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[Summary of Literature Review Part 2]Education Reforms and Students At Risk - October 1996
To establish quality education for our young people, we need to look at all aspects of our schools -- curriculum, instruction, assessment, staff development, and organizational strategies -- as well as factors outside school that influence students' "readiness to learn." Our challenge is to institutionalize practices that stimulate all students to learn, while ensuring that the diverse needs of students at greatest risk are met in a nonstigmatizing manner. The literature on students at risk is constantly expanding and changing, and there are varying and often sharply divergent interpretations of the data on students at risk and the programs that serve them. The purpose of this literature review is to bring together what has been learned over the past few decades about children at risk and review current strategies designed to improve student and school performance.
As we approach the 21st century, economic and demographic trends are making the needs of students at risk, and the country's dependence on these young people, increasingly salient. Students traditionally regarded as "at risk" -- poor children and children of color -- are growing in numbers. According to some projections, by the year 2020 about one-fourth of children will live in poverty, and children of color will comprise more than half of students in public schools (Natriello, McDill, and Pallas, 1990). Already, in many districts, children of color comprise the majority of public school students.
The presence of large numbers of at-risk children in schools is not new. At the turn of the century, immigrant children composed the majority of many urban schools while African-American, Mexican-American, and other children of color made up significant proportions of southern and western school districts. At that time, the education necessary to integrate these students into the economy was limited to learning basic skills and disciplined work habits suitable for the factories and the fields (Tyack, 1974; Eckert and Marshall, 1938; Katz, 1971). Schools also reinforced color and class divisions, with curriculum designed to prepare these students for their station in life and to discourage aspiration to "the white man's condition" (Cubberly, cited in Mohraz, 1979; Odum, 1910/1968; Carter and Segura, 1979; San Miguel, 1987b; Anderson, 1988).
World War II ushered in a new call for qualitatively different education reforms, fueled by the cold war and the shift to a post-industrial economy. It is important to recognize that reformers did make real gains in addressing educational equity, excellence, and relevance through desegregation, compensatory education, and community/culture-based instruction (Anderson, 1988; Alverez, 1986; Noley, 1994). Black dropout rates have declined sharply, and -- according to some statistics -- converge with white dropout rates when family income is held constant (New York Times, 1992). Citing data from the College Board and from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Lewis (1992) states that the great "untold story"" of the past 20 years is that black youngsters have been "steadily narrowing the gap between themselves and whites in math and science proficiency....[and the] reading proficiency of blacks... is much higher than it was twenty years ago." Over the same time period, the mean scores of black students on the Scholastic Aptitude Test have increased by much larger margins than the mean scores of white students.
While significant, these gains are not sufficient to close the gap between the education attainment of at-risk students and the skills required for integration into all levels of the rapidly changing economy. It is from today's generation of young, ethnically diverse students that the next generation of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians must be drawn to replace retiring professionals in the next century (Kahn, 1992). And it is this young, ethnically diverse population that the aging Baby Boomers must depend upon to support the Social Security system (Hodgkinson, 1985). Many recommend that even noncollege-bound young people must develop strong academic proficiencies: the fastest growing occupations will require some postsecondary training. While the economy will continue to generate large numbers of new low-skill jobs, the wages for those jobs are declining (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1989; National Research Council, 1989; U. S. Department of Labor, 1987; Urban Institute, 1991b).
Economic and demographic trends give a new urgency to education reform efforts, yet the personal and social costs of school failure have been apparent for decades. The direct costs of correcting this failure are tremendous. Almost one-third of major U. S. corporations provide basic skills training for employees, spending $25 billion annually on remedial education (Reich, 1990), and businesses spend as much on remedial math education as schools and colleges (National Research Council 1989). Huge disparities between the well-educated "haves" and the poorly skilled "have nots" intensify social divisions and contribute to urban decay and violence. The escalating costs of our welfare and prison systems cannot be measured simply in dollars and cents; all of us, including those caught within these systems, pay for unemployment and crime with a loss of security and well-being.
And there are less dramatic costs -- costs that rarely make the evening news. Most poorly educated young people do not become lifelong welfare recipients or career criminals. High school dropouts are less likely to find work (Stern, Paik, Catterall, and Nadata, 1989) and get promoted (Sicherman, 1990) than more highly educated persons. Too many of these poorly educated young people labor long hours at dead-end jobs for wages that fail to raise their families out of poverty; they enroll in store-front vocational "colleges" that immerse them in debt and fail to prepare them for promised career opportunities; they struggle to read the employment application or the letter from their child's teacher that demands more literacy skills than they possess; they die at earlier ages from illnesses and diseases related to poverty.
