Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do, Laurence Steinberg, author

Reviewed by Leon McGinnis

Twenty-five years of school reform has failed--student performance today is no better than in the mid-seventies. More students today care less about school than in the past, making the classroom teacher's job much harder. And parents today are just as apathetic about school as their children. So conclude Laurence Steinberg and his associates after a decade-long study of more than 20,000 students in "typical" high schools across the US. What has happened to public education, and what can we do about it?

The key to understanding contemporary public education lies not in theories of learning or in the school reform movement, but in the concept of engagement. "When highly engaged students are in class, they are there emotionally as well as physically. They concentrate on the task at hand, they strive to do their best when tested or called upon, and when they are given homework or other outside assignments, they do them on time and in good faith. ... When disengaged students are in school, they are clearly just going through the motions. When they are not in school, school is the last thing on their mind." Parents who are engaged are "attending school programs, extracurricular activities, teacher conferences, and 'back to school' nights." Disengaged parents "do not know how their child is doing in school, have no idea who their child's friends are, and are not aware of how their child spends his or free time."

The research results demonstrate conclusively that disengagement is rampant in today's public schools. Among the findings: two-thirds of the students say they cheated on a test during the past school year; 9 of 10 say they copied homework; half hold down a job that requires fifteen hours a week or more; 40% of students who participate in school activities such as athletics say they are too tired afterwards to study; 20% of all students say they don't try as hard as they could because of what their friends might think; one-third say their parents don't know how they are performing in school; 25% of parents are truly disengaged, and 40% never attend any school program. This lack of engagement means that a typical high school teachers faces a classroom in which half the students have "checked out."

Is the glass half empty or half full? Not all children are failing, so why do some students succeed and some fail? "Here's the big surprise...of all the demographic factors we studied in relation to school performance, ethnicity is the most important." It would be easy to dismiss this research as racist claptrap after reading such a statement, but Steinberg devotes almost half the book to examining these results and explaining why Asian-Americans perform so well and African-Americans and Latinos perform so poorly in school. He discusses many factors, but four of them seem to stand out.

First, students perform better in school if they believe that what they are learning is worthwhile, and that failure in school will have serious consequences. Asian-American students often believe that success in school is essential for success in life; if they succeed academically, they can overcome racial prejudice and achieve success. African-American and Latino students, on the other hand, often do not believe that there are serious consequences for failure in school, because even if they are successful academically, racial prejudice will prevent them from being successful in life. In one case there is a fear of failure, in the other case there isn't. When students fear the consequences of failure, they will "engage" more fully in school.

Second, student performance suffers when students hold down jobs outside of school, especially jobs that require fifteen hours per week or more, or when they spend large amounts of time on extracurricular activities or socializing. The study results show that Asian-American students are less likely to hold after-school jobs, and also spend considerably less time each week socializing with friends.

Third, peer groups have more influence on the performance of high school students than any other factor. "...vulnerability to peer pressure...rises as children become teenagers, peaks sometime around eighth or ninth grade, and then begins to decline as individuals move through high school." Children tend to define themselves as members of a "crowd," but less than 5% are "members of a high-achieving crowd that defines itself mainly on the basis of academic excellence." According to Steinberg, "...Asian students ' friends have higher performance standards, spend more time on homework, are more committed to education, and earn considerably higher grades in school. Black and Hispanic students' friends earn lower grades, spend less time on their studies, and have substantially lower performance standards. White students' friends fall somewhere between these two extremes..."

Fourth is parental engagement, i.e., participation in school events and monitoring student performance. "Parental disengagement is a very good predictor of many of the problem behaviors whose levels have reached alarming proportions: alcohol and drug abuse, delinquency and violence, suicide, and sexual precocity. And ... parental disengagement is also a very good predictor of academic difficulties and low school achievement." In general Latino parents are less engaged, as are single parents or parents who both work full-time.

When parental behavior clearly demonstrates commitment to schooling, children are more fully engaged. When the peer groups available to children are more committed to academic achievement, the children will be more engaged. Engagement, both parental and student, impacts academic achievement. Perhaps this explains the success of parochial schools, private schools, charter schools, and home study programs. In each case, one can argue that parents are more fully engaged than in the typical public school, and that the available peer groups are more likely to emphasize academic achievement.