Source: Ed Week, Click here.
Executive Summary
Schools Aim to Craft Environment for Learning
A
school's social and disciplinary atmosphere can have a profound impact on
student achievement
By The Editors ED WEEK
This
17th edition of Education Week's annual Quality Counts report
takes aim at an issue freighted with emotional as well as policy implications:
the impact of a school's social and disciplinary environment on students'
ability to learn and on the teachers and administrators tasked with guiding
them.
National
initiatives to improve schools tend to focus heavily on curriculum, testing,
and personnel. But a growing consensus also recognizes that the elements that
make up school climate—including peer relationships, students' sense of safety
and security, and the disciplinary policies and practices they confront each
day—play a crucial part in laying the groundwork for academic success. Those
factors, along with resources and the ability of school staff members to meet
students' needs, are seen as especially important for low-performing schools
and at-risk students.
Policymakers
have begun responding to such concerns in recent years by focusing on aspects
of students' well-being beyond simply their academic health. A number of
federal initiatives reflect the shift. They include a set of school climate
grants awarded to 11 states (now in their third and final year), White
House-led programs on bullying awareness and prevention, and a partnership
among federal agencies designed to change the way schools discipline students.
"The
conditions for success in schools include not just having high-quality
teachers, but ensuring that they are working in schools designed for success.
In schools designed for success, there's a growing interest in ensuring that
school climate supports students," says Deborah Delisle, the U.S.
Department of Education's assistant secretary for elementary and secondary
education.
Multiple
Factors
In
analyzing the ways in which school climate can support—or hinder—academic
achievement, Education Week's reporters drew on the latest research and
visits to schools putting into practice approaches intended to assure a secure,
supportive learning environment.
In
the classroom arena, they document ways in which educators are working to
bolster students' ability to cope with academic and personal pressures that
can interfere with learning and lead to peer conflict and bullying. They look
at the challenges that teachers, administrators, and school-level support
personnel face in fulfilling their mission amid constraints involving time,
training, and staff resources.
Field
Survey
To
complement Education Week's reporting, the Editorial Projects in
Education Research Center conducted an online survey of registered users of
the Education Week website. More than 1,300 school-based personnel,
responded to questions on a range of issues involving school climate, safety,
and discipline.
The
results of the survey offer insight into the views of teachers, instructional
specialists, principals, and other building-level administrators who have
valuable, first-hand experience with efforts to craft a safe, supportive school
environment.
State
of the States
Quality
Counts 2013 continues the EPE Research Center's
annual practice of ranking the states on a range of key education
indicators—with detailed tracking for each of the three categories updated in
this year's report—and of awarding summative letter grades and scores for the
states and for the nation as a whole across all six categories that make up the
report's grading framework.
This
year, the report updates Quality Counts' signature Chance-for-Success
Index, which looks at the connection between education and beneficial outcomes
at each stage of a person's life; school finance indicators, which capture the
level and equitability of school funding; and transitions and alignment,
examining how states work to coordinate K-12 schooling and other aspects of
their education systems at various stages of a student's career.
Three
additional categories—k-12 achievement; standards, assessments, and
accountability; and the teaching profession—were updated in the 2012 edition.
Grading
Highlights
Taken
together, all six categories form the basis of the report's state-by-state
summative scores and rankings, and the grades for the states and the nation
overall.
Maryland,
for the fifth consecutive year, receives the top grade in the nation, with a
B-plus. In second place is Massachusetts, with a B, followed closely by New
York state and then by Virginia. (All four states took the same slots in Quality Counts 2012 and have consistently
ranked high in past reports.) Joining the top-10 list for the first time is
Kentucky, which earns a B-minus.
At
the other end of scale, South Dakota for the second year in a row takes the
bottom spot, with a grade of D-plus. The nation as a whole receives a score of
C-plus—joining 19 states in that tier. Overall, a large majority of states—37,
plus the District of Columbia—receive grades ranging from C-minus to C-plus in
this year's report.
Standouts
Even
with most states clustered in the middle tiers of the grading scale,
performance in certain categories included notable standouts:
•
Massachusetts captures the top ranking in the Chance-for-Success Index for the
sixth year in a row, earning an A-minus.
•
In the category of transitions and alignment—which puts a particular focus on
early-childhood education, college readiness, and career readiness—Georgia
becomes the first state to earn a perfect score for these policies.
•
In the school finance category, West Virginia leaps to second in the nation,
with an A-minus, up from 14th place last year. Wyoming once again tops the list
in that category, receiving the only grade of A.
Source: Ed Week, Click here.
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