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Finding Solutions: What Works and Why for Student Achievement 

AIR DATE: Friday, February 19th 2010
POSTED BY: ALLISON FROST
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Photo credit: Self Enhancement, Inc.

When you call Western Oregon University student Kristty Polanco's cell phone you get a message in perfect English inviting you to leave your name and number, then one in fluent Spanish. She's facile in both languages, she's majoring in Community Health and is holding down a 3.59 GPA.

She's a success story, but there are other paths she could have taken. When she first moved here at nine years old with her family from Venezuela she spoke no English. She says her dad spent hours with her helping her study for a spelling test that other kids might have spent 15 minutes on. But she was lucky, she learned English fairly quickly and her parents were behind her all the way.  At her Dallas high school she connected with the federally funded Upward Bound program. She'll graduate college this spring.

The conversation about how to make sure students succeed doesn't seem to be coming to a close anytime soon. The Obama administration wants changes to the federal No Child Left Behind Act.  Some of the best, brightest and well-funded in Oregon continue think about how to close "the achievement gap." Today we're taking a look at three different organizations that work to boost student achievement — what makes them work, and why.

How do you measure student success? What have you seen that helps overcome obstacles to achievement? What barriers did you face in your own academic career? What helped you?

GUESTS:

Tagged as: college · finding solutions · high school · minorities

Photo credit: Self Enhancement, Inc.

I've taught high school and middle school English from the South Bronx to Eugene, OR. The holy grail of education right now seems to be eliminating the achievement gap -- primarily among students of varied racial and ethnic backgrounds. I struggled to help my students in the Bronx overcome seemingly insurmountable deficits. They lived in one of the poorest Congressional districts in the country. They were not properly nourished. Their neighborhoods were filled with medical waste incinerators, drug dealers, crime....too many signs that society had given up on them. 

A difficult question for our society is not how to close the achievement gap, but why the vast majority of students who are at the bottom of that achievement gap are racial and ethnic minorities. Why are they concentrated in poor neighborhoods, largely in urban areas? Why do their parents struggle more with unemployment, hunger, disease, prison, and homelessness than their white counterparts? How can we help them?

For many of these students, no matter how good the school or the teacher or the curriculum, it's TOO LATE to help then once they're in school. Hart and Risley did a groundbreaking study related to this. By age 3, a child's learning trajectory is largely fixed and their vocabulary (which is a result of the quantity and quality their parents talk to them) is an accurate predictor of future academic success and IQ. So children who are behind at age 3 will remain behind throughout their academic careers.

 What will work for all students would be to give them an equal start - to begin with parents and their infants. As a society, we need to educate their parents to provide their children with the things they need for optimal prenatal and postnatal brain development: good nutrition, an environment rich in talk and reading, quality play, a loving and nurturing environment. Parents do what is best for their children with the tools they have. We can provide many more tools and more support to parents so that their children are not behind when they begin school. 

Birth the Three, in Eugene, is doing work to help parents here.

Harlem Children's Zone is doing groundbreaking work  in New York City to do this same work.    http://www.hcz.org/

I think that this early work is our best hope.

Amy Samson

Eugene, OR

swixchick —

I wish I could call in tomorrow morning to share my personal experience and opinion on this subject. Unfortunately, I will be in a meeting at work. ~Kilong

GoldenLeaf —

"What will work for all students would be to give them an equal start - to begin with parents and their infants. As a society, we need to educate their parents to provide their children with the things they need for optimal prenatal and postnatal brain development: good nutrition, an environment rich in talk and reading, quality play, a loving and nurturing environment. Parents do what is best for their children with the tools they have. We can provide many more tools and more support to parents so that their children are not behind when they begin school." 

"Birth the Three, in Eugene, is doing work to help parents here."

"Harlem Children's Zone is doing groundbreaking work  in New York City to do this same work."    http://www.hcz.org/

"I think that this early work is our best hope."

"Amy Samson"

"Eugene, OR"

Right on , right on, right on!

Tom D Ford —

You are exactly right, Amy. The achievement gap is a by-product of a larger issue. We need to look "upstream" to the root causes of the problem- namely poverty. Kids who are brought up in impoverished homes are more likely to be undernourshed, live in unsafe neighborhoods, be exposed to more chemicals, stress and violence. All of which impact a student's ability to do well in school.

We need to look with a wider lens at programs and policies that can help students achieve, such as access to health care, living wage and food assitance programs.

elizabethkthorne —

College intervention is often too late.  Early childhood programs that feed smoothly into elementary school and through critical transitions in Middle and High School are most effective. 

Sparkplug Dance in Eugene is a great example of an early childhood arts program that prepares students, parents and teachers to help students succeed.  Through brain-based creative movement studies, students learn spacial relationships, collaboration and physical awareness.