Historically, children of color and poor youth have been disproportionately at risk in our schools (Coleman, 1988; Comer, 1988, 1992; Darling-Hammond, 1985; Farley and Allen, 1987; Jaynes and Williams, 1989; Natriello, McDill, and Pallas, 1990; National Alliance of Black School Educators, 1984; Ogbu, 1985; Smith and O'Day, 1991; Strickland and Ascher, 1992; Wilson, 1987; Winfield, 1991). Yet they are not the only children at risk. Any child who lacks sufficient support may fail to develop adequate academic and social skills. Prenatal conditions, quality of health, family characteristics, peer influences, community climate, and social status may be affected by support networks and significantly influence a child's "readiness to learn" (McCormick, Gortmaker, and Sobol, 1990; Hack et al., 1991; Carter, 1983; Marlowe et al., 1982; Needleman et al., 1979; Natriello, McDill, and Pallas, 1990; Ekstrom, 1987; Brooks-Gunn and Furstenburg, 1986; Wallerstien and Kelly, 1980; Lamb, 1981; Hetherington et al., 1981; Biller, 1971; Larson, 1989; Fernandez et al., 1989; Stroup and Robins, 1972; Riley and Cochran, 1987; Pasco and Earp, 1984; Sroufe and Egeland, 1989; Clarke, 1983; Goldenberg, 1989; Kunjufu, 1988; Semons, 1989; Schunk and Hanson, 1985; Fordham, 1988; Littel and Wynn, 1989; Auletta, 1982; Heffernan and Heffernan, 1986, cited in Green and Schneider, 1990; Grant Foundation, 1988; Ogbu, 1978; Braddock and McPartland, 1987; Steele, 1992; Urban Institute, 1991a; McCarty, 1976; Huang, 1990).
Diverse strategies involving school, business, social service, and community-based organizations have been suggested to reduce environmental risks (Grant Foundation Commission, 1988; Heath and McLaughlin, 1989; Meyers and Bernier, 1987). Notable in the literature is a shift away from a single-minded focus on crisis intervention to an emphasis on preventive or developmental services that bolster families and address multiple needs. While many of these interventions may center on schools or involve collaborations between schools and communities, others may require fundamental changes in social services and society. Specific strategies proposed by various researchers, policymakers, and child advocates are highlighted below.
Quality of Health. Proposals to improve the health of poor children include expansion of prenatal care and drug treatment programs for poor women, improved availability of immunization against childhood diseases, comprehensive health clinics for school-aged children in low-income areas, school-based teen health clinics, expansion and improvement of children's mental health care, and universal health coverage, food stamp expansion, establishment of a guaranteed minimum income, increased availability of low-income housing, and development of more and better shelters for runaway and homeless youth (e. g., Chasnoff, 1991; Children's Defense Fund, 1986; Connor, 1988; Gibbs, 1988; Sartain, 1989).
Family structure. Other researchers target the relationship between parent and child for intervention. Suggested reforms range from an expansion in social services (e. g., parenting skills courses, support groups, child abuse prevention, home health-visitor program for first-time parents), to improving the economic conditions of families (e. g., enforcement of child support), to policies facilitating parenting (e. g., policies that promote two-parent families, flextime, and family leave for child care) (Grant Foundation Commission, 1988; Rich, 1987; Helfer, 1987; Conner, 1988).
Youth programs and integrated services. Youth programs, grassroots groups, and informal social networks (e. g., concerned, mutually supportive neighbors) may serve as "mediating structures" that protect young people from the risks of living in poor communities (Woodson, 1989). Social support may strengthen family resilience, increase young people's access to support and guidance, encourage adolescents' investment in constructive pursuits, and foster talent development (Dunst et al., 1986; Murray-Nettles, 1989; Pascoe and Earp, 1984; Saulnier and Rowland, 1985; Shonkoff, 1984; Stanton-Salazar, 1990). Especially in poor areas with large numbers of single-parent families, school-based programs that provide before-and after-school care are much needed to provide children with a safe place to be while their parents work (U. S. Department of Education, 1993).
Youth programs, however, must be careful not to stigmatize participants. In middle-class areas, youth programs are often viewed as opportunities to encourage and develop children's talents. In poor areas, youth programs are frequently thought of as interventions to discourage involvement with drugs or crime -- although many participants may have never considered becoming involved in illegal activities (Littel and Wynn, 1989). Children may receive a hidden message from these programs that, because of the color of their skin or where they live, little is expected of them. Success may be negatively defined, attributed to the intervention, or both -- if the participants do not grow up to become thugs, the program is a success.
The above discussion of environmental risk factors is not meant to suggest that schools can do little to raise the performance of poor children. Although all students would benefit from an improvement in their home or community environment, most students at risk do not suffer from the severe problems (e. g., child abuse or neglect, homelessness) that may require intensive interventions involving outside agencies. Thus, school reform is not dependent on social service improvements.
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[Executive Summary Part 2] [Summary of Literature Review Part 2]