Schools

1
Schools

• Current Context
• School Organization
• School Climate

2
Schools

• Current Context
• School Organization
• School Climate

3
Function of schools

• Schools as a medium for
• Education
• Basic academics
• General liberal education
• (Elite) intellectual training
• Vocational training
• Preparation for adulthood
• Family life
• Citizenship
• Employment and finance
• Social change
• Social control

4
The Rise of Schooling
Compulsory education for adolescents is a recent
advent in America
In other Western countries, a similar trend took
place.
5
Origins of Compulsory Education in America

• Industrialization
• Many families could make ends meet without the
  labor of their adolescents
• Greater need for skilled and reliable (adult)
  workers
• Urbanization and Immigration
• Rapid population growth led to overcrowding,
  slums, crime
• Compulsory secondary education was a means of
  social control, to improve lives of poor and
  working classes

6
Characteristics of good schools

• Emphasis on intellectual activities
• Challenging curriculum
• High quality teachers
• Self-monitoring (meta-cognitive)
• Community integration
• Active learning

7
What Do Good Schools Look Like?

• Emphasize intellectual activities over athletics
  or social activities
• Employ teachers who are strongly committed to
  students and have enough freedom to teach
  effectively
• Constantly monitor the students and the school
  itself in order to make policy changes and
  function better
• Links with the communitySchools are well
  integrated into the communities they serve (e.g.,
  with local colleges and employers)
• Composed of classrooms with good climate, where
  students are active participants who are
  challenged to think critically

8
Good schools, good parents

• Two crucial dimensions
• Responsiveness
• Demandingness
• What do these look like in parenting?
• What do these look like in school?

9
Optimum School Climate

• Supportive teachers, involved with students,
  dedicated
• Firm but fair discipline
• High expectations for student performance and
  conduct

• Higher attendance
• Higher achievement scores
• Lower rates of delinquency

10
Positive Impacts on Engagement

• Positive school climate
• Parents high expectations for achievement
• Parents involvement in their adolescent childs
  education
• Parenting style High demandingness and high
  responsiveness

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Schools

• Current Context
• School Organization
• School Climate

12
School organization

• Size
• Size of school or size of class
• Which is more important?
• Less bureaucracy, more intimacy
• Stronger sense of connection
• Greater involvement in activities
• School transitions
• elementary ? secondary education
• Major differences between them?

13
School Size

• Schools grew larger to offer a wider range of
  courses and services to students at decreased
  cost to taxpayers
• Student performance and interest in school
  improve when schools are more intimate
• Schools within schools

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Effective Schools Size Matters

• Large schools
• Offer diverse courses and extracurricular
  activities
• Small schools
• Less diversity in offerings students more likely
  to participate in extracurricular activities
• Scholars agree optimum school size for
  adolescents is?....

Between 500 1000 students
What size of school did you go to?
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School Size

• Smaller school size encourages participation
• Ideal size Between 500 and 1,000 students
• In larger schools, students tend to be observers
  rather than participants
• Especially important for students whose grades
  are not very good to begin with

16
Class Size

• Classroom size
• Research findings misinterpreted by politicians
  who began emphasizing importance of small classes
• Does not affect scholastic achievement during
  adolescence, except in remedial courses
• Adolescents learn as much in classes of 40
  students as in classes of 20 students

Insert photo from DAL
17
Junior High, Middle School or Neither?
Plan Explanation
6-3-3 6 years elementary 3 years junior high 3 years high school
5-3-4 5 years elementary 3 years middle school 4 years high school
8-4 8 years elementary 4 years high school
Which system did you attend? What were the
benefits? Drawbacks? Which do you think is best,
particularly with respect to transitions and
adolescence.
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Age Grouping and School Transitions

• As children move into middle school or junior
  high
• School grades and academic motivation drop
• Scores on standardized achievements tests do not
  decline
• Student motivation and changes in grading
  practices may be changing, not student knowledge
• Schools can combat these changes by reducing
  anonymity, hiring teachers with training in
  adolescent development, and strengthening ties
  between the school and community

19
Transition from Elementary School

• In comparison to Elementary Schools, Jr. High
  Schools
• Place greater emphasis on teacher control and
  discipline.
• Provide fewer opportunities for student
  decision-making, choice, and self-management.
• Have teachers who spend more time controlling and
  less time teaching.
• Have less personal and positive teacher-student
  relationships. Students perceive teachers less
  friendly, less supportive, and less caring.

20
Age Grouping and School Transitions

• Classroom environment in middle school/junior
  high is different than elementary school
• Teachers hold different beliefs about students
• Teachers also hold different beliefs about their
  own teaching abilities
• Developmental mismatch between what adolescents
  need and what they get from teachers
• Junior high school students in more personal,
  less departmentalized schools do better in school
  than their peers in larger and more anonymous
  schools
• No uniform effects on all students during
  transitions (individual differences)

21
Schools and SES

• Low SES students
• Rates of academic progress during the school year
  are equal to high SES students
• Scores decline in the summer
• Summer school may reduce widening of achievement
  gap between affluent and poor students

22
Schools and Adolescent Development

• Most schools are not structured to promote
  psychosocial development
• For most adolescents, school is the main setting
  for socializing

23
Social Organization of Schools Tracking

• Proponents argue that ability-grouping allows
  teachers to design class lessons that are more
  finely tuned to students abilities
• Critics argue tracking leads to problems
• Students who are placed in the remedial track
  generally receive a poorer quality education, not
  just a different education
• Socialize only with peers from same track
• Difficult to change tracks once in place,
  especially for minority students

24
Ethnic Differences in High School Dropout Rates
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Ethnic Differences Achievement

• What explains these differences?
• Some differences are intertwined with issues of
  social class, parenting practices, friends
  influences
• Systemic prejudice and discrimination

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Schools

• Current Context
• School Organization
• School Climate

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Violence in schools

• 50 years ago
• Gum, back talk, making noise
• Todays schools
• Rape, robbery, shootings, assault
• 1 of 4 students victims of violence
• 1/3 boys carry weapon
• Problem specific to schools?
• 20 students in 50 million killed at school
• Hundreds more children killed at home

28
Violence in schools

• The past decade has seen numerous highly
  publicized murders in schools
• Yet, in recent years, there is an overall decline
  in violence in U.S. schools
• Widespread perception that U.S. have become more
  dangerous in the past decade

• Security practices in schools e.g., metal
  detectors
• Federal funding for violence prevention programs
• Research on bullying

29
School Violence

• One in four American high school students has
  been the victim of violence in or around school
• Violence more common in overcrowded schools in
  poor urban neighborhoods
• Asian Americans targeted because of perceived
  teacher preference toward these students
• Zero-tolerance policies
• Lethal school violence
• Widely publicized but rare, school shootings
  declined since 1990s
• Increase in number of school-shooting related
  deaths because of automatic weapons
• Impossible to predict which students will commit
  these acts

30
The Climate of the Classroom

• How teachers interact with students, use class
  time, and the expectations they hold for students
  all influence learning and academic achievement
• Students achieve more when attending schools that
  are responsive and demanding, where teachers are
  supportive but in control
• Similar to the authoritative family environment

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College Attendance Through the Years
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Beyond High School The Non-College-Bound

• Secondary schools are geared almost exclusively
  toward college-bound youngsters, even though one
  third of adolescents do not go on to college
• Rise in minimum-wage service jobs means less
  chance of making decent living without college
  experience
• Critics argue we should ease transition to adult
  world of work for those not interested in college
  by providing apprenticeship and advanced skilled
  job training