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Co-curricular activities such as student government, academic or special interest clubs, theater and music groups, and intramural sports teams have traditionally enhanced students' sense of school membership by providing them with a special "niche" in the school community. Students involved in these kinds of co-curricular activities find opportunities to shine and are less likely to become disengaged from school. Many studies have indicated an association between extracurricular activities in general and positive academic outcomes. For example, one Gallup survey showed that high school social participation is positively correlated with high school and post-high school educational achievement, as well as occupational status five years after graduation. Another study of reading skills development showed that the higher students' level of involvement in organized extracurricular activities, the higher their reading achievement. This study also noted that the effect of these "achievement-related experiences" was stronger among those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, although all social class and gender subgroups benefitted (as cited in Funkhouser, Humphrey, Panton, & Rosenthal, 1992).
Students in successful alternative secondary school programs place a high value on their sense of belonging, or membership, in the school. According to observers, students characterized these alternative schools as friendlier and warmer than the schools they had left; peers were more accepting, teachers were more concerned. In their view, adults' willingness to help them overcome academic and personal problems and accept them as individuals was among the most valued features of their new schools (Wehlage et al., 1989). Likewise, other studies have found that alienated students at risk of dropping out can re-engage in smaller settings where teachers are committed to helping them and circumstances support teachers' expanded role. These findings reflect the influence of students' sense of school membership--an attachment to adults and peers that enables students to make a commitment to the norms of the school, become involved in school activities, and accept the legitimacy of the institution.
Fostering a sense of school membership in a personalized environment requires an expanded role for teachers. In this expanded role, teachers seek to influence students' social and personal development, as well as their intellectual growth. To sustain a pervasive "ethic of caring," adults maintain continuous and sustained contact with students, responding to the students as whole persons rather than just as clients in need of a particular service. Expanding their traditional role as transmitters of knowledge, teachers help create networks of support that foster students' sense of belonging and support students to succeed in the school. For their part, adults in the school need to (1) promote positive and respectful relations between adults and students; (2) help students with personal problems; (3) cultivate students' ability to meet school standards; and (4) support students' efforts to find a place in society by forging appropriate links between personal goals and interests, school opportunities, and future plans. In exchange for this active commitment from the school, students behave positively and respectfully toward adults and peers and commit their mental and physical efforts in school tasks to a level making their own achievement likely.
Personalized schools, where students and teachers are both committed to the central purposes of schooling, can effect dramatic changes even in previously established relationships. A former teacher at City-as-School tells this story:
A study of federally funded peer tutoring and mentoring projects found that peer tutoring and mentoring may be particularly helpful in raising the academic achievement of peer tutors, particularly when the tutors themselves are at risk, are working with younger children in a cross-age tutoring program, and are the beneficiaries of focused and related services, such as mentoring, intensive training, or monitoring (Pringle, Anderson, Rubenstein, & Russo, 1993). The study's findings suggest that peer tutoring and mentoring services may be useful strategies for increasing students' sense of belonging to the school community, especially when peer tutors are matched with tutees in ways that promote interpersonal bonding between the pair.
According to research, mentorships work best when mentors focus on developing competence, stressing specific knowledge and skills, and doing things that make sense to their proteges. Warm interpersonal relations--a central goal of the mentorship for many mentors--are more likely to result from a focus on building competence than from a focus on building a relationship. Mentorships also generally work better when the goals of the experience are clear. When both the mentor and the protege know why they are involved in the relationship and what they are trying to accomplish, the relationship is likely to have more staying power. In addition, recruitment, training, and continuing support of mentors require a significant investment of program resources. One study of mentoring programs linking college students with at-risk students found that many of the matches were not successful because of inadequate prematch training and postmatch follow-up for both mentors and youths (Tierney & Branch, 1992). For such relationships to be successful, schools must screen potential mentors carefully to be sure that they have the time and other resources to fulfill their obligations as a mentor and provide on-going support as the mentorship develops.
