cable subscriptions, a pattern that undermines the value of its ESPN channels, and the associated advertising revenues.

Broadcasting college sports just can’t guarantee the same returns that made it such a popular money-maker in the past.

Beyond the backwards financial machinations of college sports, there is the fact that, overwhelmingly, K-12 sports are falling into a pay-to-play format that is fundamentally exclusionary. What merit can a sports program have as an avenue for poor or at-risk students to access college, if the cost of participation already bars them from playing in high school?

Yet at the collegiate level, sports teams have become the tent pole holding up the entire institution:

  • Rather than marketing the university based on academics, professional outcomes, research opportunities or expert faculty, their record of athletic accomplishment gets the most publicity
  • Individual payouts are larger (yet fewer) for athletic scholarships, creating a competitive, high-stakes sports culture that trickles down through secondary and even primary school programs
  • Universities must compete in terms of funding, event games, and spectacle in addition to competing on the field of play

In short, the whole mission and focus of universities pivots to accommodate athletics with increasing urgency.

Compromise abounds—even the United States Naval Academy, which graduates over a thousand students with Bachelor of Science degrees while simultaneously training them as officers for the U.S. Navy every year, has augmented its historically high standards to allow its student athletes to compete at the same level as schools lacking its demanding duel mission. Ditto for West Point.

Beyond lowering the bar for education itself, the troubling school-sports marriage is proving hazardous to the health of student athletes—at every level and age cohort.

The medical data coming out on the punishing long-term effects of athletic injuries, overexertion, and cumulative trauma from youth sports is damning. Whether or not it pays off in the form of discounted tuition or admission to a prestigious school, young jocks in full contact sports can more or less count on legacy injuries dogging them for life.

Outside the high-visibility, high-risk arena of football, research indicates that a hyper-competitive culture that prioritizes specialization leaves any youth athletes at risk of chronic injury. It isn’t that the sports themselves are bad, just that the culture surrounding them has made them so. Technophiles look to science to solve the problem of inherently violent contact sports, only to discover that the culture—not the equipment—is what needs to change to save lives.

The compromise of academics to accommodate athletes is troubling. The conflict of interest for universities, students, the public, and the myriad companies and industries that profit of collegiate sports is fundamentally undermining the purpose and potential of American higher education.

Institutions of learning should support student missions of learning—not athletics.

____

Edgar Wilson is an Oregon native with a passion for cooking, trivia, and politics. He studied conflict resolution and international relations and has worked in industries ranging from international marketing to broadcast journalism. He is currently working as an independent analytical consultant. He can be reached via email here or on Twitter @EdgarTwilson.

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Matthew Lynch published in Equity, Policy & Reform

Mississippi faces steep education cuts

K-12 education in Mississippi is under fire as the state faces budget cuts.

According to Clarionledger.com, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant plans to cut the state’s budget by 1.5 percent.

The cuts will result in a loss of $4 million for K-12. The silver lining is that the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, a program that determines the minimum needed for students to thrive based on the demographics of their school, is exempt from the cuts.

To pare it down further, the Schools for the Blind and Deaf stand to lose a total of $167,362 and Vocation and technical education $1,216,965.

That’s not a short loss.

Because it’s still early in the process, it is unclear if layoffs will be a part of the process. Last year when faced with budget issues, the state cut 35 positions.

Education Superintendent Carey Wright is trying to ensure that the reforms that have been put into place, such as literacy programs and the expansion of early childhood options, remain and aren’t slashed.

And Mississippi isn’t exactly climbing the walls of success. The state consistently ranks at the bottom (or dead last) in academic success and outlook for its K-12 students. When it comes to things like AP exams, just “5 percent of Mississippi students scored a 3 or higher on the exams compared to 21.6 nationally.”

It is still a slight wonder why states choose to cut money from education instead of finding relief in other areas. Mississippi in particular has no room for alleviation when it comes to education. Instead of taking money away from an educational system that desperately needs it, Mississippi should be finding ways to increase funding for K-12 schools, and publicly funded higher education. The cycle of poverty in the state won’t ever be broken if money continues to be pulled from where it is desperately needed: education.

