Mavis G. Sanders - Schooling Students Placed at Risk: Research, Policy, and Practice in the Education of Poor and Minority Adolescents

Schooling Students Placed at Risk

Research, Policy, and Practice in the Education of Poor and Minority Adolescents

Schooling Students Placed at Risk

Research, Policy, and Practice in the Education of Poor and Minority Adolescents

Edited by

Mavis G. Sanders

Johns Hopkins University

The final camera copy for this work was prepared by the author, and therefore the publisher takes no responsibility for consistency or correctness of typographical style. However, this arrangement helps to make publication of this kind of scholarship possible.

Copyright 2000, by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other means, without prior written permission of the publisher.

First published by

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers

10 Industrial Avenue

Mahwah, NJ 07430

This edition published 2012 by Routledge

Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schooling students placed at risk : research, policy, and practice in the education of poor and minority adolescents / edited by Mavis G. Sanders

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index

ISBN 0-8058-3089-8 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 0-8058-3090-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Socially handicapped studentseducation (Secondary)United States. 2. MinoritiesEducation (Secondary)United States. I. Sanders, Mavis G.

LC4069.4.S35 2000

373.182624dc21

99-048452
CIP

Dedicated to my beloved daughter, Shori

Foreword

A. WADE BOYKIN

Howard University

In recent decades, few topics in American education have received more attention than the academic achievement of minority group students from low-income backgrounds. Yet, in spite of such concentrated attention, all too many such students continue to perform at unacceptably low levels in U.S. public schools. This is obviously cause for concern. Indeed, children from the domestic cultural groups that have fared the worse in schools constitute the fastest growing school-age population. The communities from which these students come will not be able to reap the benefits of proportionately large numbers of well-educated citizens. But, this also poses a substantial challenge to society at large. As the bar is constantly being raised for the minimal skill and knowledge needed for entry into the workforce and while preparation for the labor markets of the 21st century will require competencies that schools are only recently beginning to acknowledge and appreciate, this society must rely increasingly on a talent pool comprised of people who represent groups that this society has yet found ways to successfully educate. If this challenge is not soon met, the future productivity and well-being of American society could be severely compromised. America can ill afford to have substantial numbers of poor and minority-group students functioning at the educational margins.

Fortunately, recent years bear witness to an apparent paradigm shift taking place in the American schooling enterprise. Many are losing patience with academic programs, practices, and procedures that are based essentially on hunches, fashions and fads, and good will alone. There is an increased call for schooling to be based on what truly works with the claims substantiated by solid, rigorous, systematic evidence. To be sure, this documentation must be contextualized so that there is understanding of when, where, and for whom certain approaches are effective. However, this does not reduce the importance of implementing evidence-based approaches to schooling. Further, it has become obvious that programs that only focus on one or two aspects of schooling or that are piecemeal in their implementation, will have limited utility if the goal is to significantly enhance outcomes for the student populations of interest here. The call has gone out for systemic and comprehensive school reform. School change must be school wide. It must encompass all relevant aspects of the schooling enterprise. The activities also must be sufficiently coordinated around a common vision or a set of principles, so that there is consistency and coherence to the school experience for students and staff alike.

Still further, a talent sorting or weeding function for schooling is giving way to approaches that function more to actualize the talents and potential of all students enrolled at the school. This is to be accomplished through providing the appropriate supports and opportunities for students to grow intellectually, and to genuinely succeed in school and beyond. In a related vein, there also is a shift afoot in how students are to be viewed within the academic arena. For all too long, low-income students of color have been conceived as at risk. Advocacy now is growing to see these students instead as placed at risk. This is more than a mere change in labels. Referring to students as at risk effectively locates the problem of schooling inside the children or in their putative problematic home and community circumstances. In this manner, students and their families are conceived to have afflictions that must be cured if positive schooling outcomes are to accrue. In defining the problem of schooling this way, the prescription most often is to repair the child or fix the family in some way. Certainly if we move away from a talent sorting model of schooling, this deficit conception of children would have no place. All too often, these so-called deficient aspects of children and their families have been utilized as the basis for the sorting out of problematic children, and thereby limiting their access to quality educational experiences.

Poor and minority children are not without their challenges and difficult life circumstances. Programs certainly should be implemented to fortify such children as needed. Yet, by offering the notion of students placed at risk, this widens the possibilities for what could be the source of schooling problems to include schools themselves, and their attendant curriculum, instructional, organizational, and professional development practices. Indeed, using practices that are not rooted in solid evidence surely can place students at risk. Narrowing the scope of interventions to single focused efforts, or to uncoordinated collections of practices may also place students at risk. Programs and practice which function to sort children inevitably lead to the unfortunate waste of human talent.

This book brings much needed theory, research, and practical suggestions to the task of increasing the possibilities of success for students who too frequently have been marginalized by U.S. public schools. It gives greatly welcomed attention to issues that bear on the schooling of adolescents, whose concerns too often get shortchanged in discussions of achievement enhancement and school reform. This book presents conceptions and approaches consistent with the newly emerging paradigms of schooling. Important new vistas are explored and important new questions are asked. New light is shed on such crucial topics as student transitions, tracking, school engagement, and small learning communities. Attention is given to the social fabric of the schooling process, acknowledging the significance of the social transactions and patterns of participants in the schooling enterprise. Attention also is given to how the quality of students educational experience influences achievement outcomes. Relatedly, there is focus on the necessity and consequences of teaching for inclusiveness in order to proactively accommodate students of diverse backgrounds. Furthermore, in chapters throughout the book, poor and minority students families and communities are presented not as caldrons of deficiencies and pathologies, but as resources for activities, experiences, and competencies that can be capitalized upon in school settings. There also is focus on ways in which schools can be resources for families and community development. The challenges and opportunities of comprehensive reform and restructuring are given consideration as well.