Improving America's Schools The Role of Incentives (1996) / Chapter Skim
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8 Public School Partnerships: Community, Family, and School Factors in Determining Child Outcomes
8 Public School Partnerships: Community, Family, and School Factors in Determining Child Outcomes
Pages 147-170
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From page 147... ...
Families, communities, schools, and children themselves have been instrumental in defining the inputs to education, the processes through which formal education occurs, and the application of and rewards for the products of the educational process during adulthood. The current emphasis on formal partnerships is being fueled by mounting evidence that our education system is failing to keep pace with changes in the economy that have increased the skill requirements for jobs at all levels, even low-paying jobs.
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From page 148... ...
Indicators of Stable or Improving School Performance In the aggregate, school performance has continued to improve with respect to some objectives -- enrolling more children, keeping youths in school through the full 12 years of program study, and preparing young people for postsecondary education and training options. School participation rates have continued to rise, dropout rates have fallen, Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT)
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From page 149... ...
TABLE 8.1 Trends in Student Outcomes, by Year PUBLIC SCHOOL PARTNERSHIPS 149
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From page 150... ...
In part, this trend toward higher high school completion rates reflects the institution of alternative educational opportunities within the regular secondary education system and through alternative credentialing options, principally the General Educational Development (GED) certificate.2 Despite mounting evidence that many of today's youth are not well prepared for the demands of our changing economy, the educational achievement of young people has been fairly steady over the past 20 years.
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From page 151... ...
For example, over this period, the average pupil-teacher ratio decreased 22 percent, from 20 to 17, and average teacher salaries increased by 6 percent in real terms, from $33,000 to $35,000.6 In addition, substantial resources have been channeled into providing special services for children with learning differences or for nonacademic programs. At the same time that the public has been increasing its financial investments in education, it has also been demanding continual improvements in the system.
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From page 152... ...
152 Improving America's Schools: The Role of Incentives Trends in Educational Investments, by Year TABLE 8.2
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From page 153... ...
There are several explanations for these trends, including the increasing proportion of the work force in higher education groups, an increase in the supply of labor due to rapidly rising rates of female labor force participation, declines in the real minimum wage, and structural shifts in the economy (Burtless, 1990,
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From page 154... ...
, while the rate for 18 to 24 year olds nearly doubled, from 66 to 126 arrests per 1,000. LOOKING BEYOND THE SCHOOLS TO IMPROVE EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES It is becoming increasingly clear that many factors are contributing to the disappointing life prospects of many of today's youth.
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From page 155... ...
. There is also a growing body of research indicating the power of quality preschool experiences on subsequent educational outcomes (Ramey and Campbell, 1990; BerruetaClement et al., 1984; McGroder, 1990)
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From page 156... ...
School Physical plant Curriculum Class size Teacher quality Special services Peer group Parent involvement 1. Child Development/Outcomes 0-4 Years 5-17 Years Young Adult Birth outcomes Investment in education Postsecondary education Child development School performance Employment and earnings School preparedness Educational attainment Family formation Labor force participation Teenage parenting Deviant behavior 2.
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From page 157... ...
During the postsecondary period, the influence tends to be through educational and job opportunities and the social setting. For example, in tight labor markets with rising real wages for lower-skilled jobs, the proportion of youth pursuing postsecondary education, particularly community colleges, has tended to fall.
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From page 158... ...
In addition, many minority children, especially those in minority groups with long histories of economic and social hardship in the United States, are likely to see few economic prospects in their future and therefore little reason to strive for academic success. Ethnographers suggest that cultural differences and perceptions of poor economic prospects account for some of the residual performance differences between some minority groups and white youth, after controlling for easily measurable socioeconomic factors (Erickson, 1987; Ogbu, 1987)
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From page 159... ...
What they do report are high rates of alcohol and drug use. In 1990 more than half of high school seniors reported using alcohol within the past 30 days and 17 percent had used drugs, including 9 percent who used drugs other than marijuana (Table 8.4)
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From page 160... ...
. There are several trends in the conditions of American families that are clearly associated with worse outcomes for children -- especially, rising divorce rates, increases in out-of-wedlock births, rising teenage birth rates, higher child poverty rates, and higher rates of domestic violence.
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From page 161... ...
.11 A third factor contributing to the high poverty rate among singleparent families is the decline in the youth job market (Wilson, 1987; Stern, 1993) , and a fourth factor is the 23 percent decline in real welfare benefits per recipient since 1970 (NCES, 1993b)
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From page 162... ...
. Other community-wide trends -- increases in crime rates in inner-city areas, high rates of drug use and employment opportunities in the drug industry, and decreasing job opportunities for those without postsecondary education -- go hand in hand with high rates of teenage parenting, single-parent households, and high rates of school failure (Wilson, 1987; Haveman and Wolfe, 1994; Datcher, 1982; Crane, 1991; Corcoran and Datcher, 1981)
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From page 163... ...
At one extreme in this category are welfare and public health programs, which offer broad coverage and spend millions of dollars annually to provide income and health security to poor families through the Aid to Families with Dependent Children and Medicaid programs. At the other extreme are small community-based family resource centers that work to strengthen individuals and families through a variety of informal supports and referrals (Weiss and Jacobs, 1988; Larner et al., 1992; Goetz, 1992)
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From page 164... ...
Head Start and the urban pre-K programs are probably the best known. There are also various early intervention programs for at-risk children, special schools and support programs for in-school teenage parents, and both adult and family literacy programs.
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From page 165... ...
• Job training. Job training programs have had small beneficial effects for adult women, but generally they have not led to increased employment rates or earnings for adult men or youth.
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From page 166... ...
Programs offering parenting education and family literacy have had modest measured benefits in terms of parenting behaviors and measured literacy gains of the parents. Other programs, such as the school-community partnerships, community development initiatives, and mentoring programs, have not been subjected to rigorous evaluation.
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From page 167... ...
New York: Committee for Economic Development. Congressional Budget Office.
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From page 168... ...
Child Care Policy for the 1990s. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
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From page 169... ...
1986. "Women's work, sibling competition, and children's school performance." American Economic Review 77:972-980.
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