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Policy & Reform, Teachers

Education and esafety: Why You Shouldn’t Believe Everything You Read in the News

Note: The following guest post comes to us courtesy of Keir McDonald, Chairman of EduCare, a company that provides bespoke training solutions for schools. Their courses are available both online and on paper, and cover child protection and duty of care issues.

Media horror stories bombard us daily when it comes to students and esafety, but is going online really as dangerous for children as some journalists would have us believe? A new report from the London School of Economics has found that children might be better at self-regulating their internet usage than we usually give them credit for.

The influence of news stories on children is particularly strong when it comes to stranger danger and bullying, but do media representations of the internet empower children, or destabilise their development of effective online risk-management skills?

After speaking with 378 children about esafety, academics from LSE found that many children actively seek out ways to stay safe online by “planning” and “reflecting.” For example, when using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, older children take precautions such as changing their privacy settings to protect themselves online.

Even younger children, between the ages of 9 – 11, are competent at avoiding problematic websites or applications by simply clicking away. This is an obvious but “effective tactic” when it comes to staying safe on the internet. Most children were able to recognise both the risks and the symptoms of internet addiction, including health problems, losing interest in other things and losing friends.

Though girls are “more likely to seek social support […] than boys,” both sexes are generally reluctant to approach an adult for help when an incident of cyberbullying occurs. Children are commonly able to react proactively to abusive messages by blocking the send or disabling their own account, but sometimes this isn’t enough and internet conflicts escalate rapidly.

Why are children reluctant to seek support when faced with bullying?

Children are often reluctant to seek support, preferring instead to minimise or downplay the significance of cyberbullying. However, this is an inefficient tactic and schools can do more by harnessing the power of the peer-group for their anti-bullying and esafety lessons.

As adults, we can encourage children to feel comfortable sharing their online problems with us by being more reasonable, and less sensational, when it comes to the internet. For one thing, when we talk to children about the internet, we should acknowledge the many good points as well as cautioning against the dangers. Monitoring our children’s online activity is fine for very young children, but as they get older, we can earn their trust by respecting their need for a certain amount of privacy.

Parents and teachers can try to ban Facebook and other websites, or limit their children and student’s internet usage, but they should be aware of the potential consequences. Using social networking sites, among other online skills, has become almost mandatory both in the wider world and in the modern workplace. Banning children from social networking instead of teaching them how to network safely is doing them no favours in the long run.

Read all of our posts about EdTech and Innovation by clicking here. 

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Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Equity, Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform

2 Ways Educational Opportunity Has Risen 80 Percent Since 1970

According to the Historical Report of Opportunity, released by Opportunity Nation and Measure of America, educational opportunity has escalated by 80 percent since 1970. The Report defines Educational Opportunity as the number of children in preschool, the number of high school students who graduate on time, and the number of adults with an associate’s degree or higher. Over the past four decades, Massachusetts improved the most; Nevada, the least.

Let’s look a bit closer at how educational opportunity has manifested itself in the United States.

  1. More kids in preschool: Between 1970 and 2010, the number of 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled in preschool increased by nearly four times, emphasizing the growing awareness of the benefits of early childhood education. Studies show that low-income children who attend high-quality preschool are more successful academically and more likely to graduate from high school and enroll in postsecondary education. Some states have cut funding for public pre-K, yet early childhood education continues to be a priority in many states.
  2. More adults getting degrees: Every state experienced growth in the percentage of adults aged 25 or older who obtained at least an associate’s degree. This indicates the changing global economy that requires higher levels of education of employees. During the four decades measured, Americans with at least an associate’s degree increased by 105 percent.

In 2013, 28 percent of children nationwide were enrolled in state-financed preschool. While 36.3 percent of Americans have at least an associate’s degree, economists predict that by 2020, two-thirds of American jobs will require some form of post-secondary degree or credential.

While Americans should be proud of the educational improvements our country has seen, we need to continue, or even pick up the pace to ensure people possess the skills required to build a powerful 21st-century workforce. This report acts as a good reminder to value the importance of education as the pathway to many of life’s successes.