Schools with mentoring programs profiled here tend to focus them on career awareness, especially on providing opportunities for students to gain exposure to the workplace. For example, Urban Collaborative Accelerated Program's mentorship program combines the mentorship with work experience. Student participants spend one day a week at a job site working closely with an adult mentor and receive $15 a day for their work. At Middle College High School, mentors from the community teach classes about their professional work and also meet with students one-on-one.
Most of the schools profiled in the companion volume to this idea book have taken steps to ensure that students have sustained contact with adults who serve as advisors. Small-group advisories, homerooms, or other arrangements enable teachers or other staff to provide guidance and monitor the academic and social development of students actively. At City-as-School (CAS), for example, each student is assigned to a Teacher Advisor. The Teacher Advisor serves as an advocate for his or her students, helping students coordinate their courses of study and deal with problems that come up during their time at CAS. At a weekly seminar conducted by the Teacher Advisor, students discuss their internships, academic and personal goals, and problems or challenges that have come up during the week. Students remain with the same Teacher Advisor until graduation. In the same way, each of the schools participating in Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) in San Diego County has an AVID coordinator who serves as coach, advocate, and advisor to students. The coordinator works with the regular school guidance system to ensure that students are placed in college-preparatory classes and helps students investigate postsecondary educational opportunities. The support that the AVID coordinator provides is a key element in that program's success in helping students reach their goals.
The advisory system at the Shoreham-Wading Middle School in Shoreham, New York, assigns an adult advisor-advocate to each student. Each professional staff member at the school--including the principal--trains to be an advisor to a group of up to ten students. The advisor meets with his or her group daily for ten minutes before classes begin to discuss school issues and students' activities. Students and their advisors meet later in the day for 15 minutes to eat lunch together. Twice a month, advisors meet with individual students or small groups before classes begin to discuss such topics as academics, projects, and home and school problems.The advisor, who is assigned to a student for the entire year, observes the student in classes and after-school activities and discusses the student with other staff and faculty. The student gets to know this adult well and learns that at least one person at the school will hear the student's side of things. Advisors also meet twice a year with parents to discuss the student's grades and progress in school. Teachers send all grades and comments to the advisor who collates the information, enters it on the report card, and discusses the student's progress with the parents.
The Shoreham-Wading advisory system makes it possible for a young person to develop a supportive relationship with an adult who is not a parent. Ensuring that each student has access to a trustworthy adult with whom the student can communicate and share ideas and concerns, this system reduces alienation of students and provides each young adolescent with the support of a caring adult who knows that student well. That bond can make the student's engagement and interest in learning a reality.
Creating an advisory system that depends on teachers to serve as students' primary advisors requires that teachers step beyond their traditional role definitions. In return, schools must find additional time for teachers to spend with their advisees. Schools with well-developed advisory programs must often find ways to rearrange their daily schedules to create time for teachers and advisees to interact.
For many students, especially those at risk of dropping out of school, developing a sense of school membership depends on how they perceive adults to be treating them. Students expect and want fair and decent treatment from adults; how the school administers discipline sends important messages about respect to students. When the school's disciplinary policies seem capricious and unfair, students are alienated and the school's mission wanes. When the school's rule enforcement is consistent and teacher and student roles are clearly defined, students identify more closely with the school.
In a school setting, harmonious interaction between students and teachers requires substantial agreement about the expected norms of behavior. For schools to enforce the rules accordingly, all students must know what their obligations are and how to meet them. Some schools achieve this end by reviewing their rules in a formal meeting of the entire school community one or two times a year. In addition, safe schools respect and support appropriate behavior. They adopt rules for behavior that cover both formal and informal interactions, teach students how to observe those rules competently, and monitor compliance persistently. One way to ensure students' acceptance of the school's norms of behavior is to give them a voice in creating the school community's rules:
Although a high number of students at the Urban Collaborative Accelerated Program have histories of discipline problems, UCAP uses a student-managed disciplinary process to foster individual and community responsibility and student engagement in school. Students develop school rules and monitor their implementation and enforcement through a student discipline committee. All students take turns rotating through the committee to hear and rule on cases presented by teachers and other students. Often, the rules developed by students are stricter than those devised by staff. For example, students might change a "no swearing" policy to "no swearing in any language." Teachers say that students' involvement improves their attitudes toward school and accelerates learning.
