Reposted with the permission of the American Federation of Teachers
http:/www.aft.org
Where We Stand
By Albert Shanker
Disengaged Students
Most people agree that the school reform movement has not succeeded in
finding the answer to poor student achievement.  A new book, BEYOND THE
CLASSROOM, contends that it never will if we insist on looking only at what
schools do--or don't do--and ignore the part that students and their
attitudes and values play in the equation.
But the first order of business for author Laurence Steinberg, a professor of
developmental psychology at Temple University, and his co-authors, professors
B. Bradford Brown of the University of Wisconsin and Sanford M. Dornbusch of
Stanford, is to demolish the claims of school reform critics who say we don't
really have any problems with student achievement.  According to education
reform "revisionists" like David Berliner, Bruce Biddle, and Gerald Bracey,
declining test scores are just a myth and the poor performance of U.S.
students in international comparisons is a statistical freak. They say there
is nothing wrong with the achievement of our students--or if there is, it is
mainly poor minority students who are in trouble.
This kind of stuff is being well received by educators all over the country
who are tired of hearing bad news, but Steinberg and his collaborators give
it the short shrift it deserves. They point out that SAT scores dropped for
everyone--not just poor, minority kids--and NAEP scores remain flat.
Furthermore, scandalously few students achieve top NAEP levels, which are not
very demanding--including middle class students, who are supposed to be doing
just fine. As for the international comparisons of student achievement,
Steinberg, Brown, and Dornbusch say they reveal once again the relative
weakness of our high-achieving students:
Comparisons of even our BEST students with those from other nations are
discouraging. Indeed, in mathematics and science, our top students know less
than students in other industrialized countries who are considered merely
average by their countries' standards.
BEYOND THE CLASSROOM's main argument is with people who say that poor student
achievement is chiefly--or even entirely--the fault of the schools. Believing
that student attitudes are bound to influence student performance, Steinberg
and his colleagues administered questionnaires to 20,000 students over a
three-year period to get a detailed picture of students' values and their
lives, inside and outside of school. The sample mirrored the general
population, with 40 percent of the students drawn from ethnic minorities. The
researchers also conducted focus groups and individual interviews with 600
students and 500 sets of parents.
Steinberg and his colleagues found that there is a pervasive pressure for
students to do the minimum necessary to get by. As they put it, "Not only is
there little room in most schools for the academically oriented, there is
substantial peer pressure on students to underachieve." Students reported
that they were afraid to try to do a good job in school for fear of what
their friends would think, and they said their friends laughed at students
who worked hard. Academic achievement was so little valued that when asked
which crowd they would like to be part of, many more students chose the
"druggies" (one in six) than the "brains" (one in ten).  The brains didn't
think much of their position, either; half wished they were in a different
crowd.
As a result, many students said they go to school to hang out with their
friends and "do not take school, or their studies, seriously."  Their
out-of-school activities mirror their in-school attitudes. Homework? Students
spend, on average, four hours per week on it. (Compare this with four hours
per day spent by students in other industrialized democracies.)  And half of
those questioned said they dont bother with homework assignments at all. Few
read for pleasure, but two-thirds have after-school jobs involving more than
15 hours a week. To compensate, many said they take easier classes; others
admitted to being so tired that they were unable to do their schoolwork.
As far as students can see, their attitudes toward academic achievement are
right in line with those of the adult world. Students believe that their
parents are largely indifferent to how well their children do in school. And
they can't help but get that message from most colleges and employers. Are
the schools blameless? Of course not.  But as this book makes clear, it is
absurd and dangerous to hold the schools entirely responsible. As long as we
do, we will be not be able to see the problem clearly--or find its remedy.
These comments only scratch the surface of BEYOND THE CLASSROOM. The
discussion on ethnicity and achievement, which pulls together many of the
book's themes, is particularly valuable. So are the suggestions about what we
should do to deal with the problem of student disengagement. I'll return to
them in a later column.
BEYOND THE CLASSROOM will be published by Simon and Schuster on June 4, 1996.
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Chuck Beams
Fidonet - 1:2608/70
cbeams@future.dreamscape.com
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* UniQWK #5290* 'twit *.*' typed the moderator, smiling...
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