Readers, what do you think about the educational improvements America has seen over the past several decades? Are these improvements good enough, or should we expect even more than what is happening? Let’s see your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Matthew Lynch published in Matthew Lynch, OpEducation, Policy & Reform

Rethinking the Emphasis on Standardized Testing

Note: Today’s guest blog is from Robert Sun, chairman, president and CEO of Suntex International Inc. and inventor of First In Math, an online program designed for deep practice in mathematics. He is a nationally recognized expert in the use of technology to enhance mathematics education; for more information, visit www.firstinmath.com.

Many who are concerned with education reform in the U.S. look to Asian education systems as the model to follow. Whether for cultural, economic or political reasons, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, and other Asian nations are widely considered to be societies that get public education right.

Children in many Asian countries are outperforming their global peers, and test scores are high. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s most recent PISA study, the United States ranks 36 out of 65 countries in mathematics proficiency. Those at the top include the Chinese, specifically children in Shanghai and Hong Kong.

One would think that China, India and South Korea in particular—countries known to hold schools, teachers and students accountable for performance through rigorous and repeated testing—have the formula all figured out. But let’s look at what’s currently happening in these high-achieving nations.

In China, kids march to the unrelenting drumbeat of standardized testing beginning at age eight. The testing odyssey lasts through middle school and high school, reaching its apex with the National Higher Education Entrance Examination, commonly known as “Gaokao.” Passing this grueling, multi-day test is the sole prerequisite for college entry. Students spend years preparing for it.

So what does China have to show for its stringent academic system? Unemployment among Chinese graduates six months after leaving college is officially around 15% (some Chinese researchers estimate twice that number), despite the fact that a record 7.26 million young people will graduate from the country’s many universities this year—a number seven times greater than just 15 years ago.

At the same time, according to the Nikkei Asian Review, an acute shortage of factory workers throughout China is causing managers to hire students from technical schools as apprentices. Yukon Huang, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, reports that China’s non-graduate unemployment is as low as 4%, causing graduates to consider blue-collar jobs despite their college degrees.

India is facing similar problems. One in three Indian college graduates under the age of 29 is unemployed, according to a November 2013 report issued by the Indian Labour Ministry. Experts report that skill development programs and college education are not creating the sort of training that is in demand in the manufacturing and services sectors.

Meanwhile, ICEF Monitor, a marketing intelligence provider for the international education industry, reported that South Korea’s emphasis on academics is beginning to have diminished returns. Despite education spending that is significantly above the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) average as a percentage of GDP, South Korea’s rate of graduate employment among university-educated 25-34 year-olds is just 75%, ranking it among the lowest in OECD countries, and well below the average of 82%.

After following the academic testing mantra for more than a decade, these countries are totalling the results—millions of stressed-out graduates with skills that oftentimes don’t match up with two of the most pressing needs of their societies: first, young workers who are technically trained; and second, individuals who are encouraged to be innovative, out-of-the-box thinkers.

China is only beginning to face this new realization head on. Its education ministry recently stated that it wishes to turn 600 of the nation’s universities into polytechnic schools in order to produce more technical graduates. In many areas of the country, factory jobs are paying more than entry-level office positions—a clear attempt to steer more potential white-collar workers back into empty blue-collar jobs.

For many countries with “model” education systems, it’s becoming clear that a focus on standardized testing is actually killing the kind of independent thinking that fosters creative prowess. Among the top 10 economies in the Global Innovation Index (GII), the annual innovation ranking co-published by Cornell University INSEAD and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a UN agency, only two are Asian (Singapore at #7 and Hong Kong at #10). Notably, the top five positions are all held by European countries, followed by the U.S. in sixth place. China, on the other hand, is ranked 29th, and India is far down the list at #76.

No one doubts that for a nation to remain competitive it needs to prepare their next generation for success in the STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). The question is, how many STEM graduates are needed? Even here in the U.S., attitudes are changing.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that while the total U.S. labor force will grow from 153.9 million in 2010 to 174.4 million in 2020—a 14.3% increase—engineering jobs will grow by only 11% over that same period (from 1.34 million to 1.45 million). Ten of the 15 engineering disciplines, in fact, will experience slower than average growth.

As someone who has spent years in the pursuit of math proficiency among America’s young people, I believe that mathematics is essential not only to lifetime success, but also for a society’s future. But in this worthy pursuit, we should not slavishly define standardized testing as the benchmark of effectiveness. Moreover, we should realize that testing can have a significant, even debilitating, downside for our children.