Caldara in Portland and Bend is an outstanding example of a program that helps students successfully bridge the gaps between middle school, high school and post-graduate work.  Paired with a practicing artist in an ongoing mentorship situation, students find a grounding home base as they move through their latter educational experiences.

Success in these programs is measured through self-confidence, level of engagement in school and community and ability to set goals for the future: skills that many of our students lack.  Standardized tests measure only test-taking success.  I would love to hear what other measures could be used to determine students' overall achievements.

Deborahv —

To increase awareness and turn your brain into a computer that is able to to receive, process, and react at high speed to incoming information, ....do, learn, and stick with martial arts.  It is a fantastic secret weapon as a learning tool.  I praticed martial arts all through college, got a black belt, and pulled straight A's.

hubertgerard —

Some Jesuit Priest once said "Give me a child before the age of seven and I'll give you a Catholic", or similar words.

Well, I think we ought to steal that idea. Revise early education into building kids into the human potential they have, and revise parenting methods to do just that.

The gap between what we humans currently do and what our human potential really is just brings tears to my eyes. I have been around people all through that spectrum of possibilities, from some of the worst losers to the highest achievers, and I know that we can move the norm way towards the highest achiever side by changing parenting strategies.

Tom D Ford —

We are very fortunate in that our two children have attended Portland Jewish Academy, which prepares its students for success from an early age through Middle School.  The small school allows individual care, which I think is vital to success.  When you look around the car park, you see many older model cars (we personally drive 10 year old cars), which reflects the sacrifices parents make because they believe in the education and caring environment PJA provides.  )The school also provides financial aid to around 50% of the students, which is a huge percentage for a private school.)  The kids go to high school more than prepared, and many are valedictorians.  The majority go on to college.  The kids also learn independent study and research methods from an early age, which prepares them very well for high school and college.  PJA is also a candidate school for the IB programme, which is less common in K-8 schools than the high school programme, but which is a great preparer for later life, especially in this global age.

Our older daughter now attends Riverdale High School, which has similar educational methods and goals.  Again, independent study and giving the kids a sense of responsibility for their education.

Both schools also encourage a significant amount of service work, locally or in the wider world.

Parents are very involved in the schools; many of them are involved in learning themselves at some level, so teach by example.  An expectation that kids will take their education seriously is a given.  This active approach takes a lot of time and commitment, not to mention money, but we feel this is what it takes for children to succeed.

RuthS —

Thanks for talking about this important issue. I work for Oregon Mentors -- the statewide partnership that works to expand the number of young people with access to quality mentoring relationships. There are more than 165,000 kids in Oregon who need mentors; currently 35,000 have mentors through the support of mentoring programs around the state.

Potential mentors can connect to mentoring opportunities at: www.oregonmentors.org. We host Oregon’s statewide database of mentoring opportunities through more than 100 programs around the state, operating in more than 500 locations. Programs like Kids Unlimited, SEI, Mentor Portland, Incight, APSIRE, and many more, offer a variety of unique ways that adults can support young people.

Christina Mullin
Oregon Mentors
Portland OR

cmullin —

Mid Valley Mentors is another great program you will find in the Oregon Mentors database.  We serve students in Marion and Polk Counties.

sjorgensen —
  • Tom Cole: Executive director of Kids Unlimited
  • Tony Hopson: President and CEO of Self Enhancement, Inc.

I appreciate what these guys and their programs are doing, but they are addressing pathology and symptoms and I would like to see prevention, to teaching all parents, before they even become parents, how to be good effective parents.

I'd like to see good parenting taught from early on in schools, in middle school if at all possible. Let's rethink education into considering that we want to raise good potential parents, for they are the future that will affect the future children.

Let's add good parenting to our goals of educating workers, citizens, and decent contributing people.

Tom D Ford —

While I totally agree student success starts with involved parenting, caring schools and enriching opportunities for children, it's not too late to provide innovative programs and support for college students to assist in their success and retention. Numerous research studies document that student success and retention is directly related to student engagement and connection to the school of higher education. The TRiO Student Support Services program previously mentioned on your program, is a great example of how enhanced outreach, connection and support of students increases their success and retention. Another fairly new model is life coaching. There is a company (Inside Track) that has also documented through the use of control groups that students that are provided a life coach in their first year of college to support them, assist them with study and life skills, goal setting, decision-making, encouragment, etc, have a 20-25% higher retention rate, and 20-25% higher GPA than their peers who did not have a life coach. I believe as professionals in this field we must always be open to new innovative methodologies that will support individuals of any age to be successful in the pursuit of their life dreams.

RoseAnn Kennett

TRiO-SSS Advisor

coachroseann —

Thanks, TOL, good show, well done, and well sourced!

