Academic Performance is Contagious

I Hope I Catch Some of Her Smarts (Image modified from Flickr image by Kodomut)

The Bowl Curve Syndrome

I once observed that the test scores and class averages in many of my low income classes produced graphs with a shape very different than the stereotypical bell curve, with a majority of students earning C’s (the top of the bell) and fewer students earning A’s, B’s, D’s and F’s (the sides of the bell). In my classes, the curves were shaped like inverted bells, or bowls, with very few C’s, slight higher numbers of A’s and B’s, and much higher numbers of D’s and F’s.

My interpretation of these results was that I had very few students who were academically and socially ready for college-preparatory level biology (the A’s, B’s and C’s) and a majority of students who were not ready (the D’s and F’s). Indeed, this hypothesis was supported by other data (e.g., high percentages of my students were reading far below grade level, failing other courses, and/or deficient in graduation credits). Furthermore, the students with D’s and F’s had significantly higher rates of absenteeism and were less likely to complete their assignments.

While my hypothesis made a lot of sense, it did not explain why there were fewer C’s than A’s or B’s. However, I did observe that many of these C students ebbed and flowed depending on who they were teamed up with in the class. When grouped with higher performing students, they tended to rise to the occasion and do better in the class, while the opposite occurred when they were grouped with lower performing students.

This was not just a case of riding on their peers’ coat tails or putting their names on a “group” activity that was completed mostly by the higher performing students. Rather, their tests scores, lab reports and other individual assignments began to improve. It was if their peers’ self-efficacy and optimism inspired and motivated them (e.g., “if they can do, maybe I can, too, with a little more effort”). In contrast, when surrounded by students who were struggling and failing, it appeared to them as if no one was succeeding and the system must therefore be rigged and impossible, so why bother?

Academic Success is Infectious

My hypothesis was recently confirmed by research led by Hiroki Sayama, director of the Collective Dynamics of Complex Systems research group at Binghamton University in Binghamton, N.Y. and published in the Public Library of Science (PLoS).

Sayama’s research team asked students at Maine-Endwell High School in Endwell, N.Y. to rank their classmates as either a “best friend,” a “friend,” an “acquaintance” or someone they didn’t know. They then examined their grade point averages and how these changed between January 2011 and January 2012, finding a linear relationship between students’ grades and those of their peer group. For example, if a student’s grade were initially higher than their peers’ grades, the student’s grade tended to decline over the course of the year until it was more in line with the peers. Likewise, if the student’s initial grades were lower than their peers’, their grades tended to rise over the year. They also found a correlation in happiness, obesity and other traits between students and their peer groups. The correlations were strongest at the “friend” level, and much less significant at the “best friend” and “acquaintance” levels.

There were a number of variables and biases in the experiment that are worth noting. The sample size was relatively small (only 158 students and only one school were examined). Consequently, the results may have been skewed due to the small sample size or the possible concentration of students of similar socioeconomic background (e.g., they were predominantly white and suburban). Also, the social networks were constructed based on self-reporting by students. This could also skew the data, as people do not always respond truthfully or accurately on self-reporting surveys. Furthermore, the categories to which students assigned their peers (e.g., best friend, friend, acquaintance, etc.) are subjective and difficult to quantify. One other significant bias inherent in this research is that students may be choosing their “friends” based on preexisting similarities in behavior, academic readiness, motivation and attitudes about school. Thus, a correlation in academic achievement could be explained by behaviors that were coincidental rather than influential.

Take Home Message: Desegregate Schools and Classrooms

While the research indicates that “friends” had a greater influence on students than did acquaintances, my own experience has been that even acquaintances can have a measurable influence. The problem is that grouping students with “friends” or “acquaintances” will have a negative effect if the “friends” and “acquaintances” are performing more poorly. Thus, the solution should be to surround each low performing student with more successful peers. However, in low income schools, which have higher percentages of low performing students, this would be impossible.