Testing has its place as long as it doesn’t push kids away from a sense of wonder and fascination for the world around them. Finland, another country held high for its academic excellence, believes that the overall goal should be a child’s holistic development. Finnish schools pursue the notion that children have different kinds of intellects. In fact the national curriculum dictates that public schools must have a balanced program including art, music, crafts and physical education—plus sufficient time for self-directed activities.

If America is to succeed in educating its students for the future, it’s becoming increasingly clear that rigid, standardized testing isn’t the magical solution. Global competitiveness is important—but it probably won’t come through a regimented, computer-scored exam.

A far more worthy goal would be to create a system wherein the whole individual is addressed, developed, and encouraged to thrive in the pursuit of a better life. That’s a lesson that Asia is just now beginning to learn—and it’s one we should as well, before it’s too late.

 

 

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Teachers

Keeping children back a year doesn’t help them read better

Paul Thomas, Furman University

If you’re an eight-year-old living in Charleston, South Carolina, you’re soon going to need to study extra hard at reading. The US state has joined in with a policy trend across the country that links children’s chances of progressing from third to fourth grade with their performance on reading tests.

Back in 2012, 14 states plus the District of Columbia had policies in place that hold students back a year on the basis of their reading ability.

New efforts to reverse the trend, in states such as Oklahoma, remain rare. This is despite research showing that holding children back a grade – known as grade retention – causes more harm than good.

Following Florida

In the US, holding children back a grade as a key element of reading legislation can be traced to a 2001 programme Just Read, Florida. Because of this programme, Florida was characterised by the New York Times education writer Motoko Rich as: “One of the pioneers in holding back third graders because of inadequate reading skills.”

But two problems lie in the popularity of such grade retention policies. First, while the Florida model has significant bi-partisan support among both Democrats and Republicans in the US, reviews of the outcomes of the Florida policy show research on it is misrepresented and inconclusive, at best.

Alongside this, 40 years of research into the policy of holding children back a grade refutes the practice.

Long-term consequences

The policy of holding children back a school year remains “widespread” internationally, according to a 2013 study by two Belgian scholars who studied retention and behaviour in Flemish high school students.

Research addressing retention in Senegal, in Belgium, and in Lebanon reinforces disturbing patterns about the overwhelming negative long-term consequences and ineffectiveness of grade retention. In the UK, where the practice is very uncommon, the policy has been assessed as costly and ineffective.

Holding children back a grade is strongly correlated with behaviour problems for retained students. Examining the Florida model, CALDER education researcher Umut Özek concluded, “Grade retention increases the likelihood of disciplinary incidents and suspensions in the years that follow.”

Another 2009 study by the Rand Corporation for the New York City Department of Education, found:

In general, retention does not appear to benefit students academically. Although some studies have found academic improvement in the immediate years after retention, these gains are usually short-lived and tend to fade over time.

Most disturbing are the long-term consequences. As literacy professor Nancy Frey explained:

The practice of retention … is academically ineffective and is potentially detrimental to children’s social and emotional health. The seeds of failure may be sown early for students who are retained, as they are significantly more likely to drop out of high school. Furthermore, the trajectory of adverse outcomes appears to continue into young adulthood, when wages and postsecondary educational opportunities are depressed.

Despite a well-established research base discrediting the practice, the policy appears to endure for two reasons. A political and public faith in punitive educational accountability sits alongside a straw man argument that advocates keeping children back instead of “social promotion”, where they are automatically passed onto the next grade regardless of student achievement.

Reward vs punishment

Giving children punishment and rewards for reading ability, like grade retention, is ineffective, especially in the context of teaching and learning. Education writer Alfie Kohn has challenged both for years.

Punishment and rewards shift students’ focus away from learning and toward avoiding one or seeking the other. In literacy, that failure has been exposed in the popular but flawed Accelerated Reader (AR) programme that seeks to increase reading through rewards.

Writing about the AR programme, literacy scholar and professor Renita Schmidt explains

If we continue to let AR ask the questions, we may very well lose the interest of our students and create literal readers who only want to ‘get points’ and be done with reading. That’s not teaching and that’s not reading.

But the National Association of Schools Psychologists asserts that neither strategy – repeating a year, nor promoting the student automatically – is an effective remedy.