Tom D Ford —

Mentorship is an incredibly powerful tool in helping all students, but especially at-risk and system-involved students stay in school, out of trouble and to consider a future in higher education.   Mid Valley Mentors is a Salem based non profit that provides volunteer mentors to primarily juvenile justice-involved students to support their education and reduce recidivism. 

In Marion County 2855 youth were arrested in 2008.  42% of those students were failing two or more classes and 18% had already dropped out. 

There is a significant correlation between juvenile delinquency and school failure.  Mentorship has proven to be an incredibly effective way to help these students stay in school and help them avoid returning to the juvenile system as youth or worse, committing crimes as adults.  A shared characteristic of system involved youth is a lack of support and guidance from positive adult role models.  Something as simple as a positive adult role model in the form of a mentor can make change the course of a young person’s life.

Did you know that according to a 2007 Marion County jail survey, 71% of inmates reported being high school drop-outs?  Each year 700 adults reenter Marion County after incarceration. 73% of incarcerated adults are parents; many are parents of juvenile justice involved youth.  If we do not help our students stay in school now, we will be paying for many of them to be incarcerated later, and the transgenerational cycle of juvenile delinquency and adult incarceration will continue uninterrupted.

Help us engage at-risk students in one-to-one mentoring relationships and break the cycle.   As a mentor your simple, positive support as a role model for just one hour a week can mean the difference between a child ending up in the prison system as an adult or going on to higher education and becoming a successful, contributing member of society. 

Our education system may be flawed, but even as it is, our community's children are much better off in a flawed system than in the juvenile system.  Help us stop a cycle that is destroying our communities. 

Become a Mentor.
Change a Life.

Suzanne Jorgensen
Mid Valley Mentors
www.midvalleymentors.org

sjorgensen —

I agree with every comment above to some degree.  What people don’t seem to realize is that we already know everything we need to know to provide a high quality education for every child.

The current education system provides a high quality education for every normally-abled, emotionally and physically healthy, auditory and/or visual learner, who comes from a family that values education—but whose parents also understand how to work within the system as an advocate for their child and are able to help their child with becoming a skilled writer.  That is a small percentage of the student population.

Some differently abled children get a good education.

Some students with emotional difficulties and mental health diagnoses get a good education.

Some students with physical handicaps or chronic conditions get a good education.

Some students who are kinesthetic or tactual learners get a good education.  Perhaps even some olfactory or gustatory learners get a good education.

Some students whose families value education but don’t understand how to get one, get a good education.

Some students whose families do not value education even get a good education, but this is where the percentage starts to seriously drop.

Solutions to problems are easiest if intervention is begun in pre-school.

Solutions to problems are fairly effective if intervention is begun in elementary school.

Solutions to problems may sometimes be effective if begun in middle school.

greg55616 —

CONTINUED FROM LAST POST:

Solutions to problems are most effective with high school children if they are somewhat intelligent.  There is so much to learn for a student who is prepared for 9th grade, it’s too late for many to meet math and language standards for college entrance, but it’s also likely too late for them to be conversant in the culure of educational success that opens professional doors.

They can still pass the sort of GED tests that I finished five hours early, twenty years after my last high school class in most of the subjects I was tested in.  Those who enter 9th grade functionally illiterate may do well enough to eventually have the fifth grade education that our dumbed-down society requires, unless--like Malcolm X--they have another reason besides limited intelligence for never having learned to read.

So, we need to figure out how to pay for and implement some version of every pilot program that has been shown to work but for which there is no political will or budget.  There is also no way to get the teachers.

Some people go into teaching because of their love for teaching, learning, or children.  Many teachers—some of whom are effective—go into teaching because they are unqualified for more competitive professions—law, medicine, and business.  High pay and selecting teachers like we select doctors would replace today’s problems with different ones.

Half of all new teachers leave the profession within five years.  Teachers know why.

greg55616 —

Well, here's my two cents:

I come from a low income neighborhood in Central New Jersey, and I graduated from the biggest high school in the East Coast. It was one of those schools where wearing a bookbag was considered uncool. Yeah, it was that bad.

You weren't expected to do much with your life, but a select few of us did. Many went to rutgers, some to NYU, others even reached the Ivies. What separated those who excelled from those who lagged behind was a kind of forward-thinking. I'm sure this is instilled in the home but I'm sure schools have a way of instilling it, too. What we need are creative teachers, above all. Once you have a teacher who understands the student mentality, especially in a lower income city, you have something golden.

So how do I measure success? Desire to learn. Not grades--those are easily inflated. Not attendance, not any of the regular metrics. If children desire to learn, they don't need a push from anyone.

Of course, easier said than done.

I'm so happy to see all this enthusiasm in this thread. Reminds me that there are still people out there who care.

Brandon

CEO, How To Become A Ticket Broker

glossolalia —

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