Students can also learn the importance of appropriate behavior from adult modeling and coaching. Greenbaum (1989), who participated in a long-term study of violent behavior among children, commented that if a school's "atmosphere is one of hostility and insensitivity in which students are continually subjected to criticism and failure, serious disciplinary problems and criminal behaviors are likely to erupt." Some teachers' and administrators' preoccupation with punitive methods of controlling student behavior contributes to an atmosphere of conflict. Safe schools are those where supervisory expectations, faculty competence, and staffing arrangements protect children from adult incivility.
Certain teaching strategies, classroom routines, and school practices can promote students' self-management and productive engagement in school work. For example, properly structured cooperative learning methods offer students instruction in task management and peer coaching while nurturing individual accountability. Classroom routines that encourage students to manage classroom materials and events nurture both efficacy and responsibility. Through effective teaching, students learn and practice self-management skills in substantively rewarding activities. Effective teaching also creates learning environments where each participant's contribution is valued, and anyone's absence is duly noticed. Appointing students to organize and direct academic activities and community events facilitates their development as participants in an orderly institution. The procedures used in schools constitute a "hidden curriculum" that either fosters students' engagement and general seriousness of purpose or, alternatively, undermines their confidence and sense of responsibility.
According to the National Association for Safe Schools (NASS), the most efficient design for school security begins with an assessment of the nature and patterns of offenses within the school. Once a school recognizes its problems, it can respond intelligently. For example, scheduling and access to certain areas of the building are some concerns that influence school safety. Increasing supervision, collecting money for school activities at the beginning of the day, using hall passes, and enforcing visitor policies can improve safety. In Chicago and Memphis, among other places, parents patrol the neighborhoods around certain schools at the beginning and end of the day to reduce incidents occurring in transit. Other cities use police officers or their own school security personnel to maintain order. However, the National Association for Safe Schools (NASS) cautions that the foundation of an effective school safety program is not simply better security; it is a comprehensive program that involves everyone in the school community. Students, teachers, parents, and community members must work together to create and maintain a positive and secure school climate. Students in particular can help to make their schools safer by participating on school safety committees or helping to design school security systems.
Because gang activity is the source of so much violence among students, several community agencies have started experiments with alternative social groups for adolescent boys and girls. Projects sponsored by the Ounce of Prevention Fund in Illinois, for example, provide after-school and summer clubs that offer youths opportunities for recreation, community service, and social rituals, such as the "Rites of Passage" ceremony of Simba, a Chicago club. In general, the goal of these clubs is to provide youth with alternatives to gangs while promoting pride and self-esteem and enhancing group cohesiveness. For many youths, gang lawlessness is just a sign of having nothing left to lose. Positive, engaging social alternatives can nurture the self-respect that underpins socially responsible behavior.
At the secondary level, however, most parents face challenges when they try to forge partnerships with schools. For example, there are more logistical barriers to parent involvement in most middle and high schools than in elementary schools. Middle schools and high schools are larger, harder to negotiate, and usually located farther away from home. Students have multiple teachers, so that often there is no clear point of contact if parents want to discuss either their children's progress or how they can help. High schools and middle schools are usually organized around subject-matter departments, where students (and their parents) usually have less contact with an individual teacher or administrator. In addition, parents often question their ability to help with schoolwork as theirchildren progress through secondary school and take more challenging courses.