Alternatives include addressing the powerful influence of how much access children have to books at home. Other research-supported policies, suggested instead of retention by Shane Jimerson and his colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara, include focusing on parental involvement and targeted practices based on student needs. They also suggest modified reading programmes as well as more holistic approaches to supporting students, including mental health services and behaviour interventions.

But the most urgent political step is to acknowledge that holding children back a grade fails both students and their progress in literacy. Instead, we need an effective and evidence-based policy to replace decades where punishment is preferred over educationally sound practices.The Conversation

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

Paul Thomas, Associate Professor of Education, Furman University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Testing

Students who repeat a year stoke bad behaviour in class

Clara G. Muschkin, Duke University

Students who are held back a year in school or who are older than average for their grade have long been known to be more likely to misbehave and to be suspended from school. But what’s not been clear until now is whether their presence causes ill-discipline across the school community.

In the US, accountability policies in schools have increased the number of students who are old for their grade, or have had to repeat a school year. Schools are evaluated on the basis of students’ demonstrated proficiency in certain skills, such as maths and literacy, for each grade. These policies have led to less frequent “social promotion” – where children automatically progress to the next grade regardless of their ability. Instead, there has been an increase in the proportions of children retained in grade after they fail standardised academic performance tests.

Additionally, some parents choose to hold back their children from entering kindergarten when they become eligible at age five. This trend, known as the “greying of kindergarten”, is linked to concerns about state and school accountability. There are also perceptions among parents that students who are older than their classmates have an advantage in school.

Debates on the consequences of these policies draw upon studies highlighting the effects of grade retention and older age on school attainment and behaviour of these students. But little attention has been paid to the implication on students who themselves are not at academic risk, but who must share classrooms with older and retained students.

Following the leader

Social science theories of peer influence frame questions of how older and retained peers may affect student behaviour in school. These children are more likely to get into trouble at school, in part because of the strong relationship between academic performance and behaviour.

Older students are more inclined to engage in behaviours that seem more “adult” or fitting with their physical appearance, despite a lack of social skills needed for making decisions regarding appropriate behaviour.

The older ones should know better.
Matthew Cole/Shutterstock

A stronger presence of peers who are more likely to misbehave can influence other students through the daily school climate, as well as through increased opportunities for directly interacting with at-risk students. Middle school students are particularly vulnerable to such peer influences, since early adolescence involves developmental adjustments that result in changing relationships with peers, family, and authority figures.

In a recent study, we looked at 79,314 seventh-graders in 334 North Carolina middle schools, using administrative data provided by the public schools and archived by the North Carolina Education Research Data Center at Duke University.

We compared data across schools and took into account student, school, and district-level factors that influence school behaviour. What we found was that the likelihood of a student committing an infraction, the number of infractions per student, and the likelihood of a student being suspended were all significantly higher among students attending schools with higher proportions of retained and older students.

Lowering the tone

There was increased negative behaviour across all groups of students who have higher levels of peers who have been held back a year. But this effect was stronger for students who were themselves retained. Older students share a similar vulnerability to the influence of their peers. There were stronger effects on ill-discipline on older students in classes with more older peers.

Unexpectedly, we found that students in groups that were least likely to engage in misbehaviour were the most susceptible to the potential negative peer influence of retained and older peers. This suggests that contact with older and retained peers can contribute to delinquent behaviour even if the direct contact is not very close or frequent.

These findings can help feed into longstanding debates regarding the benefits and drawbacks of grade retention and delayed school entry. They shift the focus away from the older and retained students themselves, to consider the implications for the entire school community.

For some individual students, being held back a year or delaying school entry might be the appropriate choice for their ultimate success in school. However, it is important that educators and politicians acknowledge that policies that make students repeat a year, and those that delay children starting schools, can have significant school-wide consequences.

Given consistent research evidence of the strong relationship between academic success and behaviour in school, policies that support students academically and prevent them falling back a year have the potential to benefit students who are at risk of academic failure, and can enhance positive behaviour across the entire school community.