One way around this dilemma is to desegregate schools based on socioeconomic background and academic performance (i.e., reassigning students across a school district such that all schools have similar numbers of low performing and high performing students). Of course, this would have little effect in a district that is composed entirely of lower income students. However, in cities like San Francisco, where there are wide socioeconomic, ethnic and achievement gaps between schools within the same school district, such a reassigning of students could go a long way toward increasing the ratio of successful students per classroom and thus the chances that a lower performing student is grouped with or makes friends with a higher achieving student.

Of course this is much easier said than done, as San Francisco has discovered each time it has attempted to (and failed) desegregate its schools.

8th Grade Literacy & Poverty Predict HS Grad Rates

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Thanks to Rachel Norton, San Francisco School Board member, for her recent blog post: “Who is likely to finish HS? You can tell in 8th grade,” and Kathryn Baron, from the Topics in Education blog, for her recent post: Poverty + poor reading = dropout.

According to a recent study, which examined nearly 2.6 million student records from urban districts across the country, two factors determine whether 8^th graders will go on to graduate from high school: having a GPA over 2.0 and an attendance rate over 87.5%. Impressively, 89% of students who had both and who passed all their academic core courses (math, English, social studies or science) graduated in four years.  However, simply passing all core classes was insufficient. 55% of students who had either poor attendance or low GPAs failed to graduate from high school in 4 years, even if they passed their core classes, while only 24% of students graduated on time if they possessed both risk factors.

Unfortunately, Norton did not provide the title or authors of the study, but there are numerous other studies that have replicated these results. For example, Allenworth and Easton¹ found a strong correlation between GPA and graduation. Students with a 1.5 GPA had a 62% chance of graduating on time. Those with a 2.0 GPA had a 74% chance of graduating and those with a 2.5 GPA had an 86% chance. They also found a strong correlation between attendance and graduation rates, with only 64% of students graduating high school on time if they missed five to nine days during the ninth grade. The number went up to 87% if they missed less than five days. A study by Martha A. MacIver² found that 80% of students graduated on time if they were in class at least 95% of the time during the 9^th grade, whereas less than 20% of students graduated on time if their attendance was below 70%. (Click here to view the policy brief) There was also a study of Baltimore school children³ in which high school drop-outs averaged 27.6 absences per year, while graduates averaged only 11.8. In a prior study⁴ the same authors found that low test scores and report card grades in first grade were a reliable predictor of later high school success.

This is probably not news to most teachers, as we have all experienced students who failed due to poor attendance. Many of us routinely have students who are absent 20-30% of the time (or more). While it is tempting to blame the schools for this problem, since they could always implement tougher attendance rules and consequences for unexcused absences, it would not solve the problem. There are a host of societal and familial problems that contribute to both absenteeism and low GPAs. For example, low income students are much more likely to be absent due to illnesses that go untreated and worsen due to lack of health insurance. They are also more likely to miss school in order to help with familial responsibilities like caring for a sibling or sick relative. According to the 2001 study by Alexander, et. al.³, students of lower socioeconomic status were four times more likely to drop out of high school than their wealthier counterparts.

It is true that high school graduation can be fairly accurately predicted by absences and GPA in 8^th grade (or even 1^st grade, according to Alexander, et. al. 2000³). However, these factors are not necessarily the cause of high school failure. Rather, low graduation rates and poor attendance could both be symptoms of a larger problem: poverty. Certainly a few Ds and Fs early in one’s academic career could set a student so far back that it is difficult or impossible to catch up and graduate on time. Likewise, one bad health year (e.g., injury, whooping cough, pneumonia) could cause a student to get so far behind in all classes that the entire year must be repeated. However, kids who are absent a lot in 9^th grade are generally absent a lot in all grades. Richard Rothstein says that poor children have 40% more absences than middle class kids. Similarly, students often have poor report cards throughout their academic careers for numerous reasons like low self-efficacy, difficulty focusing for extended periods of time, learning disabilities, or stress and anxiety at home.

