Schools

• Secondary schools


  Middle, junior and high school
• Nearly all 17 and 18 year olds are enrolled in school
• Even in developing countries, a significantly proportion of adolescents attend school (about 50% of 15 to 19 year olds and 60% of children 10 to 14)
• Average student spends 1/3 of waking hours in school
• Students spend 7000 hours between 11 and 18 in school
• Schools


  • Shape psychosocial development and influence extends far beyond academic development
• Broader context of secondary education

  Students spend more days per year in school
• Since 1920, number of days in school per year increased
• By 1968, average 180 days
• Todays students attend 90% of the term on average
• Students remain in school for more years than previous eras
• In 1924, fewer than 33% of youth entering 5th grade graduated
• Now, 80% of youth graduate and even more end up with degrees later on
• Origins of secondary education

  Result of industrialization, urbanization and immigration
• Industrialization


  • More machine work required more skilled workers
  • Unskilled jobs required manual labor/strength greater than a child could provide
  • Dangers of the workplace
• Immigration


  • Expanding economy drew people form other countries to move here
  • Urbanization and crowding in American cities
  • Harsh living environments and "slums"
• Reformers


  • Envisioned education as a method of taking youth off the streets and improving the lives of the poor and working class
  • Means of social control - could place youth in an environment where they could be supervised and kept out of trouble
  • Socialization of immigrants
• Comprehensive High School


  Education system that aimed to meet the diverse needs of a growing population - general education, college preparation and vocational education were all housed under one roof
• Prior to the early 20th century, schools were only for the elite and there was a focus on intellectualism
• When secondary education was aimed at the masses, education now was a means of preparing youth for life in modern society
• Few other countries attempt to utilize the Comprehensive High School model
• Schools


  • Critical tools of social intervention - through schools, we are able to reach the greatest number of young people in one place
• School reform


  • 1950's: space race
  • 1970s: work study programs
  • 1990s: preventive health programs
• No Child Left Behind

  • 1990s- growing concern about the growing achievement gap
  • Schools were called upon to raise their standards
  • All students, regardless of economic circumstances, achieve academic proficiency
  • Schools needed to report whether their students were meeting state standards or not
• No Child Left Behind

  • Increased accountability of schools to educate their students
  • Schools who continued to fail could lose their funding
  • Focus on standardized testing- no focus on other important things like critical thinking
  • Teaching to the test
• Obama administration made several changes - Race to the top, Common standards (rather then state determined standards)
• Standards Based Reform


  Improving achievement by holding schools and students to a predetermined set of benchmarks that are measured by achievement tests
• Common Core: set of standards in English Language Arts and Math, used to assess whether students were learning "what the ought to learn" at each grade, many states have abandoned this plan
• Educators still struggle to agree on what is important that high schoolers know
• Education crisis in inner city public schools

  Achievement gap - discrepancy between White and non-White youth in proficiency in math, reading and science
• 60% of Asians and 45% of White are proficient in math compared to 21% Hispanic and 14% Black
• 52% Asian and 46% White are proficient in reading compared to 22% Hispanic and 17% Black
• 1/6 of students in large inner city public schools are proficient in science
• Achievement gaps exist between students of diverse cultural, linguistic and socio-economic backgrounds and their White and middle class peers, and these gaps persist across time
• Why school has failed

  • Poverty
  • School climate and school safety - 1/5 of inner city kids feel so unsafe at school that they report carrying a weapon with them, kids don't feel a sense of belonging, leads to disengagement and poor achievement
  • Administrative bureaucracy
  • Few job opportunities, little incentive to stay in school
• Social organization of schools

  The way schools are set up and organized can have an impact on adolescent development and behavior - school and classroom size, different approaches to age grouping, tracking of students according to ability, ethnic composition of schools, public versus private
• School size and class size

  • Large schools are able to offer more courses and thus, a more comprehensive/varied curriculum, but bigger does not mean better, kids do better when they attend schools in which there is a cohesive community, attachment to school is weaker in large schools, no evidence to suggest that larger schools have more frequent victimization, victimization is better predicted by student-teacher ratios, schools within schools can help create a better sense of community but can inadvertently create schools that vary substantially in educational quality, more diverse extracurriculars but rates of participation are about half in large schools
• Students in smaller schools

  • More likely to be involved in a wider range of activities, more likely to be involved in activities that are skill building, allow students to work closely with others, feel needed and important, more likely to be placed in positions of leadership and responsibility
• Variations in class size

  Research on benefits of smaller schools often leads to the belief that smaller classes are beneficial too, but variations within the typical range of class size (20-40 students) does not have an effect on classroom achievement once they reach high school age, small classes are important for young children, who need more individualized support, exception is for those who need remedial instruction or extra support
• Nearly 15% of secondary schools are overcrowded, 8% are considered severely overcrowded, overcrowding is especially likely in schools with greater than 50% ethnic minorities