The Conversation

Clara G. Muschkin, Director, North Carolina Education Research Data Center, Associate Director, Center for Child and Family Policy, Duke University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Teachers

As easy as ABC: the way to ensure children learn to read

Kerry Hempenstall, RMIT University

Human speech has long been present in every culture, and our brains have evolved specialized features to enable its rapid development when we are exposed to the speech of others. Reading however is a relatively recent skill, and we have no such dedicated reading module to guarantee success.

Fortunately, our brains are able to adapt to the task, although there is considerable variation in the assistance learners require to achieve it.

Unlocking the alphabet

Humans have produced numerous writing systems in their attempts to create a concrete form of communication, and those languages employing an alphabet have provided the most powerful means of achieving this goal.

The invention of the alphabet was one of the greatest of human achievements. It required the appreciation that the spoken word can be split into its component sound parts, and that each part can be assigned a symbol or letter.

The only other element required to have an amazingly productive writing system is for the learner to be able to identify the sound for each letter, and blend the sounds together to recreate the spoken word.

This is known as the alphabetic principle, and allows us to write any word we can say. Our written language is thus a code, and phonics is simply the key to unlocking the code.

Should we explain to our students through phonics teaching how our speech is codified into English writing? It sounds obvious that we should; indeed, that not to do so would be cruel.

Early introduction is paramount

But some believe there is a better way. English is after all a complicated language, having absorbed so many words from other languages with differing spelling patterns.

But, no, it turns out from years of research that there is a significant advantage in demonstrating from the beginning how the alphabetic principle works. This benefit is particularly evident in the 30% or so of our students who struggle with learning to read.

It also has become clear that demonstrating this principle systematically is more effective than merely sprinkling a few clues here and there as a story is read with, or to, a student.

If we do not introduce this principle early, there is a risk of students developing less productive strategies in their efforts to make sense of print.

Some of these approaches have a surface appeal because they provide a veneer of reading progress, but become self-limiting over time.

Don’t distract from the words

Despite a lack of evidence for its worth, many teachers believe that skilled reading involves making use of multiple cues in identifying words. They believe that words can be predicted (guessed), based on cues other than their structure – picture cues, meaning cues, grammar cues, and hints from the first letter.

However, routinely using pictures to determine word identity draws student attention away from print, thereby diminishing the central importance of the alphabetic principle.

Asking students to remember words as a primary strategy gives the unhelpful message that reading involves the visual memory of shapes, of letter landscapes devoid of alphabetic significance.

Stressing the integrated use of multiple cues (picture, grammar, and meaning cues) leaves students with too many ill-defined options, and produces marked variability in the preferred approach of students.

Fourth grade slump

Of course, many of the better students will develop an understanding that phonics is a foundation anyway; however, those less fortunate will be left to scour their memories for word shapes or attempt to predict upcoming words based on sentence/passage meaning or on the sound of initial letters.

Syntactic cues to word identification tend to be less employed among this less fortunate group group as their skills in grammar are likely to be under developed.

The problem is often not identified until about the Year 4; hence, the term fourth grade slump. In truth, the problem was there from the beginning, and had an instructional source, but was unrecognised because of some teachers’ misunderstanding of reading development.

What happens to these apparently progressing students? As text becomes more complex, prediction becomes less and less accurate.

Many sentences will now include difficult-to-decode words that carry non-redundant information, and hence become more difficult targets for prediction.

There are now increasing numbers of such words. For the memorisers, the number of words that must be recalled from visual memory outgrows students’ visual memory capacity.

These moribund strategies collapse, but in the absence of a productive course of action, students often hold on to them, resisting a return to decoding as a first option as being too hard or too babyish.

Resolution of the problems of these older readers is very difficult for both teacher and student. Better not to create this situation in the first place.

The challenges

Even when the value of early phonics teaching is recognised by educators, students vary significantly in the ease with which they develop from their initial painstaking attempts at decoding through to effortless fluent orthographic-dominant reading.

Our challenge as educators is to be truly sensitive to every reader’s progress through careful monitoring, and to ensure the intensity and duration of instruction is appropriate to their needs.

Once they are on their way, future progress becomes a self-teaching issue, driven largely by how much students choose to read. However, until reading is effortless, we cannot expect children to choose books over the many alternative communication modes available to them today.

The Conversation

Kerry Hempenstall, Casual lecturer in Psychology, RMIT University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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