Developing a partnership with the adults who interact with these students outside school is more complicated for the schools as well. As middle school and high school students go through adolescence, they grow increasingly independent of their parents. Rather than parents, secondary schools must work with a whole network of adults--including community members and potential employers--who influence these students' lives. Community organizations, including employers, promote the value of education and are especially important for schools attempting to address school-to-work transition issues. Also, community organizations are key supports to both parents and school staff dealing with high-stakes issues, such as drug use and gang activity, which are more prevalent among secondary students.
Although research indicates that students of all ages do better in schools where parents and other family members are involved, few empirical data show which strategies for fostering partnerships with families work best at the secondary school level. The same principles that govern successful elementary school parent involvement programs appear to hold true for middle schools and high schools as well. Schools must view parent involvement as a process rather than as a series of isolated events; communication between the school and families should be ongoing and participatory; and a committed leadership must support ongoing parent-involvement efforts and assessment activities to inform future planning.
One of the most powerful contributions that families can make toward their children's success in school is to foster after-school learning. Families may foster home learning for students of all ages by encouraging children with their schoolwork; interacting with their children at home to support school goals and programs; and assisting children with decisions that affect their future. Family members can also exert a powerful influence not only on their children's course selection but also on their career options once they graduate from high school.
Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress indicate that three factors over which families can exercise authority--school attendance, variety of reading materials at home, and television watching--account for nearly 90 percent of the difference in the average state-by-state performance of eighth-graders' mathematics test scores (U.S. Department of Education, 1994). A national study of eighth-grade students shows that parental involvement in students' academic lives is a powerful influence on students' achievement across all academic areas (Keith & Keith, 1993). Higher achievement occurs, in part, because students whose families are more involved in their education do more homework. Parents monitoring students' attendance, homework, and use of leisure time are especially important at the secondary level as students become more active outside the home.
Besides fostering students' learning and educational choices at home, parents and community members can influence their children's education in other ways. They can work as advocates in schools by serving on site-based school restructuring councils; they can also participate in districtwide programs that involve parents and community members in a variety of decisionmaking roles.
Too often, parents and other family members feel their strengths and potential go unrecognized. Poor, minority, and limited-English proficient families often feel excluded by the schools' cultural and class boundaries. When family members are unfamiliar with language, expectations, and social conventions, they are unlikely to assume their roles as full partners with schools. In reaching out to families, schools must work to develop a sense of mutual trust and respect. When teachers and administrators acknowledge the strengths that parents and families bring to the partnership, parents will be more willing to participate. As schools recognize parents and other family members for their contributions and ask them to work on behalf of their children's education, they will create a more inviting environment for parents.
Recognizing that all parents have hopes and goals for their children and that families are central contributors to their children's education, schools may take a number of approaches to enlisting families' support. Parent involvement is not a "one-size-fits-all" program; because students have different needs, as do parents, schools must attempt to adapt their efforts to address those needs. The U.S. Department of Education recommends a range of concrete steps that schools may consider (1994):
A key feature of the reauthorized Title I of the ESEA is a renewed emphasis on increasing effective parental participation in schools. This emphasis complements the National Education Goals' promise that, by the year 2000, "Every school will promote partnerships that will increase parental involvement and participation in promoting the social, emotional, and academic growth of children." Title I requires schools receiving funds to develop a school-parent compact with parents that describes: (1) the school's responsibility to provide students with high-quality curriculum and instruction in a supportive learning environment; (2) the ways in which parents will be responsible for supporting their children's learning, such as monitoring attendance, TV viewing, and homework completion; and (3) the ongoing communication occurring between home and school. Title I also requires the school and the district to take steps to build parents' and schools' capacity for strong parent involvement, including providing materials and training for parents, educating school staff in reaching out to parents, setting up parent resource centers, developing appropriate roles for community-based organizations and businesses, and encouraging partnerships between elementary, middle, and secondary schools.