Kathryn Baron’s post, like Norton’s, focuses on predictors of high school graduation rates. Her piece looks at a new longitudinal study that shows a direct link between third grade reading and high school graduation. Double Jeopardy: How Third-Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation, which followed almost 4,000 students born between 1979 and 1989, found that third-graders who are poor readers are four times more likely to drop out of high school as those who are proficient readers.

Again, there is nothing surprising here. Poor literacy not only makes it difficult for students to comprehend test questions, homework assignments and textbooks, it can lower their self-efficacy and make school so frustrating that they stop trying. The more interesting part of the study was the observation that poverty could override the future benefits of reading proficiency. Students who were good readers, but who had lived at least one year in poverty, were just as likely to drop out as children who were poor readers but who had never experienced poverty.

While affluence can counter some of the effects low literacy, the majority of poor readers are also economically disadvantaged. Baron says that 83% of 4^th graders receiving free or reduced lunch are also reading below grade level, while 70% of high school dropouts are economically disadvantaged.

There are numerous interventions that can help some low income kids succeed in school. For instance, encouraging low income parents to read to their babies and to use more complex language at home can help counter the vocabulary and pre-literacy gap that exists by the time children are three (see Hart and Risley and David Burkam and Valerie Lee). Some children just need better health care or even eyeglasses, while others could make big gains with tutoring or support for undiagnosed learning disabilities.

However, there are additional consequences of growing up poor that cannot be remediated so easily and that contribute to poor literacy, absenteeism and poor academic achievement. Iron-deficiency anemia, which can impair cognitive ability, is twice as common among poor children, while an estimated 10% of poor students have dangerous levels of lead in their blood, which can lead to learning disabilities and decreased intelligence. Poor kids are more likely to be born premature and with low birth weights, which can also cause learning disabilities and impaired cognitive development. Simply living in a family that is experiencing financial uncertainty can create stress and the overproduction of the hormone cortisol, which can damage memory and lead to chronic health consequences that increase absenteeism. Financial uncertainty also increases the likelihood of having to move and change schools. A 1994 report by the General Accounting Office found that 41% of students who changed schools frequently were below grade level in reading and 33% were below grade level in math, compared to 26% and 17%, respectively, for those who remained at the same schools. Poor children are also less likely to have a safe, quiet place to study when they get home or to have someone who can help them with their work. During summer, they are less likely to go on intellectually stimulating vacations, take enriching classes and workshops, or play organized sports.

While it is true that some poor kids do beat the odds and succeed in school, it is these hard to remedy problems that explain why so many other poor kids continue to fail in school despite all the interventions, supports and reforms that educators have implemented. It is time to stop glorifying the few schools that have supposedly beaten the odds by getting poor kids to succeed. Even with all the extra funding and the ridiculously long hours their teachers are expected to work, the majority of poor kids are still going to slip through the cracks, because they are still poor, malnourished, untreated for their health problems, poisoned by the toxins in their homes and neighborhoods and stressed by their family’s financial insecurity. If we really want to close the achievement gap, then we need to start by closing the wealth gap.

References

1. Allensworth, E. M., & Easton, J. Q. (2007). What matters for staying on-track and graduating in Chicago Public High Schools: A close look at course grades, failures, andattendance in the freshman year. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, Consortium on Chicago School Research. http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/publications/07%20What%20Matters%20Final.pdf
2.  MacIver, Martha A. (2011) Moving Forward to Improve Graduation Rates in Baltimore City, Baltimore Education Research Consortium, Baltimore, Md. April 2011
3. Alexander, Karl L., Entwisle, Doris R., and Kabbani, Nader (2001), “The Dropout Process in Life Course Perspective: Early Risk Factors at Home and School,” Teachers College Record
4. Alexander, Karl L., Entwisle, Doris R., and Kabbani, Nader (2000), “The Dropout Process in Life Course Perspective: Part I, Profiling Risk Factors at Home and School,” Balitmore, MD. John Hopkins University.