Parents and other family members are crucial links in the network of support that students need to succeed in school. Schools aiming to increase their students' chances for success can invest wisely in programs that will encourage families to assume a more active role in their children's education and in the life of the school.
Although consensus that schools must attempt to address students' lives beyond school walls has grown, so has recognition that existing health, education, and social services are limited by the ways they are organized and delivered. Fragmentation prevents social service professionals from coordinating their interventions and tracking their cumulative impact. Because problems are defined in the short term and related to single issues, there is no "permanent record" that shows the effect of services over the long term; for example, it is rare when a drug counselor, a school nurse, a welfare worker, and a teacher meet to assess a student and develop a long-range, coordinated plan for services. Most social service resources are used for reacting to acute problems and emergencies; prevention is usually neglected. Although schools have the major contact with children and their families, most schools have no family counselors or health facilities, and they lack information about other service providers who could help address the needs of students.
A school-based program that incorporates social, economic, and health services--usually provided by agencies other than the school itself--can help reduce dropout rates, improve student achievement, and promote long-term self-sufficiency. Such a program includes an array of services that address all of the obstacles to a student's academic success. Among the services having the potential to increase the capacity of students to fare better in school are:
The school-linked services effort is part of a larger movement for more integration of education, health, and social services for children. Integration does not typically mean merging these service systems but rather increasing the collaboration among them to form a partnership in which a number of service agencies develop and work toward a common set of goals. An integrated service delivery system would be preventive, rather than reactive, and respond to the full range of child and family needs. In a school-linked approach to integrating service for children, services are provided to children and their families through a collaboration among schools, health care providers, and social services agencies. The schools are among the central participants in planning and governing the collaborative effort, and the services are provided at, or are coordinated by personnel located at, the school or a site near the school. Research on programs coordinating services suggests that such coordination should include, as a minimum: (1) a case management system in which each student is assigned to a trained service provider responsible for supervising the identification of the student's needs, (2) a service delivery plan, (3) delivery of services, and (4) follow-up to ensure students received the appropriate services and responded as expected. In schools with large numbers of at-risk students, and particularly in schools where the majority of the student body is considered at risk, implementing such a case management system would require a significant commitment of staff time and resources. For example, the Boston Public Schools have a full-time "Student Support Services Coordinator" in each high school, and St. Paul, Minnesota, has two or more school social workers in all junior and senior high schools. Coordination among agencies governed by different sets of regulations and funding requirements also presents a significant challenge; nevertheless, the case management approach holds the most promise for delivering integrated, comprehensive services to students who need them most.
Through Kentucky Education Reform Act state funding, the Youth Services Center at Western Middle School in Louisville offers students and families a variety of education, health, and employment-related services. The Center aims to improve students' academic success by helping to meet their needs and the needs of their families. The Youth Services Center links students and families with community and family service agencies. Staffed by several coordinators, a psychologist, and a clerk, the program is governed by an advisory board made up of representatives of collaborating community service agencies.Students are referred through teachers and administrators, and they receive counseling from an on-staff psychologist, community college students, or outside agency staff who come to the Center as needed. Students can also attend health-related clinics and participate in programs that build cultural pride.
The Youth Services Center uses a variety of methods to reach out to families. Staff send home newsletters and call parents on the telephone. Teachers and Parent-Teacher Association members refer parents. The Center is open during open house nights. During a monthly student awards program, speakers from a collaborating agency describe their agency's services to students and their parents.
Western's Youth Services Center offers parents six-week, twelve-hour effective parenting classes at the school. The Center also brings the classes to the community, operating in churches, community centers, and housing projects. Parents come to the Center to participate in support groups. The Center helps families access needed community services, including housing, health, employment, adult education, mental health, and substance abuse services. Center staff make appointments for parents, provide them with transportation to the agency, and even accompany the parent to the appointment if necessary. Western's Center is open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., and on evenings and weekends by appointment.
[Resources for Improvement]